SOUND DESIGN Part 2

Sound Designer's Processes
The sound designer's process is similar to other designers unless he will be working with a composer.

1.  Text analysis:  The sound designer looks in general for plot, characterization, themes, and style and then specifically for required sound effects or specified music.

2.  Production meetings:  Depending on the style of the production as defined both by the text and in the director's production concept, a sound designer's job may be short and simple, or quite complex. For a simple, straight play with few sound effects and a director uninterested with adding sound, the sound designer simply finds the sounds indicated in the text and creates a mix of pre-show and post-show music. For a more interpretive approach to the same, simple text, he may decide to add underscoring, music for scene transitions, or add more sound effects.  The decision to amplify the stage or not will also be made in production meetings. A sound designer will discuss his ideas with the other artists and bring in clips of sounds and music to clarify his ideas.

3.  The sound designer finds all of the necessary sounds and music, and he may remaster them to sound exactly as he wishes and to last an appropriate amount of time for the production.

4.  Like the lighting designer, the sound designer will probably meet with the director and stage manager to set cues.  Here the artists agree on how and when the sounds should be brought in and out, what volume levels to play them at, and how long they should play.

5.  The sound designer prepares a cue sheet that indicates what sounds are to enter the performance when, whether they are live or canned, how long they last, and what levels they are to be played at.  Often the designer will place all of the taped cues onto a single tape that can be preset to the next cue as soon as the first one is finished playing, minimizing the possibility of error.

6.  Technical rehearsals:  the designer sets levels and adjusts the lengths of sounds to coordinate with the other artists work;  for example, sounds must balance with the performers' voices, scene change music must fit the length and tone of scene changes, and explosions must sound exactly when the visual effect explodes.  If the stage is amplified,  levels must be set on the mikes to pick up appropriate noise from the actors and minimize the amplification of ambient sound (such as actors' feet when walking across the stage), and the positions of mikes may be altered. The stage manager calls the sound cues in the techs and actual performance, and they will be executed by a sound operator, who runs the actual sound check before a performance and plays the cues prepared by the designer.

Special Effects Design
For intricate special effects, a theatre company might hire a special designer.  However, some effects are used in so many scripts that theatre's technical director can usually create them themselves.  Such effects include, smoke, fog, explosions, and gunfire.

Smoke or fog may be created in a variety of ways.  One is to use dry ice, which tends to hang low over the floor and has the unfortunate side effect of slipping over the apron  and settling around the audience in the orchestra section.  Fog machines create a different kind of smoke,  when "fog juice" is heated, a  mist is given off which then rises quickly, disappearing from the stage.

Explosions, which give off some smoke of their own are created with flashpots.  Flashpots are usually commercially produced; they are built to trigger highly explosive flash powder on cue.

For guns that go off onstage, blank cartridges are used and the guns are never pointed directly at another person.  If objects or characters appear to be hit, then the reactions are created separately.  Bursting blood packs on actors (created in the costume shop) or shattering bottles (rigged by a property manager) are usually triggered electrically to coincide with the gunshot.

End of Light and Sound Design Readings