THE ECHO

ALSO IN THIS ISSUEFreelancing:VATShowcase:Black Watch

ISSUE 5 // APRIL 2013

The future of theatre sound design

Welcome to the fifth issue of The Echo.

We have been a bit busy at the ASD these pastfew months, which is why you are receiving thisa little later than planned. We have been puttinga lot of energy into setting up a trainingprogramme for this year. By the time you readthis we will have already run six courses thismembership year and we have another fiveopen for registration. We also have another sixplanned for later in the year too, ranging fromproduct specific seminars on AutoCAD andd&b’s ArrayCalc to more general seminars onsound effect design and how to design theperfect panto! Where possible we’re creatingonline versions of these seminars for those whocannot attend and we have a couple of theseonline already.

We are also planning a range of show-basedseminars, starting with Charlie and theChocolate Factory, where sound designer PaulArditti will be showing attendees around thesystem and revealing some of his trade secrets.We had a very successful New Year drinks socialevent in January, with support from ourcorporate members and the National Theatre.Expect to see more of these in the future.

This year we will also be exhibiting at PLASAFocus: Leeds for the first time. If you have notbeen before it is well worth a visit as it is amuch more intimate affair and includes freelunch!

Gareth FryChair, Association of Sound Designers

PLASA FocusPLASA Focus: Leeds 2013, the leading event forpro audio and entertainment technology in thenorth of England, is taking place at the RoyalArmouries Museum, Leeds, on Tuesday 30 Apriland Wednesday 1 May, 2013.

130 exhibitors will debut over 100 new productsfresh from international launches at Prolight +Sound and a highly acclaimed PLASAProfessional Development Programme will runalongside the event, providing visitors withaccess to over 20 free seminars, tutorials andproduct demonstrations.

The exhibition takes place across two halls, withexhibitors including Adam Hall, Amber Sound,Audio Logic, Audio–Technica, Bose, CUK Audio,d&b audiotechnik, db Technologies, JHS, KV2

Audio, Martin Audio, Midas & Klark Technik, MTPro, Nexo, Orbital Sound, POLARaudio, RCF,Roland, Sennheiser, Shure Distribution andYamaha, among others. Visitors can visit theASD at stand; RA – B6.

Jon Burton (FOH for The Prodigy and BombayBicycle Club) will present How to Soundcheck!and Gareth Fry will be giving a talk entitledCreative Manipulation of Sounds. There will alsobe a very special keynote address from audiolegend Tony Andrews. Product demonstrationsfrom Sennheiser, Martin Audio, d&baudiotechnik and Audio-Technica will also formpart of the programme.

PLASA Focus: Leeds is renowned for its friendly,informal atmosphere which attracts over 2000members of the North’s entertainmenttechnology community each year that come tosee new products, learn, network and dobusiness. Registration is free and there is a freebuffet – style lunch on both days of the show.

Visitors can register for free now which coversentry to the show and the ProfessionalDevelopment Programme:www.plasafocus.com/leeds.

Editorial

Showcase:Black Watch

Image: Manuel Harlan

Black Watch first opened in a car park inEdinburgh in 2006. Since then the theproduction has played to 212,000 people, acrossfour continents, winning 22 awards, including anOlivier award for sound designer Gareth Fry.

How did the show come about?Gareth Fry:The show was born from two eventswhich happened simultaneously: a suicidebombing in Iraq which killed three members ofthe Black Watch regiment; and theannouncement that the regiment was to beamalgamated into the Scottish regiment,essentially disappearing in all but name. Theshow came out of interviews with ex-BlackWatch soldiers who’d returned from Iraq andhad left the army. The interviews form the basisof the show, with several scenes revolvingaround a writer interviewing soldiers in a pub inFife. We’ve changed some of the names, but theshow is a factual re-telling of the events leadingup to the suicide bombing.

Why did you choose to perform the show in acar park?One of the early decisions director John Tiffanymade was that he wanted to incorporateelements of the Edinburgh Tattoo into the show.Finding venues in Edinburgh during the festivalis always a nightmare, particularly if you want alarge playing space. However, tucked away in

the centre of Edinburgh is an ex-drill hall that isnow part of Edinburgh University and used as acar park. We went to take a look at it, with thenotion that we wanted to perform in traverselike the Tattoo and not much more.

