Sound Design for the Stage E-Book

Gareth Fry

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 475

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Sound Design for the Stage is a practical guide to designing, creating and developing the sound for a live performance. Based on the author's extensive industry experience, it takes the reader through the process of creating a show, from first contact to press night, with numerous examples from high-profile productions. Written in a detailed but accessible approach, this comprehensive book offers key insights into a fast-moving industry. Topics covered include: how to analyze a script to develop ideas and concepts; how to discuss your work with a director; telling the emotional story; working with recorded and live music; how to record, create, process and abstract sound; designing for devised work; key aspects of acoustics and vocal intelligibility; the politics of radio mics and vocal foldback; how to design a sound system and, finally, what to do when things go wrong. It will be especially useful for emergent sound designers, directors and technical theatre students. Focusing on the creative and collaborative process between sound designer, director, performer and writer, it is fully illustrated with 114 colour photographs and 33 line artworks. Gareth Fry is an Olivier and Tony award-winning sound designer and an honorary fellow of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. It is another title in the new Crowood Theatre Companions series.

Leseprobe

Sound Design for the Stage

Gareth Fry

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2019 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2019

© Gareth Fry 2019

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 554 1

CONTENTS

DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1HOW TO BECOME A SOUND DESIGNER

2FIRST CONTACT

3SCRIPT ANALYSIS AND MEETING THE DIRECTOR

4CONCEIVE AND EXECUTE

5MUSIC AND THE BLURRY WORLD OF SOUND

6PULLING THE IDEAS TOGETHER

7CONTENT CREATION

8REINFORCEMENT AND AMPLIFICATION

9SYSTEM DESIGN

10REHEARSALS

11INTO THE THEATRE AND HOW TO SOUND CHECK

12FOLDBACK

13TECHNICAL REHEARSALS

14SHOW TIME

15PRESS NIGHT AND BEYOND

APPENDIX

INDEX

DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is dedicated to my amazing family: Laura, Phoebe and Lewis.

There are many people who taught me, or from whom I learnt, as I found my way into this career. I can’t hope to name all of them, but Tom Vinelott, Simon Whitehorn, Ross Brown, Peter Barnett, Paul Groothuis and Chris Shutt all deserve my thanks.

Thanks to Max Pappenheim, Harry Johnson and Pete Malkin for reading this over and pointing out my mistakes. And thanks to Crowood for their patience!

All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this book are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, trademarks and brands does not imply endorsement.

Figure 53® and QLab® are registered trademarks of Figure 53, LLC. Gareth Fry is not affiliated with Figure 53, LLC, and this text has not been reviewed nor has it been approved by Figure 53, LLC.

All photos are by Gareth Fry, except where credited, or are product photos courtesy of the manufacturers.

INTRODUCTION

Many of the books I’ve bought with similarly vague titles such as Sound Design for the Stage are sat, mostly unread, on my bookshelf. They tend to focus on the physics of loudspeakers and microphones, on recording sound effects, and how to mark up a script. But they rarely discuss how the industry works, how to get work, how to discuss ideas with a director, or how you might generate the concept for your sound design in the first place.

This book places emphasis on the practical process of creating the sound design for a show, in close collaboration with the director, writer and performers. We will discuss aspects of acoustics, vocal intelligibility and sound systems along the way, but we will focus more on the psychological and artistic effects of the decisions we might make.

Theatre happens at many different scales. I started off in pub fringe venues with just a cassette player and two knackered HiFi speakers. Since then I’ve worked on pretty much every scale of show, up to Broadway and the Olympic Games. The level of resources may differ radically, but the thought processes are often very similar, because we are still telling a story. The story can be a narrative story or it can be a musical story. It can be told with words or it can be told with movement. It may not be linear and it may not be discernible to the audience, but it’s rare that we put a bunch of random things on stage in a random order. We use technology to tell these stories – but let’s think about technology as our paintbrushes, and focus more on what we might want to paint.

I’m also going to talk about when things went wrong, or didn’t go to plan, and how I gracefully got myself out of trouble – or, in some cases, didn’t.

I am writing this book with the emergent sound designer or director in mind. Perhaps you are a student, or a graduate, or have come straight into theatre by some other route.

A lot of the information that follows is going to be my personal opinion, my ethos, and my own particular experiences, rather than objective facts. Your version of ‘good’ sound design is probably different to mine, so feel free to disagree with me entirely and find your own way.

Let’s start by looking at how the industry works, how a creative team is assembled, what is expected of a sound designer, and how they get work.

1

HOW TO BECOME A SOUND DESIGNER

WHAT IS A SOUND DESIGNER?

The job title ‘sound designer’ means different things in different industries. In theatre it is an all-encompassing role, which essentially means you are responsible for all audible aspects of a production. That is, of course, incredibly vague, and deliberately so, because what those ‘aspects’ are varies massively from show to show, depending on the story you’re telling (if there is one), the venue, the budget available, and a huge number of other factors.

It can involve sound effects recording, music production, sound system design, live music reinforcement and amplification, vocal reinforcement and amplification, room acoustics, creating multi-channel sound effects and soundscapes, amongst other things. Each of these is a huge topics in itself, so we’ll touch on them briefly and pragmatically, so we don’t get weighed down by an excess of information.

