THE ECHO

ALSO IN THIS ISSUEBack to basics: level and intelligibilityFees

ISSUE 11 // JUNE 2016

Showcase: Hamilton

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THE ECHO

Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, AnthonyRamos, and Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton

Showcase: Hamilton

The Heights back in my Acme days. We did somereadings and work shops and things, but thefirst actual production was at the Public, about ayear ago. We ran for three months which was agreat opportunity to try ideas out and shakethings down. It was immediately obvious, evenback then, that that the show wasextraordinary.

Has the sound of the show evolved much sincethen?The Public is a three hundred seat room and it’slong and narrow – just one level – very differentto the Richard Rogers theatre on Broadwaywhere the show is now. I decided to treat this asa kind of proof of concept as to how the showwould work on Broadway, so I pooled myresources into the front end of that soundsystem – the console, the wireless, themonitoring, the effects – so that when we didmove in to town the only thing that had tochange was the PA system.

There was a sense, while we were at the Public,that there were moments or parts of the showthat couldn’t really bloom here, that would

By the time you read this article it is justpossible that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biopicmusical Hamilton will have won more TonyAwards than any other musical in history. With arecord sixteen nominations this groundbreaking show has reinvented the Broadwaymusical scene – tickets are unavailable for yearsto come – while single seats trade for twelvethousand dollars online, the lottery queue oftenstretches around the block before the sun iseven up.

Hamilton tells the story American foundingfather Alexander Hamilton, set to a earth-shaking hip hop score, which, for SoundDesigner Nevin Steinberg, is a once in a life timeshow. I was lucky enough to catch up withNevin during a break in his tech schedule forBroadway musical Bright Star.

Hamilton… Well, it doesn’t get much coolerthan that. You were involved before it came toNew York I assume?Yes, the Public Theatre had been courting theproducers to open the show there and I haveworked with all the creative team before on In

GARETH OWEN

Venue: Richard Rogers TheatreDirector: Thomas KailSound Designer: Nevin SteinbergAssociate Sound Designer: Jason CrystalFOH Engineer: Justin RathbunProduction Sound Engineer: Nick Borisjuk

when we hit Broadway. Knowing that we kindof put a pin in it, it was like, ‘Okay, that’s whatwe can accomplish here, but when we get in toa bigger room…’

What sort of things were you talking about?Initially I was never that happy with thedynamic range and surround sound and thingslike that, where you just require more space.Hamilton is the show with the most extreme,dynamic range I’ve ever worked on or, frankly,seen. I mean, we go right from virtually acousticto thumping hip hop at rock and roll levels. Thetransitions are exaggerated, there’s a real senseof stretching reality to help us with thestorytelling. So, from one moment of completeand utter sonic chaos and heart-stopping low-end, to absolutely removing all of that andcutting down to one voice on a bench with solopiano, zoomed in on that character if you will.

Not an easy challenge – how did you achieve it?Well, it’s brilliantly written, for the main part. I’vekind of tagged along on some genius writingand brilliant orchestrations – I learned from thematerial what I needed to accomplish, honoringwhat’s there already – the hard bit has alreadybeen done, my job is to live up to it. Oh, and,having moved on to Broadway, I have a world-class, high-resolution, very high-powered PAsystem which helps too!

Phillipa Soo, Rene�e Elise Goldsberryand Jasmine Cephas Jones in Hamilton

What is that?It’s a hodgepodge of d&b, L-Acoustics, AlconsAudio, and some Meyer subwoofers – basicallyevery PA manufacturer you can name.

Why?I tend to choose things that fit their location sothey work with the geography and thetopography of a theatre. Sometimes amanufacturer makes a product that I think isparticularly suited for a certain position or acertain angle or a certain place in the theatre.Sometimes I’m not convinced that thatmanufacturer has the best product for anotherplace in the theatre so I tend to look at mydesigns as what speaker best suits each part ofthe theatre, rather than relying on one make ormodel. In this case I ended up with d&b V and Yline arrays, along with E3s and E0s; L’Acoustics108Ps, 112Ps and SR9s, EAW JF60s, Meyer 600HPsand 1100LFCs; and Alcons VR8s and SR9s.

Alcons is a less common name, at least in UKtheatre. I remember Rick Clarke using them a fairbit, but how did you get involved with them?I ran into Alcons at a trade show and agreed tohear a pitch for their systems. One of my chiefobjections about a lot of the speakers we use intheatres is that I’ve never been convinced that alot of them have been designed to be listenedto at the distances we’re listening to them at.

Much of it doesn’t resolve acoustically very welluntil you are fifteen or twenty meters away –sometimes line arrays don’t resolve properlyuntil you are nearly thirty meters away fromthem.