The hall was pretty big, but very dirty from yearsof exhaust fumes and had quite fragile glass inthe ceiling. One of the first things we did in thefirst sound check was see how loud we could gowithout any of the panes of glass smashing tothe ground below! There were lots of otherconstraints with the venue, like ceiling riggingweight restrictions, but these constraints wouldlater form the defining characteristics of thetouring show. Of course the acoustics werepretty poor and being in traverse we knew we’dneed to use radio mics. The performers are in

Black Watch by Gregory BurkeDirected by John TiffanyAssociate Director (Music): Davey AndersonSound Designer: Gareth FryNo.1: Andrew Elliot (2006-2007); Gideon Turner(2008); Chris Reid (2010 - 2012)Opened: Edinburgh Drill Hall, 1st August 2006

2013 tour dates include:SECC, Glasgow: 28th March – 13th AprilUAE Sportspark, Norwich: 17th – 20th AprilParamount, Seattle: 25th April – 5th MayACT at the Mission Armory, San Francisco: 9th May –16th June

Image: Scott Suchman

The finale is an ear blistering mash-up of the Simon Fraser University

Pipes & Drums, a Michael Nymanpiece and a Max Richter piece

the Edinburgh Drill Hall, so a lot of the speakerswe had around the building retained theirrelative positions to the stage. Where possiblethe show has toured into large found spaces,though these are often difficult to find so we doalso perform in theatres too. The latter ofteninvolves quite a lot of work to create traverseseating. We still get a variety of acoustics, butbecause we created the show in the worstpossible acoustics, everywhere else is better!

We also perform in radically differentauditorium sizes: some venues may have fourrows of seating per side, others 15 rows. And thewidth may change too. I’ve created an audiomatrix that is scalable to accommodatedifferent auditorium sizes initially using BSSSoundwebs and latterly Yamaha DMEs. We alsointroduced better imaging by using delaymatrices and programming the cast blockinginto the Yamaha M7CL desk.

Music forms a big part of the show. How didyou work with musical director DaveyAnderson?Davey has adapted a number of traditionalBlack Watch songs into something reallybeautiful. I think there are quite a few things inBlack Watch that people don’t expect to seewhen watching a play about Iraq: one of them ishearing the soldiers break out into song! Davey

the muzzle of a chieftain tank as it fired rounds.It has a spectacular attack to it. A few years latera group of officers from the army came to seethe show and we had a chat with themafterwards – they’d returned from Basra theprevious week and provided me with first handdescriptions of what an incoming mortarsounded like. They spotted the artistic license I’dtaken with the sound of the Warrior ‘tank’ too,but they offered me the chance to go and recordone on Salisbury Plain, which sadly I didn’t havethe time to take them up on.

Were you surprised by the success of the show?What was most surprising was the show’spopularity with those who were anti-war as itwas with serving soldiers and officers. The acidtest came when the soldiers who had beeninterviewed, and who we were representing onstage and whose friends had died, came to seeit. They were very moved by the show andthanked us for giving them a voice.

We were told the show would never tour butthe demand for it was so great that NTS decidedit was worth doing.

How did you approach touring a site specificshow?Set designer Laura Hopkins created a touring setthat mimics a lot of the structural features of

the space between the two seating banks aswell as under and on scaffold structures ateither end so I knew imaging was going to be anightmare.

How did you deal with these problems?Acoustic treatment of the venue wasn’t anoption, as we didn’t want to change the look ofthe venue by hanging big drapes everywhere. Inthe end I chose to go for a distributed system,with a row of EM Acoustics EMS81 speakersalong the length of each seating bank, hanginglow above the heads of the audience. This limitswhat you can do with imaging but gives thebest results in terms of intelligibility in adverseacoustics. For effects speakers I went with d&b’sC4s, which have a 40x40 degree dispersion,minimising the spill into the venue.

How did you create the ‘sound of war’?We were lucky to get hold of some B-roll fromthe BBC (video/audio used to pad out newsreports), which was really useful for what itreally sounded like in Iraq, particularly the ‘battlenet’, the military comms channel relayingreports and orders. I made a version of this thatunderlies a lot of the show. I took quite a fewliberties though. I couldn’t find any explosionswhich had the right impact – they were all toobass’y which didn’t work well in the Drill Hallacoustics. I ended up using a recording taken at

has managed to create some really amazingpieces that really integrate into the show, andare part of what gives the show its heart. Themusical scoring for the songs is quite minimal. Iasked Davey to provide me with the music asstems so we could send them to different setsof speakers to make the sound more three-dimensional. There’s normally a ‘natural’ reverbto the acoustic so rarely a need for any artificialreverb.

