Wearing Multiple Hats

Unlike most of my contemporary sound designer colleagues, I didn't set out to be a sound designer. I ended up becoming one in a roundabout fashion.

When I began pursuing sound in earnest I discovered that although I was a capable designer, design simply wasn't my passion. What I was good at was live mix, maintaining a system, and running a crew. I wanted to be a mix engineer and an audio supervisor. While many of my friends were chomping at the bit to one day no longer have to operate shows, I was happy behind the console even doing playback or at the work bench soldering.

As I worked professionally as a crew member, under a full time audio supervisor, I found from our designers that my experience was in the minority - that a large portion of regional and educational theatres didn't have audio supervisors. Most of them had designers, who in turn had to be their own supervisors. Many of those designers were hoping for a change in the industry leading departments to mirror more the style of electrics - a sound supervisor taking charge practical matters - much like a master electrician does for lighting - leaving the designer free to focus on the artistic aspect.

So, what is the difference? When the roles are separated, an audio supervisor is going to hire and oversee the audio crew; improve and maintain installed sound systems; set-up, modify, and configure temporary systems; take care of communications - cue lights, headsets, production monitors, hearing impaired systems, etc.; manage the sound departments budget; accommodating the practical and specific audio needs for productions - such as door bells, buzzers, speakers in record players or similar; keep records and show archives; and whatever day to day business the sound department has. A sound designer is the artistic element of audio - conceptualizing sound for a production - working with the production's director, collaborating with other designers, choosing or composing transitional, underscore, or incidental music, sound effects, and then creating those elements into overall production. When the roles are combined? All of the above.

As my career progressed, my friends who were eager to move past operating shows, were now beginning to design. Some of them became freelance designers. Others moved into academic rolls, or became resident designers - where they by necessity still had to be technicians, supervisors, and in some cases - operators.

I found the same thing as I began looking for work beyond operation - but for me the expectation was the opposite. I wanted to be a supervisor. But the majority of positions that were full time, supervisor positions, required the candidate to design as well - the number and scope of shows depending on the individual theatre.

My first long term job was education - I was hired as a professional staff member for an undergraduate theatre program. In that instance, not only was I audio supervisor and sound designer, I was also the video technician, master electrician, and effects coordinator. When I moved on to ASF and was hired as the resident sound designer, I expected to design between 50 and 70% of our season - instead I design 80-90% of our season.

For the most part, wearing two hats requires a little juggling, but is manageable. There are other times, where I find it almost impossible - there simply isn't enough of me to go around. A case in point - during last season, we had two shows over lap in tech process. I designed one show in one space, and a guest designer the show in the other. I have an engineer and an intern, so we each had an operator. As the guest's tech process began, the theatre ran into some production and communication system problems - issues a the guest designer had no idea of how to begin addressing, nor could my engineer who was running the show, leave the console in the middle of a rehearsal to check out. The result was me leaving my tech to troubleshoot and resolve the problems. All told, maybe 20 to 30 minutes outside of the space. My director, stage manager, and fellow design staff were gracious and understanding. The consequence for us in audio land, however, was not as pretty. I came back into tech to a terrified intern, and my own nerves were majorly frazzled. Another case is repeated - and that being during a musical - particularly larger scale productions. My artistic producer expects me to be in the house giving direction to my engineer. My director expects the same, as well as to be tweaking and setting recorded cue elements. But inevitably, with my crew behind the console, I'm the one who has to address gear in the pit not working, headset malfunctions, monitor trouble, actor paging malfunctioning, and any other number of technical problems that inevitably arise.

Much like the designers I operated for years ago, I too, hope for the day when audio has a departmental supervisor as a standard in the industry, except for me, rather than wanting to give up the work bench - I can leave the art to someone else.

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Tags: audio, design, supervision

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Comment by Richard B. Ingraham on August 29, 2011 at 7:41am

Richelle,

That is nice to hear that ASF is still unique today as it was when I was working in LORT. I don't think location has as much to do with it as financial stability of the organization or maybe dare I say artistic vision of the leadership of the organization? Probably a fair bit of both of those. I say that because some of the Co-Productions I've seen in Cleveland were Co-Productions from Arizona or even further away, so I don't think they are limiting themselves based on geography.

Incidentally, one of the first musicals I mixed as a sound technician (a real birth by fire!) was a Co-Production between The Cleveland Play House and Alabama Shakespeare Festival, "Aint Misbehavin".

Comment by Richelle Thompson on August 22, 2011 at 9:04pm

Thanks for your comments Richard...

