Hey

Right. For out latest school production they are putting on Midsummer Nights Dream.

They are doing this 'in the round'. Which is basically instead of using the stage, they are going to act in the middle of the hall, in a circular area, with the audience seated around.

Most members of cast will be wearing a tie mic, so they can be heard above the band in songs etc as well as general acting.

Our school hall, sound wise, is not set up for this.

I have several movable speakers (around 6 or 7) as well as the two main house speakers.

Any ideas on positioning of speakers in order to get the best sound and least feedback.

Cheers

J

xx

Generally, one of the reasons for theatre in the round is to get the audience "up close and personal", therefore eliminating the need for any extremes of reinforcement (if any is needed at all). Frankly, the first thing I'd be doing is considering carefully whether you really NEED amplification, especially on dialogue but even on musicial numbers. (By the way, since when is Midsummer Night's Dream a musical?)

However, if your decision is that amplification IS needed, I've used a couple of techniques in the past. Whether either can be adapted for your space will depend on the room and the gear you have.

First off, if you have the ability to fly speakers, I've had good luck with multiple cabinets flown just on the the stage side of the front rows of the audience, angled to provide audience cover but minimal spill on the acting area. It took some calculation of the dispersion angles to get the spacing right..but the goal was to use more speakers than usual and keep the levels from each nice and low for subtle reinforcement.

The second way I've done this was to use small monitor wedges dotted round the edge of the acting area, facing the audience. The time I used this, the audience was only a few rows deep so the "blocking effect" of the front rows wasn't so much of an issue...you certainly wouldn't get much coverage farther back. Again, I used more speakers than usual and lower levels per speaker.

(In both these cases we were working with the cast on a flat floor, I.e. no raised platform. If you do have a stage planned, you could mount small speakers as fills in the stage edge.)

Hope this helps at least a little.

Bob

Divide the audience into 4 quarters of the circle and have a flown stereo pair for each section. Will take some quite considerable calculations, but its definitely a technique that can work very well.

Do you literally mean stereo? How do you manage the panning since, even with the best specced/aimed system there's going to be some overlap/spill?

Bob

This is a school production, right? Are you coming in as an outside company, or are you a pupil at the school? (checks profile - student, then). Flying stuff will probably not be doable in-house, and almost certainly not by yourself. I'd go with the wedges on the ground if you really need sound reinforcement, but try to get away without it if you can.

Thanks guys.

To answer the questions.

Our school have made it a musical by adding 'modern' songs. Going to be great or awlful.

With general spoken lines the mics will either be off or very low, so only really used for the musical numbers.

The 'fly' idea sounds great, but is impossible with both budget, skill and regulations in school.

Thanks for all the help, and I will go with some kind of small speaker layout, using as many as possible with a low volume output.

Cheers

xx

You can't really do stereo in the round anyway - because the left becomes right, as you move around and the cast spend much of their time with their backs towards 180 degrees of the audience. Where is the band? If they are also in the centre, this is really bad news. Actually, without the correct equipment, much of this is bad news - very difficult to mix when people are facing the other way. any attempt to follow position with a left right pan is hopeless, for in-the-round you need a minimum of 3 channels, usually 4 and some method of controling pan properly - digital mixers might work - otherwise, go mono!

The comments about really needing sound make perfect sense - if at all possible, do it unamplified. If you can't fly speakers, or find suitable floor mounted positions, give up. whatever you do, people will think the poor sound is your fault. Your teacher is unlikely to understand, not having given it any thought, leaving you with no budget to do even a passable job, unless expectations are so low as to not make it worth worrying about.

You say it will be good or bad - doesn't sound as if you have any confidence in it either?

Budget is the heads fault. The whole production has hardly got any. Most of the stage crew budget has been spent on actual tie mics and gels.

Yes we get nothing.

I think suitable floor positions will be possible, as I have an up to date picture of what the hall will look like.

As for what the teachers think, we (the 'crew) get blamed for everything anyway. (this includes actors forgetting thier lines being blamed on us moving).

I would love to do it un-amplified but the band will just be too loud. Oh and the band are not in the center. Thankfully.

xx

print this thread out and let the teacher read it. Most decent teachers will realise when they don't quite know enough to manage these things. Any attempt to use your exisiting system will be pretty unrewarding. Feedback will become really troublesome. Does your mixer have decent eq to cope? Did you buy decent radio mics, or cheap ones? If you've bought sennheisers or similar you have a bit of a lead. How many have you got? Licences? (If you are running more than the exept channels) Loads of questions, and if the answers don't work properly then somebody needs to take charge quickly to stop it going pear shaped.
Paul

What is the band made of ? Does it have to have all the instruments it does? and can some be acoustic?

The band is all acoustic.

As for the teacher points. Most of those questions you mentioned can be answered with a positive, yet I do use 'most'.

Sadly it all comes down to the lack of teacher knowledge concerning what the task is they're actually asking me to do and major lack of budget.

Got to love school stage work eh.

xx

Saw a Halesworth youth company do Midsummer Night's Dream open air in a park with loads of Beatles songs throughout. Worked an absolute treat, and served to introduce a 3 & 5 year old to the Beatles, and to realise that Shakespear might actually not be all bad.

I did a version set in a night club with a drum and base sound track. This was made easier by the fact the venue that they performed in was a night club pretty much as soon as the everyone got out and I packed up. Of course this also meant a horrible, small, wingless, heightless stage with more problems than I can point a hudge stick at. On balance it was complete crap but the thespo's enjoyed it.

