Sound, as They Pound

Lots of people try to make their house look special with art. Some offices or other businesses did the same thing to make their establishments more welcoming. One might wonder about the plight of the artist whose work was reproduced hundreds of times to furnish the inside of a fast-casual dining establishment. If they got paid per reproduction, they'd be set. That probably wasn't how it worked.

There was a small recording studio on the very outskirts of the big city, far enough away from the excitement of film production, but near enough to be accessible with a short drive. The other nearby establishments, which included long-term self-service storage solutions, pawn shops, bail bondsmen, an asphalt plant, some empty storefronts and one good old-fashioned 'gentleman's club...' perhaps they indicated that this place had found a location outside the glitz of the 'business' mostly because of low property value.

But this meant they had some spare money with which to decorate.

It was a single piece of varnished wood, very old, with many different things attached to it. Some bells, a hinge, a doorknob, a metal bar... and three note pieces from a xylphone with a mallet hanging from a hook. That was clearly a reproduction. The rubber end of the mallet would have crumbled away decades ago if it was as old as the wood.

Agnes was staring at this... thing that was mounted to the wall. The whole board almost looked like one of those plastic playthings a parent would tie to part of a crib, with many little gears or things to turn, click or otherwise manipulate to entertain a baby. There was a sign on it that said not to touch it, but there was nobody else around...

Betty finally burst out into the waiting room. "Sorry I couldn't let you in!" She apologized. She was a woman of average height with blonde hair, oversized black hooded sweatshirt and leggings.

Agnes smiled as she saw her. She was more of a classic beauty, taller with a mop of curly brown hair. She wore a leather jacket that was more like a bolero, and red jeans. "Hey, Betty. I'm surprised you left the door unlocked for me. You're not afraid that some transient will wander in here without permission?"

"If I'd left the doorstop in the door, maybe that would have happened because then they'd know the door would open." Betty reasoned. "They're not going to try every doorknob to see if it's unlocked, especially if they see a light on."

"I guess that's true." Agnes said. "My car's not in any danger out there, is it?"

"Not since Garmins went out of style." Betty said. "Besides, we got security cameras and motion-detecting lights. We'll be alright."

Agnes nodded, turning her head back to the multipurpose plank of wood that had been affixed to the wall.

"You're wondering what this is, aren't you?" Betty asked.

"I am." Agnes nodded. The only sign below it was the one asking nobody to touch it. If the sign said what it was, maybe she wouldn't feel such a strong desire to touch it.

"Back in the days of radio, they made all the sound effects live on the air." Betty explained. "There were no 'takes.' You had one chance to get it right, like live theater. There would be a dedicated 'sound man,' or many, who would make sounds at the right time along with the actors. This sound board is one that he might use to make certain sound effects."

"I've got a 'sound board' on my phone..." Agnes said. "But it only plays quotes from The Office."

"Yeah, that would be unimaginable back in the thirties." Betty said. "There are these two bells at the top." She picked up the mallet hanging from the bottom of the device on an eyehook. She struck the mallet between the two bells, making a ding-dong that sounded like an old doorbell. "You can also just tap this one..." She tapped the top of the bell. In this context, this sounded more like a hotel bell. "Or you can rattle it between the two really fast to make an old-fashioned telephone ring, but this mallet is too big to do that."

Betty continued to show this sound board's features. "You have door opening..." She turned the doorknob, which made a loud mechanical 'clunk.' "Creaky hinge..." She pulled on the separate piece of wood attached by the hinge. The metal hinge squeaked. "Ever creakier by the day... and of course, the all-important xylophone for studio identification."

Betty passed the mallet to Agnes. "Would you do the honors?"

Agnes gladly accepted. She put on her nicest and most professional tone. "This ends our broadcast day." She tapped the three notes in turn. The famous three-note jingle... didn't sound right.

"The second and third notes are transposed." Agnes noted.

"Yes, you just have to play it like this." Betty took back the hammer and played the sequence properly, hitting the first note, then the third and ending with the second.

"Why not put them in that order, then?"

"You just have to know which notes to play."

"But... you can see where it used to say NBC on the notes. The C is on the B note, and vice versa. If they've only got one take, you would think they'd make it foolproof."

