What happens next …

And we return … week two of the four choreographers piece.

We left the action looking at timecode for the offstage quartet.

In the end, the timecode wasn’t much of an issue – the bigger issue was that the choreographer for that piece hadn’t realised that the quartet were in the wings. I’ve no idea why.

I do know that the several hours I spent setting up the quartet and grand piano in the wings on the saturday were pulled apart in minutes the Sunday morning to move the quartet into the orchestra pit.

“Don’t we have an orchestra in the pit?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Yes we did have to work out how a 65 strong orchestra was going to manage with a Steinway and four strings in it’s midst – a lucky bit of programming meant that the quartet started the evening, with an interval to set up the orchestra.

[shop talk]

The composer was one Olafur Arnalds, a young Icelandic composer who has some very atmospheric pieces, similar (in my minds at least) to William Orbit. He was at the piano with his own copy of Qlab along with a effects pedal and sample pad. The string quartet with him had DPA4061 clip mics, though an absence of proper clips meant we go a little creative with tie wraps – finally have a use for those things.

The Steinway was miked with a pair of C414 clamped to the framework as it was a minimumly raised lid.

Olafur had two Tannoy V12 as monitors and the quartet shared two more Tannoy V8. To deal with the timecode from the AV position all five ended up on in-ears (and Behringer headphone amps absolutely suck! I really don’t recommend them.)

We were able to minimise the impact onto the orchestra and could swop from one to the other in around ten minutes – labelling everything to death.

The orchestra had five SE300 with CK91 heads positioned fairly evenly about the pit with additional C3000 at the conductors rostrum.

And all the above was specially in for us as it’s all playback on the tour …

[/shop talk]

This show seems to have really caught poeple’s attentions. Reviews have been mixed; from zero stars to four stars and have even been mixed for the different pieces in the show.

The temple of cock has been the main talking piece – some absolutely vilifying it and some saying that it’s exactly in the Diaghilev mindset. Some have questioned having this piece to close it, some have wondered why it’s not earlier.

The answer – practicalities. It’s easier to have the piece with screens onstage first, switch to the blackbox/scanachrome pieces in the middle then spend the second interval setting up the temple and come in earlier the next day to reset back to the screens.

Personally, I’m prefering the central pieces (a solo and a duet) – the first piece doesn’t seem as vibrant – though it is based on Shackletons trip to the Antartic so vibrancy may not be the point.

And the final piece just seems to be as shocking for the sake of it. The first night had walkouts and actual boos doing the curtain calls (who sits through an entire piece they didn’t like?) but was causing laughter in the stalls on night three.

The choreographer on this seems to be going to extremes to live to the ’surprise me’ concept – I’d have been more surprised if the piece had been more involving than in it’s current form. Some dance in it would have been nice also for a piece that celebrates dance.

Still.

One reviewer was of the opinion that the boos shows that we are still stretching the comfort zones, pushing the boundaries.

That’s all very well – I’m just thinking that we’ve had several pieces recently that haven’t reviewed well, haven’t sold well and the only pieces selling are the ones that have the support of public opinion. It’s very well to be pushing the boundaries but I wonder sometimes if our boundaries are set further than that of the audience …

And whether or not that’s a good thing …

Temple of What?

I’ve already mentioned our next upcoming piece.

Celebrating the centenary of the Ballet Russes, we have four choreographers coming to together, each working on their own piece with their choice of fellow artists (lighting designers, composers, video creators and so on) which will all be put together for an evening of performance all next week, followed by an international tour.

The main brief for this was to follow Diaghilev’s comment to Cocteau: “Surprise Me!”

All very laudable.

But we knew that it was just going to be a busy couple of weeks for us here.

It’s never going to be a great start when a theatre built as a receiving house moves to produce a work. There just isn’t the creation space for performers or designers, there’s no storage space for any set/costumes/whatever and so our events department, who have the unenviable job of overseeing the booking for our rehearsal studios, have been playing a very delicate balancing act of trying to keep four separate companies with consistant space to devise the new pieces, while still keeping other bookings coming in and working around whichever incoming company is on the main stage.

This includes the offsite rehearsals of course.