On some shows you may do only a couple of those elements, on others you may be involved in all of them. Of course, no one is an expert in all those fields. Many of us have specialisms in certain aspects, and we often work with others to bolster any skills gaps we might have. Sound design involves working in a creative team, with directors, writers, designers, performers and musicians, collaborating together to make something hopefully awesome!

One of the lovely aspects about theatre sound design is that often we have complete control of the end-to-end process. That is to say, we control the recording process, the mixing process, the sound system it is played back over, and the venue it is played back in. This is in contrast to, for example, sound design for cinema, where you have control over the recording and mix of the sound design, but you have no control on how good the cinema sound system is, or indeed whether an audience member will hear it in a cinema or through a tiny speaker on their mobile phone.

Theatre is reasonably unique in giving us this end-to-end control, which opens up a lot of creative possibilities. For example, we can, if we want, put lots of sub-bass speakers underneath the audience’s seating. Or we can pan sounds around hundreds of different speakers in the auditorium. The limits tend to come from the architecture, the budget or our imagination!

THE SOUND DESIGNER’S PATH TO EMPLOYMENT

It is difficult to look at becoming a sound designer in terms similar to traditional careers, which may offer formal career paths with structured opportunities for professional development and advancement, and regular hours.

Like many careers in the arts, and increasingly in many industries, there isn’t an official path into it or through it. Everyone is making it up as they go along, and basically it’s up to you. This can be either terrifying or liberating, depending on your perspective. This lack of structure makes many ‘arts’ jobs feel like an insecure choice of career, but many people make a living doing good, interesting work. Like many freelance careers, the early years trying to get a footing can be challenging.

Sound design jobs are very rarely advertised, and this is down to two factors: how sound designers are employed, and how the creative team for a show is assembled. The ‘creative team’ typically refers to the director, the set, costume, lighting, sound and video designers, the composer, the movement director and suchlike. Each person is typically the creative lead for their department, with the director at the top.

For a good part of the twentieth century the sound design for a show was done by a combination of the director, stage manager and a member of the electrics (lighting) department – there simply weren’t sound engineers working in theatre, or anywhere else for that matter. As technology advanced, expectations rose, and the role grew more complex, and so sound departments started to appear. The sound design was created by a member of the sound department, alongside their other duties.

This was quite typical until the mid-1990s: by then, directors increasingly wanted to work with specific sound designers rather than whoever was available in the venue. Many sound designers responded to this by going freelance, and so in-house designers are much less common in the UK and USA now than they used to be. If you are interested in a more complete history, David Collison’s The Sound of Theatre is a great resource.

While in the UK most full-time sound designers are freelance, there are also those who work for a venue and may perform a range of duties as well as sound design. Many people like the variety of different job roles that working in-house brings, and obviously a guaranteed regular wage can suit some people’s personal circumstances more than the variable income typical of freelance employment. In the Appendix you can read an interview with the Royal Court’s Head of Sound, David Mc-Seveney, talking about why he enjoys working this way, amongst other topics. When an in-house person designs a show for their venue they will often, though not always, be paid an extra fee, and someone may be brought in to cover their normal duties if they are not able to do both.

Some other sound designers work for companies, most often sound equipment hire companies, who might offer a complete package: all the sound equipment and all the staff necessary for a show, including the sound designer. These companies may also do dry hire, where they just supply the equipment without staff.

The designer benefits from a guaranteed income, and will be able to specify and budget for equipment from a stock they are very familiar with, plus have the full support of that companies infrastructure at their disposal. You can read an interview in the Appendix with Ian Dickinson, who talks about the benefits of working for Autograph Sound, a UK based company.

Also featured in the Appendix are interviews with Melanie Wilson, a freelance sound designer and composer, and Gareth Owen, who runs his own company, Gareth Owen Sound Ltd, talking about what works and their own experiences of sound design.

The USA is similar to the UK in terms of how sound designers are employed. In Europe, larger arts subsidies means there are more subsidized producing houses, many of which perform shows in repertoire (where two or three different shows might perform in the same theatre space each week). This means that the technical rehearsals for a show are typically much longer because they only happen in the mornings and early afternoons around the performance schedule. The longer duration of creating work is less compatible with a freelance existence, so in-house designers are still common.

ASSEMBLING A CREATIVE TEAM

The way creative teams are assembled is a big factor in why it can be difficult to get work as a sound designer. To explain this, it is necessary to explain briefly how a typical show might be produced.

Typically, an artistic director or a producer (the two people who choose what a theatre or theatre company will perform) will have an idea of a show that they want to put on in a certain slot in their calendar. Maybe that will be a specific play or a piece they have in mind, or an author they have commissioned. Perhaps there is a particular theme they want to explore, or a certain director or choreographer whom they want to come and make a show of their own choosing, or an actor whom they want to star in a show. Maybe they aim to programme a certain number of different types of show in each season.

They might then look for a director to develop and direct that show (though sometimes a director will come to a producer with a play they want to direct). In the dance world, it may be the choreographer who is the creative lead on the project, and it is likely they will do many of the things I shall discuss when referring to the director, going forward from here.

