Theater and Sound

Since some people think I'm all out to get LTTE, and have nothing else to Blog, I thought I'd quench their thirst with some thing I promised in an earlier post. I've been involved with sound for some time, and that has converged with Theater, earned the fond title of "Sound Man" at college.

I decided to write this post, because there are few mistakes that most people keep on doing each year, and the wisdom doesn't seem to get passed on to the next generation. There fore I thought I'd pass on my 2 sense.

When it comes to Sound and Theater you always have to keep in mind that we use this only to "Add" to the performance, and shouldn't be a major part of it, unless your doing a musical. It's always nice to have an actor/actress give out an emotional speech and a piece of music on undertone to hit the exact spot. However in your enthusiasm you can drown out the actor's voice and leave the audience guessing what the hell he just said, effectively killing the effect!

This happened to a few school's at the Boy's Semi's @ Shakespeare, in-fact a judge pointed out that a school completely drowned out their actor. Doing sound at the Wendt is no easy task, as many of you may think, because of the equipment they use. According to my knowledge they use a top of the range Bose with Direct/Reflecting® Speaker Technology. As you can see the inside of the Speaker unit is fitted with many more speakers inside them.





This has the unique feature of reflecting the sound off the walls and give you a truly surround effect.

More info 1.
More info 2.






The negative point of this is, if you take a cross-section of the Wendt(pls bare with my handy work) it creates a hollow downstairs and more sound ends up down stairs than in the balcony.

Since the controls are in the balcony, most people blindly increase the volume not knowing that it's not the same volume down-stairs.

Since the actors don't have the ability to reflect sound off walls, their goal is to project to the last row, which most of the time hits the last row of the balcony and is heard. Ironically since the sound volume is much higher downstairs he's often drowned out.

Specially if your participating in a competition which involves judges, they'd be sitting downstairs (around the 10th row from front). So if the judges don’t here your actors, your basically screwed.

This is also the case for Opening and Closing music. There is nothing more that I like than opening with a BANG! and closing with a BANG! However since you cant judge the actual volume level heard down-stairs you might be actually deafening most of the members in the audience (down-stairs).

How to over come this :

1. Play it by ear. Actually speaking play it way lesser than you can hear.

2. Use monitors. We normally put a sensible guy in the audience to judge the level of sound and let us know.


Well that's about it for now. Hope you learnt something from my experiences(actually mistakes.. I had Tracy say I drowned out some of the speeches @ Shakes 2002). If you guys have anything to add, point out a few things I've missed go ahead.

Hoping this brings out a another side of me that you guys see.. before a certain blogger labels me as an extremist.. lol (not that I see anything wrong with what I'm doing)

Forgotten the hero while living, honoured in death!

The funeral of our fallen hero took place with all the works, state honours, gun carriage etc. but behind the scenes his family is still mourning their loss.. What they had to go through to release the body of Maj Gen Parami Kulatunga, was told to the Sunday Papers.

Also raised in the papers was, why the Maj. Gen wasn't given quarters in the Army H/Q, as he had 28km to travel to work spending 2 hours on road making him an easy target for anybody. (Not that anybody wanted to murder him.. only one!)

Further I wonder the 3rd in command of the army traveling in a Peugot 406 with a measly L200 for back-up. No motorcycle out riders, no defenders just a L200. I wonder where all they were, probably assigned to a son or a daughter of a politician who thinks their lives are in danger. Had the 406 been armored the outcome would have been different.

Another war hero that we have neglected is admiral Daya Sandagiri. I know that he's been interdicted for an Arms Deal, but this has left him exposed, taking away his guard etc. he has fought many battles and brought many victories so lets pay the guy some respect, innocent till proven guilty, or will we be participating in another ironic full military honours funeral?

A look at the other Goons of LTTE

Mr. Pottu Amman, the master mind behind LTTE's "intelligent!" operations and the " man behind the scene" of all pro LTTE media, operating overseas and in the country itself (including the "Head" media network and "Leader" publishers), seems to be lost in old world war II stories on covert operations. Having failed to locate Colonel Karuna, Mr. Amman and his mob go on killing berserk everyone who has a different view to the LTTE, labeling them as "pro Karuna people". His well planned dramas of the "Manthivu Killings" and "Allaippidy massacre" also failed to yield sufficient results as they could not get the support of the Tamil civilians in the area. Mr. Amman has a personal war to fight. Thus he has very little interest in bringing peace to the Tamil community.




