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Production

Engineering

Your Engineer

It was an engineer, Stewart Sloke, who taught me the rudiments of studio craft. Today he's Senior Vice President and Production Director of World Wide Wadio [sic], a state-of-the-art Hollywood production company. At the time, he worked full time for the great Dick Orkin, creator of Chickenman and of thousands of award-winning comic radio spots. Stu had imagination, a musician's timing, a terrific ear, and years of experience with commercial spoken word recording. For my part, I was steeped in stagecraft, dramatic literature and the nearly extinct American radio theater. We taught each other.

I consider myself lucky to have begun my career with Stu in Dick Orkin's studio. I have since come to realize that it is easier to teach a theater person audio than to teach an engineer theater. Without exception, the techies I've worked with in the United States did not know what drama is all about. The overwhelming majority had no talent for it, nor any great gifts as engineers — including some now engaged more or less regularly with various regional audio dramatists dotted around the country. By far the worst were the NABET members who worked in commercial broadcasting. After that came the drug-addled youths trying to break into the music business via the mixing board. The biggest problems — substance abuse, communication, irresponsibility and poor endurance. Only outside the U.S. have I found technical collaborators who thoroughly know how to do audio drama, get satisfaction from it, and can meet its demands.

The owners of domestic studios I'd investigate would try to sell me on the bells and whistles installed in their recording rooms. But I soon discovered that personnel not gadgetry that makes the difference. Good engineers can produce great tracks out of old vacuum tube boards and mono Ampexes. So, to you, I say that your engineer is your closest collaborator, your co-producer with aesthetic judgment as well as technical expertise to contribute. Your engineer can make or break your production no matter what the quality of your property, your director and your cast.

It's incumbent on you to make the most of the relationship between you and your engineers. After all, audio theater is probably only a small fraction of their work, in most cases not enough to justify their learning your modes of reference. Learn the studio terminology familiar to them; speak to them in their own language. Ground yourself in studio operations, the latest gizmos, tricks of the trade, latest technological innovations. Get some hands-on experience with the equipment, You need to know enough studio craft to oversee the work. I have often heard "that can't be done" when the opining techie just didn't want to make the effort, or didn't know how.

If you're your own engineer, more power to you! I learned long ago how to operate the equipment and have often leant an extra pair of hands to the editing and gain-riding Still, I have always felt more confident supervising the engineering than in doing it myself. And, I suspect that as a general rule, producers do a better job when they delegate and supervise rather than try to do everything themselves.

Fewer Steps vs. Greater Control

The more you parse out the studio work, the greater the control you can exert. I mean laying down production elements — voices, foley sound, pre-recorded sfx, original music, stock music — on separate tracks in separate sessions, then editing and mixing them together in a number of further passes. Such parsing lets you begin production with less advance planning than the alternative. However, it consumes huge amounts of time and money. Every step you delay until you have finished recording the voices, takes much more time than if you had done it during  the voice sessions. Further, talent can react to sounds they hear while recording better than sounds they have to pretend hearing.

Completely or partially multiplying production steps may be necessitated by the following conditions:

Combining steps requires greater preparation, more concentration and more time with your actors. What you lose in ultimate control you gain in a superior blend of sonic elements into an organic whole. You need to expend more care (especially in advance), but less time and money. No matter which way you go, you still have to size up your requirements and resources at the outside and decide which way to go before production begins.

Analogue vs Digital

Digital technology has lowered the cost, streamlined production and improved the quality of sound recordings. Yet, many fussy producers and techies prefer analogue media when tracking music. Personally, I hear a qualitative difference between analogue and digital music tracks, even though Consumers Union and other investigators claim there is none. Suffice it to say, that the difference, real or imagined, is too subtle to matter much in audio theater. I prefer the digital realm for its speed, versatility and quiet. If I'm using stock music or canned sound effects, I willl use CDs. Avoid relying on DATs, because they are somewhat unreliable. My current engineer saves raw tracks to his hard drive, using DATs only for back-up. We save final mixes on compact disks, which are fairly durable. I use these as masters for all other copies. Although you can fit far more sound information in the MP3 format, I am wary of it for preserving programs, because it degrades the sound somewhat.

