Pro Sound Web: To accomplish anything in life, we, as humanly creatures, must utilize an assortment of resources to accomplish any given task.
For example, going to a store to purchase something involves brain time in making the decision to venture out, “wear and tear” on our vehicle, and the depletion of our finances – all are expenditures of resources.
3 comments:
This article gives me a new appreciation for the jobs of sound and equipment engineers. Most times in a theatre it is taken for granted that you can hear what is going on. I think it is because the work of a sound engineer is something that cannot be seen, at least immediately. On the other hand, as soon as an audience member loses the ability to hear what is going on on-stage sound is noticed a whole lot. Sound engineers have the ability to control the audiences perception of a performance through what they hear. The volume, the quality, etc. all leaves a lasting impact on us, audience members. I have never dabbled in sound because it seemed monotonous, and lacking design. However, I now understand that design, and focus play a lot into the inner workings of a piece, and leaves me listening for the next sound cues that come up.
Focus is a very tricky thing to accomplish fully, but is extremely important in theatre. As a stage manager I need to pay attention to the action on the stage as well as follow along in my script in order to call cues at the right time. I need to have my mind in two places at once because if I pay too much attention to the show I might miss a cue in my book. If I am only looking down at my script I might put someone in danger if I am not looking where people are on the stage versus moving scenery pieces. The focus needs to be split more as a sound engineer because you are constantly adjusting levels to create the best sound. They need to be able to know exactly what buttons and knobs to turn as well as listen in on the show for the perfect level.
While this article may pertain to sound in particular, I think it’s important to think of the focus zone in terms of theater and theatrical artists as whole. It is our jib to make sure that every bit of the recourse that the audience spends on our production is spent well. We must direct their focus, precisely otherwise a distracted audience member is a bored audience member. We do this in a variety of ways, with the use of color to highlight characters or props, sound to pull focus to a moment or event. The action of the play itself even. Tome’ told us of an interesting way that the performers draw focus. The human eye sees in an oval shaped field of vision; actor, dances and singers all work their bodies in this oval, to make their presence larger and easier to see. As artist we must manipulate every possible rescores in order to keep our audiences expense as low as possible.
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