Live vs Studio

2007/08/21

Submitted by Daniel Kiernan

At the beginning of the fiscal year Name the one or two Studio works ARTC wants to achieve. Block out the times and resources needed with a deadline. Live shows can not be "booked" during those times.

If the studio work for that booked time can not be completed, then it would need to be resheduled, not to conflict with a live show or the other studio work.Since we have paid for studio time in the past. We should consider paying Audio Craft for studio time. As a paying customer, we may get better and more timely service. -- Dankie

2007/08/23

Submitted by Hal Wiedeman

"El Barbudo" aka "El Grande Imperador" asked us to give our ideas on scheduling and the balance of live and studio work at our last board meeting.

Executive Summary: Establish a fall/winter season for theater, a summer season for Cons and use spring to do CDs.

Discussion follows:

As an amateur actor, I would like more live work because it is fun. Unfortunately, the live work interferes with the production of the studio work which pays the bills and, therefore as an ARTC board member (as opposed to being a feckless adrenaline junkie), I think we need to do something about our scheduling to enable us to produce CDs on a more consistent basis.

I think we should set up a specific time of year to concentrate on editing and producing CDs. The Con Shows are in the summer, and our stage season naturally tends to concentrate in the fall and winter. Spring is not an ideal time to attract people to audio theater - because there is just too much competition from festivals and the like (pollen season; time to pollinate ....). The most logical time to schedule a break to edit and produce CDs is therefore Spring. The general idea would be to establish a break in the live schedule to allow our producers and editors some opportunity to produce CDs without the distraction of live work. (Chain them with roses....)

I think that a "Drop Dead" completion of May 10 (or so) might be appropriate. After May 10, kill the CD projects until next year (I am with you always....) and get back to live work. This would give us time to get a new product or two together by Con season.

In my opinion, we need both Stage Door (or something similar - Sketchworks, Gainesville, whatever) and the Cons. The Cons are how we make a living - such as it is. We can no more give up Cons than we can give up breathing. (Living, Breathing, Death, you should notice a theme by now....) Our only issue is how many we are going to do. I would guess that two is the minimum and five is the maximum. Ideally, one of those needs to be outside of North Georgia. It obviously depends upon what our crack technical staff and transportation team wants to do.

The live shows are also important. The live shows should be kept to a defined, fairly short season of three or four shows - from October 1 to March 1. To my mind, the live shows have four purposes:

First, they allow us to build an audience outside the Con 'ghetto'.

Second, they help us concentrate on the entertainment aspects (professionalism, panache, staging etc.) of our performance which in turn better entertains our Con audiences. Good entertainment sells CDs at Cons and is much more fun for the participants. It also helps us attract fresh bodies (er.. talent..).

Third, we can do more ambitious pieces (such as Brides) and include more live music. (And YES, I am aware that Brides was done originally at DragonCon uphill both ways in the snow with just a crust of moldy bread for breakfast and we were glad to have it after our morning beatings with a baseball bat and on special occasions with a cat o nine tails. Ah - those were the good old days....).

Fourth - We gotta do Atlanta Christmas somewhere, if only for ourselves. Think of it as a bonding event. Atlanta Christmas presents an opportunity for everybody to do something. This is a good thing. The Cons are just too crazy to fulfill this function. -- Hfw

2007/08/26

Submitted by David Benedict

The underlying problem in the dilemma of Live vs Studio production is inefficient use of resources. It is very difficult to produce live and studio shows at the same time...inevitably one of them suffers. As long as Bill and myself remain the primary editors/producers then we will have to portion out our time appropriately.

The obvious course of action is, naturally, to try to find more people to do this work. I think the easiest way to accomplish this is NOT to try to recruit editors, but instead to recruit producers. Anybody who can be organized can be a producer. Using spot sound effects in a live show is a lot easier than editing a whole show together and can be a stepping stone towards learning the more advanced editing, so finding people who are willing to produce and sound design a show could be an effective way to go.

Another option is to try to recruit editors on a per-project basis. Instead of trying, as we have done, to have people jump right into the group and provide the kind of commitment we have all at once, we should instead pitch them on the idea of a single project. Furthermore, we shouldn't be afraid to take new things into the studio, even without an editor in place. We might discover that it's easier to recruit an editor if we already have the voice tracks and SFX in place, with only music left to do once the initial edit is complete. Much easier to send projects out as a complete package than to try to sign people up for an open-ended project.

Until we manage to recruit more people to take the production and editing burden off of Bill and myself, we must allocate time accordingly. A popular sentiment right now is to budget out the year, and I think this is certainly something to consider. Our production schedule for this season is set, but for next year I propose the following calendar:

• Public season
  • This would be for Stage Door or other public shows and would run from mid-September (post-DC) through mid-February, allowing for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.
• Convention season
  • This would be for convention shows. It would begin with TimeGate in May, include LibertyCon in July, and conclude with DragonCon in September.
• Studio season
  • Time set aside for studio productions. Running from mid-February through mid-April, this would include recording voice tracks, Foley effects, pick-ups on previous shows, music, and so forth. It would also be a preproduction period for the next season.

The "seasons" could overlap a little. We could also use the "Studio season" to audition new scripts and give newcomers a chance to read roles they might not otherwise have an opportunity to. Rory 09:10, 26 August 2007 (CDT)