Why anyone would willingly produce audio plays in the analogue realm is beyond me. I've noticed that some people love editing recording tape as a form of occupational therapy, but other than that, digital technology is far more reliable and easier on the producer's nerves. If you absolutely must work with recording tape, you have to make sure of some factors that techies do not always handle properly.

Needless to say, none of these precautions apply to digital media.

The Sound

Dynamics

Important dialogue should take place in the foreground — that is, evenly balanced in strong on-mike positions, as if everyone speaking where lined up side-by-side an equal distance from the listener. Levels for sound and music are set relative to voice levels. Voice levels should always be strong and smooth. Staccato delivery or readings varying greatly and quickly in volume are hard for the listener to follow. They also interrupt the rhythm of scenes, thus muting tension and blunting the sense that the action is building toward a conclusion. No sound, voice or music of any importance should be set too far in the background. Distance is expressed less by reducing volume than by altering sound quality in some way: adding room tone or reverb, adjusting EQ, etc. No noise should be so loud as to blast the listener.

Automatic Gain Control (AGC)

There are several kinds of AGC that boost levels that are too quiet and reduce levels that are too loud. The degree to which they automatically raise or lower volume is adjustable, as well as the speed with which they kick in and out. Some add stridency to the tracks when cranked way up. All cause some deterioration in sound quality, though, in my opinion, the loss is worth it. For, AGC is indispensable for audio drama, not just for preventing distortion, but for smoothing levels. Use AGC only on voice tracks. Set them for immediate attack and release. When working in stereo, make sure that the AGC on both channels is set for identical responses. The compressors or limiters would be tied together so that a volume change triggered on one channel bring an identical change on the other. Otherwise the voices will wander in stereo.

Equalization

Adjusting the balance of low and high frequencies can produce a number of important effects. While you don't usually need an expensive eight-octave graphic equalize like the one shown (although it can't hurt), you ought to have a decent one available. That means no less than four basic controls — for lowest frequencies, low mid-range, high mid-range and highest frequencies.

Sound Quality

Pristine sound quality is not always important or desirable in audio drama. A little hash or room tone can add a little flavor. Listeners needn't hear the very highest or deepest tones. What you want is reasonably quiet tracks that sound acceptable in mono on a cheap car radio and a bit better than acceptable on the best studio speakers.

Ambiance

Ambiance tracks contribute a sense of place. This is obvious with such backgrounds as train stations, traffic, twittering birds, car interiors and their like, but with tracks that merely reproduce the relatively quiet circulation of air in the environment. Such "room tone" naturally leaks into the mikes as you record. That is why, you ought to lay down a "presence track" for every scene. After the actors have finished a scene and before they leave the recording space, record the sound of the room as they remain silently in it. The presence in a room can change with the number of people in it. If you have to add a pause in the edit, you cover it with the presence track. Otherwise, all room tone will drop out and the edit will become apparent and distracting.

Realism

Realism is an effect, not an exhaustive reproduction of the natural world. Objects of the natural world do not necessarily sound like themselves when heard but not scene. A sexy woman may not sound as sexy as a homely woman with a sexy voice. Less is more in audio theater. Too many sounds or too much movement all at once muddies focus. Depth is an illusion you may wish to create. Real depth could make a scene wishy-washy that would sound dynamic if everybody were in strong on-mike positions. As much by what you leave out as what you put in, you must create, not a sonic photograph of reality, but a fictive universe consistent with itself and seductive enough to make the listener to make a "willing suspension of disbelief," a Coleridge famously put it. To accomplish your task with memorable forcefulness, give your listener only as much to hear as is necessary to convey the desired effect.

Music

Underscoring. Musical underscoring — mood or background music that the audience but not the characters are supposed to hear — can enhance mood and the impression of time and place. In my practice, I use this tool sparingly. I am inclined to let the musical bridges do those jobs. In the scene, I direct the actors to provide the mood and ambiance tracks for a sense of location. However, I find underscoring more useful for disguising production flaws, such as noisy tracks, bad edits, weak performances. Of course, it's better to shoot for quiet tracks, good edits and effective performances. But there are times when you have to cut your losses and make the best out of what you have. Hence, the often heard phrase: "We'll save it in the mix." The music should have some reverb on it to "sweeten" it a bit. If there's not enough naturally occurring reverb in the music room, you'll have to add some in the mix.

