Archive for April, 2007

27
Apr

Inheritance

By inlimelight 2 Comments
Categories: Work

Two of the 5 nights of Inheritance have been and gone. They were both considered to be a success. Opening night was pretty good for an opening night but there had to be mistakes here and there e.g the mower being started and put on stage a scene early. Other than that there were just some other small mistakes that the audience (with the exception of 2 or 3) wouldn’t notice. The Cyc fading out through green might be considered to be one of them.

The following day the theater studies class had a meeting on how we could improve on the show and from a lighting perspective all that was needed was quicker scene changes. The director (Belly) would rather see the tech crew just walking off after a scene change than have a longer blackout. So for the second performance that is what I did. I turned it into a game. I purposely tried to catch the crew walking off and i managed to get them a couple of times.

All in all i have to say….Operating the show is incredibly boring.

20
Apr

I’m Too Tired To Think Of A Title For This Post

By inlimelight 2 Comments
Categories: Work

It was certainly a productive day today as we got allot of the lighting done for the school play. Today JP came in to drop off the cyc and the city colours, which are huge by the way, and as usual when JP comes to visit we always have issues with DMX. It’s always to do with the way the ‘loop’ is set up between Bio-box 1 and Bio-box 2 or simply we have the wrong end of the cable. Today we had both of those problems :)

Anyway after that was all working we decided to get as much of the other work done. We got the gels done eventually after Belly had to run down to clearlight to get some new frames. While we were waiting we tidied up the blacks (big black curtains that cover the walls) as they look shocking the way they were and begun organizing how we were going to hang cyclorama. It was rather a difficult task to do as we didn’t end up with the Sic that we were hoping for. We were hoping for one that was big enough to cover the whole back hight and width if the stage but unfortunately we ended up the one that was needed to be about another 3 meters wide and 3 meters longer. To solve this problem Pant suggested that we just lower the cyc and hang the black tabs above it. So we had to find the tabs and hang them from the curtain rail and find something to tie the cyc to. What we did was use the polls that I always thought were just polls but in fact they were for a ‘fly bar’ that we could tie the cyc and use the pulleys that are placed throughout the roof (which I also had no idea what they were there for) to hoist it up. This worked rather well except for hanging the black tab with took so much time as it is a heavy beast and impossible to lift high enough to get it onto the curtain rail, so then we tried having some people in the roof with ropes pulling it up while I was in the cougar to tie it off. This sort of worked but not very well and then after about 45 minutes of this Pant has yet another brilliant suggestion. Put the whole black inside the cougar. This way the cougar is taking all the weight and the new way of doing it was much quicker and easier. However it still is a bitch of a job, as you have to keep going up then down and moving the cougar along about half a meter then going up again. This is an even more frustrating job when you have people asking you to turn on power points when you are all the way in the roof tying a heavy cloth to a bar and being asked allot of questions that have been answered at least 5 times before. (Don’t worry lighting guys I’m not talking about you). Anyway at the end of the day the thing that will always annoy me is the fact that there are allot of people who don’t realize or appreciate the effort, time and sacrifice that is made by all Techies. Sure, the actors have to give up their time as well but they are the ones who get treated well by everyone. If the actors aren’t happy they can go and have a cry and demand that they pay them more money or say, “either she goes or I go”. Where as there is no compromising with Techies. Either you do it or someone else does.

16
Apr

Last Term 2

By inlimelight 3 Comments
Categories: Work

Its now term 2 and there is nothing of interest to report so I’ll go back in time to my last day of term 1 holidays. As you may or may not know I was at school using my fantastic skills to work on the lighting for the school play. Thankfully all the lights are now in the roof and a few of them have been focused but knowing how the school plays work it will have to be re-focused at least twice more. As usual I couldn’t do much once the actors were in position so the rest of the day was spent working on how to move these ‘trucks’ (set on wheels) around the stage without too much trouble. It should now just be a matter of the crew practicing what to do and what are the best spots to be pushing it from.

Now back to term 2. The only thing of note is the fact that there is a big assembly tomorrow which is always a pain. I have also once again and hopefully for the last time changed my blog layout. I’m trying to get a pages bar thing up the top of the page like what was on the old layout but I’m not having much luck with it. So any help would be great.

