Infused with the rhythms of South Africa, the sound design for Mandela at London’s Young Vic bears the signature of Paul Gatehouse and his use of the venue’s recent adoption of Out Board’s TiMax TrackerD4. ‘It meant that we were able to be ambitious in our thinking with what is, essentially, a smaller budget approach,’ he says.
The production features 22 cast members. ‘Without the automated performer tracking that TiMax provides we’d have to manually locate the position of all the vocal objects in Soundscape, which would be a lot of cues and button pushing for the sound mixer,’ he explains. ‘This way that burden is removed for us.’
The Young Vic’s TiMax Tracker set-up includes eight TTd4 Sensors covering the stage and including above- and below-balcony scenes on either side of the stage. TiMax TrackerD4 uses dual-mode UWB RF tracking technology, whose carrier-free aspect reduces errors caused by reflections, body blocking and scenery obstruction, with just two Sensors required to see a TTd4 Tag for precise and reliable 3D tracking. The multiple sensor viewpoints add robust redundancy and heighten coverage accuracy.
Due to the comprehensive coverage of TiMax TrackerD4 system, the theatre’s stage-side balcony areas were easily brought into the action. In one scene, the South African Prime Minister is speaking from one side while Mandela’s comrades speak from another. ‘It was important that our tracking coverage extended to those areas, and in doing so we had a really wide and dynamic sound picture which elevated the storytelling,’ Gatehouse says.
His preference for TiMax TrackerD4 over other tracking systems is based on its heritage. ‘TTd4 has been developed by a company rooted in sound engineering and spatial audio and therefore it’s really simple for us to integrate and take on the essential job of locating all our actors’ locations on stage.’
Gatehouse also praises Tracker Translate which, as he explains, ‘provides a simple and feature-rich way of configuring and controlling the individual tracking tags on the system’.
‘The well thought out features for theatre, including the way we manage when roles are covered, or when performers are splitting roles between them whilst covering multiple parts,’ he continues. ‘All the systems [Out Board] provides are personally configured for your project and the installation of the antennas and the coverage strategy are also guided by them. We’ve done a few shows with this system now and they still provide the same level of support, as if it was our first one.’
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