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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Sound Design Consultants
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-25-2003 02:01 AM
quote:
First off I hope your architect is ONLY a restoration architect.
Just to terrify you further, there's no guarantee that they're good just because they're exclusively restoration architects or have worked on well-known theaters. A theater Ed Jurich & I know was sold, the new folks were all starry-eyed & excited & called in a well-known theater restoration firm to consult about what "needed to be done". They showed me the company's report, & it was astounding in its huge list of things that "must be done". The first thing in my memory is that they said the WHOLE approx. 1,000 seat balcony must be REMOVED AND REPLACED with a new one, since the original was built in 1927 & did not meet ADA guidelines. Then they specified that all non-stage space be remodeled to make meeting rooms, offices, etc. - including ALL OFFSTAGE STORAGE spaces. One short statement was "Remove movie projection equipment." - with no reason why, nothing to put in that place, & oblivious to the fact that the theater was generating thousands of dollars annually from a summer film series & odd films. The report was so mind-boggling that I can't remember the name of the firm, but remember that they sent out lots of glossy brochures to LHAT members & theaters. They plainly didn't even know how a theater worked! Where do the stage folks store lights, cables, soft goods, tools, set pieces that aren't on yet, etc.? One theatre victimized by this had to keep all its soft goods, rope, sound equipment, lights, etc. in a big rented truck parked outside the loading door, hauling it back & forth through rain & cold, until additional funds were found to create storage space for the stage guys again. At this same meeting, a local architect had "attached" itself to the group to consult for a 'minimal expense', & recommended INSANE things like increasing concession area by demolishing the back wall of the auditorium to create a bar/lounge. Noise & traffic aside (there haven't been 'lounges' & 'bars' attached to auditoriums since the opera house days), the guy plainly didn't know the back wall was 18" of poured concrete (to isolate noise from the auditorium, of course)! I wish I'd gotten a photocopy of these 'reports', but my head was swimming. These things attract folks smelling money from the uneducated like flies drawn to a maple syrup spill.
Which reminds me, you'll get a lot of statements relating to ADA: "ADA requires this, that, etc.", & much of it will be spurious, to put it nicely. You need to get a copy of them, familiarize yourself with them.
The DOJ has the guidelines online in html & pdf
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/reg3a.html
A 2002 version is at
http://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm
And it would probably be a good idea to get a book from Amazon about Americans With Disabilities Act Construction.
It's important to note that the ADA applies to NEW CONSTRUCTION, not REPAIRS AND MAINTENANCE. Put in new carpet, fix seats & aisle lights, etc. & it is not neccessary to widen the aisles, change the slope, put in new seats, etc. ALTERATIONS come under the heading of new construction, but they only affect the FEATURE altered.
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Alteration.
An alteration is a change to a building or facility that affects or could affect the usability of the building or facility or part thereof. Alterations include, but are not limited to, remodeling, renovation, rehabilitation, reconstruction, historic restoration, resurfacing of circulation paths or vehicular ways, changes or rearrangement of the structural parts or elements, and changes or rearrangement in the plan configuration of walls and full-height partitions. Normal maintenance, reroofing, painting or wallpapering, or changes to mechanical and electrical systems are not alterations unless they affect the usability of the building or facility.
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(1) General. Alterations to existing buildings and facilities shall comply with the following:
(a) No alteration shall be undertaken which decreases or has the effect of decreasing accessibility or usability of a building or facility below the requirements for new construction at the time of alteration.
(b) If existing elements, spaces, or common areas are altered, then each such altered element, space, feature, or area shall comply with the applicable provisions of 4.1.1 to 4.1.3 Minimum Requirements (for New Construction). If the applicable provision for new construction requires that an element, space, or common area be on an accessible route, the altered element, space, or common area is not required to be on an accessible route except as provided in 4.1.6(2) (Alterations to an Area Containing a Primary Function.)
(c) If alterations of single elements, when considered together, amount to an alteration of a room or space in a building or facility, the entire space shall be made accessible.