We’ve adapted line array technology to solve alot of problems for us, but I think the downsidehas always been at five to ten meters wherethey don’t sound particularly good. Regardlessof how good they might sound at a distance orhow well they might measure, because you’restaring down the throat of the cabinet you’rebasically breaking up the thing that is supposedto resolve itself for the listener by being tooclose to it and you start to hear components.

Listening to Alcons was the first time I’d heard aline array that I could walk up to, as close as I amto you, and feel like I was still listening to a loudspeaker that was designed to hit me and serveme.

So Alcons are your new go-to box?On Hamilton I’ve only used them for fills forunder the balcony, really near-field situations.On Bright Star just down the road, the entireproscenium and most of the boxes in thebuilding are Alcons.

Tell me about your front end – do you always

use the same desk? I tend to like to do productions on a DiGiCoSD7T, and I didn’t see any reason to change here.

You’re not the only person in the world thatthinks that.Yes. I think it sounds great and I think thesoftware is great too. For Broadway weupgraded the 48k DiGiRacks to the 192k versionsand it made a hell of a difference – when themusicians come back and tell you it sounds somuch so much better in their cans you know itsdoing something useful.

What do you do for outboard? Are you a pluginsman? I don’t run Waves on the show, it’s strictlyonboard. We have two TC System 6000s forvocal and band reverbs, everything else is in thedesk. For system processing we run the entire PAthrough a substantial Meyer Galileo system.

Are you big on imaging?Yes we have six zones upstage and downstageand occasionally I do some light panning, but Idon’t ever cross-point delay on Hamilton – I willgo as far as input delay, with a little lightpanning throughout the show.

How does show control work?For sound effects we use QLab triggered by the

Nevin Steinberg.Below left: Examining custommic rigs with Anna-Lee Craig.Below right: Discussing the moveto Broadway with the director.

console. There aren’t that many sound effects inHamilton with the exception of some prettycrucial gunshots! The click tracks come directlyfrom the music department off of a dualredundant Ableton system – the show wasactually composed with the power of Ableton inmind already.

So the band are playing to click a lot?A fair bit of the time, yes. It’s a ten-piece band.Keyboard one is also the conductor, then there’sa second keyboard and a drummer who has atleast five snare drums and two additional tomsto his regular kit! We have a percussion playerwho’s also playing electronic procession andtriggering the tracks with a bass player whoplays three different basses, including anupright. Our guitar player who plays banjo, twodifferent acoustics and an electric; and finallythere is the string quartet.

Microphones wise I’m a big fan of DPA – on thisshow our guitarist is playing directly into a 4011when he’s playing his acoustic instruments andDPA 4099 clip-ons for the strings. The drum kituses a Beyer M88 on the kick, Audix D2’s andD4’s for the tom mics, a Shure SM57 on thesnare, and the overheads are DPA 4011s. Formonitoring, everyone has Aviom A360s withwhatever headphones they want.

Anything special going on with radio mics?We’ve got Sennheiser 3732s receivers withSK5212-II transmitters across the board, feedingin to the DiGiRacks on AES. The mics for the castare a very mixed affair depending on what’srequired. The majority of the cast are on DPA4061s or Sennheiser MKE-1’s, with a selection ofhat mics thrown in for good measure. When Italked to the director about how to approachthe mic’ing we decided we weren’t going tomake an assumption about anything, so Iliterally went person to person and did the bestthing for them.

For example, one of the cast members, Burr,does some incredibly subtle singing and alsoneeds some fancy live vocal effects – for theisolation we decided to close mic. The men’sensemble are all on home made booms toobecause of all the hats and costume changes,but the women’s ensemble (except for onewoman who has a shaved head), wear head-mics up at the hair line. Then all the principlewomen wear head-mics in the hair line too,along with Hamilton, Lawrence, Lafayette andMulligan.

For stage foldback, are you doing anything outof the ordinary? We come in from left and right as you wouldexpect and we also put in some apron foldback,

so in the footlight trough – which is somethingI’ve been doing on a lot of top shows latelyparticularly if the band is very isolated. I findthat if I can get a footlight position, we join thatparty down there – a kind of up-fill in the centreof the apron coming back at the actors.Particularly on shows where you comedownstage or over the orchestra, you don’t havea prayer as there’s not even a good side position.A row of d&b E0s really bailed us out here.

