Dummy Mic Update

The weighted packs made it into rehearsal hats last Friday. There was limited success. The actors found that packs were either sliding out, uncomfortable, or the hats were falling off. It's interesting the difference between an actor that is willing to make something happen and those that don't want to make it work.

I do appreciate all the work the costume dept. has put into rigging these hats. No word on when the actual hats will show up. I think costumes is going to be attempting some new positions within the caps.

A silly amount of work has gone into this mic swap at the end of show, but if it works the difficulty of it won't even cross an audience member's mind. This will be difficult to tech, especially with the director's typical desire to have things work well the first time and the relative inexperience of the crew. It will be a pity if we can't use the hat packs for any reason, but I still see a few variables in the distance that could put the nix on the swap.

Signal Line Diagram

Speaker Plot

Speaker Section

Intercommunications and A/V Monitoring Plot

Rack Schedule

Pit Plot

G2 Mass Connector Schedule

Dummy Mic Update

The costume department has partnered with us to attempt to get the body mics in hats for some problematic moments in the show. This week they had a working model, and soon our weighted dummy packs will be in rehearsals.

Mic Placement/Tracking

Tuesday I had a meeting with costumes and stage management concerning wireless mic tracking—a challenging but surmountable difficulty with this show. We are needing to be increasingly creative concerning pack placement, area mics, etc. The meeting went fairly well, and Matt F. and I gained a lot of information.

However, the next evening, we began to discover that there were discrepancies between what was talked about in the meeting and what truly happened in the rehearsal hall.

There is also choreography for the final number “Let It Go” which includes one of the six men doing a backflip with his policeman hat on…with one of our Sennheiser body packs inside. Chuck has been very adamant that we will try it a couple of times with the dummy pack, but that if it falls off, they need to either cut the choreography or cut his mic, because we can’t afford to have one of eight go down…even once during the run.

Final Production Schedule

We’re coming into prep week and I still haven’t seen a final production schedule come across my e-mail. I have a message out to Caroline asking when it will be out. As it is, it is inconveniencing my crew not to know what to plan for this next month. I have tried to give them as many details about this week as possible, including some lengthy training for the wireless crew, but am anxious to have the entire schedule out.

Sound Cue EQ

The Full Monty has developed a need for several different equalization challenges. While a moment may have music, the timbre and quality of the music depends on it’s presentation. Is it coming from a radio? A car’s cassette deck? Through a cinder block wall? We don’t necessarily pay attention to this in every day life, but our minds will certainly tell us if something is false. In this show, I have a faux radio station (which has one sort of frequency roll-off and compression), a car sound system (which has a different timbre and frequency response), music filtering into the club’s restroom (muffled and a ringing reverberation), and music heard from outside the club (whatever makes it through a wall or two—no windows since it’s a strip club). For many of these situations, there is no set rule or specific formula, I just have to trust my ears and those around me.

Mic Element Intentory/Repair

The elements we use for our wireless mic system sometimes have different caps that bring different sensitivity or timbre to the sound of the mic. Selection of this process is something that hasn’t been stressed up to this point. I pulled off all the caps, took them home, and after testing a couple of elements, I placed all the elements in our sonic jewelry cleaner. The unit seemed to adequately clear the windscreens of all makeup, etc that they had acquired over time.

In the repair of one mic element, the resistor had either gone bad or fallen out. We didn’t have any more, so I made a point of going by RadioShack on Saturday and matching the resistor.

Productive Friday

After speaking with my assistant designer and the workroom manager, we made Friday something of a workday. I put a list of tasks on the whiteboard, including an element inventory/test and repair session, organizing/inventory of the G2 mass connectors, ascertaining rigging for the JF100e’s (we’re not doing anything exotic…they currently only have rigging for one limited position), pulling/repairing all 50 ohm coax in stock, and testing our new KVM extender. We accomplished a lot, and everything is either finished or in process.

A Change in Plans

When I wrapped up the recording session, I went back to my office and saw that there were some notes from Aubrey concerning the preshow and intermission music. He asked to cut “Poison” by Bel Biv Devoe and “Mysterious Ways” by U2. I thought the U2 track was guaranteed, so I had Bob record some pieces with him specifically mentioning the song.

Aubrey also requested that we include The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men” and Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams.” A little bit of research yielded that “River of Dreams” wasn’t recorded until 1993 and “It’s Raining Men” came late, late disco right around 1981. The recordings that Bob did mentioned a “One Hit Wonder Weekend” and “The70’s at 7” but where Aubrey requested The Weather Girls doesn’t jive with either of those scenarios.

I currently have an e-mail out to him making him aware of the anachronisms and the eventuality of re-recording if he wants these pieces in and “Mysterious Ways” out…but I’m not holding my breath.

Preshow and Intermission

Aubrey requested that we set up a faux top 40 radio station from 1991 for preshow and intermission music. I happen to know that this was an idea for The Pajama Game that didn’t develop. Aubrey suggested I speak with Bob Pavlovich to see whether I could gain his voice talent for the DJ. I set up a time with him, and in the next couple of days did a bit of research on Buffalo and a specific Top 40 station, 98.5 WKSE Niagara Falls, Buffalo. When Bob came to record, we spent about a half hour discussing and creating some fairly specific spots for the DJ. I recorded Bob with an EV RE-20, a standard mic for radio. Pro Tools was acting up, but otherwise the session went very well and I was happy with the material.