(d) No alteration of an existing element, space, or area of a building or facility shall impose a requirement for greater accessibility than that which would be required for new construction. For example, if the elevators and stairs in a building are being altered and the elevators are, in turn, being made accessible, then no accessibility modifications are required to the stairs connecting levels connected by the elevator. If stair modifications to correct unsafe conditions are required by other codes, the modifications shall be done in compliance with these guidelines unless technically infeasible.
[...]
(h)* Entrances: If a planned alteration entails alterations to an entrance, and the building has an accessible entrance, the entrance being altered is not required to comply with 4.1.3(8), except to the extent required by 4.1.6(2). If a particular entrance is not made accessible, appropriate accessible signage indicating the location of the nearest accessible entrance(s) shall be installed at or near the inaccessible entrance, such that a person with disabilities will not be required to retrace the approach route from the inaccessible entrance. Appendix Note
(i) If the alteration work is limited solely to the electrical, mechanical, or plumbing system, or to hazardous material abatement, or automatic sprinkler retrofitting, and does not involve the alteration of any elements or spaces required to be accessible under these guidelines, then 4.1.6(2) does not apply.
(j) EXCEPTION: In alteration work, if compliance with 4.1.6 is technically infeasible, the alteration shall provide accessibility to the maximum extent feasible. Any elements or features of the building or facility that are being altered and can be made accessible shall be made accessible within the scope of the alteration.
Technically Infeasible. Means, with respect to an alteration of a building or a facility, that it has little likelihood of being accomplished because existing structural conditions would require removing or altering a load-bearing member which is an essential part of the structural frame; or because other existing physical or site constraints prohibit modification or addition of elements, spaces, or features which are in full and strict compliance with the minimum requirements for new construction and which are necessary to provide accessibility.
If the alteration is a new door, that new door must meet ADAAG. The spaces inside & out, if unaltered, are not subject to ADAAG.
The DOJ has a ADA FAQ at
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/pubs/mythfct.txt
The overview is
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MYTH: The ADA is rigid and requires businesses to spend lots of
money to make their existing facilities accessible.
FACT: The ADA is based on common sense. It recognizes that
altering existing structures is more costly than making new
construction accessible. The law _only_ requires that public
accommodations (e.g. stores, banks, hotels, and restaurants)
remove architectural barriers in existing facilities when it is
"readily achievable", i.e., it can be done "without much
difficulty or expense." Inexpensive, easy steps to take include
ramping one step; installing a bathroom grab bar; lowering a
paper towel dispenser; rearranging furniture; installing offset
hinges to widen a doorway; or painting new lines to create an
accessible parking space.
ADA compliance actually is a good idea. It applies to NEW CONSTRUCTION, & it's a good idea to make new construction accessible because it's then not expensive to include in design as it's architecturally standardized for most things (doors, ramps, etc.), & accessible features mean 'mo customers, 'mo money. Accessible seating in a flat floor theater means a couple of spaces or even removable chairs in a few places to accommodate wheelchairs when needed.
Get the ADAAG, get familiar, go to the meetings. There will be a lot of "well, I guess they should know what they're doing"; but if you take your hands off the wheel, you're gonna have a wreck.
quote:
Don`t those shiny Egyptian columns refelct a lot of light?
You're looking at them with the house lights up, & a lot of spill from the footlights (which are being used as a curtain warmer). Even proscenium theaters with gilt proscenia (woo-hoo!) aren't reflective during a movie - think about it, house lights are far down, & the light from the movie is an isolated, masked square further in within the masking. Many theaters (even postwar singles) had movable masking of gold lame' with only a 10" or so strip of black at the edges for masking.
There are legal ramifications of ADA outside of construction, the standard one is that if only orchestra-level seating is wheelchair accessible, but balcony is not, wheelchair accessible seating must made available *at the same price* if balcony seats are sold at lower cost. Just the wheelchair spaces.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 12-25-2003 01:31 PM
William Hooper has touched on a great many things that are true about working with Historic or even "multi-purpose" venues.