The director will often then develop a concept for that show. They may have creative team members with whom they work regularly, and with whom they want to work again. Or they may have someone new whose work they’ve seen or heard, with whom they’d like to work. Failing that, the producer or venue may have a list of creative team members they’ve worked with before to recommend to the director. Once the director and producer have identified the individuals they’d like to have on the creative team, those designers are contacted by the producer’s staff to see if they are free to work on the show: this is known as the availability checking period.

An availability check may happen long in advance of a show starting rehearsals – for example, an opera availability check might be anywhere between a year to three years before it is due to open. Plays typically are not scheduled as far in advance, so ‘AV’ checks may happen six to nine months before rehearsals begin, though it’s not unusual to get an enquiry just before rehearsals begin. The latter can often happen when the director is closer to the start of the project and identifies more specific needs that perhaps hadn’t been apparent in the planning stages – for instance, they hadn’t been planning to employ a sound designer but now they need one! However, the latter scenario is increasingly rare as sound designers are becoming a standard part of the creative team.

Some theatres and producers run planning – or ‘parameters’ – meetings far in advance of rehearsals beginning, to ascertain what resources, scheduling and budget a show will need. All these timelines can be affected by how the project is funded, and how much or little time there is between funding being confirmed and rehearsals beginning.

An availability check usually comes in the following form: ‘We are planning a show, it will begin rehearsals on … Fit-up will start on … First preview is on … Press night is on …’. Sometimes they may tell you the name of the show, the writer and the director, sometimes not, depending on whether the show has been announced to the public. Availability checks often contain confidential information that isn’t in the public domain, so it is important to keep them confidential.

Sound designers typically work with many different directors, so it’s not uncommon for the director’s first choice to be unavailable, in which case the producers then move on to AV checking another candidate. This is another reason why you might get an availability check close to rehearsals beginning – they’ve spent time going through other candidates before getting to you.

Once a designer has been identified as available, more details of the project will be revealed, and a fee can be negotiated. Some venues may have ‘fixed’ fees, particularly subsidized ones. Some designers may not be able to make the project work for the fee offered, and so the producer will move on again in their search.

This process may vary if the venue concerned has an in-house designer, or if the producer is looking to work with a complete service company. But you will have deduced the following from the above:

•Directors often have sound designers they work with regularly, and bring with them from show to show

•Directors often have people in mind with whom they’d like to try working, based on other work they’ve been to see, or designers they’ve heard about

•Producers often maintain lists of designers to suggest to directors. These may be designers they’ve worked with before, or well-known designers. Equally, they may well have a ‘black list’ of people they’ve had bad experiences with in the past. Black lists are illegal so may not actually exist on paper, but certainly if a producer has had a bad experience with someone previously, they’ll wish to dissuade a director from working with them (without blocking them outright)

Whilst there is much common sense in this method of employing a creative team, it does make the industry difficult to access when you are starting out. It is the typical Catch 22 of employment: you need experience to get work, but you need to get work to gain experience. This is one of the reasons why the industry is not as diverse in terms of gender, class or ethnic background as it should be. The UK theatre industry is predominantly inhabited by white male middle-class people, and so white male middle-class people find it easier to access the industry. This is something that must change, which we’ll discuss later.

In the UK there is a large theatre industry, both in London and across the country. This vibrancy means there are often plenty of jobs to go round, at a variety of pay scales. Producers and directors are often looking for new people to work with, just because they want someone new to work with, or because the usual candidates aren’t available, or won’t/can’t work for the available money. This means that opportunities do open up for those emerging into the industry.

THE SOUND DESIGNER’S BACKGROUND

As I consider the current crop of sound designers, I see a range of people who have come into the industry by a variety of paths:

•Some have trained at drama school, or attended specialist sound courses

•Some have been doing theatre sound for youth groups or amateur dramatic societies since their youth and have moved into professional sound (and to be clear here, I generally define ‘professional’ as meaning that you are earning part of your living from doing it, rather than doing it as a hobby)

•Some have worked in various roles in the theatre sound industry

•Some have moved across from other sound industries, either being trained in, or working in, studio recording, live sound (bands, concerts, church sound), film sound, radio, and so on

•Some have come in from a music background, starting out as a composer or musician, and then gained more interest in the sound world beyond that

Some people have started off with a degree, but many have started out with little or no training and have learned everything on the job. Many prefer to play with the technology and see what it can do. Some people even read the manuals. All of these paths are equally valid.

Beyond their backgrounds, some designers have then specialized in certain types of work. Those specialisms might be certain types of musicals, plays, dance, opera, devised work, site-specific work, and so on. This diversity of backgrounds and specialisms means that individual designers are often sought out for specific projects – it is what makes them stand out from the crowd. Of course, what makes you more employable in one sector can make you less employable in another, and designers can become ‘typecast’, based on their body of work.

WHAT DO EMPLOYERS LOOK FOR IN A SOUND DESIGNER?

It’s important to know what your potential employers want from you, namely the director, and the producer and the production manager.

