Alice In Wonderland Jr

[paulears]

DANGER WILL ROBINSON

 

24 radio mics for somebody who's never done this before is a disaster in the making. Does your teacher realise how difficult this is going to be to make work? It's a ridiculous thing to suggest to a beginner! Totally crazy!

 

I'd love to see the frequency planning and license docs - not the kind of thing the local hire firm are going to do for you - JFMG will be your friend.

 

Is she trying to give every person a radio pack? Swapping is a common way of doing this to make the technical and budget issues more manageable.

 

Is the space good acoustically? You mentioned feedback earlier. Well, sorting that will take some doing, and frankly - your teacher shows all the signs of assuming this is easy. A really decent PA, proper EQ, a very good desk with good channel EQ, automated mutes will be pretty useful too. How will you have enough hands to cope with this? In a school situation, I'd suggest multiple operators who can work together properly - maybe one to read the script and warn the other two to be ready for 5 and 11, then 3 and 6. With basic kit and a green op (sorry - I know you've done this before, but as you said, it was feedback hell).

 

You will get the blame and it's your teachers fault for knowing zilch about what is going on. What's the betting you don't even get the two or three hours with the cast to perfect the eq on individuals and groups. What is proposed is just so unfair - on you!

[Bobbsy]

+1 to what Paul said.

 

Twenty four radio mics is doable but it is the province of experienced operators with top notch equipment. Even so, it will require line by line mixing of the whole show--there's no way you can just turn all all the mics and let it sit that way--the gain before feedback will be non-existent.

 

All this is before you get into the issue of licensing and hire costs. To make this work you'll need to be renting expensive professional grade gear from the likes of Orbital in London. The equipment and support does not come cheap.

 

To put it in perspective, I've been mixing sound for something like 35 years, and the most mics I've ever used on a show was 24 RF plus 3 PCCs on the stage edge (not including the orchestra obviously). To do the show I used a large digital board with 4 band parametric EQ on every channel and a huge number of scene presets. I also had a week of tech set up. I don't recall the budget but it was large.

 

Time for a chat with your teacher methinks. Feel free to show her this post.

 

Bob

[Stutwo]

Please, please take note of both of the above posts, this will not end well and you will end up with most of the blame for wasted time and spoiled show, not the teacher.

[Ynot]

+2 for Paul and Bobbsy's comments.

 

It's quite honestly a ridiculous idea to expect a student, regardless of school experience, to tackle a show in this way.

24 radio mics is a HUGE undertaking, even if it were physically possible. I'm assuming that the school doesn't HAVE these mics but is hiring them in. Are they planning to hire in a huge desk also? Does the teacher actually realise that they NEED a desk that can cope with the channels? (Believe me, I've had schools want to hire a dozen radio mics without realising they needed mixing - they just thought they'd 'plug into the school system - ie the amp/speakers in the hall...).

 

I'd advise against suggesting that you get the teacher/director to look at this thread here on the Blue Room - I'd strongly advise that you (respectfully) INSIST that they do! Because it strikes me that there's a huge gap between what is being asked for and what is actually necessary for this show to go on! And that gap is of the director's creation.

 

As for looking for an electronic copy of your scripts/scores, I'd say that getting one officially/legally online is going to be a tricky thing to do. There is a reason why these are hard to find, and that's because the printed copies are part of the income due to the author. So peddling such as 'freebies' on the web is pretty much the same as ripping and distributing recorded music.

That's probably why so many of the links as published on the page that Tom Mulliner posted have been removed - because the licence holders have found them and requested the site owner to take them down - and not surprisingly.

 

Copying scripts/scores is to all intents against the copyright laws. Whilst it's probably acceptable to do what's been suggested and create your own local copy for single use, (especially if it's a hired copy you start off with) but I'd suggest that the copy is then destroyed after the show ends - to keep it strictly kosher.

[ace]

Hiya!

 

Just to add my 2p - If you do make an electronic copy of the script, it is worth maintaining the integrity of each page as during rehearsals, the tech and even during the show - you may well find yourself asking other people what page they are on, and if your page numbers are different then 'half way down page 42' isn't going to help.

 

Also I hope you have considered batteries! 24x good quality batteries (poor ones just wont work) x however many shows, dress rehearsals etc, isn't going to be cheap and also a nightmare if they start to fail mid performance.

 

I am a lampy at heart, but I also have a lot of experience with sound. However I wouldn't attempt to run a show with 24 radio mics. There is simply going to be too much going on to keep up, particularly with playback as well, and trust me it will go horribly wrong. You are much better to find a way of cutting this down. Can you get away with just mic'ing the leads, and using the overheads for the chorus etc? Can you have a second operator for playback? What are the acoustics of the room like? - Do you even need radio mics?