There are a lot of movement sequences in theshow using found music. Some of this isstraight off CD and some not. The finale is anear blistering mash-up of the Simon FraserUniversity Pipes & Drums, a Michael Nymanpiece and a Max Richter piece. Davey made thisusing a rather old keyboard sampler synth and ifyou listen to the tracks in isolation the noise andtime stretching artefacts are awful. Put it alltogether though and it sounds amazing andyou just don’t hear the noise.

There is a certain rough aesthetic to the wholeshow – was this a choice?The show we first made was very rough aroundthe edges in many respects. The audience sat ontemporary seating in a venue covered in sootthat didn’t have any discernible heating orventilation system, watching soldiers setting upcamp in Iraq in similarly rough conditions. The

ramshackle setting, temporary seating, lack ofmasking is intrinsic to the show. When we cameto remount Black Watch I was keen to re-make alot of the sound effects, but somehow everytime I made something cleaner it didn’t feelright. In the end I refined a lot of thingsminimally but we decided to leave a lot of theshow as we had first made it.

We spoke to Chris Reid who has been touringwith the show since 2010.

What are the challenges of the show?Chris Reid:The very physical nature of theperformance constantly throws up challengeswith regard to mic positioning, sweaty actorsand damaged equipment. All before youconsider the actual choreography of mixing theshow, the sheer number of times you have topress that go button and the very fast paceddialogue. At various points in the show the textrevolves around the sound effects to the pointthat the sound almost becomes the eleventhmember of the cast. You have to adapt eachbutton press depending on what you’retriggering and how the cast are playing thescene that night, to keep it as realistic aspossible whilst giving the cast something toplay against.

How long have you spent touring with theshow?All together I’ve spent twelve months touringthe show, with my first tour in 2010-11 taking upthe first nine months of that time. We’ve beento Glasgow; Aberdeen; Belfast; London;Coventry; Glenrothes;Washington, DC, twice;Chicago, IL, twice; Austin, TX; Chapel Hill NC;New York, NY and Seoul, South Korea. During mytime with the show we have played in very large

Image: Manuel Harlan

concert venues such as the SECC in Glasgowperforming to an audience of 750 and smalltheatre spaces such as Memorial Hall, Universityof North Carolina performing to 240.

What was the most challenging venue?The show is usually performed in traversebetween two large arena seating banks. Wewere not allowed to build a seating bank intoauditorium of Washington DC’s Sidney HarmanHall, meaning we had a seating bank on stagefacing the full auditorium of the theatre. Thisresulted in extra speakers being added to thevocal system and a re-design of the delaymatrices to utilise some repositioned effectsspeakers as fills to increase the coverage to thefar wider seating area. We also had to split whatused to be duplicate signal sends to each side ofthe traverse to allow independent control fortwo vastly different loudspeaker systems andseating areas.

How do you adapt to the different acoustics youencounter?Some venues come with a lengthy naturalreverb time (The Broadway Armory, Chicago)that can add a new feeling to the very loudplayback but can hamper the dialogue. In someof these instances we have had to hangadditional blacks in the space in an attempt tocombat this but ultimately we can’t recreate the

sound of a theatre auditorium in a Sports Hall.For this production the raw presentation can beenhanced by the natural acoustics of the room,it just takes a little getting used to when you’remixing.

How is the show for the No.2?I think the No.2 experience on the show is achallenge. The cast have very physicalmovement and action sequences coupled withvery fast quick changes and limited timeoffstage. So at times the No.2 is policing up tosix quick changes simultaneously for micpositioning whilst possibly replacing sweated orbroken microphones. The character Cammywears two mics throughout the show as hecarries up to 70 percent of the dialogue andnarration of the show, and is only offstage oncewhere he is not doing a 20 second quick change

and re-entering. Monitoring his mics andknowing his every exit and entrance and thetime between, is vital to decide how best to dealwith any problems that may occur. I think italmost comes as a relief to the No.2 when theybegin to learn the mix of the show becausethen they find out how busy a mix it is andappreciate just how vital all the running aroundthey do backstage is to the person lifting thefaders front of house.

Any interesting anecdotes to share?Of course touring a show for so long with acompany for 23 (ten cast, two understudies andeleven technical crew), where twelve of themare young men mostly from Scotland who arepartial to a party on their days off will raisesome very interesting anecdotes – none ofwhich are repeatable in a magazine.

Image: Manuel Harlan

MacBook Pro (or other high spec laptop)To me, it really is the most incredible thing thatin a standard laptop bag I can carry a systembuilt around a MacBook Pro which enablescomplete end to end production of sound (andvideo) designs from initial recordings, editing,post production and mastering through to finalshow control programming and output.