Is there anything you’ve done on this show thatis different to normal? What’s the new trickthat you’re taking away from Hamilton?I don’t know if there’s a new trick butsomething I really worked hard on was low-frequency management. I know I have a lot ofdeficiencies as a sound designer, but one of theareas I feel most deficient in is low-frequencystuff. Hamilton was a real opportunity toexercise LF and see just what I could get awaywith and how far I could push it. I put in twoMeyer 1100-LFCs, which, frankly, have nobusiness being in a theatre! I bought in a MeyerSIM system and we got three solid four hoursessions in – I drive SIM myself rather than bringin a dedicated SIM engineer – I like the data andI’m a bit of a data whore, so I like to know howthings are performing. It’s very important for meto feel like the system is verified, that Iunderstand if something sounds a certain way,

that I feel like I have an idea about why thatmight be. Even if I choose not to address it atthat moment, I feel like that enriches mebecause I know my tools better.

You must need a pretty solid team of people tomake all this work?Yes, I have an amazing group around me. I havea team that’s the culmination of years onBroadway – Jason Crystal is my Associate, JustinRathbun is mixing and Nick Borisjuk put it all inand made it work. Backstage we have Anna-LeeCraig and John Senter and kit was supplied byPRG who gave me what I asked for withoutbreaking the budget.

So, I imagine you are planning to retire nextweek?Well, not really [laughter]. I mean, this is theshow that people dream of designing, right? Wegot to opening night and I looked around andfelt the same experience I had at the end of Inthe Heights – I was genuinely sad it was over –when it was time for pencil’s down, I actuallygot melancholy because it meant thattomorrow, I didn’t get to go back to work onHamilton anymore. That’s pretty rare, right?

MORE INFOwww.hamiltonbroadway.com

Rob Bettle, a former Operator on a number ofmusical theatre tours he now works as anAssociate Sound Designer and ProductionSound Engineer.

Credits include… as Associate Sound Designer,wonder.land (Manchester Palace); Billy Elliot (UKtour & Circustheater Holland); American Psycho(Almeida); Scottsboro Boys (Garrick & YoungVic); One Man Two Guvnors (Westend & tours).As Production Sound Engineer, Harry Potter AndThe Cursed Child (Palace); Teddy Ferrara(Donmar); The Curious Incident of the Dog in theNight Time (UK tour); A View from the Bridge,King Charles III, Skylight (Wyndams); TheElephant Man, Great Britain (Haymarket);National Theatre 50 Years on Stage (Olivier);Mojo, Chimerica (Harold Pinter); The Audience(Apollo & Gielgud); Olivier Awards (Royal OperaHouse); NT Live (various productions).

A FEW OF MYFAVOURITE THINGS

WunderlistThis software is on the surface very simple,providing to-do lists. It’s power lies in itssynchronisation and collaboration tools. As it willrun on your iPhone, Android, Mac or PC, andseemlessly and instantly synchronise betweenthem you can always see an up-to-date version ofyour to do list anywhere. You can then share thatlist with other people, assign them jobs to do,have them make notes or sub-to-dos on thattask, and then they can tick it off when complete,or add further to do items. Reminders and Duedates can be set and Wunderlist can even sendout notifications to show you when to dos havebeen completed. Everyone’s lists staysynchronised and up to date so it is a great wayto collaborate as a team on a project, knowingwhat still needs to be achieved and what hasalready been completed. Best of all it is free to use.www.wunderlist.com

CTP dBbox2 testerThis device is a godsend for troubleshooting. Itfeatures a plethora of monitoring and signalgeneration functions. It has a built in speakerand headphone port so you can monitor it’smic/line/AES/SPDIF inputs, along with onscreenVU meters. It has a microphone and pink noiseand various other generators so you can injectaudio down a mic/line/AES/SPDIF cable. It cantest for phantom power down a mic cable, orprovide it to a mic. It has a MIDI input allowingmonitoring of incoming MIDI messages. It canbe plugged into a ring intercom and used as anoutstation to test comms systems. www.ctpsystems.co.uk/dbbox2.html

LED Lenser 7.2 torchThis isn’t the sort of torch you’d use backstage. Itis super bright (320 lumens) with a very focusedbeam, making it ideal for recce’ing the farawaynooks and crannies of dimly lit theatres. You candim it down with a second press of the onbutton if you’re worried about burning a fellowcolleagues face off with the sheer brightness ofthe main setting. It’s also a lot more robust thansome of the torches many of us have used foryears, which promised durability but rarelylasted a year or two. www.ledlenser.com/uk/flashlights/p72

Back to basics:level and intelligibility

Peak & RMSLet’s start with one of the most fundamentalquestions: how loud does it need to be? Thereisn’t a one size fits all answer to this andultimately it’s up to the sound designer todecide what works for the show. If you want anaverage of 120dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level) overthe entire show then those two Control 1syou’ve had lying around for years probablyaren’t going to cut it.

In theatre we are usually dealing with contentwhich has a wide dynamic range, therefore oursystem should be able to accommodate areasonable average level (RMS) and occasionalloud peaks. To work out what speakers will besuitable we must first look at the loudest partof the show, for example an SFX gunshot orlarge music crescendo. In music, the peak level(for example a kick drum) can be anywhere from4-10 times greater (12-20dB) than the RMSvalue, and this difference is known as the Crestfactor.

