A Labor of Love on Location

by Joel Pierson

French Quarter is the result of three years of research and writing by my wife, Dana Dyer Pierson, and myself. We felt that New Orleans has been too often maligned by the popular media, which portrayed it as a slum full of alcoholics. In our many trips to New Orleans, however, we found the city to be a unique, powerful place with a sound all its own.

French Quarter tells the intertwined stories of ten New Orleans residents who either live or work in the infamous French Quarter; people like Liam O'Flaherty, owner of a restaurant and bar, trying to keep his business safe; Sadie and Stony Brady, owners of a small bed and breakfast; Rachel Montague, a Manhattan socialite turned Tulane University student; Trevor McGaffey and Bronwyn Kelsey, detectives on a dangerous beat; Iris Aiello, owner of a new age shop, and her lover, Marie Shannen;and Jorge Fonquez, the process server who is too often fortune's plaything.

With our script in place, we had to decide: do we want someone else to produce the series, or should we do it ourselves? With many friends in this industry, we could have found someone to produce it in New York or Los Angeles, but we soon realized that we were so close to the story, we'd have to do it ourselves, or it wouldn't feel right.

Our production company, Mind's Ear Audio Productions of Bloomington, Indiana, is by no means wealthy. Our specialty for the past several years has been grass roots live productions of audio theatre in small venues. We have been able to create remarkable sounds on the tightest of budgets. But French Quarter was to be a series of thirteen half-hour episodes, over 140 scenes, over 80 distinct characters. We refused to compromise on quality.

GETTING THE EQUIPMENT

Before a single sound could be recorded, we had to decide on a capture device. Analog wouldn't do it any more, and DAT was a strange and expensive beast. The answer was simple and practical: minidisc. The love child of analog and digital technology would offer us the freedom we needed, and the more faithful sound we demanded.

At the heart of the studio is the Yamaha MD4 multitrack minidisc studio. Fully portable, the unit is a digital descendant of the old Yamaha four-tracks that gave countless garage bands a chance to be heard. Using special data minidiscs, the studio recorded up to four separate tracks onto a single disc, which allowed for overdubbing, and retakes of a single track of the soundscape. The MD4 had a built-in mixing board to control each track independently. For larger scenes, in which more than four microphones were needed at once, our Peavey sixteen-channel mixing board could be fed into a stereo left/right of the Yamaha. The microphones would be simple: Shure and Yamaha vocal mikes--unprocessed, ungated, honest.

GETTING THE LOCATION RIGHT

With the equipment in place, the next decision was where to record the series. Our association with LodesTone Studios would have offered a soundproof neutral environment in which to lay down each track individually, so we could put them together at a later time. It took no time at all to decide against that approach. Too much modern audio theatre is cobbled together by actors who never meet, doing "clean readings" of their lines onto tape, only to have them assembled into an imitation of real dialogue.

French Quarter is about relationships; it's about people reacting to people in a natural setting. We knew that meant a location shoot, with the actors doing the scenes sequentially, working together. Certainly, the ideal location would have been New Orleans itself, but, sadly, cost was prohibitive. To spend three months in the French Quarter with 40 actors would have been impossible, so we chose to do the next best thing: we brought New Orleans to Indiana. Pre-production scouting missions sent the two of us down to New Orleans with recording equipment and a list of authentic sounds we would need. We brought those back home with us, and kept them ready for later.

It was easy enough to find substitute venues in Bloomington. Scenes at the bed and breakfast were taped in various rooms of our own home. Scenes at a restaurant were taped at a restaurant. Scenes in a park were taped in . . . well, you get the idea. The world has its own set of background sound, and--unless the sound was horribly incongruous to the scene--we just let it play.

GETTING THE CAST

At the time we decided to hold open auditions for French Quarter, we had been in Bloomington less than a year. Few people had heard of us. So we posted our posters, set ourselves up at the public library, and hoped for the best, knowing that we would need up to forty actors. The first night of auditions, eleven people came. Some were quite good. Others wouldn't make the cut. We returned home a little bit worried; with only one more day of auditions, would we get the people we needed?