The Director

For the director you occupy two roles, one as the sound designer, and one as a creative team member. It’s easy to concentrate on the former (covered in detail later) and forget about the latter, so we’ll consider that now.

You are there to be on the director’s side, to bounce ideas around – not just sound, but more generally, whether this or that scene is working, or not, and why. You have a responsibility to support them creating the show, and to do this you have to look at the show from the director’s point of view.

To do this you have to build up a line of communication with them, to be able to discuss the show dramatically, artistically and, of course, sonically. You need to develop your taste, your opinion, of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ because you will be asked for your opinion, or there will be times when it will be useful to express it and justify it. What for you is ‘good acting’? Everyone has different notions of what is good and bad, and for you to be a useful team member you should work to develop your taste, and question why you like or connect to something. You can do this by visiting plenty of shows, films, exhibitions, and so on. Go with a friend who likes different things, so you can reflect, discuss and argue about it – being able to strongly and reasonably justify your subjective response, whilst acceding that other strong subjective responses are also valid, will become very useful.

Your taste and opinions will evolve the more you watch and listen. Why does one thing work and not another? What is the crucial missing ingredient(s) in a failure? It’s useful to analyse what you would like to have been better, and if there was a route, to do it better. But equally it’s important to be sympathetic that only so much can be achieved by a team in the time and circumstances available, and with the money, and resources, available for the creation of any piece of work. Can you spot where compromises were made, and why?

Watch some shows that you wouldn’t normally go to watch, things you think you’ll dislike. What can you take away from them? There is virtually nothing you can’t watch without learning some aspect of storytelling, right or wrong. Once you have a notion of what makes a piece of work good or bad, then you can start to talk about whether the sound design is good or bad. There are times when a sound design can be objectively bad outside the context of the aesthetic of a show – bad feedback or an inability to hear any dialogue are usually strong indicators. Does ‘good’ equate to ‘appropriate’?

Keep in mind that what you think is good is an entirely subjective opinion. What you consider bad, someone else may think is brilliant. Life would be very boring if we all liked the same things.

By watching and listening to a great deal of work you are also building up a set of reference points that you can utilize so as to find ways to talk to a director, to find common ground to talk about the piece, and about sound – for example: ‘We could do a similar thing to…’. You need to be able to reference other work as a means to describe what you want to achieve.

It’s also important to understand the different ways that directors direct shows. Directors have different styles, both in the process they employ and the style of work they direct. Some directors specialize (or have become typecast) in certain types of work. Watch different directors’ shows to seek to understand what they are trying to achieve and the techniques they use to achieve that. Find a director whose work you like, and see all their shows. Watch how they adjust their style to match the piece, and how their style evolves across different works. Watch different productions of the same script to understand how much the creative team brings to a production.

You can only ever create a ‘good’ sound design for the director if you understand what they are trying to achieve.

The Producer and Production Manager

The producer also has a number of things that he needs from you, but these tend to be more pragmatic. Producers often employ a production manager to co-ordinate the various aspects of a production, notably the schedule and the budget. They need you to do the following:

•To deliver, as far as is reasonably possible, what the director is asking of you, but within the allocated budget, timeframe and the confines of the venue. They may eventually want you to create a touring version of it, too

•To plan the sound system, so it can be budgeted for and costed up, and the installation of it can be co-ordinated with other departments (for example, where the set manufacturer needs to build holes in the set for speakers)

•To assemble, or assist with assembling a team, who are going to keep the show running and deal with any minor technical issues that may arise. To ensure that those people are good members of the company, who can co-operate and collaborate

•To create a sound design that delivers consistently good sound to all sections of the auditorium. Producers don’t like having to refund patrons who couldn’t hear properly

•To deliver a system that is reliable, that will not break down in such a way as to cause the show to stop, or worse still, be cancelled. A backup show computer may be expensive, but not as much as refunding 800 tickets when the only computer breaks down

Whilst most of the above will be achieved in coordination with the production manager, generally we will liaise with the producers to clear the copyright of any music or other copyrighted sounds. Producers tend to handle clearances because these often involve financial and contractual negotiations with the artists or their publishers, and discussions about box office revenue. I will often provide information about the context in which the material is being used, and for how long.

MAKING OURSELVES A POTENTIAL CANDIDATE

In the following section we’ll discuss making contact with people, but nowadays the second you make contact with someone they are going to google you, and search for you across social media. And what they find there will probably determine whether they decide to reply to you, or not. You’ll be judged on your online presence first, long before you get to meet anyone in person.

It is therefore essential to turn your web and social media presence into a reflection of your business as a sound designer – and to hide away your personal life. Start by making all your social media accounts as private as possible. Delete any posts that could be construed badly by a potential employer or collaborator, whether public or private. Google ‘(Your name), sound design’, as that’s what they’ll likely search for: is it useful, constructive, positive? And if it isn’t, what can you do about it?

If you don’t have a website, now is a good time to make one. There are many good, free offerings that don’t require programming skills. The point of your website is to provide a point of contact for you when people google you – they can’t offer you work if they can’t contact you. Beyond that, it’s there to encourage them to choose you above someone else, by providing positive information about you and your skills, your background, or any other pertinent information. What are the things that make you stand out, that are unique to you?

