Sound design is usually challenging because a show is BIG. It has lots of cues, lots of microphones, lots of, well, something.My next project is a challenge for the exactly the opposite reason: it has to be simple.The show in question is a touring version of Romeo and Juliet. The production is part of our educational program at ASF and is designed to tour to regional schools, with the aim of being both education and instructional - offering a combination of a gentle introduction to Shakespeare and offering workshop options with instruction on the Bard and theatre, acting and being an audience. The touring group will perform in a variety of venues - from traditional high school theatres and cafatoriums, to gyms, classrooms, and school courtyards. Part of the parameters of the tour include a condensed script - it has to be short enough to be staged in about an hour. While it needs to be a complete production - the tech support that accompany it must fit in a trailer and can be set-up by the minimal touring company: 8 actors/technicians and a stage/tour manager. The sound system that travels with the tour (as you might imagine,) has to be both portable and simple - I've been sending out a portable "all in one" system of lightweight powered speakers and on board mini mixer. Playback has traditionally been a single deck - in short, whatever sound is used has to be very simple .The challenge before me is how to make sure the effects and music chosen for the show meet two very high bars: interesting and dynamic enough to capture an audience used to movies and video games with elaborate sound, and yet be practical and simple enough to be executed in a handful of tracks.Step one: what is absolutely critical to the show? What sound do we need? While I don't yet have a final script to answer the bulk of that question in terms of effects or transitions - the two things I know I need: music for the beginning - the public brawl that begins the action of the play - and curtain call. Step two: finding the "right" music for these sections. If you're a composer (which I am not) you can write that music. Since that's not in my skill set, I have to find the pieces I need. It has to be appropriate, exciting, dynamic. Luckily, the days of hunting through CD's in a library collection or buying albums to choose from are over. The internet makes searching for, listening two, and eventually buying music so much simpler. Step three: fleshing it all out. Once the essentials are down and the music is chosen, I can fill in the spaces with underscore, sound-scape, or the embellishment to flesh out the show. Just because the show needs to be simple, doesn't require it to empty. That said... I may discover that it needs very little help from me when it's said and done.Finally: editing and mix down.Unlike a show playing back on computer, I can to overlays or fade in's with some programming - which means it has to be done on the track in an edit. Who knows where we'll end up? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers!~RSee More

Sound design is usually challenging because a show is BIG. It has lots of cues, lots of microphones, lots of, well, something.My next project is a challenge for the exactly the opposite reason: it has to be simple.The show in question is a touring version of Romeo and Juliet. The production is part of our educational program at ASF and is designed to tour to regional schools, with the aim of being both education and instructional - offering a combination of a gentle introduction to Shakespeare and offering workshop options with instruction on the Bard and theatre, acting and being an audience. The touring group will perform in a variety of venues - from traditional high school theatres and cafatoriums, to gyms, classrooms, and school courtyards. Part of the parameters of the tour include a condensed script - it has to be short enough to be staged in about an hour. While it needs to be a complete production - the tech support that accompany it must fit in a trailer and can be set-up by the minimal touring company: 8 actors/technicians and a stage/tour manager. The sound system that travels with the tour (as you might imagine,) has to be both portable and simple - I've been sending out a portable "all in one" system of lightweight powered speakers and on board mini mixer. Playback has traditionally been a single deck - in short, whatever sound is used has to be very simple .The challenge before me is how to make sure the effects and music chosen for the show meet two very high bars: interesting and dynamic enough to capture an audience used to movies and video games with elaborate sound, and yet be practical and simple enough to be executed in a handful of tracks.Step one: what is absolutely critical to the show? What sound do we need? While I don't yet have a final script to answer the bulk of that question in terms of effects or transitions - the two things I know I need: music for the beginning - the public brawl that begins the action of the play - and curtain call. Step two: finding the "right" music for these sections. If you're a composer (which I am not) you can write that music. Since that's not in my skill set, I have to find the pieces I need. It has to be appropriate, exciting, dynamic. Luckily, the days of hunting through CD's in a library collection or buying albums to choose from are over. The internet makes searching for, listening two, and eventually buying music so much simpler. Step three: fleshing it all out. Once the essentials are down and the music is chosen, I can fill in the spaces with underscore, sound-scape, or the embellishment to flesh out the show. Just because the show needs to be simple, doesn't require it to empty. That said... I may discover that it needs very little help from me when it's said and done.Finally: editing and mix down.Unlike a show playing back on computer, I can to overlays or fade in's with some programming - which means it has to be done on the track in an edit. Who knows where we'll end up? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers!~RSee More

