Holly Wakeman
SOUND DESIGNER AND PHOTOGRAPHER
Hello my name is Holly and I am the sound designer and photographer for Primordial Productions Theatre Company.
I am a third year performing art student at Canterbury Christchurch University studying a major in singing.
I chose to take the Practice as Research Module as I am a creative individual and would like to use my skills gained throughout my time at university in my final assessment.
Whilst already having an ear for music I have gained an interest in sound design with specific interest into abstract sound design. I hope to be able to use my current skills in this performance whilst expanding my knowledge of sound design.
I am also the designated photographer for the group and have had the opportunity to document some of the process.
PHOTOGRAPHY
The majority of the photographs on the main page were created and edited by myself to capture the company as a whole. Unfortunately, as I was taking the photo I wasn't in the whole group photograph.
SOUND DESIGN
THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE PERFORMANCE
The concept of the original piece is reality to performance, with overarching themes of storytelling, corruption of power and estrangement.
Sound contributes to the atmosphere of a performance. For this project, the aim of the sound design is to create a distancing/alienation effect on the audience whilst incorporating Brecht's Theory of Estrangement. The idea behind distancing is to interrupt the audiences fixation on the narrative of the stories being told and bringing a sense of familiarisation to a show that is being performed in multiple layers of reality, by jolting the audience back to everyday reality it reminds them that they are watching an artificial show.
I have created soundscapes that are relevant to the environment within each reality.
The Theban Players Present; A Delightfully Theban Performance in Honour of our Glorious King and Theban Noble persons, On the subject Of Thebes’ Great Stories That Truly Enrich our Theban Pride
"Title By Calum Harbottle"
LAYERS OF REALITY
SUB REALITIES IN PERFORMANCE AND THEMES
1 - OBJECTIVE REALITY - (2020 Canterbury) - Performativity
2 - SUBJECTIVE REALITY - (Theban Players) - Arts and Conflict
3 - FALSE REALITY - (Theban market people) - Propaganda
4 - SYMBOLIC REALITY - (Brechtian Masques) - Storytelling
THE PROCESS
This is an early rehearsal of the marketplace scene with initial sound ideas
THE MARKETPLACE
Level 3 Reality
The Marketplace is the heart of the performance, it is a platform that would be returned to between stories that the audience would begin to become familiar with.
The marketplace is a scene that builds into a chaotic mess before being interrupted by sound. There are 3 stalls and two thieves, its a cycle where the thieves steal the products and the stall owner retrieve said objects, this speeds up and the tension and volume builds within the scene.
My job was to create an atmosphere of the Marketplace through sound design
The first initial thoughts about sound for the Marketplace was to have some sort of Folk music. I came across this piece of sound when speeding up records, it has a really sweet little tune which I thought presented the age of the stories well. to create a sense of estrangement I gradually distorted the ending until it is only just recognisable.
However the group were not completely on board with the sound as its sounded more Medieval at the beginning and felt the Marketplace needed something a bit lighter.
I was thinking about the ambience of a Marketplace, there is always such a collage of sounds and voices. The actors themselves were creating a lot of vocal noise so I wanted to replicate that environment in the sound. I decided as we were portraying Greek Marketplace to find a recording of a Greek Market, I also thought about how I could show that we were in a different level. Meta theatre means the audience is watching a show of a show and typically when a musical happens there's music so I decided to add Greek music. To add a level of estrangement I also wanted to create something that's familiar to the audience, they would recognise the speaking within the sound and Greek music has a distinct sound. The group preferred this to the original track that I had created and we started to workshop the scene further with this soundscape.