Delving into the technical data of loudspeakerswill reveal its peak SPL at a specified distance(usually 1m), and occasionally what crest factorwas used to get these readings; thus giving youan idea of the SPL it will be able to reproduce.Running a speaker at it’s peak volumecontinuously will considerably shorten its

lifespan. This is one of the key bits ofinformation we need in order to choose whichloudspeakers to use.

RMS and Peak are terms used to describe boththe SPL output of a speaker, and it’s powerhandling; the latter of which we will address ina later issue.

Inverse Square Law (beware there be mathshere) Now let’s look at how to achieve a consistentlevel for our entire audience. We know that thefurther you are from the origin of a sound, thequieter it is. This happens in a predictable way,and the relationship can be calculated using asimple formula known as the Inverse SquareLaw, expressed as: Level Drop (SPL dB) = 20 xlog(distance 1/distance 2)

This sounds scary, but it results in a great rule ofthumb: for every doubling of distance from thesource, the volume (SPL) drops by 6dB. There areplenty of apps and websites that will calculatethis for you, so you don’t need to go rummagingfor your old Casio, but you will need to know theSPL output of the loudspeaker to reference thedrop in level against.

It’s worth remembering that this rule applies toall sound sources, not just Loudspeakers, and

In this, the first of four articles titled ‘Back to basics’we’ll look at some key aspects of choosing andpositioning loudspeakers, and the electroacousticprinciples at the core of these decisions. Hopefully, byapplying these, along with some experience, you canimprove your loudspeaker choice and positioning, andin turn provide a better experience for the audience.

ANDREW JOSEPHS

RYAN PERRY

and back of our audience. In order for thefurthest member of the audience to hear oursound, we might end up with a volume that israther uncomfortable in the front row.

One way in which we can reduce this levelvariation is simply by moving the loudspeakerfurther upstage away from the front row (seeFig. 3). This method works because InverseSquare Law behaves in a logarithmic way, so bydoubling the distance to our closest audiencemember we have reduced the the front to backdrop to 14dB.

We could move our loudspeaker upstage byanother 2m (double the distance) to furtherreduce this variation, however that might resultin feedback if we are using microphones. Luckilythere is another direction we can move ourloudspeakers in….

Flying loudspeakers is a common practice intheatre and it provides advantages both from acoverage and visual point of view. As we lift themain loudspeakers the difference in distance tothe front and back of the audience is reduced.Without delving too deeply into high schoolmaths, Pythagoras Theorem tells us thisrelationship between the three sides of atriangle. The formula is as follows: A2+B2 = C2

can be used to help you achieve better gain atyour microphone; for example when positioninga radio mic on a performer. If you halve thedistance, which could be as little as 5cm, thenyou will increase the SPL into the mic by 6dB.

Thinking about this in relation to our audience,if our closest patron is sat 2m from theloudspeaker, and our farthest is 20m away, thenthere would be a 20dB difference between thetwo, regardless of the original SPL. Obviously,this introduces a challenge if we want our entireaudience to be able to understand the show

and be blown away by our breathtaking vintagetrain sound effect. At this point, you may betempted to suggest that this is what delays arefor, however, we can often make largeimprovements through careful positioning ofour main loudspeakers.

Coverage Let’s look at a common scenario (see Fig. 2), ourmain loudspeakers are placed inline with thefront of the stage at head height to theaudience. Using Inverse Square Law we knowthat there will be a 19dB drop between the front

Fig. 1 Inverse Square LawInverse Square Law represents what is happening as sound emanatesfrom a single source. As the sound travels away from the source it isspread across an ever increasing area, which is inversely proportional tothe square of the distance.

As we can see in Fig. 4, by lifting the loudspeakerby 2m, we can increase the distance to the frontrow by a greater amount than the increase indistance to the back. Again calculating withInverse Square Law shows that this results in an11dB drop across our audience.

If we continue to lift the loudspeakers thedifference in SPL from front to back willcontinue to reduce, though at the expense ofimaging the sound to the performance. In Fig. 5we have increased the height to 4m whichresults in only an 8dB drop in SPL.

The ideal scenario would be for the same SPL tobe achieved everywhere, giving us a uniformsound for every audience member; but withoutendless delays, or making the audience wearheadphones, there is going to have to be acompromise somewhere; it’s the job of a sounddesigner to use their knowledge and judgementto decide what those compromises need to be.

The examples provided follow the theoreticalmodel, which doesn’t take into considerationroom acoustics; however, they are accurateenough for us to make estimations in theatre.

