There comes a time in every student's life when he or she just doesn't feel the same enthusiasm for class as at the beginning. This is what we call the end of the honeymoon phase. In the beginning, everything's new and exciting. What'll the course be like? Will I be challenged to my full potential? Is this the class to take me into a glorious future of bioinformatics or, dare I dream, education? It happens sometime after the middle of the term when the weight of the work becomes tangible and real. "But wait," I hear you cry, "You're a theatre major; surely there isn't that much work to be had with such a relaxed course of study!" Attend a moment and I shall reverse this notion while deftly weaving together a tale of academia and extracurricula.
Scene opens on a computer lab containing the students of the TECHNICAL THEATER class. They've been given an assignment involving the manipulation and distortion of sound effects to create a scene from a production of "H.M.S. Pinafore vs. the Pirates of Penzance from Space." The scene begins with the two ships firing upon each other, one with traditional canons, the other with lasers. Also, the Pinafore is crewed by barnyard animals, while the Pirates are robots. Pretty standard.
One of the more important elements of sound manipulation I've learned while working on this project is that of panning, which is the placement of the sound from right to left, or center. The point isn't just to find sound effects on the internet and place them one after the other in the program Garageband. There're all these little bits that need to be taken care of -- fine points that you don't notice when you're watching a movie, for example, but which make the scene completely believable movie magic.
I've had some experience working with sound for high school and college theatre productions, but usually with live microphones, so sound editing is a sort of brave new world. Add to that the radio programme on which I appear every week (for which many a sound effect and manipulation are needed every show), I find myself surrounded by sound.
Move forward, now, into Clark's upcoming production of "Miss Julie." (Three guesses for the technical capacity in which I find myself engaged regarding this show.) Last night, at a rehearsal which took the typical too long length of time for a show a week away, I offered up some song mixes for a scene of dancing, revelry, and debauchery. Imagine a bunch of drunk servants tipping over furniture and chanting a German drinking song for about two minutes, highlighted with a creepy Stravinsky track plus pre-recorded audio of that same drinking song playing as loud as possible and you might get a bit of an idea of where the scene is going. But that's just two minutes of the thing. That's just the part I had finished before the rehearsal yesterday.
A couple hours in, the director tells me that he wants some ambient noise throughout a different scene, so my technical theater professor and I mix about thirty seconds of background ambience characteristic of a drunken summer's night (this took about an hour and a half -- too long). The director takes a listen and proclaims that he thinks it'd be a good idea to have this sort of ambience play throughout the entire show. After a half-hearted attempt at convincing him that this is a bad idea, and that there shouldn't be ambient noise on stage for almost two hours, I consulted with my tech theater professor and left with directions to loop a lot of sound. Come tomorrow's rehearsal, there may not even be need for the sound I'm going to work out tonight, but I enjoy the work and do it for the love of the theatre, and if anyone ever needs two hours of ambient summer sounds, I can hook you up.
The point is, though the honeymoon phase is over for such classes as those which I've above described, this is the time when one can really learn what the class is all about, and find those hidden aspects that make the whole course of study meaningful and worthwhile, for now and for the future.
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