Production Week: Tuesday

TUESDAY 26^th March 7.50am-10pm:

On the Tuesday I seemed to arrive ridiculously early so the first thing I decided to do was continue the tapping of cables backstage where there were walkways. Again there were a lot of cables running along the floor from the staging to PA Systems etc.. So I taped all of these down to help with the safety of cast and crew when working backstage during the performances. I then also used duct tape to help keep the huge multicore cable above the Fire Exit, and then put a layer of tape over the cabling that ran down the wall.

Today was going to be when we got to do our Technical Rehearsal’s and then go into a full run-through for the first time, so today was going to be a stressful and fun filled day. By the time everyone had arrived everything had been turned on, while the band and the cast were doing their vocal warm up’s we were preparing the wireless microphones because they were going to be used during the technical rehearsal so Mark who was going to be mixing them started to practise. The technical rehearsal for sound was really only for the microphones. We only made slight adjustments to the band during the rehearsal, at points I did jump in and help Mark out with the wireless microphones at points where they got a bit harder.

The main points that came out of the technical rehearsal was the fact that one that the wireless microphones weren’t sounding great but this was just because it was the first time we had rehearsed with them, and then the cast were complaining that they couldn’t hear the lead actors over the band. To solve the second problem we rigged up my personal PA System at the front of the stage, then we purely sent the wireless microphone mix through them so the cast on stage would be able to hear cue lines etc...  Also during the Technical Rehearsal we did sort of play around with the mix of the band just to see what sort of effect certain changes would make.

After the technical run through and lunch, we went into just a normal no stopping run-through so that everyone could pick up on areas that they either needed to rehearse or if there were parts that needed changing.  After this it was apparent that there were musical numbers that needed to be rehearsed again and certain scenes as well. Also they were all saying that the band was still too loud and the volume needed to be brought down and the microphones brought up a bit, so we adjusted the way we were mixing everything through the speakers to alter how it was sounding, and the volume was adjust a tiny bit. One thing we did add at this point was that we added in a limiter to the system which meant we could make sure that the sound doesn’t get any louder than the level we set.

One task that we did have to try and figure out how to do was trying to get a Wireless microphone working on the lead actors guitar. Impact Productions had provided us with and adaptor for a guitar so it was all done for us all we had to do was plug it in, but we needed to add distortion to the guitar for the songs otherwise we weren’t going to be getting the right sound. After several different attempts/methods we got the now Wireless Guitar working with the distortion, but the downside was we were now experiencing a weird interference. What was happening was when we turned up the wireless guitar microphone we got a radio playing alongside, luckily it was a lot quieter than th guitar so we would be able to hopefully hide it during performances.

What then happened is they started a full run-through and aimed to get through as much of it as possible before they finished for the day, after this the stage crew realised that they were short-handed when it came scene changes and backstage duties so they needed and extra hand, Mark who was operating the wireless microphone wasn’t 100% confident with the mixing for this show so volunteered to help out with stage, I then moved onto doing the microphones for the show while Will who was just overseeing/assisting us now was going to be mixing the band.

Once everyone had disappeared we began to try and fix and eradicate the radio sounds that were coming out of the speakers when we used the wireless guitar, but this went no-where and whatever we tried failed so we knew we would just have to work around it when it came to the performances. Also we tried to help the acoustics of the theatre by sliding the thick black curtains past the PA speakers and then facing the speakers slightly towards them, when we then played sound through it, it didn’t sound like it had changed but we would need the band to see if it had made an effect. After this we packed up and called it a day.