The next show of the year was Swingin into charismas, which is the big musical theatre number that happens straight after the panto.  This show is knowing ever year for its tight schedule and no room for errors as there is no time for mistakes.  This show required 24 headset microphones and 7 band microphones giving a grand total of 31 channels on our 32 channel, Yamaha LS9.  For this show i had to program a lot on the fly as the time didn’t exist for it so it was very important to use all of the digital desk functions to help like recall safe, saving scenes, built in compressing, eq’s and its effect rack.  Controlling so many channels is never an easy task and having to looking after all mics is even harder.  With the musical gigs like these it’s important for correct boom placement as a centimeter can make all the different from good to bad results, it also plays a large role for EQ and feedback.  One of the most time consuming parts is to get everyone’s mics fitted and labeled, as you can imagine 10 people to fit in like 15 mins isn’t to easy.  You can either make this show easy or hard for yourself depending how you setup the desk, by this I mean fader setup.  This is something that I learned from the show last year and is very important, as the LS9 doesn’t come with a DCA section.  When programming these shows the faders show always be set from all female to all male this allows you to boost each section with easy for example a female number is happen on stage but my female singers are all on mixed faders like 1, 14, 9, 19, 12 etc etc.  This would be impossible to rise quickly but by setting them out like so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc makes it simple as you can kinda use your arm to increase them all.

The last show of the year was Touched a much small piece than my last to sure but never less, not a walk in the park.  This show by no means was not technical heavy but did involve very technical programming with QLAB, which also tested my knowledge with software.  My role for this was sound designer/programmer/operator, which is always interesting, my first idea was to program the show so the DSM could opp it as the space for operating was so small and fitting sound, lighting and a DSM was tight.  However it all ran smooth to the very last cue where it got to busy and the DSM wasn’t able to operator sound because of this.  The show was rehearsing down in York so this involved me traveling down to discuss sound effects and to get a general feel of the show, this is something that I find important as not getting into the rehearsal room makes you have very little understanding of what you are designing for and what you need to achieve.

To sum up my 3^rd year has been a long and very successful year as its tested everything that the academy could possible test me on with regards to sound.  Panto for the first year was a stress free show even though it was a big show I at no point got worried or feel behind it also taught me to relax and be confident as it’s often the best approach.  Musical theater then took all that confidence from panto and gave me the right attitude to complete this show, I did getting a little worried as the show is very big to manage but I think it did ok and at the end of the day the director was happy witch I guess makes me happy also.  Finally Touched a great show to end on as it was nice and easy and I great working with actors for the last time, it was also a good show as I was 100% confident with everything that I was possible doing.  I think that also was related back to me from the director’s comments.

The hardest challenge this year was managing my team as this is the first time I have worked on this skill, I guess thats because I am young I find it weird working as a head because sometimes I was telling people older than me what to do I guess that is weird to me but I was very surprised with the amount of respect these people showed to me now I don’t know if that was due to it being a student show or if they just respect that I know what I was talking about to be honest.  My managerial role was with panto where I guess I helped with lighting and sound but I was mainly in charge of Towers and a couple of first years when I needed the extra muscle.  Now for panto I had to do a lot of work from scheduling, wiring diagrams, speaker rig, patch list, SFX list, band setup, microphone choice etc.  Now this is what I found the hard part because I was in the managerial role I had to step back and let towers work a lot of things out for himself as I wouldn’t have been very effect if I troubleshooted everything myself cause at the end of the day he would be running the show so if something live was to happening he would need to know how to recover. It does get stressful when you watching someone take a while to do something but I guess its nice to watch them learn.  Towers got a hold of the rig fairly quickly and wasn’t to hard to work with as he has previous sound experience it was however harder to work with the new first years.  I felt like you had to show and talk them through everything which was rather annoying but I look back and say to myself “Was I like that back them” because I really don’t so but maybe I was?. Working with people with know experience was challenging but fun at the same time cause you can see them really paying attention to your ever word and very positive about learning so I guess that was one of the highs of being in a managerial role.

The next role was with swingin into charismas, which was very different from panto in many ways.  I had very little time for this and a very large setup so good management was a key, unlike panto I couldn’t show and tell everything to the first years as I had know time to do so.  That meant that they had to pick it up from me showing the cast through the microphone fittings.  My sound 2 was an exchange student who left halfway through because of illness but she helped massively from the begin and gave out all microphones and packs as per disused with her.  I also put her in charge of the floor as I was on the desk programming most of the show.  The biggest part of this shows was the ins and the outs as this involved a lot of sound equipment in and out the venue, this was all pre planned but never went very well to plan but never the less we got it all done on time. It involved all of setup from desk, monitors, radio rack, computer and patch runs so I was lucky that I had people with sound experience before the in because it would have been very stressful to explain under time pressure. Through the show my sound 2 had to run everything back stage and be on cans incase microphones went down, which is always an issue with this show.  She was also responsible for pre show checks before the show went up.

Touched was the last show that I was and to be honest never really involved much managerial work.  I was the only audio tech on the show meaning that most of the work had to be completed by myself.  I guess the only time I was doing managerial work was again the In’s and Out’s from the Tron.  The tron in help Jamie with electrics mainly on the ground so we could give the first years experience with rigging, focus, plug up and gelling.  The audio speaker where already patch so their was nothing I had to do expect boot up the mac and add my QLAB session.  I also gave all of lessons to the first years since I had lots of time on my hands, this ranged from different cables, analog sound equipment, QLAB, projection and to my surprise helped with the lighting console.  The first years had improved greatly from my last encounter with them on musical theatre, which is very promising to see.

Overall I think I have performed managerial work to the standards expected from me and I would like to think that everyone who worked with me through the shows enjoyed it also.  I do have a lot to work on in this area and hope that when I hit the industry that I can keep building these skills as one day I will needed them to be very strong in order to process with my career in the industry the academy has taught me well and I have achieved everything that I wanted do when starting the academy.  I think maybe if I was giving more managerial work in second year I might have been stronger in my final year but then it is a big step a might be a lot of work load for a second year to handle. I hope that everything that I have learned can now be put into practice so I can become even stronger in the industry and use all forms of training the academy has give me.  I am very glad to say that if I could go back and do the course again I would because it did improve me and got me to high standards.

More images to come soon

This week has all been about getting all the small things out the way like my visa, contract, passport, paperwork etc and ready to go, i have also been putting togther a smaller “Disney” toolkit for essential tools as i can’t take my whole box over.  Either than prepping this week i have been climbing like mad and buying little odds and ends in.

Should be loads of pics and stuff to come soon.

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