 

Chris

[pisquee]

Another option, depending on the acoustic of the room, and hoe loud the cast can project, is to only mic the characters who sing along to the tracks, and only use the mics for singing - everything else is just their voice, or maybe use the ambient mics (stage edge/overheads) for spoken lines.

[damobarrowafc]

Cheers for all comments guys

Been working on the show since early 7 this morning rehersing etc,

only couple of glitches today.

Thankfully I had a word with all music, drama teachers and they agreed 24 mics wer to much hassle so we dropped down to 16 which went well today.

no major problems with sound today but lampie had a few problems as well (we are both lampies but both do sound & lighting)

Cheers for all the help :)

as for the script if anyone could find a copy it would be much appreciated.

[pisquee]

According to the the Broadway Jr website, the showkit (which I assume the school must have bought to be putting on the show legally) includes:

Director's Script

Production Handbook

1 Piano/Vocal Book

20 Student Librettos

2 Performance CD's

Choreography DVD

20 Family Matters Book

 

The student librettos include the full script and vox score, and was certainly more than adequate for me to use for my sound script markups.

 

I can't remember off hand, how much of the budget went on buying in the pack at the school I worked at, but it wasn't a small amount, and as such, I doubt you will find a copy for free on the net. Am sure if Disney found free copies around they would want to protect their IP rights.

 

http://www.broadwayjr.com/store/showkitproduct.asp?oid=20

[the kid]

Well Looking at that site "10 principals, 9 featured roles, plus ensemble"

 

So 24 radio mics for 10-19 people is a bit weird.

[damobarrowafc]

They have a full drama class doing it..

Alice

Alice Small

Alice Tall

Mad Hatter

Caterpiller

King

Queen Of Hearts

White Rabbit

Chesire Cat 1

Chesire Cat 2

Chesire Cat 3

Tweedle Dum

Tweedle Dee

Mathilda

The Flowers (Rose, Petunia, Lily, Violet, Daisy)

Hare

The Doorknob

Dodo

 

This is what the drama teacher told me,

 

"Please could all cast that have speaking lines have seperate mics and a few of the chorus have them."

Due to her hiring in all the equipment seperate to me and the lampie. We only did as we were told but now the number of mics have gone down to 16

 

But because most of the cast are used for chorus they dont have time to change or swap mics.

 

Cheers Damo

Bluebird Tech North West

[paulears]

No - not weird, it's education. The cast list gets expanded to suit the number of people in the group. Dialogue is then chopped up so everyone has a speaking part of some kind.

[Bobbsy]

Yup. Been there, done that, got the mic swap list!

 

Seriously, I've never seen a show yet where it's not possible to do SOME swaps, especially with the help of a a good A2 backstage to grab mics as people come off stage and get them to the right people. If you don't have one or two people backstage to do the miking up and swapping, find people NOW! You cannae trust the cast to do it! Seriously, even the initial miking up needs people to put them on the right people in the right place (i.e. same every performance) and to make sure they have fresh batteries, are turn on and not muted, etc. etc. You'll be surprised how long it takes to put on 16 mics then gather them in and sort them later--and you can't count on having the time yourself.

 

Some other tricks:

 

If you have characters with a single line, instead of a swap or dedicated mic, if their heads are near somebody else with a mic, you can often pick them up from that with careful mixing.

 

Float mics across the front of the stage (probably PCC160s or equivalent) are your friend for chorus numbers--use the radio mics to pick up solo lines or to add a bit of fullness to the sound. Don't let the radio mics dominate though.

 

Keep the mics low for dialogue--aim for lines to be heard but sound natural, not to sound amplified. Sneak them in and out when lines are competing with underscore; don't turn channels on/off suddenly.

 

Never have any unnecessary mics faded up--be constantly mixing. Even with the PCCs, if the action moves across the stage, fade the mics with them.

 

If somebody is doing a solo far stage right or stage left, cheat the panning on their mic to let the audience have some directional information. It's distracting to see a person singing stage right but have the dominant sound coming from a stage left FOH cab. Don't go TOO far with this though.

 

If by any chance you have access to a delay box, then delay the FOH speakers by a few ms so the natural, live sound arrives at the audience first. (Google the Haas Effect.) Set this delay by ear--when it sound right and not amplified you have the delay right.

 

Mark your script carefully with fade in, fade out, dip, level up, FX etc. cues. Don't forget stand by cues for things happening early on the next page.

 

...and especially, have fun!

 

Bob

[AndyJones]

I am a mere lampie, so please don't berate me if this is not a feasible option... :blink:

 

Could you not hire more than 16 mic heads, so that each person gets a mic. That way the only swap that needs to take place is between the physical packs, which surly would only take seconds?

 

AndyJones

[paulears]

Nope - perfectly sensible and fairly common practice.

[damobarrowafc]

Everything is all sorted now cheers :blink:

The first two shows yesterday went well with only a few hiccups (cast missing lines etc)

Cheers for all advice

Damo

Bluebird Tech North West