Avoid it sounding like a CV with unhelpful personal statements such as ‘I’m highly motivated’, and whether or not you can use Microsoft Office. And it’s better to have no information than to list your school holiday job. Normal Job Centre-type CV tips do not apply here! If it’s not directly supporting your cause, don’t put it on there. Register a domain name with a company such as 1&1: this will get you a web address such as www.jobloggs.com and an associated email address. Avoid email addresses containing your year of birth.

Have a look at other designers’ websites and see what works for you. It can be as simple as a nice big image, your name, phone number and email address, and the words ‘Sound Design’. Put your contact details on every page of your website: visitors may have arrived via a search engine and won’t necessarily go to the home page first. Avoid using those unattractive contact forms – and don’t include a blog that you’ll fail to keep up writing after three posts.

Focus your website on the work you’re trying to get, but sell yourself in a way that is inclusive to all potential clients, as you are likely to end up doing all sorts of different work along the way to obtaining the work you want. You want to encourage them to contact you, too. If you have specialist skills, whether it be an encyclopaedic knowledge of Serialist music, a proclivity for recording high speed cars or a talent for synth programming, these can attract certain employers to you, so use them as a selling point. Once an employer has been persuaded to take you on because you have the special skills they need for a certain project, then hopefully you can further persuade them that your broader skill set will do for all their projects.

Sound design for theatre is frustratingly difficult to represent online – something that sounds great in a show sounds rubbish removed from the context of the performance. If it doesn’t sound good alone, don’t put it online. Most sound designers don’t put much work online, preferring to let the list of shows and collaborators speak for their reputation. However, sounds that you’ve made for web trailers or to accompany video design often work well. Add a note that the audio will be best heard over headphones, rather than on an iPhone speaker.

Get a friend to check your website for spelling, mistakes and the tone. The people you want to read your website read scripts for a living – they’ll notice your spelling and punctuation errors and judge you! Put a recurring alarm in your calendar to update your website every three months.

Social media can be a great way to advertise your day-to-day activities, which you mightn’t put on your website. Careful use of who you connect with, comments, retweets, and so on, can help spread ‘Brand You’. But beware the drunken tweet….

Many websites (LinkedIn, Mandy, the Association of Sound Designers) offer the opportunity to write a profile about yourself. However, rather than write something that will quickly be out of date, link to a biog on your website. Look through the profiles of members of the Association of Sound Designers to see how to write a biog.

What is your name? Are you Joe Bloggs or Joseph Bloggs, Jo or Joanne? If you have a name with variations, choose one and stick to it – be clear and consistent with ‘Brand You’. If you have a name that is similar to someone out there doing theatre sound, then find a variation to use to distinguish you. Avoid nicknames. Your name is your brand, and it is you whom producers and directors will want to bring on to a creative team. Whilst we want to create a business-like look to convey a level of professionalism, a director is rarely going to say that they want JB Services Ltd to come in and design their show – our clients want to employ a specific person because of their specific skills, experience or attitude.

Business cards are worthwhile, though you may only give out one or two a month. They create a better impression than scribbling your email address on a scrap of paper, and can drive a visit to your website to find out more about you. Don’t include too much information: your name, job description, phone number, email and website are plenty. Check out magazines such as Creative Review for inspiration on more interesting visual designs.

Being able to be found is essential for a freelancer. Register on LinkedIn, Mandy and with the Association of Sound Designers to expand your presence – though LinkedIn is not really used in the theatre world.

MAKING CONTACT

The first step to getting work is about getting someone to appreciate who you are. Person-to-person networking is very important: theatre is a people business. Finding opportunities to meet people isn’t always easy, but fortunately most people in the industry are actually quite obliging. If you email them saying that you’re an emerging sound designer and love their work/venue, most people will give you fifteen minutes over a cup of coffee to talk.

The work won’t find you – you have to find the work, and getting your first job can be trickiest of all. But once you have one show on your CV everything becomes slightly easier.

Emailing someone out of the blue can be quite daunting. Don’t think you have to write an essay, though – explain that you are an emerging sound designer, that you are looking for people to collaborate with, then talk briefly about your background, and talk passionately about your interest in their work (research their work). You are more likely to receive a reply to an email personalized to whom you’re sending it to, showing that you are aware of their interests, and demonstrating your interests, than to a generic email. People respond to passion, so don’t be afraid of stating your interests. The aim of your email is to ask if it would be possible to meet for a coffee, to have a chat.

Who should you be emailing? Rather than emailing the artistic director of the National Theatre (or whoever) and getting rejected, research the associate directors or the associate movement directors on the shows you like. They are probably directors in their own right, at an earlier stage of their career (that is, closer to your stage of your career), and we can assume they like the shows that you like, to a certain degree. Tracking down email addresses can sometimes be difficult if they don’t have a website or an agent, but most theatre companies have administration offices, whose staff can pass on your email to the relevant person.

Research people working in fringe theatre (not to be confused with the Edinburgh Fringe), who are likely also to be emerging professionals in their own field. They are unlikely to be in a position to get you paid work, but if you can support yourself with a side job, the fringe offers valuable ways to gain experience designing shows, with less pressure to deliver what might be expected of an experienced professional.