"Well, whoever built this is dead, so there's nobody left to complain to." Betty said, lowering the mallet.

Agnes looked around the waiting room. There were no other faces in here except the ones on the old magazines on the coffee table. Which reminded Agnes... "Does this place have coffee?"

"It's too late for coffee." Betty said.

"It's eleven o'clock at night, and I pulled a double today." Agnes said. "It's too late NOT to have coffee."

Betty brought Agnes to the thinly appointed 'break room,' more of a tiny kitchen, only slightly bigger than a bathroom stall with an old refrigerator and harsh fluorescent lighting. There was a coffee maker at one side of the room, which quickly saw use. The room filled with the aroma of not-that-great coffee, and Agnes poured herself a paper cup's worth. The cups were those ones that were prop cups printed with poker games on them that were featured so prominently in Terminator 2. She didn't know any place actually stocked these things.

"You remember what I promised you in college, right?" Betty said, sipping some water. "If I ever had some acting work for you, I'd throw it your way. If you had any sound work, you'd send it to me."

"I remember." Agnes said. "I'm sorry I really haven't found any sound work except for that audiobook."

"It's fine. I always knew it'd be easier for me than it would be for you." Betty said. "I'm really sorry to pull you in like this so late, but I'm in a real pickle right now."

"I'm happy to do it." Agnes sipped her coffee. "I'm just glad to be doing some acting. I'm assuming that's what you need, right? You didn't call me to move a dead body or something, right?"

"No, it is acting work." Betty said. "And it needs to be done... tonight."

Agnes stared at her. "What happened? Why the urgency?"

"I'll show you when we go into the booth."

Agnes got to the bottom of her tiny paper cup and poured another one before following Betty out of the room. It sounds like it might turn into a long night.

Betty brought Agnes through one door, down a short hall, and into the actual recording booth of the studio. It was a room covered in acoustic foam on all the walls, even the door. The only flat surfaces not covered were the pane of glass that separated this booth from the control room next door. Inside, there were several microphones on boom arms, some music stands for holding scripts, and a white folding table covered in many different devices.

When Agnes heard the door shut behind her, she turned around... and Betty wasn't there. It was shockingly quiet in this room. Agnes had been in sound dampening rooms, but there was normally a bit of activity to make noise. A place like this, this late... it was almost chilling, like a trap had snapped around her.

Betty appeared in the booth. She moved a smaller microphone to her mouth as she prepared some things at terminals that Agnes couldn't see. "I'm just getting everything set up." Betty's voice appeared over the loudspeaker. "It's just us tonight. No techs or anything. They all went home. Could you put on those headphones, please?"

There were a pair of professional looking ear-covering headphones on the couch in the room. Seemed weird to have a couch in here. Wouldn't the springs inside this make audible squeaks? Agnes took a seat, and didn't feel or hear anything. Maybe it would be fine. She put on the headphones.

"So, we have this film that they shot a little while back. Apparently, nobody on set was monitoring the boom sound, or the guy didn't have his headphones up high enough to notice that it was too quiet. So all that sound was useless. Normally, we could go back and rely on the on-board sound. It's not great, but it might cut the mustard if I do some magic on it."

Betty tapped some keys on her computer. A portion of the movie began to play on the screen in the booth, into Agnes' headphones. It was a conversation between two glamorous women.

Agnes immediately threw the headphones off. It sounded like they were recorded through a tin can. It had that thoroughly blown-out sound of someone yelling into a microphone much too closely. Agnes picked the headphones and listened to the dialogue as close as she could. It was sometimes comprehensible through the distortion... but if it sounded this bad, why would anyone endure it?

"Holy cow, that's bad." Agnes groaned.

"Some dimwit put the gain all the way up on the camera's on-board microphone." Betty shook her head. "It's unbearable when its loud and incomprehensible when its quiet. Normally, we could go back to the boom, but that didn't get picked up at all. It the audio equivalent of someone forgetting to take the lens cap off."

"So... you need me to redub all the dialogue for the characters?" Agnes asked. "I can do that."

"WE'LL do it." Betty said "There are only two characters, so I'll play one and you'll play the other."

