I was the teacher/director for a class of Japanese teenagers who presented a 20-minute parody of Cinderella for an English-language drama festival sponsored by their English school here in Japan.
I asked for Paul's help for sound effects and background music. Our interaction consisted of the exchange of e-mails, text files, and mp3 files over the Internet. His contribution included the following.
1. The creation of different sound effects for different situations and characters. He created several possibilities for each situation.
2. During the scene when Cinderella had to return home from the ball at midnight, we used for humorous effect a recording of Big Ben striking 12 condensed into 15 seconds. Paul manipulated an original recording to produce an effect that had everyone laughing.
3. As the background music for one scene, we used music from a recurring scene in a famous Japanese television program that has been broadcast for more than 30 years. All the existing recordings of this incidental music have dialogue over the top, rendering them unusable. Paul used his performing talent and technical skills to duplicate the music precisely with electronic instruments. The audience instantly recognized it.
For #3 in particular, Paul demonstrated a rigorous attention to detail and precision by producing several versions until he nailed it.
He did all of this work promptly after I asked him. That allowed plenty of time to for the students to use the material in rehearsal, which added to their incentive.
From this interaction, I discovered that if Paul says he can do something, he canand he will. He certainly helped make a small part of Japan happy.
- Bill Sakovich, Saga City, Japan
P.S.: The students' drama won first prize in the competition. read more