Combining SPLAt this point we have only really thought aboutthe level for an audience member from a single

loudspeaker, however, you’ll do very well to findany theatrical sound design with just oneloudspeaker. So what happens to the SPL for ouraudience when we start adding moreloudspeakers? The maths for adding soundsources together is a constant regardless of howmany sources you have, and the formulas are:Sum of n incoherent sources = 10 x log [10(level 1 /10) + 10(level 2 /10) + ....... + 10(level n /10)]

This is for incoherent sound sources – if all of thesound sources were emitting the same

programme material then the formula would be:Sum of n coherent sources = 20 x log [10(level 1 /20) + 10(level 2 /20) + ....... + 10(level n /20)]

N.B. All logarithm functions calculated to base10.

Incoherent is defined as two signals withdifferent phase patterns, e.g. a piano and a drumkit. So whilst a left-right mix would likely beconsidered largely coherent, a centre vocalcluster and a LR band stack would not be

Fig.2 Speaker position 1Fig.3 Speaker position 2

coherent with each other. It is rare to find any reproduced sound that isentirely in mono, and different speakers may befed difference mixes, have different EQs anddelays, all of which make them non-coherent.Use your judgement when deciding whichequation to use – the reality is that the resultswill likely be somewhere between the two.

With a little reworking of the equationsmentioned thus far, you could work in theopposite direction to discover the SPL @ 1mrating your loudspeakers need to reach aspecified level at a certain position. Lets sayyou’re sat centre between a LR set up, 8m awayfrom each speaker, and you want to achieve anaverage of 100dB SPL at your listening position;inverting the SPL combination equations tells us

(predictably) the level which reaches the listenerfrom each speaker will be need to be 94dB, andthe level drop over 8m will be 18dB. So, theoutput of each speaker will have to be 112dB SPL@ 1m. Time to invest in something a little largerthan those Control 1s!

Also consider the crest factor of yourprogramme material; if it has a crest factor of 4(12dB), then your speaker will need to be able toreproduce Peaks of 124dB SPL to accommodatean RMS of 112dB SPL (although it’s highlyrecommended to give yourself more headroomthan this).

Critical DistanceHaving established that the further you arefrom a sound source the quieter it gets; and

whilst the theory is accurate, in the real worldthings are rarely that simple. Sound, like light,reflects off surfaces and these reflections are anessential part of the way we hear the world,helping us to localise where sounds are comingfrom and help form a picture of oursurroundings – for example, a large or smallspace.

Yet, there is a direct relationship between howwell we can understand what we are hearingand the amount of sound which is direct fromthe source and reflected from oursurroundings – think about how well you can(or can’t) understand someone speaking in aCathedral as you get farther away from them.

Many auditoria share similarities of design,

Fig.4 Speaker position 3 Fig.5 Speaker position 4

Fig.6 Reverse calculation Fig.7 Critical Distance

typically an enclosed space with a stage area atthe front and seating right up to the back wall.

Critical distance is the point at which whenmoving away from the stage, the audiencehears more sound reflected from theenvironment than from the direct sources, andas a result, they may struggle to understandwhat they are hearing. Before you jump to addin all of those extra delays to make sureeveryone hears direct sound, bear in mind thatyou can travel a long way back from the CriticalPoint, and audiences will still be able to enjoy‘good to fair’ intelligibility.

If you were to measure the distance from thedirect source to your critical point, you can(theoretically) travel back that distance again

three times (according to inverse square law)before you would get a 10dB drop and theintelligibility would begin to be classed as ‘poor’.How do you know where your critical point is?

Get yourself an SPL meter and start walkingaway from your sound source. When themeasurement stops decreasing then you havereached the Critical Distance. It is worth notingthat turning the source of the direct sound upwon’t increase your critical distance; the reverbin the room will just increase as well.

An understanding of Critical Distance will allowyou to explain to a producer why the budget forextra delays would be worth having or even todecide that the extra line of delays won’t benecessary. Understanding how sound reacts in a

room can be a huge advantage when designinga system.

Feeling refreshed?These theoretical principals underpin many ofthe decisions we make instinctively. Doing all ofthe sums without listening to what your earstell you will make for a bad sounding show; butusing some theory to support your decisionscould help to improve your system and solvepotential problems before you get into thetheatre.

Next time…We will be looking at the benefits (and dangers)of speaker placement, and how our audienceinterpret what they hear.

What is your current project and role?I’m currently finishing a solo album and composingan opera about the life of Charles Byrne for Jerwoodand Aldeburgh. I am also working as sound designeron Once in a Lifetime at The Young Vic, directed byRichard Jones.

What is the favourite part of your work/process?I love creating liminal sounds, for instance those thatblur the boundaries between vocalisations andmachines; or between music and sound effect. I alsolove ensemble work – that moment when soundmeets the perfect lighting and choreography.