Being in the "biz" of theatre - or, for that matter, any aspect of the entertainment industry, means that you get to work with a lot of fabulous people. The up side to that is all the different people you get to know, learn from, create art with - even if you don't love or even like all of them. The down side is that you are constantly saying "good bye" to some one, either as folks move on, a season ends, a tech wraps up, or a show closes. While this is something I have often thought about - and have reflected on in previous posts - it's very much in mind as my season comes to a close, and both seasonal folks move on, as well as other full time colleagues have decided the time to move on is at hand.From a personal and emotional experience - the extreme sides of changing faces are being torn up every time someone you work with and grow to like moves on to the next thing in their life and career. The opposite is not invest in coworkers from the start, or shutting out memories - forgetting the names and faces as soon as the door closes. I hate to say at one time or another, I have been both of these extremes, and I would much prefer to be somewhere in the middle - where I can miss people who I've enjoyed, remember people who I didn't necessarily enjoy, but not be broken up or, alternately, cold, and reintroducing myself to people when next we meet as if we've never crossed paths before.I've worked places where the majority of the resident staff had been in the building for years, and only a small number of folks came in and out. I've also worked for summer stock or seasonal companies, where every season or summer is different and goodbye happens at a set time. Most of the places I've worked have been somewhere between that, with some long time staff member and a mix of new people, or... newer people. The professional side of changing faces - requires being able and ready to adapt to a changing work environment. When a staff position changes, even if the new person has a skill set very similar to the person who left - they will, of course, have their own individual approach to a problem, project, task, or even meeting environment. While some of the "duty" expectations are going to be the same, expecting the new person to react or replace their predecessor is unfair and unrealistic. This is the same for both colleagues or your own employees. In terms of employees, I've had several engineers, and have had 5 interns over the past 4 years, and each of them has had entirely different back grounds, skill sets, expectations, strengths, and goals. While I've always recognized that, I wonder more I could have done to help expand strengths and meet goals. So how do you deal with new staff, new coworkers? What is best part of working with new people? What's the hardest? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers,~RSee More

Being in the "biz" of theatre - or, for that matter, any aspect of the entertainment industry, means that you get to work with a lot of fabulous people. The up side to that is all the different people you get to know, learn from, create art with - even if you don't love or even like all of them. The down side is that you are constantly saying "good bye" to some one, either as folks move on, a season ends, a tech wraps up, or a show closes. While this is something I have often thought about - and have reflected on in previous posts - it's very much in mind as my season comes to a close, and both seasonal folks move on, as well as other full time colleagues have decided the time to move on is at hand.From a personal and emotional experience - the extreme sides of changing faces are being torn up every time someone you work with and grow to like moves on to the next thing in their life and career. The opposite is not invest in coworkers from the start, or shutting out memories - forgetting the names and faces as soon as the door closes. I hate to say at one time or another, I have been both of these extremes, and I would much prefer to be somewhere in the middle - where I can miss people who I've enjoyed, remember people who I didn't necessarily enjoy, but not be broken up or, alternately, cold, and reintroducing myself to people when next we meet as if we've never crossed paths before.I've worked places where the majority of the resident staff had been in the building for years, and only a small number of folks came in and out. I've also worked for summer stock or seasonal companies, where every season or summer is different and goodbye happens at a set time. Most of the places I've worked have been somewhere between that, with some long time staff member and a mix of new people, or... newer people. The professional side of changing faces - requires being able and ready to adapt to a changing work environment. When a staff position changes, even if the new person has a skill set very similar to the person who left - they will, of course, have their own individual approach to a problem, project, task, or even meeting environment. While some of the "duty" expectations are going to be the same, expecting the new person to react or replace their predecessor is unfair and unrealistic. This is the same for both colleagues or your own employees. In terms of employees, I've had several engineers, and have had 5 interns over the past 4 years, and each of them has had entirely different back grounds, skill sets, expectations, strengths, and goals. While I've always recognized that, I wonder more I could have done to help expand strengths and meet goals. So how do you deal with new staff, new coworkers? What is best part of working with new people? What's the hardest? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers,~RSee More