Very importantly, whether face to face or online, no one likes someone who is being really pushy in trying to get them to meet them. Remember you are trying to encourage people to employ you, so don’t irritate them with spam or scare them with cyber stalking.

An over-a-coffee meeting is an opportunity to demonstrate what a nice person you are, and your enthusiasm to work with them. Use it to ask them about their past work, their interests and passions. Invite them to see your work, if that’s possible. Don’t push them about any future projects they might have, but be clear that you would be interested in working with them in the future if they have any interesting projects coming up. That can then be their cue to talk about any interesting projects they might have – or not to talk about them, if they don’t want to.

Depending on who you are meeting, you might be aiming to work with them in the future. However, if you feel that’s unrealistic, perhaps ask if you might come and watch some rehearsals, or some tech rehearsals at some point, to see them at work. There may a discussion of process, of how you like to build up a show, and of how the director likes to work. ‘What’s your process for making a sound design?’ is not an uncommon question from a director when meeting them for the first time. If you’re not sure how to answer that question, read the rest of this book!

There are many other ways to get yourself noticed by people, such as attending or getting involved with organizing industry events, exploiting any contacts you may already have, posting your business card out to venues, being a presence on email forums.

Fringe theatres and companies are often looking for sound designers. We’ll discuss the economics of fringe shortly, but these enterprises are worth getting in touch with, sending a business card to, and going to ‘scratch’ performances (which involve experimenting with a half-developed idea). Scratch performances often involve feedback sessions, and are a very good way to meet the people behind each show, to meet potential collaborators.

Building a freelance career can take a while as you build contacts and design credits, working your way towards more lucrative work. It will take several years to build up to a point where you are able to live purely off sound design work. Having another income stream, theatre related or otherwise, is essential in the early days.

Many sound designers start off as sound operators, technicians, radio mic runners, assistants or associates. A paid position is financially useful whilst you build up your design career, and is a good opportunity to build contacts and get to know the equipment that is commonly used in the industry, as well as to observe other creative teams developing work. Indeed, not everyone wants to design full time, and many people enjoy moving between a variety of sound roles.

If a sound designer is unavailable for a project, they might be asked to recommend someone else, and they will tend to suggest people they know. This is why it is useful to get to know other sound designers, too. This can be via the can-wego-for-a-coffee route (to see if there is any possibility of associating or assisting with a production, or of just coming along to it), or via industry events such as trade shows, or events organized by professional associations such as the Association of Sound Designers (ASD) or the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association (TSDCA). These events are great for meeting people outside your normal circuit, and for getting your name known, which is often the first step to getting work of any kind via your peers.

Some operating and radio mic running jobs are advertised in trade newspapers and on online job boards. Increasingly these, and other temporary opportunities, are advertised more informally on theatre sound-specific social media. The Audio Cartel group on Facebook is often used by West End theatre sound departments to find new ‘deps’ – the deputy, an additional staff member who is needed occasionally to cover when sound department members are ill, on leave, or learning to cover each other’s jobs, or as staff members move on to other shows. Getting on a show as a dep is a very good way to access the industry. Some jobs aren’t advertised at all, as staff members may be approached directly by producers, production managers, sound designers or sound operators who want specific people on their team for their show.

Work placements (work experience) are also a useful way to access various parts of the industry. Employers often choose to employ someone they know in preference to someone they don’t know when both have similar skills and experience. Work placements can help you become known.

ATTITUDE

I can’t emphasize enough how important your attitude is as to whether you get work. There’s no shortage of people with talent and abilities who can do what you can do – indeed, many people come into the industry without previous experience and make a success of it. What makes for success, what shines through everything else, is positivity, the ability to collaborate, the ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, to make compromises and concessions, to work together.

We see plenty of examples of difficult and controversial characters succeeding in all walks of life, but it is a lonely path to tread. I’ve worked with quite a few ‘difficult’ people, and they are often bitter and lonely, and this often feeds into a destructive circle, ending with no one wanting to employ them. Avoid that path.

Also avoid using slang labels for people, such as ‘techies’, ‘musos’, ‘turns’ and so on. Be respectful and call people by their job titles. Techies rarely like being called ‘techies’: they are often a highly diverse bunch of people with individual specialist skills.

One of the hardest balancing acts for someone emerging into the industry is appearing confident without being arrogant. Almost every job will be a leap into the unknown, taking on a job and saying ‘Yes, I can do that’, but not necessarily having done it before, or not knowing how to do it, or if you really can. It’s important to take these leaps, because without them you will only ever do what you already know, and will not go anywhere else.

Risk is important. Risk will push your creativity. You can improve the odds of a safe landing through research, preparation, by not overselling speaking to people who’ve done that before and by asking their advice. Be confident in yourself that you can make it work by being prepared, by knowing when to ask for help, and knowing how to act if it goes wrong (we’ll cover that later). Arrogance is thinking you can make the leap without preparing, by refusing help and by deflecting blame when things go wrong.

When those leaps occasionally go wrong it’s important to pick yourself up, gather your confidence and carry on. Everyone suffers these setbacks, whether it is a technical or an artistic one. We’ll cover dealing with disaster later on.

