Hofstra Drama 20 – Sound for the Theatre

1:  Saturday, April 6, 2013, 12:19 pm, 31 W 19^th St, 12^th Floor, Studio B

2:  Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.

I’m in a studio at the New York Film Academy with my BFA Performance class, and we’re working on cold reads.  The scene we’ve been given is a typical, post-kidnapping interrogation from an NCIS-style crime show.  Megan is playing a badly beaten, psychologically rattled prostitute whose best friend has gone missing, and Mary is playing the empathetic investigator who sits said prostitute down to ask a few questions.  The scene is very intense, so the fact that the Film Academy is hosting children’s auditions for some commercial or other right and the queue has formed right outside the studio door is quite inopportune.  The farthest noises that we can hear are those of  the congregated seven, eight, nine and ten year olds grumbling and protesting at their momagers’ overhandling.  The chatter outside the door, near which the orchestrators of the event have stupidly placed the sign-in table, reaches a dull roar while our camera is rolling, with one of the girls telling her mom she has to “go tinkie again” and one of the moms telling her daughter that if she fusses with her headband again, she’s going home.

3:  Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.

At the far side of the room, away from the door, Megan and Mary perform their cold read.  The instructor Omar stopped the pair to attempt the scene before Megan and Mary multiple times to tell them to reduce their volume.  He insisted that, with mic’ing practices, the modern convention for filming is contrary to that of stage acting in that scenes are performed at very, very low volume.  For this reason, Mary in particular is almost entirely inaudible.  We can see her lips moving, but the most that comes out at this distance mumbles of varying inflection.

4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).

At medium range, my class watches Megan and Mary from a section of plastic seats that creak sporadically as we shift.  We try to stay quiet for filming, but the intensely low volume of the scene makes our every sniffle and paper rustle hyperaudible.  The interesting thing about the quiet of the scene is that it so limits the range of audiblity and demands such aural attention that you feel like you’re zoomed in for a close-up, even while watching fifteen feet away.

5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.

The dichotomy of the sound environment, in which the lowest-volume sonic activity demands the most attention and the highest-volume (outside the door) must be ignored, is very interestingly inverted.  The disparity in sound level is great, but the closed door between the larger sounds and me allows me to will myself to tune them out.

6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.

“Multidirectional”

7: Select and list 3 sounds that are essential to the sound environment. Note: you need to try and figure out what sounds make up this environment and which of those sounds need to be there for the feeling of the environment to stay intact.

Mary’s murmuring and the restrained sounds of my class trying to limit our own noise level (resulting in stifled coughs and abruptly ended creaking noises) creates a sonic picture of a film set.  The noise outside is so coincidental and disruptive that it doesn’t feel in keeping with this specific concept; nevertheless, it is part and parcel to the kooky sound environment that I actually experienced.