Overview

The Studio

The basic studio configuration: One room to produce sounds in and another connected to it for the capturing devices and controls. A separate room or area set off by sound baffles may be used to record sounds that, for one reason or another, have to be isolated from the other sounds.

American commercial recording studios are studios that you can rent for production. Most clients produce commercials, talking books, and industrials in them. Hardly any room is given to the recording environment. The control booth dominates and is filled to the brim with equipment, much of which is used to make up for the inadequacies of the recording environment. This configuration works for post, but is hell for recording the voice tracks (mastering). Now, with digital technology, ANY area can be used for post, as long as you have a good set of headphones.

What you often encounter at public and community radio stations are studios barely adequate for normal station usage, which does NOT usually consist of sophisticated recording of the spoken word. If stations do have appropriate bells and whistles, usually they're packed up for remote-casts.

In Europe and Canada, I've worked in studios built for radio drama. Great attention is given to the recording environment. European production tends to emphasize mastering with little or no post-production. Inadequate recording environments impose heavy post upon you.

American music studios have the space, but not the acoustics. I've used them for drama, but find them as problematic as the tiny boxes in production rooms. They are built so that sound bounces off the walls, which adds pleasant overtones to the music. For audio drama you need a room that either produces few overtones, or several kinds that reproduce typical real life sonic environments. The "liveness" of the room is called "slap." One way to test a new recording space is to clap your hands and listen for slap.

Studios for mastering audio drama have to be big and have high ceilings, so that any sound bouncing off the walls is so faint by the time it reaches the mike as to be unnoticeable. They should contain nooks and crannies configured to reproduce various sonic environments, such as a "dead" room for outdoor scenes. In Stockholm, I've seen studios that have a dead end and a live end. In Cologne, WDR, the regional network, built tiny speakers into the walls. By feeding sound back through these speakers with various delays, producers can alter the room's acoustics while mastering.

The closest Americans come in rentable space for audio drama are foley and especially Audio Direct Recording (ADR) rooms: studios built for adding sound effects and overdubbing voices, respectively, to film and video. The usual production rooms are okay for narration, though, if too dead, they can sound like you're recording in a coffin.

You need far less control over acoustics when working before a live audience — which is good, because you probably won't get it. If the home audience knows you're working in a theatrical environment in front of a live audience, they will make the necessary imaginative allowances. You only need to guard against feedback and to make sure that naturally occurring reverberations do not muddy the sound. And you can forget about acoustical subtleties, or presenting work that depends on them.

A MODEL PRODUCTION STUDIO

elevation

floor plan

Misc Features

The room is floated: that is, it's a box inside a larger box cushioned by springs to shield against rumble from outside traffic.

Ample mike jacks and outlets.

Adjustable, non-glare overhead ceiling fixtures give ample light for script reading.

Speakers in walls can be adjusted to give reverberation to main first floor recording area.

Detail

1. First floor. Dead room for outdoor scenes, with adjustable floor to approximate sound of dirt, gravel, rock.

2. Second floor. Partitioned landing, furnished and including various removable wall and flooring surfaces to approximate sonic overtones of various interiors — kitchen, living room, bedroom, car, carriage, garage, office, etc.

3. Stairway divided vertically into three surfaces — wood, concrete, metal.

4. "Gravel pits," of various surfaces for footfall foley — hardwood, squeaky wood, marble, concrete, tile, etc.

5. Shuttered, draped window, built into wall for foley.

6. Foley doors of various surfaces and weights.

7. Three-foot deep sunken tub for water foley.

8. Large sliding door leading to storage area for foley equipment.

9. "Pressure chamber" connecting studio, control booth, storage, green room (actor's llounge), and lobby.

10. Control booth.

11. Isolation booth.

A Guide to the Gear

Almost all professional studios contain one or more of the following:

Microphone.

Patch bay. Wiring equipment together directly creates the time-wasting problem of hooking up and unhooking the equipment. A patch bay saves time and confusion. Wires plug in more or less permanently into the back and are patched in or out by toggle switches, patch cords, or other means in the front.

Console or mixing board. The master control regulating volume, equalization and stereo placement, among other things.

Recording instrument and recording medium. A tape recorder and tape, or a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) player and DAT, or a computer and disk, etc.

Playback for prerecorded music and sound.

Sound processors, which may include a "gain brain" and/or other noise reduction system, preamplifiers, outboard equalizer, compressor for automatically regulating volume, reverb unit, de-esser, and numerous other gadgets.

Speaker(s).

The Process

The process unfolds in clearly demarcated steps in more or less the following order:

Writing

Turning ideas into text. Some plays, such as improvisations, don't require a text, but most do. Writing can be a group effort of the production ensemble or a solitary effort largely independent of the rest of the production process. Even in the latter case, no script is finished until it is performed at least once.