Twenty years ago the physical equipment that isso effectively virtualised in software on my laptopwould not have fitted into a studio built on a 40-foot trailer bed and would have cost millions.

But what is more important is that it putscreative tools in the hands of everyone,liberating the means of production and, as hashappened in the music recording industry, takesgatekeeping of access to these facilities out ofthe hands of a controlling elite.

It allows the imaginations of designers todirectly connect with technologies, to allowtheir ideas to be shared with audiences. Itenables talented people to do high quality workacross the entire spectrum of theatricalendeavours and budgets, without any practicallimit on what can be achieved.

And now through the most incredible piece ofvirtualisation yet, Vienna Symphonic Library’sMIR PRO 24 software, I can carry aroundsimulations of first class concert halls, which goway beyond standard convolution reverbs,containing a full 9.1 Ambisonic basedmicrophone array and place 24 sound sourceswithin them and record the results.

Spotify PremiumThe first thing I do if I am working on a showwhich references a lot of commercial recordingsis make sure the director has a Spotify account,if necessary signing them up for a three monthpremium account. We can then accesscollaborative playlists and share ideas withoutany actual audio being transferred.

Having started music research activities in thedays of vinyl, moving to CD in the early 1980s,amassing huge libraries at vast expense andthen spending hours ripping these libraries intoiTunes, each advance made the music researchworkflow easier and the outcomes better.

The arrival of Spotify took things to another levelentirely. Instant access to such a huge library ofmusic in all genres and in some cases really

MIC POOL Mic works internationally as a sound and videodesigner. In 2008 he won the first ever Tony award forsound design for the Broadway production of The 39Steps. He was the first Head of Sound at the rebuiltLyric Theatre Hammersmith, Head of Sound at theRoyal Court in its 25th Anniversary year, touredextensively with with Ballet Rambert, and hasdesigned sound for the RSC, The National and manyWest End and New York productions. For 23 years hewas resident at West Yorkshire Playhouse, latterly asDirector of Creative Technology. He is now freelance.

So what are his favourite things?

A FEW OF MYFAVOURITE THINGS

Mainstage 2 screenshot

obscure material is just incredible. Being able tofind the perfect piece of music for a scene, andthen instantly to be able to audition andcompare many recorded versions, (and in thecase of iconic period recordings, quite oftenseveral different versions of re-mastering for CDrelease) really refines the process of musicselection.The dramatic impact that can be madeon a production just by substituting a recordingby a different conductor, or a different period ofrecording technology, cannot be overstated.

There are a few downsides. The indexing isreally, really, basic, and you can no longer buyand download tracks so you do have to locatethe original elsewhere. Additionally some artistsare not available at all.

Mainstage 2This used to be part of Logic but is now aseparate application for Apple Mac. It allowsmixing and control of audio plug-ins,instruments and effects in a live environment.For £21 it contains the most ridiculous amountof high quality instrument and effect plug-insand samples.

I do most of the research and development of

my designs in Pro Tools using a huge armoury ofplug ins. It used to be really frustrating thentrying to put together an affordable system ofhardware effects to get similar results in thetheatre. Some effects just don’t exist in usablehardware, particularly real-time granular effectswhich I particularly like for extreme vocalmodifications.

Hardware reverbs are often difficult to programand rarely match the sound quality of theconvolution reverbs I use in software particularlywhen, as in the Tim Piggot-Smith King Lear inLeeds, I wanted extremely high quality 40second reverb times to effect thunder sheetsplayed live on stage.

A Mac Mini, an 8-channel audio interface, and

Mainstage is, straight out of the box, the mostincredibly versatile effects unit with over 120instruments and effects. Samplers, compressors,limiters, synths, loop recorders, reverbs andguitar effects racks, and a fully featured mixerare all included.

Add in your specific requirements as AU plug-insand you can create an effects rack perfectlytailored for your show. It’s just a pain that it onlyhas stereo output busses.

On The King’s Speech at Wyndham’s Theatre weused Mainstage to host three plug-ins whichwere key components of the show’s sound:Speakerphone, for public address and radiobroadcast simulations, and Altiverb for acousticsimulation of Westminster Abbey and other livespaces.

Quite bizarrely I did a search for a mic modellerto emulate microphones of the 1920s and 1930sand the first search result was a Waves plug incalled ‘The King’s Microphones’ which emulatesthe silver plated and royal crested EMImicrophones that were used for recordings ofroyal speeches by George V and George VI,which worked really nicely.

