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Timax Tracker Turns Theatre on its Head
The story of William Tell is given much credence in Switzerland as it is essentially regarded as an important episode in the formation of the Swiss nation. When director Volker Hesse interpreted the original Schiller play a dialogue-only rendition of the story - Tellspiele - he solicited the assistance of Out Board's TiMax Audio Imaging system and sound designer Tom Strebel to produce the most reliable, person-specific, voice-localisation effects available, with real-time automation by the new TiMax Tracker actor tracking system.
The play was staged in the Uri Theatre in Altdorf - the Swiss province from whence Tell originally hailed. The 500plus-capacity theatre is a standard proscenium build, but not much else about this production's staging could be described as standard. The theatre's interior was almost completely re-fashioned to create a 35-metre long stage platform stretching all the way from the rear upstage wall right to the far back of the auditorium, above the original audience seating area. New audience seating was then established in tiers, atop and at a 90-degree angle to the original seating, either side and facing across the new central stage.
The audience's visual scope was not contained to just this already vast 180-degree plane, however, as a significant slice of the action is taken behind both seating areas. Hesse recognised the potential for audience-confusion and knew that controlling the auditory perspective with TiMax would be essential -the audience would need their ears to help guide their eyes to the performers on stage. TiMax Tracker's inherent 3D capability was invaluable for maintaining localisation in these special performance areas some metres higher up than the main stage platform.
Hesse is no newcomer to this audio-imaging technology. Indeed, he had witnessed the startling benefits of TiMax-assisted production when he directed the huge open-air Welttheater musical opus in Einseideln, coincidentally with Tom Strebel again as the sound designer and his Audiopool crew running the TiMax system. For both projects Out Board director Robin Whittaker was also on hand to provide sound design and programming support.
For the performance of Tellspiele, the stage was broken down into 16 different zones: six across the expanse of the central stage, four each side at the back of the audience and one each at the extreme ends of the stage. Sixteen actors were permanently tracked - each with their own Sennheiser radio microphone channel - and the action took them continually through the full span of the established TiMax zones across the central stage and to the furthermost rear extents of the audience area.
The distributed sound system - comprised of 21 Klein & Hummel Pro-X6N enclosures - was hung as seven outward-facing pairs along a central truss above the stage. A further three cabinets were positioned at each end of the stage, pointing towards the opposite stage end and a single box covered the sound-mix position. This setup provided the appropriate degree of coverage and separation for the voice localisation to be effective.
Each actor wore a TiMax Tracker (TT) Tag which transmitted synchronised ultra-wideband pulses to six TT Sensors around the room. The TT Location Engine software continually analysed multiple signal arrival angles and time differences to compute precise location data in real-time for every actor. The TiMax showcontrol computer communicated this information to the TiMax delay matrix which then applied Out Board's proprietary smooth-panning algorithms between the actors' mics and the loudspeakers to provide the necessary precedence-based vocal localisation for every audience member.
Commenting on the performance of the TiMax within the production, sound designer, Tom Strebel, said, "We knew that vocal localisation from TiMax was going to be very advantageous to the production, but in hindsight Tellspiele would have been almost impossible to comprehend without it - the action in many places is so fast: the audience must be able to instantly place which actor is speaking.
"The TiMax Tracker system too, we used for the first time and the reliability and accuracy far supersedes my expectations even knowing the quality of the TiMax product. It is fascinating to watch the software depict the movement of the actors between the zones and hear the results. It also gives the actors more freedom and makes watching even more pleasurable for the audience."
25th November 2008
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