What would you change about your work / theindustry?As I’m primarily a live performer, I’m still finding myfeet with theatre sound. But I would like to see moreadventurous use of dynamically changing sound (e.g.using sensors and Max/MSP). My fantasy productionwould cherish the responsiveness of sound as muchas the liveness of actors.

What’s your top trick / tip?If you want to create a thrilling, tactile effect withinfrasonics, amplitude modulate your bass using asignal that precisely follows the envelope of theaudible, higher frequencies. This will create thedisturbing sensation of palpable sound, not theimpression there’s a lorry chugging away outside.

What are you listening to at the moment? (Analbum?)The Sadness of Things (by Steven Stapleton and DavidTibet) and La Louison (by Les Fin’Amoureuses) – amcurrently obsessed with the generous sense of spacein both.

Mini profiles

SARAH ANGLISS

What is your current project and role?I am currently working on International Waters forFire Exit. It has been described as an apocalypticscatological farce. From the outset, the director hasinsisted on there being big moments that foregroundthe design, so its a little daunting being allowed totake all your toys out of the box and play with themall at once.

I am also in the process of organising a furtherdevelopment and future production based on Kind ofSilence, which I created and directed last year for SolarBear. This new version is being spearheaded by theNational Theatre of Parramatta, a new theatrecompany in Australia. One of the fundamentalaspects of the show, which will remain from theoriginal version is that it addresses sound and musicin a context that includes deaf and hearingperformers and audience members.

What is the favourite part of your work/process?My favourite part of the process of making work isthe way that the concrete realised components of thefinished work reflect or refract the initial abstract orpoetic ideas. Its always a pleasure to imaginesomething together with your colleagues, worktogether to build it, and then see what it becomeswhich will inevitably confirm aspects of the initialidea but also surprise you by being different fromwhat you had imagined or expected.

What would you change about your work / theindustry?It feels like we seldom have enough time to dealproperly with sound at the business end of a process.Technical rehearsals at their best feel really creativeand full of possibilities, rather than just aconsolidation of the work you have prepared. Isuppose all departments feel like this.

What’s your top trick / tip?I think that it is important to carefully construct yourscheme for music or sound within a project, but beprepared to contradict yourself at any moment andbreak it completely if it serves the piece.

What are you listening to at the moment? (Analbum?)At the moment I am listening to Crying by RoyOrbison, From Farthest Know Objects by Surgeon andI’m still listening to To Pimp a Butterfly by KendrickLamar.

DANIEL KRASS

Fees

How much one should get paid to design ashow is a difficult topic to discuss. Differentpeople prefer to value their efforts differently. Isit about the amount of time you put in, or thecreativity? How can you quantify creativity?Does reducing your contribution to a show to anhourly, daily, weekly rate diminish that you arecreating something; or is it the only meaningfulway to charge for what you’ve done? These areall challenging questions.

We also negotiate our contracts in advance ofperforming them, with proportions of feesbeing advanced before we’ve started work,unlike many other industries. There are financialbenefits to this but it also means we have tonegotiate our fee based on what can be quite avague notion of what the project will entail. It iseasy to underestimate for example how muchtime in rehearsals will be required – anincreasing demand. So even measuring our timeis impossible when we can only guess what wewill be doing long in advance of doing it. Our time and creativity are a couple of thefactors we have to consider. We also haveongoing business and personal costs: travel,rent/mortgage, the purchase, maintenance and

upgrading of our resources and tools, soundeffect libraries, computer hardware, softwareand sound equipment.

Producers on the other hand are trying toorganise a vast array of variable staff, materialsand venue costs into budget lines that stack upagainst the predicted income of their plannedproduction. A lot of these costs will bepredictions in the planning stages of aproduction that only firm up much closer to fit-up. The predicted income may be directly relatedto the number of tickets that can be sold andhence the number of seats available in theauditorium. Thus the money on offer to peopleworking on the show is often factored to thesize of the auditorium rather than to the workinvolved. Of course that is a simplification as weoften do not work in a purely commercial world.And yet the range of fees offered to sounddesigners for essentially similar timecommitments can vary radically.

Getting to the point of getting regular well paidwork in the industry is tough, requiring one tobuild up both experience to become good atyour job and a reputation to get ongoing and

better paid work. Many people work for free, oras near as makes no odds in order to garner theexperience. There is great debate in the industryabout the rights and wrongs of the low pay/nopay issue. The differing scales and functions offringe theatre is where a lot of this debatecenters. For some people the fringe is a steppingstone, for others it is the scale of theatre theyprefer to be work on, for some it is a hobby. Iwould like to think that everyone should receivethe National Minimum Wage (NMW) for theirwork on a fringe show. Under the currentsystem if we want, or need to work in the lowerend of the fringe we effectively have tosubsidise the production by earning moneyelsewhere to pay our living costs.