Preproduction

Everything you need to do once you have a script before you can go into the studio with the actors: planning and preparation, final script editing, casting, production meetings, scheduling, preliminary paper (contracts, schedules, budgets, etc.), pulling and preparing recorded and foley (mechanical) effects, renting or buying special equipment, scoring the source and background music, and "table work" (read-throughs, preliminary rehearsals). Thorough preproduction requires more skill and patience than any other step in the process. It repays the demands by contributing an immeasurable treasure of efficiency and smoothness to the rest of the process.

Capturing or Mastering

The process of channeling performance through capturing and processing devices to transmission or recording media, including the setting up of equipment and in-studio rehearsing. "Mastering" specifically means recording voice and/or music tracks, whether with or without effects and processing. The resulting exposed recording medium is called the master.

Post-Production

In live audio drama, i.e. — plays performed and transmitted simultaneously — the process necessarily ends with capturing. You're stuck with whatever came through the mixing board, up the transmitter and out into the ether. When you record for delayed transmission, you can continue massaging the master tracks. Everything that ensues after the mastering is referred to as post-production or simply post.

Editing. Physically, electronically or digitally cutting and pasting an exposed recording medium, such as tape. This includes assembly or conformance, in which the best takes are chosen and assembled in order, and fine tuning to eliminate unwanted and accidental noises and to refine the pace and rhythm of the recorded sounds.

Overdubbing. Adding sound effects, music, and additional voices in sequence to the sounds on the master. You can do this, with or without electronic processing, either by laying down the new material on empty tracks of the master or by copying everything to empty tracks of a virgin medium. You may segregate some sounds on separate tracks and combine or premix others.

Mixing. Combining and processing (i.e., electronically adjusting relative sound quality and levels) the effects, music, and voices into their final aggregated sound. The resulting exposed recording medium is called the final mix.

Packaging. Preparing the program for transmission by producing announcements and mixing them with the final mix to one or more transmission masters. The same program could reach the public via several venues, each requiring its own announcements. You may customize the program for individual stations. Later, you may publish the program on cassette for sale, eliminating the act breaks, and substituting publishing acknowledgements for network identification announcements and system cues. You may have to change the packaging again for cable release, foreign broadcast, etc.

Final Paper. Preparing a record of the who, what, when, where and cost of production for archiving, fiscal reporting, project analysis, budgeting and legal purposes. Heavy post is typical of American production. This is partly forced on producers by the inadequacies of available mastering studios and personnel limitations, and partly caused by the influence of sound designers. Heavy post can suck up incredible amounts of the production time and money. An effect that you could have quickly laid in as you mastered the voices will take three times longer to lay down in post.

On the other hand, post gives you an extraordinary amount of focus and control over the production. You can concentrate better when you do one thing or a small group of things at a time. It's harder to juggle sound elements, such as relative volume and cuing, when you mix as you tape than it is when you separate those steps. Without post, you employ more hands and more rehearsal, but get less precision. In post, you and one engineer can do everything. Plays with complicated sound plots generally benefit from heavy post.

Some producers don't believe in any post. Or, rather, they do the post before they lay down the voice tracks. At ERT, the Greek national broadcast entity in Athens, I saw a crew record a very complex audio play that way. Prerecorded effects and music had been leadered and cued before the actors showed up. Several foley operators worked in the studio with the actors. The studio manager edited on the fly: if there was a glitch during the performance, he rewound the tape, played it back, and, when he got to the editing point, punched into record mode while the tape was rolling. After they finished, the whole crew rushed out without even spot-checking the punches. They were done.

Granted favorable working conditions and a modest sound plot, I prefer to master voices with discrete (foley) sounds. These are sounds of limited duration that are cued by or that cue voices and other sounds. I distinguish them from backgrounds: musical beds and bridges, and atmospheres or ambience/presence tracks (environmental sounds, such as birds twittering or rain). Cutting into backgrounds is tricky. If you splice over a musical phrase, for instance, the audience will hear it. Therefore, I lay backgrounds in after the edit; to avoid tedium, I sometimes save this step for the final mix.

With a very simple show, particularly if you're working in mono, it's possible to lay down everything as you master. Post then consists of editing takes together and adding the packaging, which you can leave to a subordinate while you get on with other matters requiring executive control. Several producers dump even complex post on the unsupervised engineer. Not a few engineers, especially those who fancy themselves sound designers, prefer to post without the producer. The post can make or break a production. There's a reason the phrase "We'll save it in the mix" gets heard so often. I think a producer should supervise every creative choice at every step of production, especially the post.

In the end, the demands of the task at hand and working conditions influence how much post you do and how you order the steps.

