Birmingham Rep’s Animal Farm puppets come to life with d&b Soundscape.
Birmingham Rep’s new stage adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm presented an audio challenge for Olivier Award winning sound designer, Tom Gibbons. The ambitious British production saw War Horse puppeteer Toby Olié’s beautifully crafted horses, pigs, birds and more revolt against their human farmer master. And they needed to speak.
A key aspect to the realism of the surreal piece was accurately positioning pre-recorded audio script parts to each puppet as they speak and to achieve this, Gibbons employed the d&b Soundscape system.
“I knew from early conversations with the director, Robert Icke, that there would be very little live dialogue in this production, meaning that almost all of the audio parts needed to be mapped to the puppets within the soundscape wherever they were on the stage, and even when they moved,” said Gibbons.
Gibbons road tested the capabilities of Soundscape at d&b audiotechnik’s Nailsworth UK base. He was aware of its two software modules, En-Scene and En-Space, the former of which would enable him to perfectly position each piece of pre-recorded dialogue to each puppet. “Soundscape was the only viable solution with the object-based positioning power to programme the complex on-stage dialogue as we needed,” he said.
Gibbons’ audio team comprised production sound engineers James Melling and Andy Josephs, along with Johnny Edwards (Sound no.1) and Raffaela Pancucci (Sound no.2). They worked with d&b EAS Adam Hockley to specify a Soundscape-optimised loudspeaker array, to complement Birmingham Rep’s installed d&b delays and surrounds.
The main system comprised five d&b Y10P loudspeakers, flown and evenly distributed over the top of the proscenium arch. On front fill duty were seven d&b 44S loudspeakers, with two powerful d&b B22-SUBS adding authoritative bass. These were all supplied to the production by Cardiff-based, theatre specialist AV company Stage Sound Services. At the heart of the system was the network controlled and Dante-enabled d&b DS100 Signal Engine.
“From a loudspeaker placement perspective, it’s important to try and cover as much of the audience from every sound source, and repeat with all of the others,” explains Adam Hockley.
“With Soundscape, the front fill is a really important part because that's what really helps to pull the audience’s attention back down to the performance on stage from the larger, main loudspeakers, which are flown above. This area needs a higher resolution because they're closer to the listener, and the 44S fitted the bill. Subwoofer-wise, the B22-SUB left and right of the stage really helped to achieve that dynamic in the low frequencies and resulted in some really memorable moments.”
Gibbons recorded the actors playing the parts of the animals in a acoustically dead environment in London, in the months leading up to the Birmingham Rep premiere. He then used the d&b En-Space room emulation tool to add in reverberation signatures in post-production.
“We auditioned a few of the En-Space settings, ranging from a small, to a medium theatre, and then large,” he said. “I was keen to recreate the sound of the theatre we were in, taking into account its size, shape and variables, so that it sounded like the animals were speaking live in that space. Recording it dry, we didn’t get the acoustic energy that you get in a theatre, with a live voice in front of an audience.
Support came in the form of Adam Hockley’s visits, both to rehearsals and get-in at The Rep. “My background is theatre, so when a show uses d&b products, I feel like I’m not only working for the manufacturer, but also as part of the production team. Soundscape is exciting new technology, and I want to learn how people are using it and help them to achieve their creative vision.”
Gibbons is enthused: “I’d very much use Soundscape again. Once you set up the system and the sound objects, assign them to the puppets and input the dimensions of the stage, it really is very easy to programme. It worked brilliantly.”
