Its here Production Week: Monday

MONDAY 25^th March 8.30am-10pm:

On Monday morning we didn’t have specific roles to stick to for the time being it was a case of all giving a hand with bring the equipment over to the Theatre. We all worked effectively here and managed to cut down the time it took by assigning everyone with a selection of the sound equipment to bring over, this meant that we only ended up doing 2 trips instead of multiple. After everything had been transported over to the theatre along with the set, this is when I started to work purely on a sound front, while the other members of the production team started on the construction of the set.

When it came to the three sound crew roles, at this point I was purely concentrating on the sound set-up, I found that this would more effective because personally I prefer to be left to complete a task on my own, also as I was going to be mixing the band it was my responsibility to complete the set-up of them. Shortly after we had arrived and finished bring most of the sound equipment over except from the Instruments, Impact productions arrived with the hired equipment.  

The first thing that impact did for us was assemble the staging that we had hired, this meant that the minute it was set-up I could start to get equipment into the places it needed to go and then start the huge job of cabling. The most important job that we had when it came to the sound set-up was the 50m Cable that connected all elements of sound to the mixer. This cable had to be run along the wall but also over 2 Doorway’s in order to get to the mixer, so this was going to present challenges. First thing I did was just unroll the cable into a pile and then placed the multicore part to it at the back dead centre to the band. Then with the help of Mark we managed to get the cable along and up to where it needed to go.

After this was done I had to get it all plugged in to the mixer and get everything powered up. What I did was get a huge blue flight case that is used to transport lights. After the Lights had been rigged I borrowed the case and used it as a sound desk for my Mixer. This case just happened to be a perfect size because we just managed to slide it down one of the rows of seats which added to it stability. Once I had this desk I placed the big 24 track Soundcraft mixer onto the desk and started to plug in all of the XLR Ends into their rightful XLR Sockets. Then after this we just had to get some power to the area for everything that needed power.

My next Job was the positioning of the band, the whole band had not long before brought over everything they needed, so it was my job to place everything where it needed to go. The first thing to be placed was the Drum Kit, this was the biggest item to fit onto the stage. I also got Joel the drummer to actually give me a lesson of how to assemble the drum kit while I was helping him set it up which was educational. After he was in place I started to place the keyboards where they needed to be and then moved onto the guitars, the amps were not going to actually be used as speakers but were being used for their effects to the instrument, I put the Bassist and Guitarist together along with the Reed player. These were all placed together because it was the best use of the space no other real reason. The three backing singers just were placed next to eachother but they had a section to themselves this then also looked like how conventional back singers are placed. After we had finished the Musical Director wanted to go ahead and just do an acoustic warm up which was fine because it meant we could carry on with other things.

Just after this the cast started to arrive in the theatre, this was a shock to us because we were expecting to have the day to ourselves so we could get on and get everything sorted without disturbance, this idea was obviously wrong. They had come over because they wanted to start doing some rehearsals in the space that they were going to be using, which at the time they arrived was covered in equipment, cables, set and just general mess but this wasn’t our problem. Because of their arrival we knew they were going to want to use the band to do some rehearsals so we would now have to rush to get the whole band microphones up and get everything connected. For the time being we weren’t going worry about the wireless microphones and purely aim our efforts at the band.

Just after 2pm Will who would be helping/assisting and supervising with the sound on this production arrived, by this time I had only connected up the microphones. So he then helped with pointing us in the right direction for what we needed to be doing first and so on. So Me, Will and Mark began the plugging in of all the Amps and keyboards into the cable drum XLR Inputs, but making sure we were writing down what was going into each input so we knew when it came to working it all out on the board. We also had to set-up the 2x EVSX300 Speakers and Amp that we hired as a band foldback, for this we had to run wires underneath the stage but to do this we used some string and just pulled it through. One thing that Will had provided was the Clip on microphones for the Drum Kit along with 2 Condensers and then a Clip on microphone for the saxophone. The whole process of connecting everything up and making sure everything will be able to be hear, was a long job that had to be rushed because of being pushed to finish. Because of this we made a huge mess of the stage which was then covered in wires. 

Because we were being pushed for time, we decided to set-up any other PA system while they were rehearsing, this would project the sound of the band towards the audience, it also meant that we could share the volume through 4 speakers instead of 2 meaning we were avoiding breaking the speakers but also it would help to make the whole general sound better. As none of the tracks had been EQed it didn’t sound very good and it would have to be correctly levelled and tweaked. During these rehearsals we were getting on with other jobs that needed doing.

The Cast rehearsed for a couple of hours before heading off and then once the band had finished there rehearsing, we could now fix the mistakes that we had made when rushing to get everything plugged in. I personally couldn’t believe the state the band stage was in and I had a OCD Moment where I neatened/taped and untangled all of the cabling on the stage. After about an hour of me doing this I finally finished, the whole appearance of the stage looked 100% better.