Go behind the scenes and into the rehearsal room of From Morning to Midnight with director Melly Still and writer Dennis Kelly, who have adapted Georg Kaiser’s German Expressionist masterpiece for the Lyttelton Theatre.
Find more information on the show click here click here.
Our tactical roadtripper, TRUNDL.buddy and the Ghostly Wi-filactery, flings you through a gauntlet of environments, each with their own distinct color palette and style. Between each one, you’ll guide TRUNDL.buddy through decisions, shaping both mind and journey.
IT IS HARD
Early on, I wanted the music to branch alongside the narrative, incorporating different genres to reflect the changing personality of the player’s character. Violent or aggressive choices might transition to death metal or the militaristic styling of Battlestar Galactica. Pacifistic choices might swing more acoustic, Appalachian. Aside from the obvious challenges of producing such a wide variety of cues for every level in the game, there was another less obvious problem. The baseline song would need a neutral tone.
Creating music without emotion has been incredibly challenging for me. I’ve always felt the two are inextricable. But over the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered an interesting approach. Percussion and rhythm don’t carry much emotion by themselves, just a sense of energy and movement. I stripped out the melodic instruments entirely; built an underscore with just rhythmic textures and a single (tonic) pitch. When the player takes dramatic action, I comment by introducing melody and harmony – emotion.
Another issue I discovered is how quickly the “mix” fills up in-game; ambient sounds, engine sounds, enemies attacking you, obstacles whizzing by and music all playing at the same time. This buries the ambience completely – wind, insects, animal sounds. Ambience serves almost no gameplay purpose, except to ground you in the world. But having grown up with adventure games like MystandIco, I value these sounds highly and don’t want them lost.
PROBLEM + PROBLEM = SOLUTION
I needed neutral music and I’ve got buried ambience. The answer to both, musical ambience. I’ve incorporated environmental sounds into the rhythmic texture for each level’s backing theme. The music now feels connected to the place it’s scoring, still serves the gameplay, and provides a neutral base that pivots harmonically with the player’s actions. And I don’t have to worry about the mix as much. That, friends, is how I murdered two avian friend-beasts in the most primal way imaginable. I don’t even know where this rock came from… I… hello?
Check out the video you probably already watched for some quick examples!
I used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. But over the past 10 years or so, I’ve noticed that percentage has dropped significantly — and it’s not due to hearing loss on my end. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself occasionally not being able to parse entire lines of dialogue when I see a movie in a theater, and when I watch things at home, I’ve defaulted to turning the subtitles on to make sure I don’t miss anything crucial to the plot.
Knowing I’m not alone in having these experiences, I reached out to several professional sound editors, designers, and mixers, many of whom have won Oscars for their work on some of Hollywood’s biggest films, to get to the bottom of what’s going on. One person refused to talk to me, saying it would be “professional suicide" to address this topic on the record. Another agreed to talk, but only under the condition that they remain anonymous. But several others spoke openly about the topic, and it quickly became apparent that this is a familiar subject among the folks in the sound community, since they’re the ones who often bear the brunt of complaints about dialogue intelligibility.
TLDR:
its hard to hear words in movies because
1. directors like Christopher Nolan record fuzzy dialogue to make it more "realistic”
2. actors mumble or whisper to act their characters, and making it louder can’t usually make the words clear in the finished movie
3. microphones have to be placed away from visual setpieces so they can’t be seen in the finished movie, making it harder to put them where they can record the best audio
4. sound designers not being respected and time crunches with production mean they’re often told to “fix it in post” (while editing the film) instead of being allowed to record good audio
5. people add extra sounds because they can add them easier now
6. working on a movie for so long means you can get so used to hearing the fuzzy words correctly that you don’t realize other people can’t understand it
7. sometimes movies are released too loud, and so movie theaters turn down the volume for all movies, making normal-volume movies too quiet
8. movie theater employees are more inexperienced and play the movie as it is originally, instead of making sure it sounds good like they did when they used projectors
9. some streaming platforms compress the audio too much, making it low quality and too hard to understand
10. tvs also sometimes change how the audio sounds
11. not all films have their sound changed by the people making it to sound good on a home tv
the article ends by talking about ways to fix all this, mostly by educating people about why sound design is important
So out of curiosity, wolf anyone be interested in like. A podcast about Tech theatre? Kind of like this post I made forever ago that blew up
[IMAGE ID: tumblr user 5-to-places: You know what I want? I want a show in the Style of The Office, only it follows a production team at a theatre. Have like, an SM, some designers, front of house, an electrician, board ops, a Michael Scott-esque director who has all these big ideas, and actors that would cycle through every half season or at the end of the season. Idk just an idea. END IMAGE ID]
I’m kinda thinking of making it, but in an audio format, maybe framing it in the way of a Stage Manager who records production meetings, mixed in with phone calls and things like that.
