Sound f/x Cell Phone Answering Machine

[tknelms]

I'm sound designing a production soon that requires a long answering machine message as the first scene. The director wants to switch this up to a cell phone voicemail sound, ideally with the cell phone visible onstage, and mobile.

Is there a good way to wirelessly send sound to the cell phone, and then play it to the audience either by the cell phone's speakers or some other embedded solution? The theater itself is not gigantic (think large black box space, 80-person audience max), so it doesn't need to be deafening, but the sound does need to be distinguishable.

 

[cpf]

Your best bet for doing this with a real phone would be to get the loudest smartphone you can find - I can recommend the iPhone 4/4S for being surprisingly powerful, but I'm sure there are better - then load your voicemail clip onto the music player app and crank the volume up. When it comes time to hear the call, actor just hits play. If you want the phone against their ear, a) check it won't deafen them b) have them hit sleep as they bring it up to prevent inadvertent face-touchscreen interaction. For extra authenticity, take a screenshot of a real call-in-progress on the phone, crop it appropriately, and set it as the album art of the clip. Of course, make sure nothing else will autoplay after the message - for iPhones you can do this by making a playlist with just your clip in it.


As for audibility and legibility (wrong word), make sure it's plenty loud in an empty theatre - an audience will soak up both echoes (good) and a lot of the sound you want (bad).

 

[techieman33]

You can pick up a bluetooth speaker for under $100 that would play a phones voice mail, or an audio clip on the phone.