Source Music. This is music that the characters can hear, present in the environment of the scene, as when your characters are watching a parade or dancing in a night club. The character of source music — instrumentation, EQ, presence, etc. — should contrast with the underscoring, so as to avoid confusion and to provide a more authentic impression. You don't necessarily want to sweeten  source music with reverb. It has to be consistent with the other sounds in the fictive environment.

Bridges. The most frequent method of transitioning from scene to scene is to bridge them with brief strains of music. Bridges have to be long enough (around five seconds) to register with the listener. Longer bridges can help establish that considerable time has eclipsed between scenes. Short ones can contribute to mounting tension. Tempo and character should compliment those of the scenes they're bridging. They can fade in and out under the concluding and beginning lines or start and stop in the clear, depending on the effect you want them to produce. A sting at the beginning sets off the curtain line of the scene preceding it. Ending the bridge on a suspended chord, rather than a dominant one, helps drive the play forward.

Sound Effects and Music Libraries. For mood, source and bridge music, you can acquire CDs or download MP3 files from various music libraries. Most of these libraries carry a variety of pieces in a choice of styles played by differing combinations of instruments. A disk can have several tracks of the same melody: several beds of differing moods, and several bridges of varying lengths. Some downloadable music allows you to pick and choose the instrumentation. Not only are these libraries of disparate quality, the material in each of their catalogues are not equally good. Sometimes, you don't want the best rack. More than once I have chosen a pretty lousy piece of music for comic effect. Some of these libraries offer their wares for free. Most charge a "needle drop" fee — that is, every time a piece is heard in the play, you pay.

Typically, sound effects libraries ask you to buy the desired recording. Once you've made the purchase, every use is free. Commercial production studios often have a supply of recorded sfx on hand. Some will charge you for them, the better ones will not. (They may also have access to stock music, adding a surcharge to the publisher's needle-drop fee.) In my practice, I find the largest and most useful sfx libraries come from Sound Ideas and the BBC, which is sold by Sound Ideas.

Listening

At times, your instruments will tell you that your levels, stereo placement and EQ are at one setting and your ears tell you they're at another setting. You may hear things that the gauges don't register. Which do you believe, the meters or your ears? Your ears are always right. Trust them. The meter readings don't reflect the response of the human auditory apparatus, only what is transmitted to receptors  before being turned into sound waves.

You need to listen to your tracks through three sets of speakers. Normal studio speakers are supposed to give you the best sound. But they only  manifest what listeners will hear at home on a good quality sound system with the volume hot enough to bother the neighbors. They distort the impression of levels, making voices in particular sound more complimentary than they actually are. Use them to make sure every sound you want is present and unwanted sounds are absent.

Much of your audience will be listening in their cars, or on various mediocre portable devices. So you should double check your mixes on a set of small inferior speakers. Stereo mixes should be double checked in mono to make sure levels are still satisfactory and to guard against phase cancellation. When coordinating the stereo positions of two or more related signals — as when a gun shot must come from the hand of the shooter — move them together and check them while wearing cans. Earphones provide the most accuracy for stereo placement.

You must also appreciate the the special acoustical nature of the booth. Its sound-proofing drastically reduces (or should drastically reduce) those noises competing with the signal in most other listening environments. Therefore, when working on a complex sound plot, you may want to bring your mixes home; listen to them in the car, pop them in your home stereo, load them in your iPod before going on your daily jog. If a program that sounds terrific in the studio sounds satisfactory in real-life listening environments, you're home free.

Auditorium Production

Working on-stage in front of a house audience is simpler and easier than studio-based production. Don't try to disguise the staginess; use it as a production element. Playing to a house audience tends to enliven the actors, and audience reaction adds to the enjoyment of the remote listener. So, make sure the audience is adequately miked, especially when the property is comic. If a little "slap" or room tone winds up on the tracks, all the better.