A regular column looking at how our jobs andtechnologies will evolve in the future.This issue: PROCEDURAL AUDIO

We are on the cusp of some radical changes tohow we can play back sound, and we have thecomputer games industry to thank for it. GameAudio shares a lot of similarities with theatresound – it rarely locks to timecode, there is aperformer (the player) who will act differentlyeach time, and cues need to be flexible and fluidto respond to the differences in eachperformance (each time the game is played).Sound designers for games often have to createnaturalistic or highly stylised landscapes withmultiple locations and perspectives. In manygames, the player is free to explore a world withdifferent sound-generating objects and changesof time and weather. As the player may wanderin any direction, the sound design has to be ableto respond with incredible flexibility.

The tools and techniques for creating gameaudio are significantly different to theatresound though. Rather than having a linearplaylist of cues, game playback engines areprogrammed to take a more logical set of inputparameters. Let’s take, for example, a gameworld consisting simply of a kitchen, containing

a fridge and an avatar of our player. Theplayback engine would take the inputparameters of the player’s distance and anglefrom the fridge, and use them to set thevolume, panning, EQ and reverb dry/wet mix ofthe fridge sound effect. As the distance to thefridge increases, the level of the fridgedecreases, some of the top end might be rolledoff, and the sound is made more reverberant. Afourth input parameter might be whether thefridge door is open or closed. This fridge modelis built by the sound designer, using a few fridgerecordings, and defining a few mixes, and theplayback engine takes care of the transitionsbased on the input parameters.

We can imagine using this in a theatricalcontext by replacing the player’s inputparameters with MIDI from our show controlsoftware. (Yes, I think MIDI will still be aroundlong into the future!) So we have our showcomputer running our fridge sound effectmodel – we can then send MIDI from our showcontrol software to set the level/distanceappropriate to our scene. Not the most excitingthing in the world when you apply it to a fridgesound effect, but it has vast potential.

These models of the world are built up by sound

designers using tools such as FMOD(http://fmod.org) and WWise(http://www.audiokinetic.com), and thenrendered out into a playback engine, hostedwithin the computer game.These tools are honedtowards delivering game audio, and are oftenquite daunting to use, belying their computerprogramming origins. But each new version of thesoftware is becoming easier to use and morefamiliar to the average DAW user, whilst deliveringmore advanced forms of audio manipulation.Insomniac Games, for example, have built a crowdgenerator into their engine that builds up, in realtime, variable size crowd sound effects using shortclips of dialogue. A recent version of FMODintroduced the Engine Designer module, whichallows the designer to build a basic model of avehicle’s engine, using a few simple recordings ofthe engine at different speeds.The module thenallows input parameters, such as throttle, tocontrol the speed of the engine.This largelyautomates a lot of painstaking crossfading andlooping of sound effects, and the programming ofhow they are played back.

I worked on a show recently that was entirelyset in the compartments and corridors of atrain. The train had to depart and arrive atstations, seamlessly slowing down and speeding

The future of theatre sound design

up, and go through tunnels and under bridges. Itwas incredibly faffy to design using the tools wehave available now. Imagine a tool where I couldfeed in a few choice recordings of a train andthen send it parameters of how fast or slow itshould be going, whether we’re in acompartment, corridor or outside the window.I’d spend a lot less time doing faffyprogramming and have a lot more time to focuson how it sounds. The comparison I would makeis to lighting desks and moving lights – tenyears ago they were incredibly time-consumingto program, having to edit a single parameter ata time, but with the advent of dedicated tools,they are now much faster to program.

Imagine that rather than trawling through yoursfx library to find the right rain sound effect, youcould just insert a plug-in that couldsynthetically generate rain on a variety ofsurfaces at a variety of intensities. This is thenext step along – Procedural Audio – generatingsound effects the way a synth generatesmusical notes. Of course we've all heard thosenot-so-great rain and sea synth patches fromthe 1980s, but procedural audio is aiming higherthan this. It is synthesis in a form closer to thetechniques used to computer-generate theimages in your average Pixar movie. It involves

specifying the acoustic properties of soundgenerators and surfaces and accuratelymodelling the wavefronts of sound interacting.And it is already becoming a reality:http://tinyurl.com/SoundseedWindGenerator

Of course it may well often be easier andproduce better results to go out and recordsomething we want for a show, but often thereare times when we need something we can'trecord for reasons of finances, logistics or thosepesky laws of physics! Sadly time travelling witha location recorder to the 18th Century to getthat perfect Italian street scene remains out ofreach; and everyone must have at some pointbeen onboard a stalled jet plane as it plummetsto the ground, survived, only to find out that youforgot to press Record! Of course we can createthese sounds currently, using a degree ofimagination. There are also plenty of soundsthat are difficult to record with enough isolationto be usable. But if you can model it... And ofcourse, modelling offers the opportunity to

create places that have never existed, machinesyet to be invented, objects that defy reality.But of course, simulating reality or otherwise isnot a straightforward task. The more complex asound generator is, the more complex it is tosimulate. Consider all the separate parts of aninternal combustion engine that combine tomake the sound of an engine and you begin tosee why this is still a little way off at present.Time must be taken by people to build thesemodels. But these are hardly obstacles ofsubstance. Perhaps, in less time than we think,we will be creating and buying sound modelsrather than painstakingly stitching themtogether from existing recordings.