When we were workshopping the marketplace, we were talking about Brecht's technique of estrangement and how we could incorporate It into the marketplace scene. The Market place will provide the audience with a familiar setting between the stories. The overarching theme of the Marketplace is propaganda and how society is reeled in by propaganda and how it can influence our lives. The actors would break the fourth wall by engaging with the audience whilst adding comedy Into the mix. I needed to develop my soundscape to further distance the audience from the narrative of the scene, as a group we suggested about adding In Jingles that pop up every now and again, these would be very familiar jingles which in hope would make the audience stop and go "Was that the McDonalds theme tune?" its also playing with the idea of things that shouldn't be there or perhaps go wrong. In this sound, the audience wouldn't be expecting McDonald's and Moonpig adverts int he middle of supposedly a Greek Market. These Ads add another level of chaos to the overall ambience of the Marketplace. This whole soundscape sounds like ads in between a programming just one long stream of ads.
Continuing to workshop the Marketplace meant that further changes needed to be added, for example at the end it needed to have bells to mark the end of the Market but then merge in war bells which mark the Falling of Thebes at the end but is covered up by the actors saying to the Children audience that everything was ok and not to panic. So that's exactly what I created, I thought It would be nice to add the bells at the beginning to open the market as well as have them at the end, I then merged in church bells and then had a mix of an air raid siren and Big Ben. Church bells are a typical war bell, an air raid siren marks danger and Big Ben Is a familiar sound which is keeping with politics and propaganda. At the same time, a person from level 1 would cut in and say that we are all doomed and is then dragged off before returning to the scene in level 3. The audience would hopefully experience a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts as there isn't a straight narrative to follow. Further distancing is created by having diegetic and non-diegetic sound mixed together, having naturalistic sound and then mixing it into an abstract piece at the end whilst panning, delaying and adding delay.
Scene starts at 2 mins
This is a later rehearsal of The Marketplace with updated sound and lighting
The opening soundscape has a mix of drone, music and natural sounds, the soundscape itself creates a dream-like/trance effect which is relevant for the spiritual element of the opening scene, it has a calm opening which is then interrupted with a thunderclap and then the crossover happens revealing a more sinister tone, this soundscape is the first draft for the scene with the idea that messages could be entwined through, parts of the stories to be told or news stories to bring a sense fo propaganda. The estrangement comes from within the sound itself, there are very subtle changes throughout the piece and the cut-through of messages would have jolted the audience back to level 1 reality.
The sound accompanies the scene, drawing the audience into the spiritual side of level 4 reality.
SCENE 1
SACRED COW
Level 4 Reality
The Sacred Cow scene was going to be the very first thing the audience sees. The cow puppet would be onstage with just the house lighting on. Then there would be a blackout giving the puppeteers the time to get into position. The lights and sound come on revealing level 4 which is your typical drama student type performance, very over the top with sound and lighting with a dramatic slaughtering of the cow whilst other actors dance around the stage with ribbons before being interrupted by the Theban Director in level 2 asking what all that was about before introducing the actual Theban show.
There is a point to all of this of course and it is all to do with estrangement and performativity. This scene comes from the Founding of Thebes whereby Cadmus sacrificed a sacred cow to Athena, he was given warriors that helped him build Thebes. So what we were doing is storytelling through sound, lighting and dance. It is very spiritual, colourful, dreamlike and completely over the top. My challenge for sound was to create this dreamlike atmosphere with a cross over after the killing of the cow.
We improvised the cow scene a few times, firstly using a piece of music by Phillip Glass that had a very light and airy feel, it had added effects such as light wind in the trees, ocean waves and wind chimes, this is something the group really wanted so in one of the sessions George (Lighting) and myself Improvised whilst the actors Improvised on stage, I had collected a few songs I think could have worked and effects that worked well together and using QLabs tried the different options, from there I was able to play with fading in certain tracks and adding in a a cross over into more of a dark drone build up with beats.
we had decided on the song and I was given the instruction to have the dreamlike music and then a cross over and then for it to build up ready for the interruption.
Qlabs allowed me to experiment with levels of sound and seeing which worked better at a higher lever to others etc and when there was the cross over I could manually fade out the dream like music which gave me ideas for the soundscape.
The scene starts after the introduction
This is a rehearsal of the opening cow scene - movement had yet to be choreographed.