Fortunately for us, on the second day of auditions, the local newspaper included an announcement that included the magic words: "Actors will be compensated." To our astonshment, nearly 90 actors showed up to audition in the space of three hours that day. We heard them all, and our cast was born.

GETTING UNDERWAY

Of course, the first thing any cast wants is a full set of scripts. We smiled and shook our heads. The actors would get three episodes at a time, and we would shoot each unit sequentially. Our position, which they soon understood, was that nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, and that includes the characters in an ongoing series. To give the actors too much insight into their characters' future could taint the performances, and introduce elements of anticipation in their work.

Begrudgingly, they agreed, but as each unit came to a close, the cast eagerly read through the next unit's scripts, excited to find out what would happen next. At first, we rehearsed each scene several times before taping it. Before too long, though, the actors became so familiar with their roles, with our directorial style, and with their characters, that we could incorporate rehearsal and taping into a single evening. This was a relief, because with forty actors and 140 scenes, we found ourselves working three to five nights a week. But in those nights, magic was made at the microphones. The talented, versatile, patient cast found every nuance in the intricate script, and brought it to life with humor, honesty, and some moments that inspired chills.

We had some old pros with us, folks like Diane Kondrat, star of the 1994 audio series Hayward Sanitarium, and Steve Heise and Abdul-Khaliq Murtadha, both of whom had sharpened their teeth on the independent film scene. We also had some newcomers, like Indiana University students Kelly Armantage and Jada Barbry, whose youth and talent spoke volumes.

Over the course of five months, we put the vocals onto minidisc, incorporating as many of the sound effects as we could on-the-fly. The cast was dismissed with our deep gratitude.

FIXING IT IN POST

Our work was far from over. There were still over 1200 sound effects cues to put in. Some came from our New Orleans recordings. A few we found on compact disc. Still others we created live with microphones. But some just weren't out there anywhere. That's when we broke out the Sharp Md-MS702. Hand-held, fully digital, fully portable, it allowed for crystal-clear capturing of in-the-field effects. For venues where stealth was important, it could be concealed in a pocket. We had rigged two lavalier microphones to an ordinary headband, which could be worn discreetly while taping. With the Sharp, we captured over 100 unique sound effects and ambiances, which we later plugged into the multitrack mix.

IF IT AIN'T GOT THAT SWING

The series would be nothing without good music. Fortunately, we have good friends, particularly Kansas City composer and musician Jeffrey Ruckma of the Gillham Park Orchtet. He composed a score for the series, and gave us access to a selection of his music for incidentals, all at a wonderfully reasonable price. His music adds fire to the finished product from start to finish.

For the scenes at our Irish bar, we spoke to Patrick O'Flaherty, owner of O'Flaherty's in the French Quarter. He gave us free use of all the music on his CDs, which was incredibly appropriate, since our Irish bar was a thinly-veiled version of his own. His vocal group, the Poor Clares, also lent their talents to these scenes. With the music in place, the last piece of the post-production puzzle was in place.

FORGING AHEAD

The next step was digital editing. With the help of a SoundBlaster PCI sound card, our personal computer, and Sound Forge 4.5, we had the tools we needed. Each scene was patched from the Yamaha into the computer, and processed through Sound Forge, providing equalization, noise reduction, and a number of vocal enhancements to perfect the sound, and remove any material we had to. One young actor sounded quite a bit younger than his character should, so a simple shift in pitch gave him the rich baritone he so deserved.

It took well over 200 hours on the digital editor to get those six-and-a-half hours of French Quarter sounding the way we needed them to. When it was over, we burned CD masters, and sent them off to our manufacturer, New Age Multimedia, in Ohio.

Four weeks later, a very large truck pulled up to the house that was also our studio, and delivered our baby--1,000 copies of our baby, all healthy and beautiful. Like any proud parents, we want our child to go on to greatness. Something tells me it's in the cards.