Anytime film and live performances are mixed you need a GREAT team to pull it off well. The screen and film part is pretty easy. The screen will be either flown if you have a fly-gallery or a roll down...much more expensive but without fly space there are few alternatives. I suggest that the screen and masking system be flown together so that you don't depend on the other line sets with soft goods for masking...it can be done but keeping it all together makes movie time less of a burden...particularly if it is interspersed with live-show (including load-ins or load-outs). Think about having the screen be movable...that is...if the live show people really need the line set the screen is on...can the screen system be moved to an alternate line set for storage further upstage?
Keep the screen as far down stage as possible this usually is about the 3rd line set after the 1st electric. Normally there will be a debate on where the screen goes...if left to the live-theatre people...you will be so far up stage that the screen width is going to be about only 10-feet due to poor sight lines. You also want to keep your speakers as far downstage as possible...the stage house is like the most poorly tuned speaker cabinet you can find...way too boomy.
A big battle I always face is the surrounds...this is an area, where William touched that has the movie equipment also affecting the appearance of the theatre. I often lobby hard for them to be visible and accepted. There is no substitute for a good surround array. Sometimes you can incorporate them into the decor of the room but have them planned in EARLY. If you have esthetic police in the theatre...they will be the tough ones. If film is an important aspect of the theatre then there should be concessions allowed for them. Film audiences expect them too (to be visible). Again if they can be considered from the get-go...you have a better chance of them fitting in with the decor.
I've done invisible surrounds and they are better than nothing but always a compromise that I try to minimize. Also note, doing it wrong is often more expensive than doing it right. That is...your inexpensive surround speaker my jump 2-3 fold in cost to have one that works in its "assigned" place. Also, you might need additional processing to have the surround (or even the stage channels) perform well in the given space (they are all different).
Things to look at on your stage speakers...if your consultant suggests conventional theatre speakers (direct radiators), wants you to use the cluster speakers above the stage then move on...they don't know what they are talking about. When you are on a stage...think horn loaded systems...you don't want the stage house participating in your sound. The cluster is out due to its location (the sound will be quite disjointed) and it often is best with voice...not so good with full-range movie soundtracks)...as Bill said, you might get away with it for an old time mono film. I also suggest getting the subwoofers off the stage...they can go up in the cloud or down below (in the stage). With some creative audio work you can get these systems to do surprisingly well despite the hostle live theatre environment.
As to architecs...I can't remember the last good one I came across for multi-purpose venues...prior experience seems to mean little...and no guarantee that your venue will turn out well. Before you choose...go and see what they have done and talk to the people that used them...how happy are they...how happy are you with the end result...how much of that was overcomming the bad design?
Below are a semi-recent design I worked on. It is the Kimball theatre in Williamsburg, VA. The contraints were that there were to be no visible speakers yet they were very unhappy with the original, use the cluster, design. The sound was quite disjointed and no surround sound. The CWF wanted to keep the very simple and colonial look of the theatre (as did the people donating the money).
(This is the rear of the auditorium...behind two of the squarish panels on each balcony are surround speakers)
(These are the "slots" where the lighting instruments live...and some surround speakers)
We did some computer modeling (using EASE) to locate the speakers in the "slots" that are about 1/3 and 2/3 down the ceiling and on the "spot light balconies" so that the speakers were behind the fabric and intrude slightly into the balcony area (not a customer area...only the sound board operator and spot light people can see them. It took some DSP to get the room well tuned (very hard surfaces and the time delay had to be set for the various speaker locations for a consistant time arrival). The stage speakers are flown, the screen is a roll-down. Even the stage speakers (my trusty A-5s with new drivers/Mantaray horns) were effectively tri-amped so that the bass frequencies were rolled into the subs below 100Hz to keep them off the stage. The customer was quite pleased.