Perhaps because of our isolation from other theatres, we've only done two co-pros in my tenure at ASF. (The next city with a LORT theatre of our size is Atlanta.) We've done a little touring or taking productions elsewhere but haven't had the best success with these shows for a variety of reasons. We have also just returned to having a Resident Scene Designer after years of not having one. Currently, he is designing all of our productions. Our Resident Costume Designer just retired, but she's still doing a few shows a season with us. Our ME will do some lighting designs - usually the smaller shows - in a way, making him technically the resident lighting designer. It's interesting to see how theatre's are using or not using resident designers - as well as how different theatres hire guests designers.

And definitely... only time will tell what our roles as sound designers/engineers/supervisors will be in the future.

Perhaps once the economy has stabilized?

Comment by Richard B. Ingraham on August 22, 2011 at 8:51am

All I could possibly add to this is: YES, YES YES!!!

I know exactly what you are talking about. I have worked in organizations where I am the Resident Sound Designer, but I don't really have to concern myself with the day to day operations of the Sound Department and I have worked in organizations where I was in charge of everything as the Resident Sound Designer, even having to worry about things like updating the recorded message on hold on the phone system and building wide paging systems. So even though my title might have been Resident Sound Designer/Engineer, it should have been Resident Sound Engineer, who occasionally we'll let work on their design work. One of the many reasons I left my position working in LORT theatre and am now a freelance designer.

I think most LORT theatres seem to be dropping their resident designer positions in favor of a master sound technician, or some similar title. So I think the trend is heading more toward what you describe, but only in LORT theatres. The downside to this of course is the old battle of LORT theatres not using much, if any, local talent on the artistic side of their productions. Most of them only seem interested in hiring designers with a NYC address or from out of town.

I guess this makes sense since at least in my neck of the woods, the Co-Production seems to be the norm these days, with very few of the shows on our LORT stages being completely produced in the same city. It almost seems like LORT theatres have become some sort of small tour hosts, ala the typical Broadway tour roadhouse. By small I don't mean the production values are limited, I only mean in the number of venues a show is hosted in.

When I first started at The Cleveland Play House there were almost no Co-Productions with other regional theatres. Maybe one production every two or three seasons. We also had designers working within the organization, so the paint charge might design sets for a few productions, same thing with costumes, etc... and of course Sound being the red headed step child it was, the Resident Sound Designer had to design all, or almost all of the shows and run the department, just as you describe.

But now it seems that maybe one or two shows per season are really fully produced by The Cleveland Play House and most of the productions are just "stopping by" for a local run of a show really produced by another organization.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I can only guess that it's mostly a financial tactic. But I can not help but feel that it somewhat diminishes the artistic integrity of the organization in some fashion as well. I don't mean that I think the shows are not well done. Just that to me it seems that there is even fewer artists being nurtured or given an outlet, and there is less and less of a connection between the LORT theatre and the artists that might call the city it's located in home.

I guess only time will tell how this trend will truly effect these organizations.

Comment by Richelle Thompson on August 21, 2011 at 10:47am

Hardy,

Sound very often seems to be something folks stumble upon or blunder into. I started by running a musical for a friend who needed a board op he could trust and would actually show up to all of tech. :)

ASF is currently using SFX 5.6., with a combination of SFX and LCS/CueStation in one space. I need to update - right now it's more about outdated operating systems and hardware than problems with software. I would like to switch to Mac and QLab - I have used it on a guest design and loved it.

My favorite sound text book (which covers both design and technical aspects) is John Bracewell's Sound Design in the Theatre. Sadly, it is out of print, and is rapidly becoming out dated. You can find used copies, but they tend to be expensive. (I've seen the book go for almost $400 on a used book sellers website.)

John A Leonard's book, Theatre Sound is a great introductory book into both design and audio systems.

The book I used to teach design and have given aspiring designers, is Sound and Music for the Theatre, The Art and Technique of Design by Deena Kaye and James LeBrecht.

For me, the overall audio technical reference "Bible" if you will, is the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook. This is not the book to hand someone to read... but it's the book for any career sound person to own as a reference - if you have an audio question - chances are it covers it.

I hope that's helpful.

Cheers!

~R

Comment by Hardy L. Bates on August 18, 2011 at 8:39pm

I found Sound Design by chance in grad school when no one else wanted the production job in the department. I'm glad that I stepped out on a limb and took a chance with sound design because it has made me more marketable as an artist.

What type of playback software do you prefer using in your process?

As a professor at Grambling State University, I was also curious to know if you knew of any text that would be helpful to young inspiring sound technicians?

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