"You can act?"

"I've done some radio commercials before. Not that the standards are THAT high for that. I was just around. But I'm familiar with this material. I should do fine. There's nobody else to do it, so I don't really have a choice." She left the booth and returned to the main studio space.

"What's all the stuff on the table?" Agnes asked, pointing to the mysterious devices.

"I need those for sound effects." Betty said. "I'll take care of that part. You don't need to worry about it."

Agnes chuckled. "We're really doing this like an old time radio play, aren't we?"

"Sort of, yeah." Betty showed Agnes a handheld remote control with a single button on the top. "When I press this button down, the movie will start playing. If I take my thumb off this, the movie will pause. We have to read along with it and match up what they're saying as close as we can. If we need to stop for a second, I can pause it. But we cannot go back. If I have to rewind it, we'll lose everything and have to start over. So we DO get to take a second take if we completely mess up, but it all has to be in one."

Agnes's eyebrows shot up. "How long have we got?"

"They're supposed to pick this up at 7AM tomorrow."

"We've got eight hours." Agnes said. "Should we watch this through once and get familiar with it?"

"I don't want to spend that time, in case we need it later." Betty said. "Let's just try going through it as if we don't get a second chance and we'll see if we need to. Besides, you don't want to be here all night, do you?"

Agnes took a sip of her coffee. "I'm here for you as long as you need me. I don't work tomorrow. But yeah, I wouldn't mind getting to sleep sooner, rather than later."

Betty kept moving around the room, adjusting microphones into the right positions. She took an oil can off the table of sound effects props, an antique-looking one with the round plunger at the back to gently apply oil with a press of the thumb... and she oiled the joints of one of the microphone stands with it. She was certain that thing was just a prop for making sounds, but here it was, getting used for its intended purpose.

"Should I stand, or can I sit?" Agnes asked. "I'm pretty beat."

"You can sit, so long as you don't move around too much." Betty said. "These mics are very sensitive."

Agnes took the initiative and sat herself down onto the couch. Betty immediately lowered her microphone into the proper range. She moved over to her side of the room, standing up near the table. "First take. Are you ready?"

"First and last, let's hope. Let's get this in one." Agnes said.

Betty held the button down. The projection at one end of the recording booth began playing. A black screen faded in to opening credits. Rose Petalz and May Showers were listed at the start... what was up with those names? These young people and their stage names... Agnes was given a name that was old-fashioned in the fifties, and she had stuck with it. What's their excuse?

The title came up briefly: Rendezvous. Maybe it was a working title. The titles themselves looked pretty old, like the level of graphical effects from a 2000s local news station, or maybe the effects that came programmed into a consumer-level camcorder.

The picture faded in, an establishing shot of a fancy house sprinkled in golden sunshine. Perfectly manicured topiary trees and blooming flowers, stone steps leading to a large entrance, and a long pull-in cobblestone driveway. It was about as far away from the low-value area this studio was in as one could get.

Someone drove up to the entrance of the mansion in their stunning red convertible, all sharp angles and points like a gemstone. A gorgeous blonde woman with big breasts stepped out of the car in a blazer and short skirt.

The movie paused without warning on the lovely woman's image. "That's you." Betty said, having released the button on the remote control.

"OK." Agnes looked to the script. "Is she... Rose or May?"

"She's Rose. Well, her character is Ali, but her real name is Rose. Well, her stage name is Rose."

"This could get confusing."

"She's you. I'm the other one. Not confusing at all."

Agnes found Rose's lines in her script. She took in a deep breath as Betty resumed the film.

On screen, Rose (or Ali) approached the door to this mansion. She took hold of the huge lion-shaped doorknocker and knocked it three times.

Agnes jumped as Betty made three loud metal-on-metal knocks with a similar, if smaller doorknocker that was mounted to a piece of wood. It looked like she had the timing just right. Betty glanced over to Agnes and put one finger over her lips. They were live, after all. Agnes took a breath away from the mic and waited as Betty pushed the door knocker away and grabbed another prop. It looked like a door from Alice in Wonderland, a full-sized doorknob and hinge set into a frame just small enough to open. She turned the knob and swung the door open slowly. It sounded like a full-sized door.

