Added: 03/20/2006 |
The Craft of Theatre Sound Designers and Technical Sound DesignersTheatre sound designers are persons who practice the art of sound design for theatre performances. In motion picture production a sound designer is responsible for the movie's audio track. In theatre sound design is one of recent innovations. Theatre is less preoccupied with technical innovations in comparison with cinematography and sound design is considered one of the youngest fields in technical theater along with projection and multimedia displays.
The idea of theatre sound design has been around since first theatre performances but presently the first person who can be called a sound designer was probably Dan Dugan. He worked at North American Regional Repertory Theatre during sixties and was responsible for sound editing for theatre performances. His first work was on "Show Girl" in 1963 and since then the sound design in theatre has been developing rapidly. The term sound design and sound designer was introduced by Walter Murch - a sound editor of Coppola's "The Godfather" the music for which was written by outstanding sound director Carmine Coppola - Francis Ford Coppola's father.
Walter Murch is considered to be the first sound designer cutting the audio track for "The Godfather" after the movie was shot. But let's get back to the theatre sound designers. Today there are two types of the theatre sound design. These are the technical sound design and the conceptual sound designers. The technical sound design is prevalent on Broadway and the conceptual sound design is more peculiar to regional repertory theatres.
Both types are equally important and sometimes their functions intersect. Technical sound designers are required to design the sound system that will implement the needs of the production. If there is already a sound system, the task of a technical sound designer is to tune all necessary equipment such as microphones, speakers, equalizers etc. to attain the best sound performance.
Technical sound designers collaborate with music directors very tightly to determine the use and placement of microphones for musicians and actors. A technical sound designer is responsible for clarity of voices and music; he makes certain that actors hear each other and can be understood by the audience.
The conceptual sound design is different but equally important. A conceptual sound designer works very tightly with a director in order to determine what music themes and messages should be implemented to create a necessary mood or setting. In collaboration with a music director a conceptual sound designer might choose or compose some specific music for the play.
However the final decision is director's who can instruct a conceptual sound designer to choose appropriate sounds and to which parts of the play they should be applied. Theatre sound designers can work independently depending on the level of trust between the director and a sound designer. Theatre sound designers are also responsible for removing unwanted sounds in historical movies such as occasional bells of modern cellular phones and so on.
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