Mr. Soosai, the happiest man in the world since Colonel Karuna's estrangement with the leadership, has begun to emulate his beloved role model, Adolph Hitler. Controlling innocent civilians by the rule of the gun, and ordering them to run few miles and then arm them with clubs , Mr. Soosai and his mob train them how to smash a child's head when they are sent on future " Missions" in Sinhalese or Muslim villages . Mr. Soosai has become so belligerent it seems; his mobs continue with small scale attacks on the FDLs and carryout claymore explosions using innocent civilians but without success and with heavy losses. Mr. Soosai has no interest in achieving a lasting peace; he only needs the ceasefire, since it gives him a lot of opportunity to gain more recognition from the leadership. Why should he worry about the lives of the Tamil people, he never goes to war anyway. Recently at one of his ridiculous graduating ceremonies where innocent civilians are armed with clubs and wear red head bands, he boasted "The Sinhalese will not understand when you speak normally, but if you really speak harshly to Sinhalese then they will begin to understand."


Source http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20060609_04

Join or Die !!

This is the newest slogan the LTTE'rs are using as their slogan in recruitment for their "Baby Brigade". And they truly mean it, like this 12 yr old found out.

The child was in his sleep at his Grandmother's residence when the group of terrorists grabbed him out and shot to death. The dead child named S. Sathyan ,a student of Valaichenai Hindu College had been forced to join LTTE by the LTTE's "Baby brigade" recruiters for several times. It has been revealed that the child had refused the LTTE orders and was seeking refuge at his grand mother's house.



So why would this 12 yr old kid want to disobey his sole representative LTTE leadership? Probably the kid didn't know better to mess with them, and paid the price..

More shockingly the UNICEF issue's a statement calling for ALL parties to stop Child Recruitment. Shame on you SLA for recruiting children..

“Besides recruitment of child soldiers, there are also allegations of other grave violations against children by all parties to the conflict,” she added, expressing deep concern about the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka, where separatists and Government forces have been fighting for two decades.

So did the UNICEF forget to mention the innocent LTTE or they are just turning the blind eye.

And on the way to become the sole rep of tamil people the LTTE (or some times known as "Unidentified Gun-men") bumped off a prominent member of the Peoples Liberation Organization of Tamil Elam (PLOTE); a major alternative political party of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.

Why War.. and not Peace?

After a long chat with one of my friends, I started thinking why War? and not Peace? All of us would like peace.. the majority of the country would.. so why isn't there Peace in this country.. (not CFA but Peace).. What are the reasons for keeping this blood shed going on? I realize that this was is not fought for all the Right reasons..

LTTE :

1. They aren't fighting for Tamils coz they were discriminated by Sinhalease.

2. They don’t want a separate home land for all the Tamil's in Sri Lanka. Just there goons, and supporters who are forced to fight for them. (Ask any Tamil in Colombo whether he's gonna go back to Eelam Land??)

3. Guided by a lunatic who's father was killed and seeking Revenge(so I hear.. I honestly think he was dropped when he was a baby)

4. His other goon's (Anton, Selvam etc) they just wanna make the cover of News Week!

If they want a home land to be King and Almighty.. why cant they freakin Buy an island, like Branson did. I'm sure they have enough money in the vault, that is being filled by dumb expatriate Tamil's who know nothing about the present situation, and made to be felt guilt for fleeing the country.


SL GOVT:
1., 2., 3., 4. MONEY!!

The amount of money made on arms deal's, weaponry and the ability to ask for aid from World Bank, and the ability to use the spending on war as an excuse for their mismanagement of funds and emptying of the treasury.

And when I mean "Govt" I mean both present and past ones. I was so sick of the news I heard from my friend that I stayed a whole day away from the Blog, sick of all these politicians who got elected saying they are gonna do this and that.. and we(atleast those who voted for him.. although I can't find 10 people who did now...) expected a change from him/them.. "my foot!"


Take a moment to think of the Foot Soldier manning his point with a gun hasn't been manufactured for 10yrs, fighting for their home land, while a freaking Major General or a Politician is living the high life, off the cut he made bringing the so called "Brand New" guns. No wonder there are soo many deserters..

And one fine day when this country is "beyond redemption" (if it already isn't) you'll find the kids of Prabha and Mahinda (and all the other goons.. SLFP, UNP and JVP) enjoying life in their mansions in the States and Europe.. who know might even be drinking in the same freaking Irish Pub.. while the rest of the Sinhalese and Tamils are make something out of a barren land.