13
Apr

So Very Tired

By inlimelight 4 Comments
Categories: Work

Today was yet another day of rehearsals. We once again worked at a steady pace but the fact that Belly wanted to focus on the acing made it hard for us to be working in the hall so anything that could be done had to happen outside. Once we had done some tedious jobs as there was nothing that we could really do off stage we went and had lunch which took us longer than expected. We were gone for about an hour due to the fact that Pizza takes a long time to cook. Anyway on the way back from lunch Toranto drove over my foot as I was getting into the car. Don’t worry, I’m fine.

Unfortunately the tech crew has to go back again tomorrow as there is no other time for us to be doing lights. With those actors always hanging around it would be a shame if something was to fall on their heads.

12
Apr

So Tired

By inlimelight 1 Comment
Categories: Work

I am incredibly tired after 2 days of rehearsals for the school play. The first day of rehearsals wasn’t bad. We got the usual amount of work done which means that Belly is worrying about having the set built on time. We got the blacks hung at a steady pace, not record time though. We rigged some lights while training the year 10’s so they know how everything works and tricks on how to make it easier in a poorly designed hall. Thats right I said it, my second home is poorly designed. Who ever built it didn’t think about where he or she was placing the lighting bars. Anyway before i go off topic the year 10’s have been a big help but they aren’t making up the amount of people that graduated last year so we have problems with amounts of people. Also i doesn’t help that it is always the same people who are stuffing around.

Today was allot slower. I woke up early so as to get a fridge for one of the two kitchens, which I did get some applause for at the end of they day which was nice. Then things happened but not allot. There was some more construction of the kitchens, there were some more lights rigged, some of the sound was set up and then some extra things of the set were done, now it seems like more than yesterday but trust me.

Now onto tomorrow where there will hopefully be more lights done, at least one of the kitchens will be finished, the exterior wall painted and i also have to mix another one of those dance CDs for one of the teachers at school. No lunch for me! I also have a bed to drop off for one of the scenes and at some point i have to bring in a wheel barrow.

07
Apr

My Day In The City

By inlimelight 1 Comment
Categories: Holiday

Kong felt he wasn’t mentioned enough in my blog so I am now going to write about my day in the city with Kong.

There isn’t much to tell really. We went around the city looking at things that no one can afford and then went home. However we did go to the Exhibition Centre to go to one of those things where they sell crap CDs and DVDs for $5. There was nothing good but I did buy a pair of shoes for $10. We also had a look at some Art and had lunch.

The End

04
Apr

Ambient Recording

By inlimelight 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

What an interesting day. Toby, Belly and I went down to Geelong to get some ambient recordings for the school play, Inheritance. The drive up was good . It didn’t take too long to get down there and the view of the hills from the farm that we actually did the recordings of was brilliant. For those who may ask “why?” we went all the way down to Geelong to do a recording of farm land…The answer is: Because the play is realism, we wanted to get real sounds of a farm out in the middle of nowhere.

We spent an hour trying to a recording with a crown microphone that is worth $1000 or so and it was terrible. We would not be able to get enough ambient sound. we would get an excellent recording of sounds that were within 10m but anything that was further away would not be picked up. That was until I went into my magical bag of stuff and found my AKG D 3700 dynamic microphone. This baby was only like $200 and it did an excellent job. Thankfully I packed it otherwise we would have driven all the way down there and find that it was a waist of time.

Other than ambient sounds we also had to record a Ute. Recording this was a real pain as the stupid paddock bomb wouldn’t start! The plan was simple. Push it don the hill in 2nd gear and start it, but… We had to push it out of the garage, which was awful as there was a dip just outside to door which the car got stuck in, twice. Then we had to push it up a slight hill which was harder than it sounds as the tiers need more air in them. Anyway we got the car ready to push down the hill and realized that if it didn’t start on its way down we would either have to leave it there and run away or push it back up! So we pushed it down the hill with Belly trying to start it and…Success, it worked and we were able to get another good recording.

I’ve put some photos in the gallery.