Ultimate Audio Book System Design

The system design for Ultimate Audio Book was centered around the idea of immersing the audience in the story. To accomplish this we drew up a system design that would surround the audience, and take advantage of our large black box theatre. Shown below is the initial idea and notes, the large rectangles are the seating units, and it is hard to see but the dashed square is the area where the actors would primarily be in for the plays. The speakers in the middle would be hung in the catwalks.

To take advantage of the catwalks that act as a second floor in our black box theatre four more speakers were added, also more speakers were added behind where the actors would be, and the speaker pair that was in front of the seating unit were removed. the location of the sub (QSC on the first draft) was moved and a second one was added to balance the room and help fill the room with low end if the sound designs needed it. The second draft is shown below, the 5x500 speakers are the ones in the catwalks, and the vox speakers are still hung from the catwalks and point at each seating unit.

The final draft of the system added speakers in the seating units, except the seating unit where the sound board and equipment is located, which only had one speaker added. These additional speakers allowed sounds to be placed in seating units when it is needed. The final draft is shown below.

The show used the Yamaha O1V96 digital console and the Eventide Eclipse for vocal effects.

The signal flow is shown below

This system allows the sound to come from anywhere the theatre, sounds can come from above the audience, all around the audience, or from a single location letting the audience feel as though they are in the story world.

This system design received the Certificate of Merit, and won the KCACTF Theatre Craft Showcase.

The Fisherman and His Wife

The Fisherman and his Wife by rjgoddar

This was a sound design I did for a short play called The Fisherman and his Wife, based off of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. In this play a Fisherman catches a magic fish who grants him any wish he wants, and when he tells his wife about this she makes him wish for more and more extravagant things until the fish gets fed up and undos all of the wishes. The composition was done by Chloé Laban, and I set up the QLab that we both used.

This play features two basic scenes, the home of the Fisherman and his Wife, and the sea where the Fisherman talks to the Fish. Each time the fisherman keeps wishing for higher and higher statuses, so each time he goes home the scene has to change to reflect it being more and more opulent. Each time he returns to the sea though it becomes darker and a thunderstorm moves in.

In three of the scenes the wife throws dishes at the husband to encourage him to go back to the flounder, for these sound effects I bought glass, porcelain, and ceramic pots and recorded smashing them against the floor. These sound effects were cued so that it would sound like the actor was actually throwing the dishes, and the sound of the crash would come from the where a plate would actually crash. So if the actor threw a plate directly at the center of the audience, there is a speaker there that would play the crash.

One of the main goals for the Ultimate Audio Book was to have the audience feel like they are inside the story world. With this goal there were 21 speakers placed throughout a black box theatre, which allowed each sound effect to appear to be coming from anywhere in the space, so the audience would be immersed in the soundscape. In addition to the speaker placement the audience was apart of the play, one of the actor's would have conversations with people before the play started and that conversation would be added into that night's sound design so that when there is supposed to be a crowd of people you can kind of hear conversations that you saw recorded that very night. During the play when the Fisherman would head back to sea the audience would make wave motions with their hands to simulate the sea, and if the Fisherman forgot what his wife was supposed to ask the Flounder he would ask a nearby audience member for help.

I was awarded the Kennedy Center Certificate of Merit for my sound design, and Chloé and I also presented this at KCACTF Region III festival. We were considered for nationals, but ultimately did not make it. Below is the poster that was made for the KCACTF presentation.