ProSoundWeb: It’s no understatement to say that the pandemic has had a devastating effect on live events; it was one of the first industries brought to a halt and will probably be one of the last to return. To make matters worse it happened virtually overnight, catching many people unprepared for the complete and utter cessation of work – and the financial implications that quickly followed.
2 comments:
I am a big metaphor person. I do not yet know all that much about Sound, but this article helped me to contextualize both sound waves and the pandemic itself. I have heard the term ceilings and floors in sound, but I did not know that along with walls they were the sound boundaries. It is true that the pandemic has created many boundaries, much like in the world of sound. Even the headlining photo of the article looks like a visual representation of how things have been going throughout this pandemic. The article mentions being optimistic about the jobs returning and especially without knowing how serious the virus was, this was accurate for many including myself. In the end it worked out quite well for me to transfer to Carnegie Mellon, but many people are stranded without jobs or any idea of what the future can hold. The article talks about reflection and hoping that jobs would return in the same way that they were lost. I learned in Lighting about how the angle of incidence is equal to the degree of reflection. This seems to be the same concept. The article does a great job comparing both the pandemic and entertainment/gig jobs to sound as well as providing some optimistic insight. It is a nice reminder to be told that it is temporary and things will hopefully return to some sense of normalcy and to be reminded that our resilience will get us through this chaos, hopefully with as few casualties as possible.
-Ariel Bernhard
There have been a lot of great metaphors about the COVID pandemic, and this is another good one. Our industry is at a crossroads, and there are many people that have had to make tough choices about careers that they loved. I have even considered my choices and whether I will be able to find work, two years from now. The unfortunate reality is, though, that many people will have to or already have been faced with that decision. There is such precious little work out there that only a select few people are able to find, and even then the rates for their labor is going to be severely driven down. And now that many other job sectors are picking back up, the alternatives to the still frozen entertainment industry are looking more and more pleasing to unemployed freelancers and artists. The question I think about is how the industry will look when it does start back up. Who will be there? What will budgets look like? What will be redefined? Keeping with the analogy of sound, what is able to pass through mediums as opposed to being reflected is not the same as the source. It is muddled and distorted into something different. But perhaps that is what the industry needed. We look at the growing anti-racist theatre movements and questioning of traditions that marginalize so many people. I can hope that the 'filtered sound' coming out of this pandemic will lead to a bright future for our industry.
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