Theatrical Sound Workshop for a Summer Camp

[CharlieTromb]

Hello All!

I've been browsing this great site for a while now but I've got a few questions I'm hoping you could help with so here goes my first post!

For years now I've been attending a performing arts summer camp that I love. The Music and Film workshops are very strong, but for as long as I can remember the acting workshops were always very low-tech. (Not bad, just lacking many production elements) Fast forward a few years: I'm a counselor and the camp is looking at purchasing its own campsite to move into. I've been talking with another counselor (who does lighting) and we were thinking that now is a great time to create our own tech theatre workshop to supplement the acting workshops. Tech theatre is fairly popular in high schools in our area, so we're not too worried about attendance, but our space/ budget is very limited.

The camp director is interested in our idea, but hesitant to throw too much money at this so our budget is very tight. In addition, we're both college students, so we don't exactly have much of our own equipment. All I've got is a little Behringer Xenyx 802, some lengths of XLR cable, and a Macbook Pro with Audacity and Qlab. My question for you fine folks is if anyone has any advice on what equipment to look for if I need to make a functional setup for relatively cheap, in a relatively small space. I was thinking of trying to get money to purchase a pair of Mackie powered speakers, and some additional cabling to put it all together. Thoughts? I'm also open to suggestions on a theatrical sound curriculum. What does the group think is essential to teach when imparting the basics of sound design to high school students?

Thanks for you time!

-Charile

 

[carproelsofly]

I've done a number of these as one- or two-day workshops with groups from four to about 20 students.

What has worked best for me is to split the students into groups of two or three, and give them a project with clearly-defined objectives, including, but not limited to:
- cue list: this is both the planning and the documentation stage of any design
- some interstitial music cues: must be copyright-free and royalty-free (archive.org and incompetech are good sources - many others available) - this is also a great opportunity to discuss some copyright issues
- some "sound effects": same as above, plus allows for introduction to digital editing
- some recorded cues: could be part of the sound effects or perhaps a voice-over - this will allow you to cover the basics of getting a mic connected to a recording device, either through the mixer or directly into your interface, including mic selection, gain stages, and good recording practices
- basic (or advanced?) programming: how to use the various techniques available in QLab to make it sound the way you want it to

It really helps to have a script or story that everyone is working from. You might check out what's been used for the USITT guerrilla sound challenges, or just pick something you know that has good opportunity for design. Start with text analysis, then move to discussion of how sound can affect the audience's experience. It can be helpful, if you use a script, to enlist some actors to perform along with the designs.

I'd shoot for a five- to ten-minute project, depending on the number of groups you anticipate.

Equipment-wise, it seems like with the addition of the monitors you'll probably have what you need. It will take some serious time management to make sure all of the groups have enough access to the computer. If you're able, get another laptop or two (and some headphones) so that more than one group can work at once.

At least once a session, have the kids share a little piece of what they're working on, and teach them how to critique each others' work in a positive, helpful manner.

There's surely more I could add to this (like the technical side - equipment usage and troubleshooting!), but I've got to go run a show. Please let me know if you have additional questions, or if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on.

Jen

 

[CharlieTromb]

Thank you so much for the advice! This is really helpful for me, especially the idea about splitting the workshop into a few "teams" and having each team tackle a piece of the script or maybe a sound effect. This will make sure that the workshop is more hands on instead of me just lecturing the campers the whole time.

Thanks again!
-Charlie

 

[carproelsofly]

You're welcome! And, to clarify, what I usually do is give the whole project to each team, then discuss, as a group, how there can be many different approaches to the same design challenges. It points out how there's no one right answer, and helps identify, and hopefully to some extent begin to develop, each student's aesthetic.

Best of luck!
Jen