There's no denying it: Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is a monster musical on every level, from the massive lighting rig to the extensive projections to the booming, heavily layered sound design. Taking the gargantuan $75 million production from conception to execution has been quite a challenge for everyone involved, and it event underwent a last-minute reboot to transform it from an admirable but complex show into a more streamlined, tourist-friendly piece.
While director/co-writer Julie Taymor admirably wanted Spider-Man to play out on the level of Greek tragedy, the original two-act show was a bit too epic and overstuffed with material that it did not connect with theatergoers on an emotional level. The reboot changed all of that by excising most of the villainous Arachne role and focusing more on Peter Parker's family and girlfriend along with his clashes with the Green Goblin.
Starting with the Music
At the heart of this creative storm was the audio team of sound designer Jonathan Deans, associate sound designers Brian Hsieh and Keith Caggiano and production sound engineer Simon Matthews. Deans and Matthews were working on Young Frankenstein in Seattle during the summer of 2008 when Deans first got the call about the show, but work did not really being until spring of 2009.
Matthews, who worked on version one of the show (prior to the reboot), recalls that the first band workshop, which involved orchestrator David Campbell and band member auditions, took place in May 2009. He and production monitor Dan Hochstine brought microphones, a mixing console, a pair of speakers and Pro Tools into the rehearsal sessions.
"The show at that point was pretty magical," recalls Matthews. "From the band workshop, I was able to send secret recordings to Jonathan so that he could hear the orchestrations and be inspired by that. He was very inspired by the work that was going on there, and at that point it was a very collaborative process. It was just the music at that point."
Production Delays, Overtime
The audio team was looking forward to starting shop prep in June 2009, but then they received a call that the show was on hold indefinitely. It would be another year before they got started in the Foxwoods Theater, where they had worked together on The Pirate Queen and Young Frankenstein previously.
"We started our shop prep in May 2010 and did the load-in in the theater in June," says Matthews. "Basically over the next 10 months we pretty quickly ran into six to seven days a week, 8 a.m. till 10 or 11 p.m. or midnight. The intercom and video system on that show are quite massive, so whenever there was a flying rehearsal or programming [involved] we needed to be there."
For Hsieh, Spider-Man was, in some ways, much like any other project the team has worked on. The basic regimen existed in the beginning – assembling ideas, coming up with a system for the show, building it and then installing it into the theater – along with familiar hurdles, but magnified in terms of scale. "Further down the road, it started to go a different route than what we're used to," notes Hsieh. That is probably an understatement.
According to Hsieh, the show went through 13 or 14 different versions of the sound system, but once they got to Foxwoods there were never any actual physical console changes. "In the specification process, the show was on and off and on and off for two years before we actually sat down to do it for real," he recalls. "Through that process, and even after we sat down to do it for real, we changed consoles five times. We actually changed the entire scheme of how the audio system was put together, and that was in reaction to many factors – changing concepts in the show and the budget, changing how things were going to be staged and logistics of how we could get things accomplished in that theater based on what they wanted to do in the show."
Stuffed with Scenery
The biggest challenge early on, sound-wise, was scenery, says Hsieh. The show is stuffed with scenery, so trying to find places on stage physically to put the sound system was difficult. "Because of that, a lot of it ended up being in less-than-ideal places," he notes. "We had to deal with processing to compensate for that, which is really difficult. It's always a little bit of a challenge in a theater, and it was a bit more of a challenge on this show, because of the scale of it and the importance of the scenery. At one point, our sound system was asymmetrical from the left to right side, which is certainly not desirable, then things changed later on. Where the guitar player and bass player used to stand [in the original version of the show] is now a speaker array."
Hsieh adds that the other challenge was not sound-related but of a more intellectual nature. "It was just simply somehow maintaining any sort of sanity through the production period that was so long," he admits. "We were in there at eight or nine o'clock in the morning every day for months on end, and not getting out until midnight. It wears on your ability to hear well and do things, because you're just there and tired. We like to go into new scenes with fresh ears and be able to tackle it with a fresh mind, but when you're in there every day with those hours, that was certainly a challenge. We had a very good team. Simon is one of the best mixers in the business. He is really able to tune in with the music and help the dynamics out in a way that is really engaging and keep the show interesting from a sonic point-of-view. Our monitor engineer, Dan Hochstine, really takes care of things backstage. You don't have to worry about it. And John Gibson, the house head at Foxwoods, hires a good crew. On that front, we were very fortunate."
The Gear
The core of the Spidey sound system is a Meyer Sound D-Mitri system, which the main show is mixed on, and through which everything falls. It is 144 in by 144 out with 72-channel playback capability, 48 of which were used for sound effects and playback. A Meyer Sound LCS CueConsole II control surface hooked up to the D-Mitri handles the wireless microphones, sound effects and effects processing.