Rather than trying for realism, use sound effects and music in an emblematic fashion — that is, the noises should clearly represent what they're supposed to, but be executed with sufficient artificiality to be in sync with the artificial nature of auditorium production. For instance, rather than using a recording of, say, outdoor ambiance, your foley walkers should use bird whistles and calls. I'm reminded of Alfred Jarry's surrealist comedy Ubu Roi. In the original 1896 staging, instead of filling the stage with spear carriers, one actor stands upstage with a sign on his chest stating "Polish Army." That's emblemism in extremis.

To pull auditorium production off, you need to choose a property that works well in this format. Avoid plays that require intimate performance or subtle inflections. You also need an appropriate performance space. One that is too big for the size of the anticipated audience will seem empty to that audience and dilute their pleasure. If the space is too live, intelligibility will suffer. If the stage is too small, you risk feedback and too much leakage from one mike to the next.

You have to adjust stage lights so that the overheads illuminate the scripts adequately while the frontals give the house a good view of the stage without blinding the players. Using the overheads alone, though best for lighting scripts, casts the talent's eyes in shadow, thus hiding from the house their most expressive feature.

I have never, nor would I ever, try to produce an auditorium show in stereo. There are no commercial or artistic reasons for encountering all the production problems stereo carries with it.

Typical Set Up

1. The musician's area. Even if there's an orchestra pit, it is better for the visual interest of the studio audience to have the musicians on stage -- if the ensemble is small enough and the stage large enough.

2.  "Retiring" area. A row of folding chairs where the actors sit when not standing at the mics. Crowd noises can be done from here as well. Commonly, all actors remain on stage from the beginning of the play to the end.

3. Foley area. 

4. Playing area. The actors should be as far downstage as possible, without compromising sight lines. Use only as many mics as absolutely necessary to avoid feedback and phasing problems. The actors stand in this area, never sit. They do not use music stands as in the sound studio, but hold scripts in their downstage hands.

5. Floor director's area. The floor director moves about so that the stage personnel can see his or her hand signals (see hand signals). The director is in the booth, where s/he can hear the mix over speakers or, better, earphones. The director communicates with the floor director via a headset so that the latter can pass the former's instructions on via hand signals. Although a floor director is not absolutely necessary, the presence of one adds to the visual interest for the live audience. The floor director can and often does double as stage manager.

6. A mike hangs over the studio audience to capture its laughter and applause. For the home audience,  the response of the studio audience is an essential part of the show, especially with comedy.

7. Speakers. The show will sound better to the house of voices, music and sfx are heard through speakers. The actors and musicians need little amplification for the studio audience, but the sfx do. The speakers must be so arranged  to minimize leakage and prevent feedback.

8. The house manager hovers in the rear of the auditorium, doing crowd control and coordinating the start and end of the program with the floor director/stage manager.

The Booth. If there is no booth above or behind the auditorium, the sound crew sets up the mixing board as far back as possible. Ideally, lights and sound are controlled from the booth. On a signal from the house manager or floor director, the house and stage lights are cross-faded at the beginning and the end of the program. Prerecorded sfx are manipulated here and all sounds mixed for transmission or recording. The director and producer remain in this area, where they can guide all personnel during performance.

Tracking and Recording

The Room

Not every recording room in sound studios easily accommodates audio drama. It is not just a matter of size, but of shape and of baffling or the lack thereof. Some rooms possess several kinds of acoustical characteristics depending upon where the mike and sound source are placed and even at what direction they are pointed. Before committing to a room, check it out. Walk around it clapping your hands loudly. If there's slap anywhere in the room, the space is problematic. Either it will have to be augmented with portable baffles, or you'll have to find a better place. Conversely, a small room may be too dead, adding overtones that make voices sound as if recorded in a coffin.