The last performance of the last show of the '12-'13 season finished this past Sunday afternoon. After the audience cleared, I said good-bye to a great bunch of folks. Parting with this latest bunch of musicians, actors, and crew seems some how more "final" than previous productions of the season - maybe in part because I seemed to spend more time with this bunch and the needs of this specific production and got to quite like these folks, or perhaps simply because it is the last closing of my theatre year, and a hiatus stretches out before me. However I feel about it - the show is done, and all that remains are buckets of spent AA batteries, some road cases to be returned to respective rental houses, and lots of my own gear to be stowed away.With a big break between shows, this strike is much more leisurely than the tearing down of a production often is. After helping the musicians collect and pack their personal instruments, we were able to shut off the lights and call it a day, leaving cable, microphones, speakers, and the rest of the on set set-up until the next morning. One of the musicians told me he was surprised that a battalion of carpenters with screw guns and hammers weren't waiting in the wings for the shows final patrons to exit so they could begin taking things a part. I laughed, and told him this time was so relaxed, the stage crew was even getting Monday off before coming in to take the set a part. As I was looking at both scheduling my crews last week, as well as the to do list, I realized the biggest advantage of this final slot, is that it gives me the opportunity not only to be home at a reasonable hour, but the ability to perform cleaning and maintenance above and beyond what goes into simply boxing, wrapping, toting and storing away. We potentially even have time for a few small projects that are easier to tackle with multiple people.The only disappointment in our to-do list were for my two engineers - they both had been hoping to help out the shop and stage crew tear down the set - but with two rental returns they'll be on the road instead. As my crew and I set to work the next morning clearing the stage of audio cable and equipment, we started talking about the show and strikes in the past - those where strikes were rushed and everyone was hurrying about the stage breaking things a part, and carting armloads and full trash cans to the dumpster - other times where sets were taken apart to be trucked and stored at a warehouse for later seasons or shipped to other theatres for a second set of performances for the production. In the middle of this conversation, I remembered one of my first strikes - many moons ago, when I turned and asked a fellow crew member... why is it called strike anyway? She didn't know. And I realized I still don't know... My brief search online hasn't produced any more enlightening answers. So - hey out there... any ideas why we call it strike? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers and happy striking,~RSee More

The last performance of the last show of the '12-'13 season finished this past Sunday afternoon. After the audience cleared, I said good-bye to a great bunch of folks. Parting with this latest bunch of musicians, actors, and crew seems some how more "final" than previous productions of the season - maybe in part because I seemed to spend more time with this bunch and the needs of this specific production and got to quite like these folks, or perhaps simply because it is the last closing of my theatre year, and a hiatus stretches out before me. However I feel about it - the show is done, and all that remains are buckets of spent AA batteries, some road cases to be returned to respective rental houses, and lots of my own gear to be stowed away.With a big break between shows, this strike is much more leisurely than the tearing down of a production often is. After helping the musicians collect and pack their personal instruments, we were able to shut off the lights and call it a day, leaving cable, microphones, speakers, and the rest of the on set set-up until the next morning. One of the musicians told me he was surprised that a battalion of carpenters with screw guns and hammers weren't waiting in the wings for the shows final patrons to exit so they could begin taking things a part. I laughed, and told him this time was so relaxed, the stage crew was even getting Monday off before coming in to take the set a part. As I was looking at both scheduling my crews last week, as well as the to do list, I realized the biggest advantage of this final slot, is that it gives me the opportunity not only to be home at a reasonable hour, but the ability to perform cleaning and maintenance above and beyond what goes into simply boxing, wrapping, toting and storing away. We potentially even have time for a few small projects that are easier to tackle with multiple people.The only disappointment in our to-do list were for my two engineers - they both had been hoping to help out the shop and stage crew tear down the set - but with two rental returns they'll be on the road instead. As my crew and I set to work the next morning clearing the stage of audio cable and equipment, we started talking about the show and strikes in the past - those where strikes were rushed and everyone was hurrying about the stage breaking things a part, and carting armloads and full trash cans to the dumpster - other times where sets were taken apart to be trucked and stored at a warehouse for later seasons or shipped to other theatres for a second set of performances for the production. In the middle of this conversation, I remembered one of my first strikes - many moons ago, when I turned and asked a fellow crew member... why is it called strike anyway? She didn't know. And I realized I still don't know... My brief search online hasn't produced any more enlightening answers. So - hey out there... any ideas why we call it strike? Until next time cats and kittens,Cheers and happy striking,~RSee More