Personnel

Now that we've seen what has to be done, let's take a look at who does what. A modest production — small cast, no music, few effects — requires only a small production crew. The various functions listed below will have to be filled whether the operation is small or large, but jobs can and do overlap. The smaller the production, the more the doubling of tasks. I prefer a lean, efficient operation.

Obviously, the busier the shop, the more personnel it needs; the more stable its operations, the more personnel it can afford. I say 'more stable' rather than 'wealthier' because with plenty of time and money, you, the producer, can often afford to work leisurely, taking on more chores personally or parcelling them out to fewer subordinates. But, lacking a stable or routine production schedule, you can't easily take on fulltime support persons, or provide enough work to properly train regular parttimers. You have to make do with 'occasional' employees, who are more difficult to supervise, for the duration of the project. In any professional circumstance, if you can't keep 'em busy, don't put 'em on the payroll. "Idle hands," etc., etc.

Executive Producer

One person in the chain-of-command keeps one hand on the office and the other on the studio. The executiveproducer (EP) is the ultimate "suit," the boss or client, the person who finds the money, defines the project, hires the producer and takes charge of such essential non-production functions as general administration, promotion, marketing, and distribution. In an institutional environment, sometimes the title is honorific and the putative EP does little or nothing. At other times, the Executive Producer takes all the initiative to launch a project, and get it funded and listened to. If the producer is also directing, the EP may attend the mastering sessions to trouble-shoot snafus with the studio executives or talent agents. A series, or even a single program, may employ several producers, but there's rarely any room for more than one EP. After the initial planning and conceptualizing, good EPs stay out of the producer's way.

The Production Team

Producer. The individual in charge of a given production. The producer has management and artistic functions. S/he hires and supervises all subordinates, tracks time and money expenditures, troubleshoots, etc. The producer also is responsible for production design and supervises post-production and packaging.

Director. The individual responsible for matters relating to text. The director may help the writer edit the script or even develop the script with the writer, will cast the actors and guide them through the taping, and ought, but doesn't always, select the most desirable takes and edit as needed to fine tune performances. So often are the functions of producer and director combined in audio drama that if you say, "I produce audio drama for a living," it is taken for granted that you produce and direct.

Floor Director. An individual in the same room with the actors. Communicates via a headset with the director in the booth, passes on the director's instructions, using hand signals, to the talent as they perform. I use a floor director when I'm trying to lay down tracks in real time and 1) the production is being broadcast live or taped before a studio audience, or 2) I'm working under severe time or financial restraints. In the former circumstance, the floor director will cue the audience as well as the talent.

Writer. The writer on any given project may be the ultimate author of the work being produced, a translator of a work in a foreign tongue, or an adapter who has transformed a work from another medium. Some audio dramatists enjoy working with writers on new material. I prefer writers who have been dead several centuries. Depending on how seriously the (living) writer takes the job, s/he may, and should, participate at mastering sessions to offer rewrites and guidance, as needed.

Casting Director. In some communities, particularly where talent is routinely contracted through agents, a casting director, who knows the local talent and is respected by agents, is indispensable. I've also employed casting directors when working outside my home base, as when I was headquartered in Chicago while taping in London, New York or Los Angeles, where I did not know the talent. But in my home town, I had no need of casting support.

Musical Director. Most often these days, one person conducts, acts as contractor (that is, hires the musicians) and as Arranger (edits and orchestrates the score). If the music is original, the composer may do all these things. The only function that the musical director can't easily do, if conducting, is act as music producer.

Music Producer. Sits in the booth and guides the recording of the music. Sometimes the engineer has the training and experience to do this. In fact, I've had a much easier time finding decent to excellent music engineers/producers than competent dramatic engineers.

Talent. A collective and individual noun referring to professionals whose voices are being recorded. In a union shop, all radio drama talent comes under AFTRA jurisdiction. Subspecies include:

Actors, the persons who impersonate characters;
Narrators, specialists in story-telling;
Announcers, those who read announcements, lists (such as production credits), and titles;
Walla or "Supers." Audio supernumeraries, extras; the persons who make crowd noises. `Walla,' refers both to the humans who make the noise and the noise itself.

Studio Manager, Production Manager or Chief Engineer. The head techie on an audio drama. During voice-mastering sessions, this engineer works the mixing board and supervises subordinate Grams (recorded sound and music) Operator and Foley (live sound) Walker. The studio manager continues to engineer through the post. Although I prefer to work with a studio manager system, in the U.S. you often have only one engineer and, if you're lucky, a second, or studio gofer. Or you may find yourself dealing with one engineer at a time — a mastering engineer for voice recording, a music engineer to master and premix music tracks, an editor, and a mixer, none of whom have any stake or overview of the project. This serial monogamy has all the pitfalls of an assembly line manned by trained seals.