May appeared on the other side of the door. She was another gorgeous and glamorously done up woman with dyed blonde hair and fake eyelashes.

"Hey, Ali!" Betty read from her script. "How was the drive over?"

"It was fine." Agnes read the lines from her script, trying to watch Rose's mouth at the same time. ADR was a tricky part of her job, but she normally had as many attempts as she wanted. This was quite a tightrope they were walking together. "Traffic's really bad today. What's the point of having a car like that if I can't open her up?"

"Don't I know it?" Betty read for May. "As a simple farmgirl from Washington state, I'd give up this palace for some acres to ride a horse around."

"Sounds good..." Agnes read. "Until the price of HAY goes up."

The script told them both to laugh. Both of the women did so unconvincingly. Betty had the excuse that she wasn't the one who made that joke. Agnes... maybe she could be more convincing if the joke was better.

"Come on in." Betty read for May. Both women in the film entered the house, the door closing behind them with an accompanying door closing noise provided by Betty.

The interior of the house looked a lot different, like the inside of any house of a certain size anywhere in the state. Where was the continuity people when they chose THIS set to match THAT exterior?

As May and Rose walked across the bare floor, she took a pair of high-heeled shoes and tapped them against a piece of tile mounted to a board. One hand did the footsteps for May, one for Rose... all while still holding the remote control down with her thumb. It was remarkable multitasking on her part. It seemed like Agnes really had the easier part of the work tonight... she wondered why she couldn't have done this by herself and just played both voices. It wasn't like their voices were THAT distinct from one another.

May and Rose sat on a lovely floral couch with carved wood accents and. May poured some tea from a delicate china tea set. Betty recreated this sound by pouring some of the coffee from one paper cup into another.

"Thank you." Agnes read her lines and took a sip of coffee as Rose took a sip of tea. Agnes' sip was probably a lot more than Rose's. "You always know how to make me feel comfortable."

"It's no problem at all." Betty said. "Now... what's wrong? You said you didn't want to discuss it over the phone."

On the screen, Rose made some faces, as if she was hoping not to confess to something embarrassing. Or maybe she was trying to keep the live bee inside her mouth. Maybe someone needed to tell this woman that it wasn't actually a silent film.

Agnes made a few soft thoughtful moans to punctuate the character's evident discomfort. Nothing in the script mentioned that, but it might help this seem a little less awkward than if it was dead silent.

"I'm in trouble." Agnes read the line for Rose. Rose set her teacup down, and Betty was ready, tapping a small piece of ceramic tile with a thin metal rod. "I'd be fine if my dead husband's money came out of escrow, but I don't have any left to pay these people right now. And I don't want to sell my baby out there. They don't make them like that anymore."

"Oh, Ali..." Betty said. "You know I'll do anything for you."

The pair hugged on screen. Betty brought her arms up around herself, getting that soft sound of clothing rustling together.

Then Rose and May started to kiss.

Agnes immediately flushed, like she'd walked in on two people in a private moment. What kind of movie WAS this? She looked over to Betty for support... but she was there making kissing and smacking noises with her lips, as if kissing an invisible person. When their eyes met, Agnes figured maybe she should be doing it, too. She made some kissing sounds, roughly matching it to the action on screen. It felt very silly, but that's what she was here to do.

After a minute or two of awkward fake kissing, May broke away. "Ooh, what's that?" She asked.

Agnes had her head down at her script, so she didn't see what she was talking about. She looked up at the projection. May had gone down to her knees on the floor, her head between Rose's legs. Agnes looked back down... and Betty was down on the ground in the same position. She'd moved her microphone to be near her face.

"What are you doing?" Agnes broke character. She looked at her script. It turns out... that was her line anyway.

Betty cooed into the mic. "Oh, don't tell me a little kissing got you hard." Both on the screen and in real life, they ran a hand across her groin, noticing a large bulge off to one side.

Agnes panted. This was porn. Betty had brought her in to dub... porn? Why? And now she was... recreating what was happening on screen and feeling her up through her jeans.

Agnes made the 'time-out' sign with her hands, where one holds one hand horizontally with the other hand held vertically in the center of the other hand, imitating a capital T.