We can learn from how players interact with agame too – increasingly players are using muchmore than a couple of buttons to allow agreater degree of interactivity and control:accelerometers, voice control, gestural control,and video capture are all in common use.Perhaps sound operators of the future will beusing a lot more than a Go button?

FURTHER READINGhttp://tinyurl.com/3m76uozhttp://tinyurl.com/btxnwnhhttp://tinyurl.com/c5mfnrvhttp://tinyurl.com/82wzr4p

FMOD Engine Designer

What is your current project and role?Sound Designer on The Vortex at the Rose Kingston.

What is the favourite part of your work/process?Devising with companies like Told By an Idiot, andworking with music to create emotive responses tothe work.

What would you change about your work / theindustry?More clarity in the fees structure and moreunderstanding of the differing job specification frompotential employers.

Top trick / tip?I enjoy manipulating the existing music tracks in theshow, creating tones and so on for underscores whichhelp keep the same feel and timbre across the soundworld of the play.

What are you listening to at the moment? I’m revisiting an old, but brilliant album Rossz CsillagAlatt Született by the Venetian Snares.

What is your current project and role?Sound Designer on Cannibals (Royal Exchange),Manchester Sounds (Library Theatre, site-specific), TheMasque of Anarchy (Manchester InternationalFestival).

What is your favourite part of your work/process?The collaboration with actors, directors and creativesin the rehearsal and production periods building ashow – at its most democratic it can't be beaten as away to earn a living!

What would you change about your work / theindustry?In an ideal world that theatre, and therefore my work,would be less London-centric.

Top trick / tip?Always do some work on a project as soon as possible,get the creative process going so that it can percolatein the background whilst working on other things.Being in a situation with limited time pressures cancompromise the end result.

What are you listening to at the moment?Nick Cave Push the Sky Away; Bastille Bad Blood; andAtoms for Peace AMOK.

Mini profiles

ADRIENNE QUARTLYAdrienne studied Musicat University, waspreviously a RadioProducer and followinga Masters at CSSD,began work as a sounddesigner/composer fortheatre. Her work hasappeared all over theworld.

PETER RICEPeter is a freelanceSound Designer andEngineer for theatre. Hehas a long-standingassociation with theRoyal Exchange inManchester latterly asa Sound Designer andpreviously as DeputyHead of Sound.

In the latest in our regular series on the business ofbeing a freelancer, we look at the intricacies of VAT.

VAT is a complex topic, and a lot of people don'trealise that you have to be VAT registered if youearn a certain amount of money, nor that there aredifferent types of VAT. Whilst being VAT registeredadds a huge amount of hassle to your life there areactual ‘cash flow benefits’ to be gained.

This article has been fact checked by a charteredaccountant but is for general guidance only and isnot a substitute for professional advice wherespecific circumstances can be considered. Whilstevery effort has been made to ensure theinformation contained within this publication iscorrect, the ASD does not accept any liability forany errors or omissions contained herein or anyaction taken or not taken in reliance upon theinformation provided in these articles.

As with all things relating to HMRC, multiplecaveats and conditions apply to everything below,but this guide will cover most freelance sounddesigners.

Freelancing - VAT VAT basicsIt is mandatory to register for VAT if yourturnover (all your income before expenses) goesover the VAT registration threshold: currently£77,000. You don’t have to be a business to beVAT registered. VAT is an additional tax toincome tax, and works in quite a different way.Being VAT registered is a pain in the arse, butdoes offer several advantages depending on theflavour, and can actually save you money!

There are two forms of VAT you can opt for:normal VAT and Flat Rate VAT. Which form youchoose depends on your individualcircumstances, but as a rough guide, Flat RateVAT is good if you don’t buy a lot of VAT-reclaimable items, whilst ordinary VAT is good ifyou purchase a lot of goods that you canreclaim the VAT on.

