sound operator

this role is on par with lighting operator under the DSM who cues both operators the importance of this role is quite high as without the sound operator the preformers would be singing acappella with no music and there would be no sound effects which would subtract greatly from the overall enjoyment and professionalism of the preformance, the sound operator doesnt liase too closely with the crew backstage, mostly with the preformers themselves or the director to ind out cue lines.

evaluation

The show as a whole worked well and was successful, to evaluate this the front of house team sent out questionares to see a public response to the performance as a whole.
the questionares  told us some areas upon which we could improve the experience of the show such as:
-the heat of the auditorium was too intense so audience members gave feedback that an improvment if the budget of the allow would be to get air conditioning which keep the auditorium cool for the audience and the preformers as it would make the atmosphere mor bareable and the audience would be able to focus more on the preformance than the heat.
-another was about the food on offer...this i belive was due to the layout of the tables which gave it a restaraunt feel which made the auidence have an air of expectation, we only served nibbles but the auidence didnt feel this was appropriate to the setting.
- the microphones were also complained about..this is a situation we thought would come up as the quality of the mics are something we as a department would like to improve after the previous preformance.Another reason for this would be the jacks being overloaded, this and the performers in a rush to get on fitting thier own mics and doing them incorrectly...a solution to this would be to either have more crew members to fit mics or tutor the preformers how to do their own correctly.


Things that worked well were:
- the american theme worked well as the theme was continuous from the waitresses western outfits and their fake american accents to the red white and blue theme which ran from the tables to even the lighting design.
-the lighting design worked well...as it went in with the american theme and isolated areas of preformance, and set the mood and atmosphere for the play.
-the way we worked as a team overall to achieve the quality of preformance with the lighting and sound working in tune with one another through the commands of the DSM. 

sound operation

firstly i lifted sounds from freesound.com of trucks and trains which are appropriate to what the stage manager told me was required then downloading these sounds after saving these to the user area i had
 the stage manager and the director.these were then transferred to a hardrive disk,which was then plugged into the mac and the tracks transferred to itunes.From this we opened up a new qlab document and dropped in the sounds in the order they would appear in the show ,we got a temporary lincense for so that we could insert vamps and devamps for between speech which is not free on qlab,however when the liesence turned up  there was an issue...the issue being that the lincence was valid only for the new edition of qlab...so to solve this issue we downloaded the new version of qlab and transferred the file from  the old version of qlab to the new one.

from this we added in vamps and revamps to stop or start a track looping during the speech of the actors then carry on with the acting without music cutting out or finishing early.

this was then made easier to differentiate between different forms of actions to be preformed during the show such as:
- green for ; the start of a new act/song
-red for ; stop cue
-blue for; a fade
-purple for; a devamp
-yellow/orange for; a load cue

then during the technical  rehersals I added in the cue lines as taken from the acors for actions such as; vamps, devamps, stops, fades, load cues.

 

some of the tracks we found took to long for the time we needed it to run, or started too long after actors speech so i trimmed the start or end off the track so that the track started when it was needed
to.

http://www.slideshare.net/timidrew/sound-for-abby

job role outlines:

STAGE MANAGEMENT

This job requires People management so good people/social skills are required, stage management is also required to Coordinate all aspects of the production/Manage rehearsals actors props and costume fittings so technical experience and knowledge plus past experience may be required. These people skills /experience will also be useful as you will be required to liaise with front of house and director. Needs good understanding of both technical/artistic elements of a production and would be able to Work to the director’s requirements/brief/specification. You could also be required for anything from technical rehearsals through to the actual performance to handle any problems or emergencies that arise

WORK ACTIVITIES

Setting up/running of rehearsals- so planning skills are needed and a judgmental and artistic eye to improve any mistakes/shortfallings

Procuring of props/furniture/set furnishings-ways of procuring such as borrowing buying lending and taking from storage 

Arranging wig/costume fittings- to make sure they don’t clash with rehearsals

Liaising with other theatre departments-checking times and deadlines are met

Managing budgets-in conjunction with finance

Ensures deadlines are set /met

Ensures stage management team are all properly trained so there are no breechings of the health and safety agreement

Ensures rehearsals comply with health and safety agreement

Organise/ensure safe return of props/furniture

Ensures health/wellbeing of performers/technicians

Run tech rehearsals in liaison with director, production management, and deputy stage management

During the rehearsal phase, stage managers also

·         mark out the dimensions of the set on the floor of the rehearsal hall

·         make sure rehearsal props and furnishings are available for the actors
attend all rehearsals

·         notify the designers and crafts people of changes made in rehearsal.

The ploting process:
-the technical rehersal running over could be solved by staying later on in the to ensure the job was completed.
-the dimmers being overloaded lights need to be disributed evenly accross the dimmers,where lights need to be plugged.
-more cable needed as the lights could be distributed more evenly by doing so.

The technical reheresal:
- the cast need to be in full costume and punctual to the rehersals to ensure that the tech rehersals dont become interupted and disjointed/distract from rehersal.
-more preparation to make sure that the set and props are stageworthy and will  survive the preformances and stress put upon them by the role they are required to play in a nightly preformance

The final show:
-an improvment would be for one department to handle the sales of tickets instead of many to avoid the overselling of tickets(120 SEATS),which caused confusion on he night.
- another difficulty we had was distingustishing the tickets for one night from the other so an idea would be to have the tickets for different nights as different colours.
-oversale of tickets were an issue so maybe make signs to tell the audience tickets are sold out to avoid oversale.
- the heat in the auditorium was really bad so numbering the seats may be an idea to aviod the rush to get in there to get the best seats which made the auditorium hotter
-the voiceover needs to be louder so that it can be head over the noise of the audience in the wicked cafe during the interval as it couldnt be heard very well.

Pros of the preformance

pros and cons of the job role

Things that worked well:
-The teamwork.
-The motivation within the group if a job needed doing it would get done without complaint.
-The time in which each job was effective as we devided the jobs equally between the team so they were completed quicker.
-The checklist that ensured that all jobs that needed to be done were completed,and could be checked off when they had.

Things that didnt work quite so well:
-The fact we only had one checklist between the 4 of us which meant we had to go backwards and forwards to find out what the next task was, upon reflection of this we couldve photocopied the sheet or printed it off so that each team member had one each.
-The punctuality of other group members and communicaton errors to alert other group members of this tardiness.
-The time wasted printing off signs which could otherwise be used constructively, so to save future front of house this hassle we have saved them for future use.