THE STORY OF ANTIGONE
This soundscape was the very first idea I developed which is quite simply different national anthems bundled on top of each other and played at the same time, it included the Greek National Anthem, the American National Anthem and the British National Anthem, it was decided that Rule Britannia is more familiar for an audience so that was put in as well what you end up with is snippets from each Anthem weaving through before finishing with the Two British Anthems. The sound is chaotic which matches the comedic chaos that is happening through the scene.
This Scene is rather chaotic throughout, there is multi rolling, characters constantly talking over one another and a rise in volume and as much as having the heavy anthems playing underneath it was decided that maybe have sound come in towards the ending of the scene, sticking with the original idea of using Anthems and the familiarity of Rule Britannia I looked at how I could create a distancing effect by warping the song to make the familiar strange. The beginning starts as normal, the audience would recognise it as it is. Then by layering the track and changing the pitch and placement, I was able to warp the track into something that sounds rather sinister, hard to focus with clashing notes, This soundscape would have been gradually faded into the scene with a gradual build until the stabbing of King Creon where the track would just end abruptly.
In this scene we were falsely telling the story of Antigone, it was written in a comedic style using elements from Boris Johnsons Brexit speech enforcing the elements of propaganda. The idea for the sound design for this scene was to further back the themes of propaganda whilst further breaking the fourth wall by using national anthems that are recognisable but warped further creating a distancing effect. I went through a process of bundling anthems together, adding effects and experimenting with added sound effects
Following on from the original sound design, to create a distancing effect canned laughter and claps were introduced during the scene, this adds to the comedic element of the multi rolling and text through the scene. the canned laughter and claps would have been cued manually using Qlabs but this is an example fo the type of effect it would have had. It creates a distancing effect as canned laughter wouldn't be expected through the Telling of Greek Mythology.
DISTANCING AND SOUND DESIGN
BEYOND THE PERFORMANCE
Due to COVID 19, Primordial Productions could no longer meet and develop new material so below is a soundscape that I have created to develop my own ideas about sound deisgn and distancing and how I could develop this idea in future sound design work
INFLUENCES - SONG
Bohemian Rhapsody is a one of a kind song, a 24 track song featuring multiple musical genres. I thought about how I could use layering within my own sound design work, which is present throughout this song and creating distancing through quick changes. The song itself when listening for the first time is confusing, you have absolutely no idea what is going on, it makes the listener question the motive behind the song which is what Brecht was trying to achieve with his Estrangement Theory.
Aladdin Sane is another example of a song that jumps around, with its Avant guard style featuring accidental notes, a mixture of musical styles and subliminal messaging it is yet another song that makes the listener question the song, this song creates a distancing effect on the listener as it's hard to focus on any particular section, it moves on too quickly. In my own work, I would like to try making my soundscapes busy, full of layered material and trying shorter sections.
INFLUENCES- FILM
AGE RATING 18
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - STANLEY KUBRICK
A clockwork orange – This is a unique film that is set in a futuristic setting, with heightened themes of ultra-violence, rape, and the collapse of youth this film already has a distancing effect on the audience as although these themes happen in today’s society we find ourselves not focused on these topics as we are guided by the media that focuses on larger-scale problems. The interesting thing is the use of classical music during the violent scenes, classic music now days tends to be used for relaxation which isn’t what you would link with violence, by playing classical music during these scenes makes them easier to watch as it is masking the violence.
RESERVOIR DOGS - QUENTIN TARANTINO
See 3:10
Reservoir dogs – This film is another example whereby music is used to distance the audience and diffuse/ mask the violence in a scene, in this sense a comical song is played during a torture scene where a mans ear is brutally cut off, the torturer is seen dancing and singing along to the song before performing the act. The difference to this is that the screaming was left to be heard which wasn’t always the case with a clockwork orange. In my own work, I would like to try and use music to create a distancing effect that could possibly diffuse the themes as well as work alongside these themes possibly creating a comedic effect.
SOUND INSTALLATION
John Holmes - The Skewer
John Holmes the Skewer is a sound installation that focuses on many different topics in short segments, each segment is different from the one, the installation uses many different styles and techniques to create an artistic selection of sound, there is a story behind each segment but distancing in this soundscape as the listener doesn’t have enough time to focus on each part, they might pick up words before it moves on.