Normal VATWith standard VAT, you add VAT at 20% to thevalue of the goods and services you provide inthe UK when you invoice. In filling out your VATreturn, you declare the amount of deductiblegoods and services you’ve bought that you havebeen charged VAT on. The difference betweenthese two is the foundation of the amount of

VAT you’ll pay. Confusingly though, a differentset of conditions apply for what is deductible forVAT purposes than for what is deductible forincome tax purposes. Typically the rules forreclaiming VAT on things you’ve bought aremuch stricter than for income tax, particularlyfor anything that has dual use, i.e. is also usedfor non-business activities. There are quite a fewthings that you buy that don’t have 20% VATadded to their price, so you can’t claim VAT backon them: stamps, train tickets, books, magazines,water utilities, to name a few. If you buy a lot ofitems that have VAT applied to them, then thissystem works to your favour. If you reclaim moreVAT than you invoice for, you will receive arebate from HMRC.

For example: During one financial quarter, youdesign a show for £2,000. You invoice thetheatre £2,000 + 20% VAT = £2,400. You receive£2,400 from the theatre when they pay you. Youpurchase £1,200 (including VAT) of goods andservices. You would pay HMRC £200: £400 VATyou received from the theatre minus the £200VAT you paid on goods and services. Theremaining £200 from the £400 VAT you chargedthe theatre is yours to keep and is effectively areclaim on the VAT you have been charged from

other VAT registered businesses.

Normally you complete VAT returns everyquarter, relating to the months just prior, so youhave to be very prompt and organised with yourbookkeeping and have time to produce thereturns. You can reduce this to one return byapplying for the Annual Accounting Scheme, butnine payments must still be made through theyear.http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/schemes/annual.htm

Flat Rate VATIs a much simpler form of VAT and isconsequently favoured by a lot of freelancers.You add VAT at 20% to your invoices as withnormal VAT, but you don’t claim the VAT on yourpurchases (except capital assets over £2,000).

Instead you pay HMRC a percentage of yourgross turnover (your total income, including theVAT you charge), currently 12.5% for thoseworking in the entertainment sector (there is a1% discount down to 11.5% the first 12 monthsyou register). Bookkeeping is considerablysimpler as your receipts are irrelevant to yourVAT return, and you get to keep the differencebetween the 20% VAT you invoice for and theamount you pay to HMRC. This difference is toaccount for the fact that you don’t get to claim

the VAT on your purchases. If you don’t buy a lotof goods or services that you could reclaim theVAT on, then this scheme is great and can alsoshow a cash flow benefit.http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/bimmanual/bim31585.htmhttp://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/schemes/flat-rate.htm

For example: During one financial quarter, youdesign a show for £2,000. You invoice thetheatre £2,000 + 20% VAT = £2,400. You receive£2,400 from the theatre when they pay you. Youwould only pay HMRC £300: 12.5% of the £2,400you invoiced the theatre. The remaining £100 isyours to keep. You purchase £1,200 (includingVAT) of goods and services but the purchasesyou made are irrelevant.Help:The HMRC runs a VAT Helpline: 0845 0109000.

Working for non-VAT registered companiesIf you are VAT registered and regularly have tonegotiate for a design fee, be clear that the feeyou are negotiating is excluding VAT, notincluding VAT. This is only really an issue if youare working for a company that is not VATregistered as they can’t claim the 20% VAT back.

VAT invoicesHMRC is much stricter with people who are VAT

registered about the information they mustinclude on their invoice. Your invoice shouldinclude your VAT number, your trading address, asequential reference number, the date yousupplied the goods or services, and the nameand trading address of the company you’reinvoicing. You also need to itemise your bill withthe net value (before VAT), the VAT rate(currently 20%), the amount of VAT added (i.e.20% of the net value) and the gross value (thenet value plus the VAT).

A sample invoice you can use is available todownload from the ASD website at:http://www.associationofsounddesigners.com/vat

Expenses and disbursementsWe’ve all offered to buy a bit of kit we’vewanted to get on a show, and then the producerhas paid us back for it. Disbursements is theofficial HMRC term for these items. It’simportant to separate them out on yourinvoices in a separate category. You don’t chargeVAT on disbursements, nor do you claim VAT forthe items you buy. You pass on the VAT receiptfor the item to the producer so they can claimthe VAT for themselves. As far as your VAT andself-assessment returns go, it’s as if you neverbought or invoiced anything.http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/chargin

g/disbursements.htmExpenses however tend to be things that youbuy, consume and then charge your client for,such as petrol or accommodation. You keepthese receipts for your financial records andclaim VAT on them, where you were chargedVAT: tube, train and plane tickets, for example,do not have VAT added to the price, so youcannot claim VAT back.