Production Assistant (P.A.) The producer's and director's assistant. Duties vary according to custom in a producing community. I may employ one to three P.A.s to do the scheduling, hold script, keep a track sheet, log production time and tapes, supervise conformance editing and troubleshoot. One excellent P.A. given to me by the CBC in Toronto did secretarial chores as well. The BBC P.A. with whom I worked did as little as she could get away with and was insulting to boot.

Dramaturg. If the kind of work you do demands that you solicit and read a lot of scripts, you may add a person or committee to read and recommend scripts for production, and help plan your repertory. In theatre companies, an individual doing this arduous job — and believe me, it is arduous, since most of what you see is junk — is called a dramaturg or literary manager.

The Auteur

This term, borrowed from film criticism, refers to an individual who assumes the functions of both producer and director (and may write and perform as well), whose artistic contribution is most responsible for the work’s distinctive character. One of the great cinema auteurs, Orson Welles, was also one of the great auteurs of radio theater. Today’s American audio dramatists tend to be auteurs, or, as I call them, Audio Dramatists. In my opinion, considerable artistic unity derives from combining the producer and director in one person. I highly recommend this approach.

Types of Audio Theater

There are three basic types of theater. As producer and/or director, your job and the way you go about it differs with these types. Whether or not the group with which you work identifies itself as one type or another, you should realistically assess the objectives and expectations of the production ensemble so that you can adjust your goals and methods accordingly.

Community or Recreational Theater

An essentially non-professional arena that provides recreational activity for the participants. Your pools of talent and crew are limited to volunteers who vary in ability and commitment. The quality of production matters less than the enjoyment of the people mounting it. You have to be ever-mindful of their satisfaction, mollify tempers, make numerous allowances, schedule around the professional and family obligations of your cast and crew, and decrease the number and intensity of your demands.

Typically, the audience for community theater groups consists of the friends and relations of the members. The responsibility of the amateur members to sell tickets and clean up after themselves is enforced more strictly than any obligation to behave and do one’s best. Often, the audio community company is allied with a community radio station, a non-profit broadcaster staffed by volunteers. Less frequently, although perhaps more advisable, the players produce cassettes and CDs of their productions that they sell to friends and relations. In this way, or by imposition of a membership fee, the members pay all or most of the production costs — as well they should. After all, it’s their self-indulgence.

Little Theater

This, too, is largely an unpaid endeavor manned by amateurs. However, the participants get their satisfaction from providing a service to the community-at-large. They aspire to quality. For a good number of years, some of the most important drama produced in the United States came out of the little theater movement. Eugene O’Neill started out with the amateur Provincetown Players. As one of the leaders of a little theater ensemble, you still have to indulge personalities to some degree and be sensitive to the needs of volunteers, but you can make many of the demands that professionals expect.

Some of the participants have artistic ambitions, but no desire to enter show business professionally. In 1963, I started my career in the celebrated little theater at Chicago’s Hull House, from which the city’s professional theater movement sprung. A decade later, my first radio plays were being produced within a little theater set-up, though our station, WNIB, was commercial. By 1976, my National Radio Theater was fully professional and being heard all over the English-speaking world.

Your talent pool of volunteers is probably small. Not everyone will comfortably fit the roles available or perform as competently as you would wish. But you do have one advantage. I find that the sincerity and energy of volunteers in performance often exceeds that of professionals and more than compensates for all sorts of faults. Amateurs will sometimes throw themselves into their roles with a gusto that I find immensely stimulating and enjoyable.

At this writing, the majority of audio drama in the United States — and at this writing there is a kind of renaissance abroad in the land — is produced by community and little theater operations.

Professional Audio Theater

At this time, professional audio theater is manned by people who make some or all of their living in show business. They may have come together as volunteers for audio to satisfy artistic ambitions, or they may be paid. They may be working under union auspices (AFTRA and NABET) or they may not. What distinguishes the professional operation from the amateur is that everyone involved in the former possesses professional level skill and experience. The producer and director can make professional demands. The listener can confidently expect to hear a professional-sounding production.

The supposed advantage of working under a union contract is that, presumably, union members have professional skill and experience. In reality, the NABET techies I’ve worked with have been the worst sound engineers of my professional experience. On the other hand, AFTRA actors tend to possess more acumen and a better attitude than non-members. Furthermore, casting exclusively from the AFTRA membership assures that you will avoid wasting time auditioning the numerous crazies and incompetents who show up at community theater casting calls.

I prefer to work under professional auspices. The arena you choose will depend on your personal preferences and the opportunities you either find or make for yourself.

Making Audio Plays: An Overview