This is just one example of dealing with an historic room or a difficult room..it is a closely woven thing between the owners of the room and what they want from it and the technical requirements that are put upon it. In the above example, the choice was made to compromise the surround array to avoid seeing them. The side surrounds are some 25-30 feet in the air hidden in the slots but the rear surrounds work with them as a team to pull it off. I have other examples where the surround were located in the tradional places and the results were superior and less costly but the customer didn't mind seeing them. .
There are no easy answers...good luck.
Steve
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-26-2003 03:55 AM
Just to add additional reinforcement to what Steve Guttag said:
quote:
I suggest that the screen and masking system be flown together so that you don't depend on the other line sets with soft goods for masking...it can be done but keeping it all together makes movie time less of a burden...
That's absoultely the case. The more work of masking with unattached teasers & borders, the more time to set up, the more re-tying, time to check, kicking in the legs, the border's not straight, disappointment with a top scalloped edge when a border is used for top masking, the more running out of time with it being 'close enough', the more having to pull down something that was put up for another show, etc. Work, work, work. System design in a theater revolves around the stevedoring work onstage. Work from the maxim "People are lazy". You will automatically bring into consideration things which will cause mechanical problems & must be dealt with, etc. Make it as self-contained & easily operable as possible. A movie is a cheap, easy show, keep it that way. Bring in the screen, roll out the speakers, set the masking, open the doors.
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Keep the screen as far down stage as possible this usually is about the 3rd line set after the 1st electric.
That's always what works best for everything & everyone, film & stage folks. Steve points out the reasons as far as movie sound is concerned, but it's also best for the stage folks. There's not a lot you want to hang downstage. You've got the front of house lights & first electric for lighting that area. After the first electric, the next 2 line sets will be by scripture & technical neccessity legs then a border. Right after that, it's never been a good place for anything except a movie screen. It's too far forward to hang any drop except when someones's just playing the forestage, lights don't need to go there because the 1st electric & FOH lights are there.
A problem with that position & some others is potential damage to the screen. Flying the screen in & out, there's a hazard of catching the screen on lights or flown set pieces. When your theater was built, the screen was hung much further back, lights were also a permanent hang - border lights, in a kind of supended trough, they weren't as wide when aimed (like lights today). You can often see a patched rip in screens at the top &/or bottom where someone has taken in or out the screen or the electric in front or behind, & either the gel frame from an instrument on the first electric has snagged the screen, or a connector from a light on the 2nd electric has snagged the screen. If I Ruled The World, every flown screen would have at the top & bottom a "bumper bar" running the width of the screen at the top & bottom, on the front & back, to knock any lights protruding into the plane of the screen when it goes up or down. It's easy & no cost to notice it, fix the problem & continue, straighten a gel frame back out or re-aim a light. A rip in a screen is ugly, costly & doesn't come back.
Which brings up another point with screen frames, wherever they're hung. THEY'VE GOT TO BE AS SKINNY AS POSSIBLE. I've seen new screens on new frames hung, the designers apparently thought they owned the whole damn stage front to back. It's like they've flown a construction scaffold. They need to go to work. Space is the most excruciating valuable commodity front to back. Everyone thinks their stage is too shallow, they need more linesets, etc. It's in the interest of the screen assembly's survival that it be as close to as flat as a piece of paper as possible, & essential in the operation of the stage.
You mentioned someone had been working with you on movie sound, are you already showing movies? Are you putting in a new screen or re-hanging the new one? In a proscenium theater, your screen will need to be the size of the entire proscenium opening, & will require both horizontal & side masking. People are disappointed if the picture doesn't go all the way to fill up the proscenium openin as much as possible. Scope films need to go all the way to the sides, that means they'll be masked horizontally; 'Academy' films (like Casablanca, etc.) need to go all the way top to bottom, they'll have to be masked on the sides. You should address all your problems with the screen frame & masking at once. Manual masking is a chore, screaming out the port or on the radio instructions to someone onstage, etc. The easier a show is to run, the more often & better it will be run, so if the projectionist has control of the masking & grand drape, it's all better.
