Actor Earpieces

[sam.henderson]

Hi,

 

I have got a production coming up relatively soon and am quite interested in getting some of the actors to wear earpieces.

 

This is for three reasons firstly its a musical and it would benefit their singing etc. If they had earpieces.

 

Secondly I would like to be able to talk to actors while they are on stage and sometimes offstage as there are some quite difficult cues (i.e. they enter from obscure places where they cant see whats happening) on stage.

 

Thirdly I would like them to hear whats going on onstage when they are offstage as there is no backstage PA system on the comms system.

 

finally I would just like to have a good old play with them, they look quite fun.

 

So any info on how they work, where I can hire them from, exactly what they do etc. etc.

 

Thanks

 

Sam

[gareth]

firstly its a musical and it would benefit their singing etc. If they had earpieces.

Why not just rig a few small monitor speakers (e.g. JBL Control 1's) running from an aux send off the sound desk?

 

Secondly I would like to be able to talk to actors while they are on stage and sometimes offstage as there are some quite difficult cues (i.e. they enter from obscure places where they cant see whats happening) on stage.

Cue lights. And if you really need to be able to talk to them, rig up a set of cans that they can use. What if they need to talk back to you for any reason? They can do that with cans, but not with IEMs.

 

Thirdly I would like them to hear whats going on onstage when they are offstage as there is no backstage PA system on the comms system.

You can knock together a system with a mic, a small 100v line amp, and a couple of speakers for very little if you shop around - probably for less than the cost of hiring one IEM set for a week and having the ear moulds made up. Try R.W.Salt for the necessary components.

 

finally I would just like to have a good old play with them, they look quite fun.

If you can afford to hire an IEM system just because you " want to play with it", you should look at spending the budget on something more useful - like some monitoring and show relay.

 

So any info on how they work, where I can hire them from, exactly what they do etc. etc.

If you are really dead set on hiring some, have a word with some of the larger sound hire companies - Orbital, Autograph, etc.

[sam.henderson]

If they are really expensive then we proberly wont get them. It just came up at a production meeting and so I though I'd look into it.

 

Ta,

 

Sam