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Welcome back, Prides!

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Today, we will be exploring sound.

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Sound has been an essential part
of the theater since the beginning.

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In fact, the word "auditorium" where many
plays are performed means "hearing place."

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Many different jobs contribute
to the creation of sound in a musical.

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Composer. Musician.

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Actor and Sound Designer.

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Let's head to the studio
to look at a few ways that sound

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helps tell a story.

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We'll start
by examining the role of underscoring.

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Here's a clip from The Lion King
on Broadway with the sound turned off.

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What's happening on stage?

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Who's in the scene?

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What sound might they make?

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How would you feel
if you were in the scene?

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How can you communicate

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that feeling through sound?

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What other sounds
might be present in the environment?

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Now, let's watch the clip again.

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This time,

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use your voice, hands
and feet to add music to the scene.

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Adding music
to a scene is called underscoring,

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which is the job of a Composer.

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The primary goal of underscoring
is to communicate

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the emotions of a certain moment
in a story.

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Now, we'll replay the clip one more time

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so you can hear how the composers
Han Zimmer and Mark Mancina

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chose to underscore the scene on Broadway.

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On a piece of paper, write down
how the underscoring

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makes you feel.

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How are the musical choices similar to

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and different from the sounds you created?

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You can see that even without words,

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music can play an important role
in telling a story on stage.

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Sound effects are also used

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to help the audience understand the setting
and action of a play.

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In most modern musical theater,
sound effects are prerecorded

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and then played through speakers
in the theater.

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It's the job of the Sound Designer to find
or create those sounds, and then decide

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how loud and out of which speakers
to play them back during performance.

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Before the use of recordings, theater
makers would create

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live sound effects on or off stage
by using everyday objects.

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In the early days of movies,
this method of creating sound effects

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was developed by a man named
Jack Donovan Foley and is

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now known as Foley Art.

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Here are some examples of sounds that
you can create that conjure other images.

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This is a crash box,
a box filled with different items

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to create a loud crashing sound.

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Simple percussive instruments can be used

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to create the sound of the rain falling.

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Or noises of the jungle.

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You can experiment with other objects
to create different sounds.

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Now, Syndee will give us an
introduction on

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amplification with microphones.

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It's important
to remember that the sounds created for

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a play can tell a story
only if the audience can hear them.

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It's an actor's responsibility
to project and articulate

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but part of a Sound Designer's job,
especially in large performance spaces,

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is to figure out how microphones
will be used to amplify the sound.

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There are many types of microphones,
usually called mics.

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Actors wear small mics
connected to a wireless transmission pack

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so they can be heard
no matter where they are on stage.

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Other microphones can be placed on
or around the stage

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to pick up sounds from the
ensemble members

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and in the orchestra pit to amplify
the musicians.

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Whether wireless or connected with cables,

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the sound from all microphones
is fed into a soundboard

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run by a Sound Operator or a Mixer.

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Let's hear from the

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Sound Operator for The Lion King.

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Types of microphones that we use

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at Lion King are wireless microphones.

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I have one with me here.

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It's basically a transmitter,

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and the, lavalier
microphones attached to it.

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And here we have the antenna.

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The actors would wear these
because they can move around freely

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when they wear one of these.

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And then we have a variety of other
hard wired microphones,

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in the orchestra pit to mic the drums,

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the violins and all the different
orchestra members.

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Today we looked at how various
professionals, including a Composer,

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Sound Designer, and Sound Operator,
collaborate

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to tell stories on stage
through sound.

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Now you will create some theatrical sound
by experimenting

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with microphones,
foley art, and underscoring.