Frank Angel had mentioned here earlier his design for incorporating the grand drape in motorized masking at the screen: the narrow piece of'edge' of the masking follows the motorized section & hides behind the edges when they come together. This would also be a good time to point out an appearance issue often missed at retrofitted PAC's - the screen masking isn't neccessarily & really shouldn't be solid black from the screen all the way to the prosc. If you go to a theater, you'll see it's actually just a black edge 6" or 8" wide, the rest is thin drapes complementing the decor. The same should be true for top masking - just a black edge, the rest something decoratively appropriate. Since it's usually just sheet-like, it would be attractive, easy, fun & historically appropriate to create the top masking to masquerade as a lambrequin above the masking edge. Most of the way these big theaters work to create a dramatic appearance is through a mechanism of stressing verticality: ornament placed high up, lights that shine up from below or down from above, etc. The area of your top masking will be a place that people's eyes are directed to, it needs to be appropriate & rewarding.
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Below are a semi-recent design I worked on. It is the Kimball theatre in Williamsburg, VA.
That's NICE! The Kimball has no balcony rail position or box booms to hang FOH lights. So you can see they've got their front of house lighting in a lighting trench in the ceiling. This is a typical solution in auditoriums with flat ceilings, or in that case, a simple vaulted ceiling. You see how it works: you create a trench in the ceiling that is not visible from the audience's "downstage" viewpoint excepting far forward in the orchestra seating.
That's a bit of an optical trick, cutting a trench doesn't work for theaters with ceiling construction &/or decoration that may be ornate: domes, horseshoes, etc.
Domes & horseshoes, if deep enough, can use same angle of putting the stuff downstage for invisibility, but put it up in the dome in an area cut out of the downstage section of the dome. It was done in original designs, & in retrofits.
Here's a little picture of the Tivoli in Downer's Grove, IL from
http://www.classiccinemas.com/History/tivoli.asp
You can't see the fascia on the interior edge of the dome from our (audience) side, but they've cut it out & hung FOH lights there instead of cutting a lightiing trench. They've got no balcony rail, this is used instead & looks better.
It's not new, the Chicago was built that way
The 'portholed' decorative fascia in the dome is FOH lighting across the (unseen) back.
In larger houses that need to attract larger shows, there are never enough lights, lighting positions, follow spots, linesets, etc. Usually they need as many places to hang FOH lights as possible: balcony rail & box booms are standard.
Here's a picture showing lights on the balcony rail & a box boom, cruelly compressed by me from Ed Jurich's collection of Mobile Saenger pictures at
http://www.angelfire.com/al/saenger/
Nicholas' theatre has a problem with flat side walls & little ornamentation. Box booms are usually de-emphasized by an onslaught of surrounding attached ornament. They're too-often just pipes bolted vertically to the wall, but next to a highly-decorated organ grille that looks like a bomb that's gone off behind a merry-go-round, they're not exactly painful. The Mobile Saenger's balcony rail lighting is not very distracting, since there's lots of ornament there, but the box booms look like something the plumbers bolted on the walls. Making its appearance worst is the fact that the interior decoration was reduced to white-painted walls.
The box booms on the decorated walls of the Atlanta Fox are not as painfully distracting & ugly.
For auditoriums where the box booms are very distracting, 'downstage' panels integrated with the decoration are used to conceal box booms. Since the light is going the other way, they can be scrim material & speakers placed behind them.
One of the coolest solutions for concealing box booms is possible if the organ grilles are recessed. Then, the unseen fascia around on the upstage side can be cut away into a trench, & the boom placed there.
Here's the Rialto Square theater in Joliet, from http://theatreorgans.com/il/joliet/Rialto.html
Where are the box booms? Okay, they're not using any of the lights at the moment, but you can see them. The inside, upstage surface of the column on the right side of the organ grille has been cut away (black in the picture), & the boom & lights are in there. Excellent work.
Joe Ducibella came up with that solution, but as he said, it's what Rapp & Rapp built in their later houses.
It's all a matter of looking at it like a bunch of gears, what the machine needs to do, & what's around for functional inspiration & use.
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