Receiving NMW is gaining momentum in thefringe sector, but primarily in the moreprominent venues with regular audiences and adegree of financial support, and it has primarilybeen applied to performers whose jobs aremore easily distillable to the number of hoursworked. There is the chance that fewer fringeproductions could be produced as a result ofbeing forced to pay NMW, leading to feweropportunities for people to gain the necessary

experience and contacts it takes to access wellpaid work but no one has yet to propose asolution to this that doesn’t end updisadvantaging one group of people or another.

Negotiating a fee is a nerve-wracking process,large or small. It is often the case that as eachperson’s career progresses they are asked to dobigger shows, or or work in the many differentniches of the industry, and with that comes alack of knowledge about how much one shouldbe paid for that type or scale of work. Producersare often in the same boat too: as they progressto bigger shows, there are few guides for themas to how much they should pay us. UK Theatre(the renamed TMA), the ITC and Equity allpublish or negotiate *minimum* rates fordesigners, but nothing specific to sounddesigners. When we met with Equity to discusstheir published minimum rates – which areoften well below what is actually paid in theindustry – they explained that these are meantas a safety net, a pay-no-lower-than-this level,much like the national minimum wage. But onlypublishing minimum rates that don’t reflectactual going rates skews everyone’s notion ofwhat should be paid downwards. Producers onlyhave these minimum guides and their ownexperiences to guide what they should offer asa fee.

More often than not the negotiation of a feebegins with an offer from the producer, whichmay be close to, or miles off what you’d beenhoping for. The amount of negotiation on offerwhen agreeing a fee is variable. Some venueshave fixed rates with no negotiation. Someclaim to have fixed rates but there may be somevariance. Others may have rates relating to howestablished a sound designer is or how manytimes they have worked with the producerpreviously. The perceived hierarchy of setdesigner – costume designer – lighting designer– sound designer often places your offer inrelation to what they have been offered. Thereare even still some producers who offer thelighting designer a higher fee, and whenquestioned the reply is often because the LD hasto draw a plan, ignoring the amount ofpreparation the sound designer has to do. Parityof pay with the LD is increasing but still notprevalent.

There may also be royalties to negotiate, whichwe covered in detail in the last issue of The Echo.You can read that atwww.associationofsounddesigners.com/EchoArchive. We may also be negotiating to ensure wereceive the same class of travel, accommodationand per diems as the rest of the creative team –these are called Most Favoured Nations clauses.

Producers only have so much money to spendon a production so they are often looking tomake savings wherever possible to make theshow financially viable. Consequently, the initialoffer may be slightly lower than what has beenbudgeted for on the off-chance that it isaccepted, or in anticipation of a negotiationprocess where it will be argued up to what hasactually been budgeted.

Agents have existed to represent actors formany years. Increasingly creative teammembers have them too. For an actor the agentis often a key means of getting auditions andhence work. For the designer this is less oftenthe case and the designer’s agent will primarilyhandle availability checks, negotiate the termsof the contract and the fee. An agent enablesthe designer and producer to effectively argueover fees and contract terms whilst maintaininggood relations: The agent can be the bad cop,the designer can be the good cop. There is an artto producing a show, to setting it up, getting iton its feet, selling it, and keeping it running: theproducer is not the baddie in this story, but wemay often end up having adversarialnegotiations with them to get ourselves thebest deal, which is a tricky position to be in withone’s employer.

Having an agent comes at a cost, agents may

design fees have been frozen for the last fewyears, likely reflecting decreased Arts Councilsubsidies. The database also contains the feethat other organisations such as the ITC, Equityand the ALD publish should be paid for thattype of venue. It is worth noting that the ALDpublish suggested fees rather than minimumfees, more indicative of what is actually paid.

What we’re not doing is telling producers howmuch they should be paying, or how much youshould be paid. That is still down to you and theproducer, the needs of the production and thetime involved, but this should create a morelevel playing field, and a stronger place tonegotiate from. Every production is unique, andthe tasks we undertake vary greatly withdiffering schedules. The nature of producing ashow and selling it vary greatly too, and this alsohas to be borne in mind when negotiating a fee.