The acoustics of the control booth are less important. After all, listening with earphones eliminates any overtones the booth may possess. However, both the recording space and booth should be protected from outside noises. Sonic interference can originate from radio frequencies leaking into the electronics, from passing traffic, the air conditioning, the building's elevators or nearby construction. Few studios are totally free from such nuisances. Shielding a room from RF or "floating" a room to prevent rumble cost a fortune. Shock mounts on the mikes and gobos (portable baffles) can help inexpensively. If the only way to control noise from the air conditioning is to turn off, you may have to provide your cast and crew with frequent breaks. The location of the studio is also a factor. Is it on a busy or quiet street, on a low or high floor?

You have to check these things out for yourself. The studio boss and engineer probably are not the greatest sources of information on noise control. One studio owner assured me that the room I wished to use was well-shielded from the adjacent room. It was — for music, but not for speech. Acoustical instruments are much louder than the human speaking voice. When my engineer turned up the gain for my actors, he brought up music, especially the bass, leaking from next door.

As important as its acoustical characteristics is the room's lighting. Do the players have enough light to read from without strain? Is there glare? Many of the larger rooms I've seen in the U.S. are designed for musicians, who apparently musicians prefer subdued illumination.

Miking

I am not going into the various makes and models of microphones, except to note that not all work well with the spoken human voice. Further, those that work well for close miking the human voice may not give satisfactory results when used for area miking. Your studio and engineer ought to be on top of the best and latest at their disposal. Consistency is important when you use several mikes in a scene. The mikes should have near identical pick-up characteristics and frequency response. Otherwise, characters supposedly in the same environment will sound as if they're continents apart.

Setting Levels. The first step in any session at the mikes is getting the volume levels right. The actors say a few lines while the engineer makes adjustments. The actors, too, must make adjustments with the engineer's help, to fix their best on-mike position. To help them hit their mark at every take, you may choose to "spike" their positions by placing duck or masking tape down where they're toes should go.

Peak limiting. Set the AGC so that it only brings down the volume of "peaks," or loudest sounds. This will prevent distortion, while preserving most of the frequencies you need to fiddle with later in the mix. The AGC should be used only on voice tracks.

Group Miking: One omni-directional mike covers all, possibly with some strategic spotlighting with one or more directional mikes. In a stereo production, the players move around the stereo field according to the blocking (see BLOCKING IN STEREO above). Few American studios, beyond the better ADR facilities, are configured and accoutered to accommodate area miking. You need a fairly large, high ceilinged, well-cushioned space with even acoustical characteristics throughout the space. (At Sveriges Riksradio in Stockholm, I saw one medium-sized rectangular studio designed with a live side and a dead side.) Gobos can help make a room more suitable for group miking, but it's better if you and your cast don't have to fight the room.

If you're working in stereo, your foley walker has to move around to wherever the sounds are supposed to originate. When working in mono, the foley can get its own are of the studio with mikes appropriately chosen and placed for best pick-up. Foley set-up may take a while, so bring your foley walker in before the actors so as not to waste their time.

Close Miking: One mike per actor, or perhaps two actors sharing a bidirectional mike. For stereo, the voices either have to be panned to the right stereo position as you record or isolated on separate tracks to be panned later in the mix. You may want to use separate tracks even in mono, to provide you more control over gain and leakage. Close miking takes advantage of the proximity effect, but creates other problems, especially popping. As part of your advance work, check to see if the studio has a supply of pop filters. There are two basic types, one that fits over the mike like a false nose and one disk-shaped filter that is positioned in font of the mike's business end. Too many mikes hot in a smallish space can cause phase cancellation. Therefore, when a mike is idle for a stretch of lines, the engineer should mute it.

Music Stands. Some producers like to give actors music stands for their scripts. A clip-on lamp supplements the general lighting. The stand is padded to reduce paper noise and metallic overtones on the voice. I, for one, find that music stands get in the players' way. Actors should hold their scripts in most instances. Stands work okay when you have just a few close-miked speakers in the scene at one time, when your tracking solo narration, or when the actor's hands are arthritic or shakey.

Movement. You and your director have to diligently keep talent from undo movement, especially leaning into the mike, which many actors tend to do. Even looking down into the script or from one page to another, can make an alterable difference in level.

E.Q. Equalization should be neutral as you lay tracks down. You want to lay down a full range of frequencies. Adjust, if, necessary, in post. Adjustments made at the wrong time can seriously limit your options at the right time.