I took my inspiration mainly from John Holmes The skewer to create something similar using a couple of topics that are relevant to today's society, to create a distancing effect, I wanted to try using short segments which feature a mash-up of sound editing techniques to create something that is alienating but has familiar themes running through. I want to use familiar songs, and sound and then make these strange.
I also used techniques developed through the work with Primordial Production, for example adding snippets from ringtones such as social media., these ringtones wouldn’t be expected but are familiar.
My main focus is to make the familiar strange by creating a distancing effect on the listener, I want the listener to be confused, ask questions and be taken through a rollercoaster ride of thoughts and emotions.
BREAKING NEWS
John Holmes The Skewer inspired me to create a similar soundscape about our current world focussing on relevant topics such as Corona Virus, Climate Change and The Threats of superpowers and weapons of Mass Destruction. I watched news reports and felt like the information I was receiving was just being repeated over and over again, like being trapped in a record that has got stuck.
With the focus still on creating a distancing effect, I wanted to see how layering sound can enhance this distancing effect.
Each segment is relatively short with a specific focus but layered using different effects, this causes distancing as, by the time you understand one segment it moves on, you are aware of the themes but are quickly thrown into the next segment.
The soundscape starts with the Corona Virus Pandemic - I felt like everywhere I went there was a mention of Corona Virus, every headline, conversation, and social media hence why I decided to constantly repeat the words during this segment. The Queen's speech comes through as a symbolism of the country coming together to beat the virus with reference to the country pulling through World War 2.
A building panic - This segment is a connecting section that hones in on how as a nation the media spreads mass panic, distancing is created using the familiar Song by Europe (The Final Countdown) there is definitely an element of a building panic.
Global Warming - This section takes snippets from news reports and films about how we are causing global warming and how nothing is being done to change that. once again it is a topic that is always there on news reports so this segment represents that. Distancing is created mainly when ringtones from Facebook, twitter, skype and the iPhone ringtone pop up, they are not the types of sounds you would expect to be behind serious news reports. I used a familiar track of Pink Floyds guitar solo from the song Fletcher Memorial and changed the pitch, I felt that this song not only fits with the sadness of Gretas words but also created this slightly comical effect.
Natural section - I felt like there needed to be a brief break in the heavy soundscape so nature/stormy soundscape was used with the added distancing created using the Doors Riders on the Storm Track. This segment would allow a break for the listener to take in what they have listened to, this is still fairly brief before going into the heavily layered section towards the ending.
Running out of time - The End - This next section sums up the facts and figures of climate change and a time frame in which we have to correct our mistakes, the constant threat and panic the public goes through with heightened media stories using words like - running out of time, irreversible damage, the collapse of society, Apocalypse. I decided that Slashes song Anastasia from the album Apocalyptic Love helped to support this idea of time passing quickly, once again having this with the repeated words creates a distancing effect as the listener will find it difficult to focus on both elements.
Where are we now - The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction - As a society, we are still under constant threat of nuclear war with the battle of superpowers, development of technology and politics. The ending of the song features David Bowies where are we now, Pink Floyds Fletcher memorial and The Beachboys Wouldn't it be nice - each brings across a different emotional connection. The soundscape ends with a vision of being wiped out by nuclear weapons, as much as it is a dismal ending, it is one of the biggest threats to mankind and a recurring topic to hit news stories and social media.
I really wanted the listener to question the soundscape and come up with their own thoughts behind each section, some parts are obvious but other parts pose questions.
I send this to a couple of different audience members to get their feedback.
I Felt Like I was trapped in a record that has got stuck
Is this soundscape in the wrong chronological order?
There is a lot going on so hard to focus on every part.
This feedback meant that I had done my job, to confuse and make people question, I really liked the trapped in a record as that's exactly how I felt when researching the topics and listening to news stories.
