Murder on the Orient Express
Production Team
Director - Greg Parmeter
Stage Manager - Laura Felde
Scenic Designer - Mandy Kolbe
Props Designer - Julia Milne
Costume & Makeup Designer - Michelle Collyar
Lighting Designer - Tracy Joe
Sound Designer - Brodyn Byington
Technical Director - Megan Morey
The show opened in complete darkness, and began with a sound effect of a train running over the audience, accomplished by utilizing over 20 speakers throughout the space. We then heard a brief bit of dialogue between a young girl and her family; this scene is meant to be eerie so I chose a mysterious door opening sound effect to use in combination with the voiceover.
As underscoring for the moment the characters and audience see the train for the first time, I chose the "Vorwarts Drangend" passage from Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Minor because I felt it perfectly captured the regal and elegance of the Orient Express.
There were various scenes which called for a radio to be heard. One example occurs when Mrs. Hubbard sings along to a rather loud radio playing the tune of "Alexander's Ragtime Band," much to the dismay of the other passengers. I used a graphic EQ effect in Audacity to make the tune fit the style of radios of the time period, the 1930s.
Another time a radio is heard is when the passengers are trying to contact officers in Zagreb once they have discovered a crime has been committed and they are stranded in the snow. I used Logic Pro to record this actress's voice to be the officer in Zagreb, and put a similar EQ effect on the file.
This is the largest sound design I have ever done, with so many nested groups in QLab, built from over 400 actions, which translated into 87 called cues. This screengrab is from an early version of my show file, but it shows some of my process and how I like to build my sound cues.
Photos courtesy of Joe Anderson & Ben Golden