Then you invoice your client for the receipt total(i.e. including the VAT charged by the petrolstation) and you add VAT on top of that. Someclients are not so used to dealing with VATregistered individuals and may ask for thereceipts, but you need to keep them for yourrecords – they can get copies to prove theexpense existed, but they can’t use them toclaim VAT back as you have already claimed theVAT back on that receipt.http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/reclaiming/reclaim.htm

For example: You have a £20 petrol receipt (for£16.66 plus £3.33 VAT). You would claim back the£3.33 VAT in your VAT return. You would invoiceyour client £20 plus £4 VAT = £24. They wouldclaim back the £4 VAT in their VAT return.

For example: You have a £20 train ticket (for £20plus £0 VAT). You would not claim anything back

in your VAT return (but you might in your self-assessment tax return). You would invoice yourclient £20 plus £4 VAT = £24. They would claimback the £4 VAT in their VAT return.

Fees and sales – goods and servicesHMRC tend to refer to things in terms of Goodsand Services. As a general rule Goods might bethings we sell (selling sound effects, software,custom built bits and bobs) and Services mightoften be the fees we receive for sound design.

Working abroadVAT is relatively straightforward when workingin the UK. Things get complicated fast when youwork abroad though.

EuropeWhen you work in Europe, what you invoice forand apply VAT to varies considerably, anddifferent rules apply to goods and services.

An important concept in the world of VAT is the‘place of supply’, and this often determineswhether you charge VAT. If you are supplyinggoods to an EU company then you normallyhave to charge VAT on those goods. If thatcompany is VAT registered in their country andprovides you with a valid VAT number andmeets other criteria, you can zero-rate the goodsyou supply to them.

If you are supplying services to an EU company,and you perform them in that EU country thenthe ‘place of supply’ is outside the UK and istherefore considered outside the scope of theUK VAT system and you would not add VAT toyour fees.

You would not add VAT to services performed inthe UK if you are working for a company notbased in the UK.

For our line of work you generally do not need tocomplete an EC Sales List.

References:http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/exports/services.htmhttp://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/exports/goods.htmhttp://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/esl/reporting-esl.htmhttp://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageImport_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000152&propertyType=document

The purchases you make in Europe will ofteninclude VAT, but the rate of VAT (and what it isreferred to as) varies from country to country. Ifyou buy goods online you will often find thatyou have been charged at the UK rate of VAT,

rather than the rate of the country you boughtit from. Your supplier may also ask for your VATnumber and then zero-rate the supplies to you,that is, they won’t charge you VAT on yourpurchases. In both these cases you wouldaccount for these acquisitions on your VATreturn, though in the latter case you would paythe VAT that you would have been charged inone box of the return and reclaim it back inanother! You would enter the transaction intoboxes 2, 4, 7 and 9 of your VAT return!

If you physically buy something in anothercountry you will be charged VAT at the local rate.You cannot reclaim VAT on these purchasesfrom HMRC.http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/imports/importing.htm

Non-EU countries, like the USAIf you work for a US-based company in the USthen the ‘place of supply’ is again outside theUK, and you would not charge VAT. If you areworking for a UK-based company in the US, thenyou would charge the UK company VAT.

You cannot claim VAT back on purchases youhave made in non-EU countries because thepurchases you made there do not include VAT.However you may find yourself buying goodsfrom abroad, particularly by mail order, and

being charged Customs Duty, Excise Dutyand/or Import VAT by Customs. You can claimany Import VAT back, subject to the normalconditions of whether it is claimable, but youcannot claim any Duties paid.

If you work abroad a lot, you may find yourselfbeing taxed in the country you work in. You mayalso find yourself having to fill out a variety oftax forms for the country you work in. This canoften result in you being unsure how much youwill eventually be paid, and getting paidconsiderably less than you thought you wouldbe paid, once various mysterious taxes havebeen deducted. You may want to considersetting up a company in this case. This meansthat the theatre will employ your company,rather than you, to provide services. This meansyou will not be an employee in that country, andhence you will not have to pay taxes in thatcountry - you will be employed by yourcompany, and only subject to UK tax and VATlaws. This all sounds great, but of course itbrings with it a whole new raft of financialrigmarole. We’ll look at company law in a laterissue.

MORE INFOVisit www.associationofsounddesigners.com/freelancing to read more about this topic, get updatesand leave comments.

Issue #5Copyright Association of Sound Designers 2013

Cover: Gareth Owen, Robbie Scotcher and JoannaWoodward at Using Radio Mics for Musical Theatreseminar

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