The wrong chronological order was interesting because I felt the same - in fact, I had created the climate change soundscape before the Corona Virus Soundscape and then I couldn't work out which to put at the beginning - however as the designer, it would make sense to put the most recent topic first and go from there.
There was a lot of input from other artists songs however I felt that these songs break up the soundscape but help create the overall atmosphere of each section.
Overall I think that the soundscape does have a distancing effect on the audience, yes its messy, heavy and chaotic but that's exactly what I wanted to achieve.
SOUND TECHNIQUES
Below is a small selection of sound techniques that I have used during the company process as well as in my individual sound installation
LAYERING TO ADD DEPTH
REPETITION - CREATES A LOOP EFFECT
REVERB TO DISTORT FAMILIAR SOUNDS
PANNING BETWEEN SPEAKERS
MUSIC FROM OTHER ARTISTS
DISTORTION OF SOUND AND EFFECTS TO MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE
FADE
USING FADE TO INTRODUCE THE NEXT SEGMENT, SPEED UP AND SLOW DOWN FADE ABRUPTLY CHANGES SEGMENTS
DELAY TO CREATE A CONSTANT LOOP EFFECT
THE PROCESS
HOW I HAVE DEVELOPED
I found the sound design for the production work challenging. I couldn’t find much inspiration online due to creating a question that no one else has attempted to answer before, this meant that I couldn’t gain inspiration from similar work so had to find inspiration from sources outside the theatre such as film and music that creates a similar effect to what Brecht was trying to achieve in his theory of Estrangement. Brechts theatre work did use sound a way of drawing the audience attention away from the narrative of the story, however, I wanted to create a sound that helps create the atmosphere of the performance as well as create a distancing effect, this is what was challenging.
I found that my inspiration developed through the rehearsal process and discussion, as a group we would discuss themes and would discuss ideas for lighting and sound and then I would take that away and work on small soundscapes that I could develop on. The majority of the sound work I did was accepted by the group and then they made a suggestion how I could further create distancing for example in the marketplace with the adverts. I was worried that it wouldn’t sound right however after realising that I needed to create sound to jolt the audience back to normal reality that’s when I started to become more creative within my sound work. I suppose I found myself stuck in a particular style pattern and that I needed to try something different. I had the added challenge of creating sound for multiple realities meaning that any sound design had to change and develop in each of these realities whilst trying to jolt the audience back to everyday reality, and as the beginning of the process I had absolutely no ideas
I feel like each soundscape works for each scene, creating an atmosphere, using familiar sounds and making them strange to deter the audience from the emotional connections in each scene. I think if we were to have had more time I would have experimented more with layering and adding in sound effects that didn’t quite match the scene to further distance the audience from the narrative.
The Sound work outside of the production gave me a little more freedom as I wasn’t necessarily creating a soundscape for theatre but branching out into sound installation work, whilst still incorporating Brecht’s Estrangement theory and the idea of creating distancing. I found that I had more inspiration as I could make the sound as loud and heavy as I wanted as there wouldn’t be actors trying to talk over the sound, this made it easier to create work.
John Holmes The Skewer gave me most of my inspiration for my soundscape as I liked how he fits a lot of topics into his sound work through small segments that develop and change throughout, I could see how distancing can be created through shorter segments so I wanted to try and create something similar. Once deciding on the topics, I was able to start building. With the use of panning, delay, layering, pitch shift and reverb I was able to create something equally unique to the work of John Holmes whilst still being able to focus on my initial question of creating a distancing effect on the listener, I think the soundscape successfully does this with the everchanging segments and themes.
My work with the company made me realise that it is possible to estrange the audience through modern sound design and to reach outside my comfort zone to create something that is interesting to listen to. Whilst Brecht’s technique mainly focuses on the acting and scenery, I could also use his ideas of fragmented narrative in the sound work.
My work outside the company work gave me the freedom to further explore distancing techniques and find a way of estranging the audience. I think now if the company were to continue building the performance, I could definitely incorporate many of the techniques that I have discovered and made them work for the theatre, which would further help to estrange the audience.