Three Avid VENUE mixing consoles are also being used. The first one, which is a 96-input version running as a band sidecar, is used for "a front of house band sub mix that feeds 24 stems into the D-Mitri system," says Matthews. The second one acts as "a front of house vocal insert, which runs without a control surface but allows us to put Pro Tools plug-ins on the vocal channels. We send the monitor console a sub mix of all the wireless microphones, but he gets all the band inputs and does another set of mixes downstairs for the band." The third VENUE has no actual console but acts as a plugin engine to the vocal channels prior to them hitting LCS D-Mitri. "It has a surface and a monitor mixing position in the basement that handles all the band monitoring because the band is in two separate rooms, neither of which are actually in the theater."
Musicians and Monitors
The core band room includes three guitar players, two bassists, a keyboard player, a drummer, percussionist, percussionist/dulcimer player and the conductor. The monitor mixer, who also does the visual sound effects, is also located in this room. Most of the sound effects come from there. "Ambiences that may run in the background may be triggered by front of house, but by and large any sort of visual – whether it be a punch sound or any sound effects that happen visually – are done from the basement," states Matthews. "Out front is where they trigger the voiceovers from. Anything that happens in the performance in a dialogue sense is typically triggered from the front of house. But there are exceptions to all of those."
The orchestra room includes two trumpet players, a trombonist/tuba player, French horn player, violin player, violin/viola player, cellist, reed player and a second keyboardist, "who by and large plays orchestral sounds along with a lot of the orchestra," explains Matthews. He says the keyboardists, percussionists and conductor use Ableton live setups along with MainStage from the Logic platform to stay in tempo. Ableton acts as a click track generator for the band to stay together because the timing of the music is crucial, not only for the performers on stage but because many of the guitar sounds and delay patches are time-specific.
Constant Changes
Matthews reveals that, over the course of approximately 180 previews, it was only during the last two weeks that they stopped receiving script updates. During a majority of the time prior, they would receive anywhere from 10 to 15 pages on any given day. And as the Foxwoods Theater has rehearsal halls, while the sound team and production crew were working on one scene (perhaps a musical number like "A Freak Like Me Needs Company"), other talent might be reworking a Daily Bugle reporter scene, then bring down the changes.
"The person that affects the most is the sound mixer, because you're getting information that you would have not been privy to before it's put before the audience," says Matthews. "For many weeks, there were great chunks of the show that were mixed in the blind. I would put pages in and would make sure that, in that scene, there were no surprises, like not having a microphone for a person. And the next day they might want to go back to the old one [version of a scene], or perhaps they would have a new version. You punch the holes in the paper, put them into your binder and make sure everything is noted properly using whatever personal shorthand you use. Couple that with exhaustion from working long hours for months and months and months, and those were the biggest challenges. In comparison, making an audio system work is much, much easier. It's much more black-and-white."
Microphones
There are 38 wireless Sennheiser 5212 packs with 3736 receivers on the cast. "We also have four channels of in-ear monitoring with multiple receivers," says Hsieh. "Some of them are used as IFBs for stage management to communicate with the acrobats and other crew as they're doing their thing." Four major lead characters – Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, Norman Osborn and the Green Goblin – are all double-miked. While the mic within the Goblin mask was tricky at first, the audio team had worked with prosthetics on Young Frankenstein, so they applied that knowledge to this situation.
Hsieh adds that there are approximately about 65 or 70 microphones on the orchestra total, most of them being Neumann and DPAs with a few Sennheiser, Audio-Technica and Radial DIs thrown in. The orchestra is split into two rooms downstairs at the Foxwoods. Those rooms were rebuilt as band rooms; re-carpeted and relit with the air-conditioning made quieter.
"The guitar cabinets and their microphones were all built into custom soundproof boxes and placed outside, so the members of the band only had their amp head and their processing with them," says Hsieh. "Towards the end of the process, a lot of the guitarists were switched over to a digital processing emulator. We didn't even use their actual amplifiers and microphones anymore. They were using a Fractal guitar processor called Axe-FX. We were turned on to the processor because The Edge with U2 has worked with it before. It made a little bit easier for them to deal with patch changes and emulate the sounds that he was trying to achieve."
