radio-mic use in amateur theatre and schools
Tue, 17 Oct 2006, 10:16 pmDavid Ashton14 posts in thread
radio-mic use in amateur theatre and schools
Tue, 17 Oct 2006, 10:16 pmI frequently deliver a load of radio mics to a theatre group or school and the director is relieved that all his[her] problems are over.We just clip on the mics and the weakest voice will come thundering out, in tune, over the band next to the stage.Oh dear.Radio mics are complex devices,mine have 700 channels but that does not mean you can use anything like that number because they interact with each other and other radio sources in unpredictable ways, so you have to select the dozen or so frequencies that will work in the venue and set these on the transmitters and receivers.Each transmitter also has a gain control which needs to be set correctly.You then have to plug in the actual lavalier mic into the transmitter and fit it to the actor in such a way that they don't rip it out during the dance routine.Then you can fit fully charged batteries and you can start to plug them into the P.A.Now working a 16 channel mixer is difficult at the best of times but with actors entering and exiting the stage at rapid intervals keeping track of which channels need to be live and more importantly which ones need to be off can be a nightmare even more so if actors are changing mics to save hiring more.Just to make life more interesting the omni-directional mics usually used on beltpacks will pick up all the sound in their location, so a weak voice next to a band will only be amplified relative to the band.So who's your sound operator? well Fred missed out on a part in this show so we thought he could do it.Oh dear.I know I'll be out every night, the problems will be ,mic ripped out,flat battery,lost antenna,channel changed on belt pack,etc.Now you are wondering why this rant.The point is please don't use radio mics unless you absolutely have to,a good voice teacher would probably be better value.If you really must use them prepare to spend a lot of time getting them right and rehearse with them a lot.Finally your sound operator must be good and keen and will probably need an assistant to keep tabs on which mics are 'live'.Finally be prepared for something to go wrong, you are using a highly complex system and the scope for things stuffing up is significant, always have a spare.Sorry to be so complex but it was hard to explain any other way.
Overheard discussions
Sat, 21 Oct 2006, 09:24 amWalter Plinge
Ahh, my first production on sound was using 16 radio mics. I was the assistant but we split the board in two, so we each controlled 8 mics. We had a fairly co-operative bunch that didn't fiddle with their mics We were able to lock the settings and had a separate person who's only job was to make sure that the mics were plugged into the transmitter and gaffered to their costume etc. But our bunch did not understand that the mics were not simply turned off when they were offstage. The sound crew were the most informed bunch of people, between hearing what the actors AND staging AND orchestra were saying. Even though we had 3 people on mics, we still managed to stuff up. In the dress rehersal, we were told by the orchestra who was coming on next. So we turned on those characters' mics. As you can guess, the orchestra doesn't remember the storyline or the characters. Instead we got over the speakers was three fairies insulting the director in the illusion of privacy...