This is what I’m thinking:
[IMAGE ID: Discord user Kestrel (They/He): So what I’m thinking is a podcast that follows a Tech crew at a theatre company, and I want it to have sort of SF (Stellar Firma) vibes but it’ll be scripted. It’d mostly focus on tech crew, but there will obviously be a director, a few actors, etc. And the director has sort of Michael Scott vibes in the way of big ideas and no realistic way to achieve them, And the actors of varying degrees of coolness ranging from ‘neat actor who helps out sometimes and generally gets along with tech’ to Actor™️ (trademark emoji).
In terms of Tech characters I for sure want a design team (Scenic, Costume, Lighting, and Sound), a Props Master bc of course, a Tech Director, and maybe some scenic carpenters, stitches, and electricians. And a Stage Manager. END IMAGE ID]
I’m not gonna say its definitely gonna be a thing, but I would love to do it if there’s an interest in it, so like. Let me know in the replies/reblogs!
Looking for a composer & sound designer for my graduation film! The story is set in a 3rd grade classroom in India (Indian designers will be given preference). If you’re interested, please email me at [email protected] with your rates and links to your work!
Sound mixing was completed last week with our super talented sound designer, Zoltan Juhasz! We were also lucky on this production to have not one, but two brilliant composers, Jessica Jones and Tim Morrish who created all of the original music for the film.
Mike list sheet with frequencies (names are blacked out). We had a lot of broken mics for this show so the red line indicates broken or semi-broken mics. Giving each actor a number and using that for mics, the board, and mic belts really helps keep everything organized.
I need to design some ambiences for my sound design final [more on that later^TM] and I decided to make one using audio from Fullmetal Alchemist ‘03. I used the instrumental version of “Brothers” and the vocal version of “Kelas” as a basis for this. I also designed a really basic synth element as a kind of glue between everything. Those are the only audio sources, everything else is just effects and manipulations.
I kind of want to fine-tune this more down the line, but I have a lot more assets to make for this final first. So I’m posting this as-is for now.
It’s very strange sitting in the house before closing night. Actors aren’t here yet, crew members aren’t here yet, the orchestra isn’t here yet, audience isn’t here yet… In less than two hours the house will go to half… In less than five hours actors will take their final bows… In less than eight hours the set will be torn down, the lights will be pulled, the mics will be returned, the lobby will be empty. Physically, it will be like nothing ever happened.
I used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. But over the past 10 years or so, I’ve noticed that percentage has dropped significantly — and it’s not due to hearing loss on my end. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself occasionally not being able to parse entire lines of dialogue when I see a movie in a theater, and when I watch things at home, I’ve defaulted to turning the subtitles on to make sure I don’t miss anything crucial to the plot.
Knowing I’m not alone in having these experiences, I reached out to several professional sound editors, designers, and mixers, many of whom have won Oscars for their work on some of Hollywood’s biggest films, to get to the bottom of what’s going on. One person refused to talk to me, saying it would be “professional suicide" to address this topic on the record. Another agreed to talk, but only under the condition that they remain anonymous. But several others spoke openly about the topic, and it quickly became apparent that this is a familiar subject among the folks in the sound community, since they’re the ones who often bear the brunt of complaints about dialogue intelligibility.
TLDR:
its hard to hear words in movies because
1. directors like Christopher Nolan record fuzzy dialogue to make it more "realistic”
2. actors mumble or whisper to act their characters, and making it louder can’t usually make the words clear in the finished movie
3. microphones have to be placed away from visual setpieces so they can’t be seen in the finished movie, making it harder to put them where they can record the best audio
4. sound designers not being respected and time crunches with production mean they’re often told to “fix it in post” (while editing the film) instead of being allowed to record good audio
5. people add extra sounds because they can add them easier now
6. working on a movie for so long means you can get so used to hearing the fuzzy words correctly that you don’t realize other people can’t understand it
7. sometimes movies are released too loud, and so movie theaters turn down the volume for all movies, making normal-volume movies too quiet
8. movie theater employees are more inexperienced and play the movie as it is originally, instead of making sure it sounds good like they did when they used projectors
9. some streaming platforms compress the audio too much, making it low quality and too hard to understand
10. tvs also sometimes change how the audio sounds
11. not all films have their sound changed by the people making it to sound good on a home tv
the article ends by talking about ways to fix all this, mostly by educating people about why sound design is important
