Stage Directions: Grammy, Tony, and Olivier Award-nominated sound designer Peter Hylenski (Frozen, King Kong, Motown, Rock of Ages) used a variety of products from Waves Audio for Disney’s Frozen the Musical at the St. James Theater on Broadway, including Waves plugins, SoundGrid, and MultiRack. He detailed how the technologies helped him with sound effects and the illusion of voices approaching from a distance along with sound reinforcement.
3 comments:
I really think that in the past decade or so, the sound industry has nearly sky rocketed in terms of the use of technology and theatrical practices. I think that before, people just accepted the fact that vocals or acoustics on stage just sounded a bit off and people got used to it. This article is a clear example of how our industry is gearing away from the ere tolerance of bad sound and decided that sound is integral to a story and it should sound pretty darn good. Peter Hylenski has a very interesting process, something that I wish more sound designers would foster, he uses a mod podge of various different types of equipment to engineer and produce a type of sound that is pretty spectacular. With a Disney musical like Frozen, only the best will do, so seeing the work and artistry that goes into creating the sound for such a big musical is very heartwarming.
I like Hylenski’s method of approaching a show dynamically. By identifying the ‘loudest’ and the ‘quietest’ moments of the show from the start, you have a clear roadmap of the ‘shape’ of the show, so to speak. Deeper dramaturgical analysis is still required, of course, but it can sometimes be difficult to draw a clear line from things like what motivates a character to how loud, intense, or colorful the show’s sound should be in a particular scene. Finding the shape and then using that in conjunction with deeper analysis seems like a good, intuitive way of reaching a design that engages with the script while not become so esoteric in its ideas and symbols that it doesn’t actually engage with the audience. I will probably use this method in the future. Hylenski’s distinction between the vocal effects required for orchestral scoring and thinner contemporary orchestration is also interesting, I’m surprised at his approach of using plugins to try to keep the voice afloat in both contexts, as opposed to using digital recall to adapt the effects to each scene. His is a more elegant solution, although it seems like it offers less control.
To get to know how the professionals do their jobs is always inspiring. I tend to pick up useful thoughts along the way regardless the field. Whether it is technical or creative side of lane in the theatrical industry, they seemed corresponding to each other and improve the workflow in this kind of collaborative environments. Just like Hylenski mentioned, thinking about what the style of sound is related to the venue is the first thing he does when a show is developing, though this might be categorized to be a technical issue, in practical it is also a design issue. The method chosen by each person in the production is always connecting to the other layer, also the other person's job. By choosing the most suitable solution both on software and hardware interface, we are able to deliver the show to the audience with the most accurate way.
Post a Comment