You’ll need a sense of confidence as your career progresses, because you may work in increasingly large scales of theatre, or move into different genres and types of theatre. There will always be leaps into the unknown: that’s half the fun of it.

My route into the industry took several years. After graduating I spent a few years working in an office, initially doing data entry. A friend pinned my business card on the notice board in the office of a Fringe theatre, which led to designing a number of tiny Fringe theatre shows for next to no money. These were often equipped with little more than a cassette player and some worn out HiFi speakers. Those shows didn’t particularly lead anywhere, but gave me a huge amount of real-world design experience, collaborating with many people, and working fast, and they gave me some design credits.

One of my jobs was operating a play in the West End, which was useful for seeing a professional sound designer at work, and the pro-level equipment in use, and I was able to meet a few directors, associates, production managers and producers. I spent several more years operating shows, and gradually getting designs from the contacts I made on those shows. Eventually the ratio of time that I spent operating or engineering to the time I spent designing shifted to the point where I was designing full time.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Vincent Van Gogh

If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be better than what you are.

Kung Fu Panda

ASSOCIATES AND ASSISTANTS

I expect an associate sound designer to be a fairly capable person, who will work either directly with me, or will work in my place if I’m not there. They need to be diplomatic, and capable of talking with directors, producers and operators with a high level of proficiency. They will often have a specific role, such as making sound effects, or a particular task, such as looking after things in my absence, perhaps during some rehearsals or previews.

When a show is successful, it may transfer to another venue, or tour, which may be arranged at relatively short notice and may not fit in with the designer’s pre-existing commitments, so it is fairly common for an associate to look after the re-mount, transfer or tour of a show in the designer’s place.

An assistant usually holds a more junior, and less well paid, position. They might often be given less critical tasks to do for a show, such as updating paperwork or sourcing low priority sound effects. I wouldn’t expect an assistant to fill in for me in my absence, or to deal with directors or producers.

Different sound designers have different skills, and work on different types of show, so they may well require different things of their assistants and associates.

Assistants are increasingly less common, certainly in the UK, and associates have become more common. This is a reflection of the increasing demands that are required of us when putting on a show, in that where an assistant might have sufficed in the past, it is now more likely that a person with the more advanced skills of an associate is needed.

Many associate sound designers are ‘early career’ sound designers. Being an associate gives you the chance to experience the sound design process (and what you might choose to do differently in the same position) at close quarters, a degree of artistic contribution to the show without the pressures and responsibilities of being the named designer, and offers the opportunity to meet corresponding associate directors, choreographers and so on, who might give you work on other projects.

I have a few people to whom I turn regularly to associate with me, as they know my aesthetic, process, workflow and work politics. I also use my associates for occasional ‘spec’ work – if I’m struggling to get everything done I may employ an associate for a day or two, rather than across the whole project, often to work on a specific aspect of something.

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FIRST CONTACT

At some point you will be asked if you are available to design a show. On no account say ‘yes’ – at least not straightaway. Instead take down the details, say it sounds very interesting, but you don’t have your diary to hand, and ask if you can get back to them. This gives you the opportunity to research the script, the producer, the venue, the director, what they’ve done before and their style of work, and whether you really are available to do the show with whatever commitments you already have. Do you know anyone who has worked with any of them? What do they think about the people involved, or know about the project?

In your research you may come across something that makes you think ‘Oh, actually, no, I don’t want to work on this!’ or ‘I can’t work on this’. Then you can call them back and say, ‘I’m so sorry, but the dates don’t work for me’. Have a good excuse, one that means you’re not available for the tech week. Make it clear that you’d love to work with them in the future, but it won’t work on this occasion. Don’t burn bridges. This is better than saying ‘Yes’ immediately, then having to back out the following day with a flimsy excuse because you’ve discovered a reason not to work on it. Aim to reply within forty-eight hours – don’t keep them hanging on. You are much less likely to be availability checked again if you keep them waiting a week for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

It’s important to bear in mind that an availability check isn’t an offer of work. The producer will often simultaneously ‘AV’check a number of sound designers to offer the director a few to choose from. Don’t be offended if an availability check that you respond positively to, doesn’t lead to an actual job. This happens no matter how experienced you are – whilst I’ve been writing this book I’ve had three availability checks resulting in a ‘The director has decided to go in another direction’ email.

Sometimes the director will want to meet you before committing to employing you. This is often a sort of job interview, where they want to hear a little about how you work, how you respond to the text, and whether they think they’ll like working with you. Sometimes they may have minor test questions for you, such as how you would go about achieving the so-and-so scene in their show.

NEGOTIATING A FEE

Occasionally a fee will be mentioned in the AV check, but more often that information won’t be mentioned until they offer you the job.

Sound designers are typically offered a flat fee to cover their work. They are expected to be self-employed freelancers (though some set up a company to operate from). In the UK this means that income tax and National Insurance are not deducted at source, and you are required to pay your own taxes. In contrast, a production sound engineer may be paid per day (though a fee is not uncommon for long periods of employment), and a sound operator would most likely receive a weekly wage on a salaried basis.