Room Tone. Every performance space lays some presence, or room tone, on the tracks laid down therein. When recording for possible editing in post, always lay down a generous amount of room tone to keep handy. This is sometimes called a silence track, as all that's on it is the ambient and barely noticeable flow of air in the recording space when all is still. In post, when you're editing in a pause fill the pause with room tone. Otherwise, all sound will shut down noticeably for the duration. This is, perhaps, more important while working in analogue media, which tend to make such drop-outs more pronounced than the quieter digital methods.

Back up. Whenever practicable, preserve your raw tracks on a back up medium. My current engineer records simultaneously into his computer and on DATs. 

Slating and Track Sheets

To facilitate editing, each take should be slated. Usually this means that the recordist announces the scene (or script and line numbers) and take I.D.

"Act 2, scene 2, take 1"

"Page 4, line 2 to line 6, wild track"

In the analogue world, a "slate tone" — an electronic note of low frequency — is automatically laid down under the recordist's voice. Later, when the tape is fast forwarded or reversed, the tone becomes a high beep, allow you to find takes quickly during the edit. In the digital realm slate tones are superfluous.

On the other hand, track sheets are always advisable.

Stereo

I find few artistic reasons for working in stereo and several compelling ones for not doing it. Most of your listeners will be either hearing your show in mono or in an unsatisfactory stereo set-up. Stereo limits some of audio theater's fluidity of time and place. It's expensive and time consuming to produce. On the other hand, large cast plays, lush mixes and music-heavy productions gain a clarity and definition in stereo impossible in mono. If I don't have a compelling reason to work in stereo, I prefer not to.

As with mono, you have two basic options for tracking in stereo.

Group miking. With a stereo mike or two mikes set up as a "stereo pair," you position and move talent and foley left and right, forward and back as required by the stereo blocking. The effect thus produced seems organic and well-blended. Audiences listening in mono are not likely to lose sounds placed near extreme right or left. To ensure that quiet sounds don't get lost, you can "spotlight" by placing an individual mike before the source and panning it on the console to the correct stereo position. To track properly this way, you need a large, high-ceilinged and relatively dead environment so that sounds bouncing off the walls do not add unwanted overtones. (As mentioned in the "Overview" above, such facilities are hard to come by and expensive.) You also have to take precious rehearsal time to teach the stereo blocking to the talent and foley walkers.

One reason why you need a large space for group miking is that you need to back the actors away quite a bit from the mike to avoid "wandering." If the actors are too close, every time they look up or down, they'll jump in stereo. As you have to keep a distance of three feet or more and still get an on-mike effect, not only the room, but the mike and even the wiring have to be just right. Aberrations in any of those areas can add hash, unwanted noise.

Close Miking. Each voice and sound gets its own mike. You handle stereo placement by adjusting pan pots on the console or their digital equivalent. You may either adjust for stereo as you record or, isolating each mike on a separate track, worry about it later as you mix. Lack of access to the kind of facility needed for group tracking forces close miking upon you. One mike per sound provides precise stereo placement, control over unwanted ambient noises by dipping tracks when they're not needed, and flexibility in adjusting the volume of various discrete tracks to satisfactory and audible relative levels.

However, this method adds days, if not weeks, to post production. You have to beware of phasing problems caused by having too many mikes hot at one time while tracking. The mis en scθne can lose integration. Sounds near far right and left can get lost, the apparent relative levels can change radically depending on the listener's sitting off stereo center, or not having his right and left channels balanced properly, of having his EQ adjusted too light or too dark.

Location Recording

I am by no means an expert on location, or "field," recording. In my very limited experience, I'm very pleased with the results I've gotten, not just for realistic ambiances and overtones, but for conveying the sense of movement. Outdoor scenes, so difficult to lay down in the studio are best done outdoors, granted easy access to appropriate environments. When I was working on a series in Santa Monica, we taped most outdoor scenes in the studios parking lot. When we needed extra quiet, as, say, for country locations, we taped outdoor scenes on early weekend mornings when we could anticipate little or no nearby traffic. Light-weight portable equipment is cheaper and more flexible than ever these days. If you cannot get your hands on a suitable recording facility, you might even consider location work a superior alternative to making do with an acoustically inferior room.

