When I say “fringe theatre”, I’m talking about London (UK) fringe theatre, as that’s where I’m based. I know not all cities, or countries, have permanent off-West End (or off-Broadway, in an American context) venues that regularly produce professional theatrical work outside of a festival, which makes me all the more grateful that I live and work in a city where you don’t have to have arts bodies funding to make great theatre, although that definitely helps.
8 comments:
I love when people write about things like this. It always amazes me when people (most often props people) talk about their creative, within-budget, solutions for various problems. Recently, we had Jon Ward talking to us about props, and he told us that the "light bulbs" for the yellow brick road's staffs were empty lotion bottles. Hearing solutions like that not only show years of theater experience manifesting itself into epic problem solving abilities, but also provides the readers or listeners with knowledge that may be useful to them in the future. When people write or talk about these creative fixes, it reminds me of scientists documenting results in a lab report. It creates a wealth of resources that people in the same field can draw from for the future. The sharing of information and problem solving in such a way needs to be more common among theater professionals.
Fascinating. This reminds me a little of old fashioned radio effects. If you were to watch the first few episodes of the new television show Marvel's Agent Carter, you can see an interesting representation of sound effects on a radio show. We see lobster being crushed for the bloody, gory sound of squished bones and entrails, and meat being pounded with fists to create a satisfying punch. Despite it only being in a just a few scenes, it makes fascinating television, both aurally and visually. My point is this-- it is fascinating to see sound effects made by objects and movements used very differently from their intended effects. While most people have never heard the sounds of a violent murder, we have an innate sense of what does and does not sound real. It reminds me that despite the particularity of the human senses, it is completely possible to fool us with the weirdest and simplest of means.
I think this is very creative and innovative. Creating sound effects can be very difficult because many things happen in shows that do not normally occur often in real like. Finding a sound effect about a body being dropped in a bath tub and drowned would be very difficult to find because it does not happen that often and if someone was to kill a person that way, I doubt they would record it and put that sound online for the public. The only way to have that sound effect would be to make it yourself. He was very creative with how he went about making each sound. With a limited budget, it is very important and necessary to be creative. Using the carpet was a very interesting idea that most people would not think about. Sound designers are usually not given enough credit based on all the great work they do. It takes a lot of skill to create certain sounds from totally different objects and methods.
This is such a cool article. I have always found sound design fascinating, particularly when it's something sort of created in our world and made to fit in another. I remember talking about these things with Chris Rummel, a recent MFA graduate, at Northwestern two summers ago, and he said that one of the biggest jobs of a sound designer is to listen to the world around him and make a catalogue of the things he hears. Then, when the time comes, he will be able to compose exactly what he needs from what he knows. I love the thought of all of these cool things coming together to create a realistic representation of the situation. It also seems really fun to me to be searching for these kinds of solutions; problem-solving is definitely one of my favorite kinds of creativity. Yay sound design!
There really is a lot more than you might think that goes into effective sound design. Yes, its easy to dismiss sound as the layering of prerecorded tracks to create a sensory mood, but really there is a lot more too it than that. Yes, running mp3’s off iTunes can work for some productions, but as an audience it’s easy to point out a poor sound effect or crappy layering job, while fantastic designs don’t always get the attention they deserve because they create such a fluidity in the world that they almost seem natural and thus go unnoticed. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to gain some exposure to the world of sound design because I’ve become a lot more perceptive of designs around me. Sound design is truly remarkable when done well and deserves much more credit than it often receives. I love how this author talks about the challenges he faced and overcame with unconventional means. A Sound designers’ ability to find creative solutions while taking careful consideration about things like space reverberations, is what allows them to be so successful in creating an immersive world, I only wish this continuity wouldn’t be so easily overlooked by a general audience.
I love this! I have always thought that some of the most creative and convincing methods of practice come from a quick improvisation, necessitated by a small budget or a material requirement. I think her solution to these problems are fantastic: she worked with what she had (her own apartment, herself, a carpet, and a friend), even with physical risk and underpaid, under-budgeted work. However, she was able to improvise something incredibly successful, and her ingenuity paid off. Like Olivia, it reminds me of old radio shows, live recorded so that any sound effects had to be created in the small space without actual destruction or death. People walking on gravel, thunder, rain, cups of tea being poured, wheels creaking, etc. are all recorded through improvised (and successful!) solutions. We made a show when I was in elementary school, and a whole team of students were in charge of twisting rope into a microphone, shaking a thunder sheet, and stomping on buckets of gravel. What fun!
That was a really cool article, and I think it’s great that she was able to do all this for a low budget production. One of the things I’m thinking about doing after I leave school is foley work, because I think it’s so cool to try to figure out what sounds sound like. What she was doing was very realistic (a drowning body in a bath sounds like a drowning body in a bath), but there are so many other cool things that can be used to create sounds. What she did was cool, but it’s also really cool to make a sound using something really random and having it sound “better” than the real thing. I liked reading about her process, and I think it’s incredible that she wanted to foley everything herself. I also really like how she did everything in her bathroom so she could match the acoustic environment of the performance space. That sort of level of detail is crucial in the theatre world, and it’s nice that she’s trying to have it despite her budget.
First and fore most, sound design is really cool. Thank to the power of sound, you can totally change the way that the audience perceives space and other things because of sound. What I love so much about sound design is how complex it is, but how simple it sounds. When you listen to sound design content it is really hard to grasp just how many different unique sounds going into the creating this one sound that you are hearing. This is not solely does through the content of the sound design. The sound system design and speaker place also plays a huge. This also really proves that in general the relationship between content and system is really important and can have a very be impact. That is why I have a lot of respect for sound designers because they are able to screw with the audience and how they really make the world of the play more dynamic.
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