This makes me wonder why you bother putting your time and effort into it. If the staff are so ungrateful, then why should you help? Leave them to it and see how they cope without.

Just because we enjoy doing it.

And personally it helps with future career plans.

But there have been times when we've thought 'F**k it'

x

You enjoy working your socks off, getting none of the credit, but getting all of the blame when things go belly-up even if it's not your fault?!

Well that's why we all do it isn't it?

I was just about to say that.

Thats what it's like everywhere.

And if theres a magical place

Where stage crew get the artists credit and salary, and the artists get the crews...

Please leave an address.

It's sad to see you so cynical while still in school!

It's not magic, but there are many places, amateur and professional, where the contribution made by the technical team is valued. Those that treat crews poorly tend to have a rapid turnover.

As for money, while stars get the big bucks, the technical staff at a theatre probably earn more over a year than the typical freelance actor who spends much of his or her time "resting". You know the old joke: what do most actors say when they meet you? Answer: Do you want fries with that?

I'm not going to claim that technical jobs in entertainment are all sweetness and light or a good way to get rich...but I'm happy to say that in 30+ years working (in my case mainly in broadcasting), it's rarely been as bad as you say.

Bob

hear hear!

I am firmly of the opinion that you do your job to the best of your ability. The phrase "that will do" doesn't feature very much in my world. Despite what many 'old lags' might say to newcomers,very few would do the job unless they actually liked it - as I've said to many people, somebody in their early 20's will get more money, have better working conditions and much better chances at promotion and career progression by working in a bank (my pet subject, as this is where I lost my best ever lighting op to - thank you Barclays!).

I you to be on-stage, then do it. However, if you wish to remain in support services, because that's what we are, then don't ever resent the pay, short hours and better conditions the turns get - you had the choice. Don't wait for thanks, or credits or the odd name check - we wear black so as people don't notice us. The public don't care about anything other than the stars. I always love walking out of the stage door when there is a pile of bodies waiting for autographs, seeing the looks of disapointment when it's me, and not the star turn.

I care what people think of my work - but the people I'm talking about are others like me. We know when we do a really good job, I don't need or expect anybody else to even notice what I've done.

We have to put our work into perspective. As Mr Davidson once said to me during a somewhat difficult discussion - "I'll go on with a ####ing torch then!"

The thing to remember is that he could have............. But we couldn't do the show without him. One person is irreplacable, and that isn't anybody on the technical team - we're support services.

Sorry about that - I should know better than to go off topic like this, but it is a sore point with me.

Where were we, oh yes - speakers in the round. Carry on everyone.

<polite applause from the gallery> hear hear </applause>

Not always the case, either. Try spending a bit of time with a ballet company and check out the pay, hours and conditions for a young dancer in the corps. (I'll give you a clue: dreadful, long, harsh.)

Whoa hit a nerve there.

Purely a throw away comment on my behalf.

Sorry if some people were offended.

xx

Noones offended, but if you genuinely feel that way you should probably be looking elsewhere for a way to make a living.

It's either this or journalism.

HI im new to all this but if its only to amplifie a voice surely it only needs to be a mono setup?

Yep - I totally agree. Any attempt to create spacial information seems doomed without really complex and sophisticated kit. Very few (if any) desks have a quad pan pot?

Far too complicated for a bodge to work, so running all the vocals equally split to all loudspeaker does make sense to me too.

Mono is the way I'm going. =]


x

Apologies for digging this one up again, came across it by chance and having worked LX on this production I thought for the sake of completeness I'd just let you know how it went.

Well the good news is it did in fact work, without too many hiccups! In fact our solution worked well enough to be used for a second year for The Tempest.

In the end we ran the whole thing in Mono (swapping over to a pseudo-stereo job for the second year, due to lack of live band we were responsible for instrumental playout - we kept the mics balanced for the sake of hair loss, etc)

During preparation we drafted in the use of several Feedback Killer type devices, numerous long nights with an EQ and all sorts of other ideas - however when we actually rigged we found the following worked really well:

Since audience were slightly raised on steeldeck-type stuff we positioned our speakers underneath this staging (if I recall, possibly even facing upwards 'through' the decking). By using lots of cabs (well, approx 6) on little volume we kept levels approximately 'even' (meaning radio mics didn't pick up feedback more in one 'corner' of the stage than others). Granted, the clarity of the sound from these positions clearly was never going to be perfect, but it was a lot more perfect than the feedback would have been!

Mic positioning was also instrumental in solving this - we did a Tech rehearsal with mics in a lapel position to disastrous results (admittedly not as bad as they could have been, but still entirely unacceptable). We ended up micro-porous'ing the mics in a 'Britney' position and making up over the tape. Could have looked better (especially since the cast and audience were so intimate) however it did the job. Mics were on a VERY low gain, as you might imagine.

We found with an empty auditorium we got the odd squeal of feedback but figured that once an audience were seated, they would absorb much of the output - obviously no way of testing for sure until opening night, but luckily we were right! (I have to admit I don't know the first thing about acoustics and don't claim to, I was just using a bit of logic! If the theory of what I've just said is wrong please do correct me, it seemed to work in practice though!)

So a belated thanks for the suggestions and I do hope our resolutions help someone else in the future!

Next project - Candide - which we're doing semi-in-the-round, semi-proscenium and semi-satellite staged. I swear I'll be grey/bald by the end of Upper VI!