Post

Editing

Editing proceeds in various steps throughout post-production. The first edit is an assembly of the good takes in sequential order. Once assembled, the performances have to be edited again to remove pops, mouth noises and fine tune the actors' timing by adding desired pauses and eliminating undesirable ones. The addition, or overdubbing  of music and pre-recorded sound effects may require further edits to make room for them.

The only engineers I've met who enjoy this part of the process are not cases who get a benefit from it as occupational therapy. It is energy-sapping. Fortunately, the digital domain, depending on the equipment and software) can greatly speed the process and remove much of the aggravation. Further, it enables "non-destructive" edits. You don't physically slice away a quantity of recording tape with a razor blade, you merely sort of set it aside. You can always retrieve anything you've "cut" until, if and when you wipe it off your hard-drive or record over your DAT to make room for another production.

Overdubbing

The recipe, more or less in the following order, is as follows:

• Add atmospheres, music and sound effects.

• Add reverb and other special effects.

• Place everything in proper stereo position.

Note that nothing important goes only on one channel; no signal comes out all the way left or right, because someone listening in less than optimal conditions may lose one of the channels.

• Adjust EQ as necessary so that scenic elements sound like they're all in the same space.

Outdoor scenes should be set brighter than indoor scenes.

The play's overall EQ should be slightly sharp and penetrating.

The Mix

Adjust levels to their final settings. Here is when you adjust AGC to do more than limit peaks. Still adjusting only on voice tracks, you "compress" the actors' tracks so that the very quietest bits come up and the very loudest bits come down. There is only so much gain riding you can do manually. You may have to make different settings for different scenes. For normal ones, you don't want to over-do it. However, when your characters are speaking over a loud background, you may need to step up the compression so that none of their lines get lost under the din. On come occasions, musical beds need to be compressed if the dynamic range changes suddenly and intermittently obscuring the lines.

All important dialogue ought to be well into the foreground. Set all other tracks relative to the voices. Doing so may take several passes, adjusting first the voices, then the background, then fine tuning the voices, then the background again, and finally making sure that volume of individual scenes or beats have a smooth median level throughout.

With the right software, almost all of these settings are done digitally and can be automated. The console can be ignored, except for setting playback levels in the booth. If you do not have automation available, every pass has to be individually adjusted. The mix has to be done piece meal with adjustments recorded on empty tracks and then edited together. In such a case, I hope you and your engineer take thorough notes.

Packaging

The packaging, also called wrap-arounds, includes all necessary announcements and public service or commercial spots, pauses and beds for local station breaks . Your final fully-mixed master should not include the packaging, though you may wish to attach musical beds for announcements and breaks. This is allows you to customize the play for different uses. You may require one kind of packaging for broadcast that includes acknowledgement to the network or distributor, one or more pause of sixty to 120 seconds for breaks and a "systems cue" before the breaks and at the end of the program. You may need announcements for the top and bottom of each side of cassettes and another set for the beginning and end CDs (see CREDITS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS in the appendix below). Download and satellite release may require  their own packaging.

At his writing, it is common for the packaging to include electronic indexes on CDs every three or so minutes. Usually the publisher adds this before mass-producing copies for sale and rental. There's a practical reason for this in audiobooks. Listeners play audiobooks in chunks, for the duration of  their commutes or endurance. They need to stop and turn off the CD and find their place when they continue listening. That's what the indexes are for. Plays are meant to be heard entirely in one sitting, or one episode at a time. Therefore, I recommend indexing only after each act or, if the episodes are a half-hour long or less, after each episode. This is because the inaudible indexes can inadvertently add brief pauses where they occur. Since acts and episode end with a pause anyway, an index at those points can't degrade your program.

Contents • Intro • Gimme a break! • Overview • Management • The P.A. • The Text • MS Formats • Mike Acting • Casting • Stereo • Directing • Production • Foley • Appendices • Author's Bio •  NATF home page