You may be asked ‘How much do you normally charge?’ If they sound like a relatively young person it means they are probably fairly new to producing, truly don’t know, but probably don’t have a large budget at their disposal. In the UK there is little guidance for producers on what sound designers should be paid, so to a degree, everyone is making it up as they go along.

You will soon notice that what you are offered has no bearing on the amount of work they want you to do, or the amount of time it will take to do it. Instead, the fee’s amount will often reflect the audience capacity of a theatre. Why? Because, for many producers, the income they receive is related to the number of tickets they can sell. If there are only 100 seats in the theatre, then their maximum income is going to be tied to that, and hence the budget to make the show and to employ everyone is tied to that. That’s not always the case, especially with venues that receive private funding or public subsidies.

Let’s take a moment to examine some of the organizations you might work for. In the UK, we have the Arts Council, funded by government, which subsidizes a lot of arts venues and theatre companies. Most of our producing houses, whether a regional studio theatre or the National Theatre, receive most of their income from the Arts Council. Some may produce shows that will transfer into the West End or commercially tour the country. There are many theatre companies that primarily produce touring work, but whose administrative backbone is funded by the Arts Council.

There are also theatre companies that don’t receive regular funding, but which apply for funding on a production-by-production basis. Many towns have a subsidized theatre or arts centre, which may produce its own work or have a mix of its own work and shows that tour in for a day or a week. We do also have many theatres that produce work without Arts Council funding, such as London’s Old Vic, to the many commercial theatres nationwide. There are many producers and production companies that produce work, at many different scales, without subsidy.

In the USA there is the National Endowment for the Arts, but whereas the Arts Council will spend £622 million in 2018 in the UK, the NEA only has $150 million for the entire USA. Without equivalent subsidies, venues and theatre companies in the USA rely far more on ticket sales, and private donations or corporate sponsorship for their income. There is still a diverse theatre community nonetheless. There are producers making work for Broadway or touring the country. There are large and small theatre companies that create and tour work. There are producing houses and a wealth of regional venues, too. Universities often have well funded and well resourced theatre programmes with numerous small and large-scale venues.

All these organizations have different funding sources and different amounts to spend. Understanding something of the organization you are potentially working for is a critical part in the fee negotiation process.

You will often be negotiating a fee before anyone can know how much work a job will actually involve – that may only become apparent some weeks or months later. It takes experience to estimate how much time a particular show, with a particular director, working in a particular style, in a particular venue, will take. This is important to calculate, not just to negotiate this project, but also so you know how much time you have for any other projects or side-line jobs you have.

Different producers and venues all have different approaches and resources available that determine how long a show will rehearse for, how long the production week(s) will be, and the sound budget available. Typically, commercial shows may have relatively short rehearsal periods, but may have longer preview periods in the theatre. The budget for a commercial show may often be higher because an entire sound system may need to be hired in, whereas a subsidized house may have a small budget because they have a lot of in-house equipment.

Many shows in Europe rehearse using a schedule similar to a UK opera schedule, which might mean you have a short amount of time in the rehearsal room, followed by lots of rehearsals onstage, but only until about 4pm each day when the entire set will be pulled offstage, and that evening’s set will be put on ready for one of the many shows in the repertoire to be performed that evening. As you can only work half a day each day, the process can take twice as long. If you are working in an outdoor venue, parts of the tech may happen overnight so that it is dark enough for the lighting to be visible, or there may be curfews in place that dictate when sound can, and cannot, be played.

How much should you be paid for your work? Should it be proportionate to the earning potential of the show? Or related to the amount of time you will spend creating it? Does it diminish the creativity of your work to reduce it to an hourly rate? How can we find a quantity to charge for the creativity, and our intellectual property, within our design? These are not easy questions to answer simply, and no one has come up with a good answer yet.

There are some guides out there on fees for set designers and lighting designers, which can be useful. In the UK, various organizations all publish documents, outlining minimum fees for a variety of design roles. These are often not reflective of what is actually paid, as they are designed to indicate the lowest possible wage someone might receive for the simplest show with the shortest time commitment. They are rarely useful other than to check that you aren’t being paid below that minimum. In the USA, USA829 (the union branch that covers sound designers across the USA) have negotiated more realistic minimum wages with the League of Regional Theatres (LORT) and the Broadway League.

Whilst there are plenty of sound design jobs that pay well, getting those jobs often involves building up contacts and experience by working the jobs that don’t pay so well. These may be in the smaller, less well funded venues. In my quick rundown of the UK and USA above – sorry, other countries, for not mentioning you! – I excluded a large and important sector: the fringe. Fringe theatres (not to be confused with the Edinburgh Fringe, which is a seasonal entity unto itself) are typically unsubsidized, and have low seating capacities, so often have little income. Some fringe theatres produce work themselves, and some are available to be dry-hired by external producers.

If you are working with a small-scale fringe producer, you may find that they are also in the early stages of their career. There are also well-established fringe theatres, such as The Gate in London, where seating capacities are marginally larger than the typical room-above-a-pub, and there is a small, full-time, paid staff running the venue, producing work, and paying better – though not awesome – fees.