Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board: Boom Box

Message

   My stage manager is researching this as well, but I wanted to check here. 

We have a very small budget for our production of George Orwell's "1984".  $500 needs to cover everything.

There is no sound system in our theater, just great accoustics.  

I would like to have the voice of Big Brother and possibly Goldstein pre-recorded for each performance.  There are a few sound effects (trumpets blaring, rats, crowd cheering, doorbell that can be obtained easily enough), and the voice of the Loudspeaker that I would like to be "live" rather than prerecorded.  

Between that and scene change music, how can I go about doing this as cheaply as possible?  Other productions have used a simple boom box there.  So can a boom box be used with a microphone and sound appropriate for the loudspeaker's voice?  If we use several boxes would that work?  Other recommendations?

Author	Message
chel Celebrity Joined: 6/20/07 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 106	Topic: Boom Box Posted: 3/20/09 at 5:45pm
	My stage manager is researching this as well, but I wanted to check here. We have a very small budget for our production of George Orwell's "1984". $500 needs to cover everything. There is no sound system in our theater, just great accoustics. I would like to have the voice of Big Brother and possibly Goldstein pre-recorded for each performance. There are a few sound effects (trumpets blaring, rats, crowd cheering, doorbell that can be obtained easily enough), and the voice of the Loudspeaker that I would like to be "live" rather than prerecorded. Between that and scene change music, how can I go about doing this as cheaply as possible? Other productions have used a simple boom box there. So can a boom box be used with a microphone and sound appropriate for the loudspeaker's voice? If we use several boxes would that work? Other recommendations?
	chel www.windhamtheaterguild.org

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ddave Player Joined: 2/21/09 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 7	Posted: 3/25/09 at 9:47pm
	Very important information to be able to suggest anything: Size of space & how many seats.
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TimmyP1955 Lead Joined: 12/30/09 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 37	Posted: 1/02/10 at 3:21pm
	I can't imagine a boom box being able to handle the dynamic range of uncompressed speech without distorting. A small mixer and a small powered loudspeaker (Mackie 300 or the like) would be in order as a minimum I think.
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Lights and Sound
Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board :Producing Theater :Lights and Sound

Topic: Boom Box( Topic Closed)