Three-Week Reboot
Matthews departed after version 1.0 ended, but Deans and Hsieh continued through the three-week reboot process into version 2.0. "It actually wasn't too bad," says Hsieh. Associate sound designer Keith Caggiano came onboard by then, "and he was extremely organized. We were actually able to save chunks of programming from the first version of the show, and the system itself didn't change too much, other than the repositioning of some of the arrays. Keith and Pete worked on that prior to the three-week reboot. On the whole, I would say the process was relatively smooth. We had some small issues to sort through, but having the band in one room made it easier in terms of communication. There were lessons learned the first time around, so decisions were made a little bit faster and committed to a little bit quicker. That helped a lot."
Matthews states that there were many challenges in coordinating with the different departments on the show, especially as some of the production people did not come from a Broadway background. "Spider-Man is a show on steroids, and it eventually got the ‘roid rage," he quips. "The biggest challenge was not having everyone working together to solve the problems that were apparent. Not everyone originally was working on the same page." That said, Matthews was impressed with how much backstage coordination there is now. "It's a feat of theatrical production."
"This show was built as a rock epic," proclaims Hsieh. "We were able to work with the other designers to make it work, like moving things when there was a lot of drums were going on, things like that. The projections team was very cooperative in helping us contain the sound of their 7 million watt projector on the balcony rail. They actually built an enclosure for it, and put the venting into the old venting system in the theater. They were very cooperative, and we worked with them to get that contained early in the process. All the drives, motors and winches were located far enough away that they were not really as much of an issue."
"I certainly think it's been an interesting process, and I learned a lot from it," says Hsieh. "It was certainly a privilege, however briefly, for us to sit down and work with the gentlemen from U2 and interact with them. Even though the process was bumpy, most of the people in that building are the best at what they do, so it was certainly a privilege and honor to work alongside with them."
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark: THE GEAR
Loudspeakers
8 Meyer Sound JM-1P (center cluster)
34 Meyer Sound M'elodie (main LR arrays)
2 Meyer Sound CQ-1 OH (downfill)
9 Meyer Sound CQ-2 OH (effects)
14 Meyer Sound M1D (frontfills)
2 Meyer Sound M2D (balc rear surr)
16 Meyer Sound UPJ-1P (orchestra surround/sidefills)
2 Meyer Sound UPA-1P (balc sidefills)
14 Meyer Sound UPJunior (box fills)
4 Meyer Sound UPQ-1P (LR orch fills)
8 d&b audiotechnik B4 (LR subs)
4 d&b audiotechnik B2 (LR subs)
40 d&b audiotechnik E8 (surround/ sides/rears/balc delays)
10 EAW JF80 (balc surround)
2 L-Acoustic SB218 floor subs (LR)
4 Sunfire True subwoofer (orchestra surround)
12 Genelec 8030 (band monitoring)
12 Meyer Sound MM-4XP (band room acoustics)
2 Meyer Sound UMS-1P (band room acoustics)
Amplifiers
18 d&b audiotechnik D6
6 d&b audiotechnik D12
2 Lab.gruppen fp6400
6 Yamaha H7000
Consoles and Accessories
1 Meyer Sound D-Mitri digital mix engine w/ CueConsole II (144×144)
2 Avid VENUE console system (96×24)
1 Avid VENUE Stage Rack (48×48)
1 Midas Venice 240
5 Sonifex RB-PMX4
2 Rane MLM82
11 Apple Mac Mini
1 Apple Mac Pro
2 MacBook Pro 17"
6 Netgear GS724T gigabit switch
1 MOTU 896 Firewire interface
2 Avid VENUE plugins bundle 3
2 tc electronic production bundle plugin package
Processing
7 Meyer Sound Galileo 616
2 Meyer Sound MM4 CEU
3 tc electronic System 6000 reverb w/ PC-ICON remote
2 Waves MaxxBCL
1 tc electronic Fireworx
1 tc electronic Finalizer 96
2 tc Helicon VoicePro
2 tc electronic D2
1 XTA DP200
3 Apogee DA-16x AES to analog converter
Wireless System
38 Sennheiser SK5212-U Transmitters
19 Sennheiser EM3732-II Receivers w/ computer interface
8 Sennheiser EK300-G3 in-ear-receivers
4 Sennheiser SR300-G3 in-ear-transmitters
6 Sennheiser MKE-1 lavelier microphone
6 DPA 4061 lavelier microphone
40 DPA 4066 boomset headworn microphone
1 36CH Masque Sound LM Series RF Listening Station
Microphones (Partial List)
2 Shure Beta 91
2 Audio-Technica AE2500
11 Neumann KM140
4 Sennheiser MKH-40
2 Shure Beta 52
4 Radial Pro D8
8 Radial JDI Duplex
9 Neumann TLM170
4 AKG C747
9 DPA 4011
4 Audio-Technica 4050
5 Audix D2
10 Shure SM57
5 Rode NT2-A
2 Neumann U89
4 DPA IMK4061
