Producing the score, sound design, editing and mixing for a period audio drama set during WWII
The Camp was written by Neil Edwards, directed by Emily Bignell, and produced by the Shooting Fish theatre company in the UK.
Synopsis
It is 1944. Former Kabarett singer Elke Gruenbaum, and her 15-year-old daughter, Heidemarie, find themselves imprisoned at Theresienstadt Ghetto, a Jewish transit camp situated in northern Bohemia. To survive, they must swallow down the daily diet of fear and hardship, else risk the deportation to one of the much-feared ‘work’ camps in the east.
Creating a Cabaret
For the following excerpt, I created diegetic musical accompaniment for a solo vocal performance that weaves in and out of the narration.
This was a particularly challenging aspect of the production because the original vocal performance was provided a capella – without a backing track, or any musical accompaniment.
The first step involved some gentle pitch correction to help the vocal play nice and in key. It was also necessary to adjust the timing of the performance to conform to the meter of the music I was creating, since the original performance tended to drift in time slightly.
Then, after composing the backing track, I placed the performance in a 1940s cabaret club with layers of designed background ambience.
It took several iterations to get right but, despite the challenge (or perhaps because of it!) It turned out to be one of my favourite, most satisfying sequences of the production.
Dan Nicholls Audio 