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Applications
In the heart of the English countryside, CSC was once again employed to provide sound playback for Shakespeare Live's annual outdoor production.
The show is performed in the fantastic grounds of a country manor in the heart of the UK's Wiltshire countryside. This alone provides numerous problems, before even thinking about the show itself. Everything has to be thought of: a lonely field offers no support when it comes to sound reinforcement, power, or shelter from the weather.
As an amateur group, work commitments are hard to avoid, and time in the "venue" is limited before the show opens. With a get-in on the Saturday afternoon, a day of rehearsals on the Sunday and an opening night on the Monday, the sound team has no time to spare. One thing designers agree on is CSCs unrivalled design speed, and it is here that CSC has become an invaluable tool in making sure the show gets designed, plotted and finalised all within a day, ready for the Opening Night. Even on Opening Night small "tweaks" and emergency changes are simple due to CSCs flexible user interface.
The System
This year saw the most compact yet powerful system ever used for Shakespeare Live. Housed in the sound "tent", was a Yamaha 02R digital mixing desk, a laptop, an M-Audio FW-410 8-channel audio interface and a USB 8-button remote control box. The 02R also provided the inputs and delay processing for the reinforcement microphones placed around the set and above the audience stand to feed the audience delay speakers, cast "changing tents" located 100m away and wedge monitors for all entrances and exits to compensate for the large "stage" area and loss of sound transmission as the night draws in and the air gets heavier.
FOH speakers were hidden in trees and remote locations to retain the natural surroundings of the stage area.
Design Time
As the Sound Tent was located outside of the main audience area, there was a requirement to work from a "production desk". This area was shared with the lighting designer and the director, and this was where the show was designed and plotted on the Sunday afternoon. A laptop was used to VNC into the main show laptop, and a shared network folder was created for transferring files between the 2 machines. In this way, the main cuelist could be designed and cues run for sections of rehearsals, whilst file edits could be performed on the local laptop and approved by the director before running them on the main FOH system. Yamaha Studio Manager was also run on the show laptop to program specific scenes for different routing setups and special voice effects on the 02R.
As the show design only actually began to happen at midday on the Sunday, and a near complete version was required for the invited dress rehearsal on the Sunday evening, it was essential the show went in quickly. Cues were plotted as the cast worked through their lines, and using CSCs "isolate mode", further cues were plotted whilst the actors were working with playing cues. Music and effects levels were plotted instantly at this point to the approval of the director, with the full knowledge that the system would recreate the same thing that evening. Fade outs and sound movements were also plotted and in some cases timed to the actors movements. Small sound edits could be performed using the shared network link to edit-in-place a wave file within the cuelist on the remote machine and saved back to the remote folder.
CSCs unique "hands-on" workspace enabled spot effects and level alterations to be tested and approved with no pre-programming necessary. This vastly increased the speed and creativity of the show design.
The show was run from the production desk that evening, and final level adjustments made to the already near-perfect cue list. Since no more files were being edited, network speed was less important and the laptop was disconnected from the CAT5 link and joined to the wireless router used as as the network hub. This allowed cue levels and sound effect placements to be checked from all seating positions to ensure a good sound for all audience members. Studio manager was also used to fine tune the reinforcement microphone levels during this time.
Problems, but an easy solution
With a successful dress run the previous evening, there wasn't much to worry about for opening night.
However, with 15 minutes to go before the first performance it became evident there was a problem with the show laptop and all the show wave files were exported to a USB key using CSCs "Copy to New Folder" system, which scans the cuelist and copies every required file to a single new folder. The show was then moved to the production laptop, and after repatching the Firewire soundcard, the show was up and running on that machine, and recorded preshow announcements were continued to be made. The whole process was completed within 5 minutes and noone but the sound team was any the wiser - just proving computer playback really is as versatile and even more portable than using MiniDiscs and CDs.
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Show Time!With the laptops happily swapped over, the show was left to run - literally. With most of the audience sitting in the gardens enjoying picnics, getting the audience in to the seating area is not an easy job, and so a series of prerecorded announcements are used to encourage them in. With these starting 20 minutes before the show, CSCs clock triggers are used to automatically fire cues at predetermined times on the build up to the show, meaning the sound team were free to perform other duties rather than sitting firing cues. CSC automatically locates to the nearest clock time so times can be entered for matinee performances as well, and these can also fire the sequence of annoucements. |
Opening night performances are always slightly different to rehearsals, and this show was no different. Some timings had changed and actors were speaking louder, or in slightly different positions to those rehearsed. Also, in the most extreme cases, entrances were made early, and actors were trying to talk over pieces of pre-programmed music cues. None of this was a problem for CSC as the interface easily allows for emergency fade outs, level adjustments "on the fly" - which can then be saved back to the cuelist if liked - and even completely rebalancing a complex mix of effects to fine tune for a particular performance without altering the original cuelist.
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The show was triggered using an 8-button USB button box (supplied by Orbital Sound Ltd). The box is simply a USB-joystick adaptor with the buttons wired as per the documentation found elsewhere on this website. All 8 buttons were enabled in CSC and were assigned to provide GO, STOP, UP, DOWN controls as standard. A further button was assigned to "Fade Out All Audio"- very useful for providing a smooth fade out of all outputs when actors came in early, and the remaining 3 buttons were assinged to the trigger lists. Each trigger list was set to fire a single cue and loop, so these buttons were effectively hot keys. This was used during an outdoor "night time" forest scene, when various owl noises were required at random intervals. A cue sequence could have been pre-programmed, but a manual button push every so often - even at comic moments - proved a much better solution. The trigger lists were set up as data only events so that they did not affect the position of the cuelist. They could also have been locked to only provide "owl noises" during the forest scenes. |
CSC certainly proved to be an invaluable tool once again for the sound team and the group as a whole. Such speedy design and reliablity is near impossible with any other traditional means, and the ease of programming and control flexibility thanks to CSCs unique interface design is still unrivalled, even by other software solutions to this day.
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Equipment provided by Man Audio and Orbital Sound Ltd