Alexis Attalla - A Chorus Line

About the Show

From my initial meeting with the director, we discussed how his vision included showcasing to the audience how each of these dancers is an individual. The main theme he had was "Unity through Individuality".

This theme made its way heavily into my design idea and choices, influencing my decision to make spatial audio and audio movement throughout the entire audio system a large part of my design. In my view, before I had started programming the show, I felt that location based audio could help contribute to this overall theme of unity through individuality. The idea was that each voice would be located in a separate part of the audio system but when combined and singing together, they would merge and blend together to create a unified whole. By placing different voices in different speakers in the surround system, this also created a much larger, deeper picture than one usually gets from a musical when the audio is coming solely from the main speakers usually placed on stage.

Another important aspect of my design, a part from adjusting the placements during songs, I also used the front system to help change the picture that was being created on stage. The audio system that was built had three main systems coming from the stage: the mains (located on stage left and stage right), the center cluster (hung on the centerline above the proscenium), and the front fill (located on the front lip of the stage in front of the orchestra pit). The idea was that for dialogue, all voices would be placed in the mains. During songs or in moments where we wanted to highlight a specific character, their voice would fade into the center cluster. The idea behind this was to center the picture on the stage and force the audience to give a little more attention to the voice coming from the center cluster.

The band, meanwhile, was located primarily in the Front Fill but when I wanted to create depth in the space and felt that there was room in the design for it, I had the band swell out into the surrounding house system.

The end product was a console file with just over 300 cues, most of them automated band movement.

Click here for an in-depth view at the creative process for this show

Audio Preview

Below is a look at what I tried to achieve in the space with this show. The audio was copied from the raw audio received by the microphones throughout the show and exported as audio files into ProTools were I took the files and mixed them into what you hear below.

The idea for this song in particular was to try and gain the director's vision of "unity though individuality". I tried to achieve this though highlighting Diana's voice in the center cluster, forcing the audience's attention to her onstage. When the ensemble came in to sing, I had them in the surrounds, slowly and almost unnoticeably swelling together from being very separated throughout the space into coming into a unified whole in the surrounds until the last moment where I created a cue that took the ensembles vocals from being in the surrounds into everyone's voices being throughout the whole system. Through this, I tried to create a whole room full of their voices for the last chord.

The audio for this video is a partial clip of the original track that I edited. More info on that track is below. The audio in this video is a 24 bit wav file.

The full song's audio mix is here. The track included 28 band mics and 22 vocal tracks. Audio was recorded through the console during the show into Logic and exported to individual tracks that I imported into ProTools and then mixed and edited in ProTools. For website uploads, this track is an mp3 and does not show the beset quality of the original wav file.

Paperwork

Console File

A quick overview of the console file used for this show

A screenshot of one of the Matrix pages on the DiGiCo console file

Another Matrix page from the console file

A look at the Matrix outputs used for this show in the Bing Theater

Sheet 1 of 2 of the Aux Channels used in this show

Sheet 2 of 2 of the Aux Channels

A list view of the Aux channels and their outputs

A screenshot of one of the group sheets used for this show. Groups were used to route the audio throughout the surround system in the theatre.

Another screenshot of the second group page used for this show.

A list view of the groups. Spaces were left as groups were added and removed throughout the building process of this show. This is the final show list.

A look at the Matrix ins. These were the groups that were routed to specific speaker groups allowing me to program the audio throughout the system in the way that I envisioned.

A look at the inputs used in this show

A screenshot of the layout of the console

A look at the effects rack used for the show

An in-depth view at cues 0-76 and the control groups used during those cues.

An example look at some of the changes that were programmed into the board during cues that were taken by the mixer. Typically, cues are used to make changes to the routing of the audio in the system or, more often, used to change control groups assigned to the bank of faders most easily accessible to the mixer. Cues in this file were programmed to do both of those things. The Mixer was in charge of 8 dialog control group faders and the rest of them were pre-programmed and had assigned changes in each cue. If things went differently, the mixer was able to override the pre-programmed function if need be.