At this stage we’re not sharing our databasewith the rest of the world – and we ask that youto not either, other than for your negotiatingpurposes. This is a trial period for us as weestablish how this database can work mostusefully for our members, and we willundoubtedly modify how it works over thecoming months. Once we’ve honed it, andincreased the amount of data we’ve collected,we’ll look at whether and how we might share

venue and what they might have offereddesigners in the past. Agents will be trying toincrease that offer based on their experience. Thiscan lead to many emails flying back and forthover weeks or months, as well as uncertaintyabout whether it will result in a job (and havingto postpone replying to, or just turning downother offers until the process is resolved). WhilstMost Favoured Nations clauses ensure thateveryone is receiving similar terms, it means thatyour contract can’t be finalised until everyoneelse’s negotiations have been completed too. It istough to hold one’s nerve, often not knowingwhether you are asking for the moon on a stick orsomething perfectly reasonable.

Clearly this is a slightly ridiculous situation witha lot of guesswork from all involved. Andwithout access to historical data of what hasbeen paid in the past, sound designers are at adisadvantage in the negotiating process.

The ASD is attempting to change that with ourfees database. It contains fees that have beenpaid at a number of venues and by producersacross the country for different types ofproductions. Where possible we’re includingfees going back a number of years so you canalso see when the last time they raised theirfees was. It’s evident from the data we’vecollected so far that some (but far from all)

earn 10% of the fee or have a set monthly fee.An agent will not always be able to increase afee, but the idea is that over the long term theycan ensure you are paid as much as is possible.By having an agent you maintain good relationswith the producer through the negotiatingperiod (with your agent taking any flak)improving your chances of getting repeat workfrom that producer. A good agent will do farmore than just this, acting as your ongoingcareers advisor and confidant, amongst otherthings. And whilst 10% is a significantproportion it is worth bearing in mind that inother industries such as graphic design agentsmay earn closer to 30%.

But how do producers know how much to offer,and agents how much to try to increase an offerby? They do so based on what has beenhistorically paid to designers for similar scaleshows in similar size venues, and guessworkabout what the demands of that show mightentail. The less experienced the producer, theless experience they will have of what had beenhistorically paid.

Regardless of having an agent or not, thenegotiation process is often fraught. We aretrying to balance the cost of our time, creativityand resources, whilst the producer may be tryingto offer us a fee determined by the size of the

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that with the outside world. As you have a lookat the database you’ll notice lots of venuesmissing, and incomplete data. This is where weneed your help.

At the bottom of each page you’ll see a link to ashort form to submit data about that venue tous. The more data we have the stronger aposition we will be in to negotiate a fee. Itshould be said that it puts us in a weaknegotiating position if the informationsubmitted is inaccurate.

We think this resource will really help ourmembers know when they’re offered a gooddeal, or if not to leverage a better one.

This is just the start of the project. Once wehave collected lots of data we can analyse andreport on it. Perhaps to create an overview ofthe industry. Or perhaps to publish guidelines tothe wider industry about what sound designersare, or should be paid. That’s a little way off fornow. In the meantime, we hope you find this auseful resource and hope to get your feedbackabout how to improve it.

If you feel you can, gently bat back the first offerwith a ‘is there room for movement, this is lowerthan we’d expected’?

Ask if the fee offer is parity with the lightingdesigner?

Be appreciative of the limits of what theproducers can offer for the scale of theproduction, but keep sight of the point at whichthe production isn’t going to cover your costsand be prepared to walk away if you can’t reachan amicable agreement. Be assertive aboutwhat you need to be paid without beingaggressive.

Just because the show is a good opportunity foryou to break new territory with a venue ordirector doesn’t mean you should be paid less.

Don’t sweat the small stuff: there’s little pointarguing over a trifling amount of money if itmeans souring negotiations to the point whereyou won’t be re-employed in the future.

Be respectful to everyone – if for no other reasonthan the administrative assistant you’re talkingwith this week could be the west end’s top

producer in ten years time. People rememberpeople who are rude to them!The director’s concept for the show, or the showitself may require additional work from youcompared to what a ‘normal’ show mightexpect. You can use this to justify why you needmore: ‘The director has asked me to be inrehearsals more than I normally would. Thismeans I’m going to have to turn down workthat I’d otherwise be able to do’. The normalamount of rehearsal attendance is debatablebut anything beyond the last couple of weekscan easily be argued as being extraordinary.Ensure the director is aware that you arenegotiating with the producers to get extratime in rehearsals based on the conversationsyou’ve had about when you’ll be in rehearsals –don’t blindside them. Get them on side with ‘Ican’t do what you’re asking unless theproducers can offer me more’. There are lots ofreasons why you might be being asked to domore for the same, and these are justifiablereasons to seek a fee increase.

Have you looked at the ASD Contract rider? It contains all the terms that should be in yourcontract. Go to: tinyurl.com/gwpdgq3

MORE INFORMATIONITC: www.itc-arts.org/rates-of-payUK Theatre: tinyurl.com/z5ojnphEquity/SOLT: tinyurl.com/zv3zjmk

Fees: negotiating tips

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