Then there was the fun issue of moving a wooden floor into one of the studios.

I say fun … I may not mean fun.

The floor arrived on the same day that myself and a few of our regular techs were scheduled to load two complete wooden floors back into our storage space in the depths of Kent. The rehearsal floor was supposed to arrive first thing in the morning and be loaded into the lift to go to the third floor studio – to be finished inside an hour so I could take those floor loaders and coerce them into loading our floors – all this while Apple set up an event on the main stage.

My first clue something was awry was walking in to find a large wooden block by the lift. Not really knowing about the rehearsal floor at this point, I didn’t think too much of it and walked straight past.

Walking onstage to be asked “can we borrow you for a moment?” always arouses suspicion. That’s about the line I use when I require a couple of victims to lift our sound desk. And when the initial inquiry is followed with “just how guys have you got in today?” just confirms that something nasty is about to occur.

Trying to ignore the vague sense of impending doom I get when Mr Ben or Mr Best Man ask me if I’m available (never free!), I’m walked back to the large floor piece I ignored earlier.

“This needs to go up to the studio on the third floor!” I’m told.

“This piece of 10 foor by 6 foot by 1 foot decking made with heavy wood and with an overhanging platform top on two sides?”

“Yes” I’m told.

“This piece of 10 foot by 6 foot by 1 foot decking made from heavy wood and with an overhanging platform lip on two sides that’s by our 8 foot long lift?”

“Yes.” I’m told “How many guys have you in today?”

The quick amongst you will have noticed the slight descrepency – that two foot different between platform length and lift length.

That two foot equals three stories of stairs that double back on themselves or about 20 minutes of five guys lifting heavy wood to and fro.

And that was the first piece.

“Tell you what” I’m told after we got the first section up (of four) “let’s wait until lunchtime so the company can rehearse”

“tell you what,” I reply “as the truck we are meant to be loading now is here, why don’t we finish this now?”

“Can’t you load that later?”

“Nope, later we have to unload that truck a number of miles away.”

“Oh”

The joys of people assuming that a lift will take a load without checking first.

Oh, and we are going to come back to this particular dance piece – it’s one of the four …

So having manhandled one floor up stairs, and swearing that Gallowglass can have the fun of moving down to another studio, back up to the first and then down to the stage over the next couple of weeks, we retrieve the truck driver and start loading the two wooden floors that we were expecting to move this day.

Wood was often supplied in 8′ x 4′ sizes and you hear a lot about trucks, trains and transit being built around this size. Well, the internal measurement of a standard 18 tonne truck is around 7′10″. So rather than the two sets of floors (each across two wheeled pallets of similar sizes) being a straight load, it involves the heavier floor (read more expensive) being loaded on it’s pallets offset with the lighter floor (read the one we care less about) having to go on a sheet at a time and stack on edge in the available space.

Our offsite store is a single cage in a warehouse in an industrial estate in Marden, Kent – a village that I’m sure only exists as it has an industrial estate in it. Certainly it gets two trains an hour – one in each direction.

We arrive ahead of the truck to find that the entrance way is blocked by the unloading artic of the touring company who own the building.

Ah.

So we duly have to unload our truck outside, reversing the loading.

In about our only good fortune that day, the artic leaves right after we finish taking the floor off and we can wheel the floor to our store.

It takes a little bit of pack-tetris to get in into the store, currently home to several productions worth of odd items (not bad for a receiving house) but we manage in short order and return to the station in time to see the train leave – apparently mid afternoon the schedule changes – who knew?

Time rolls on.

It’s now the week before we start to shoehorn the four pieces on to the stage. I get a call saying that the cloth has arrived and needs to be unloaded.

“Okay. What cloth?”

It transpires that one of the four has a Scanachrome backdrop. All very lovely but we’ve a totally different production on the main stage, a rehearsal in the studio theatre and an event out front. And the print has been supplied in a state of partial unroll. Oh and it’s five hours early

Sidenote – it is possible to deliver too early. Much as I dislike late deliveries, if I’ve specified a time for delivery then I’d like it to be that time. There are many good reason why something can’t be received earlier – in this case, it was a matter of space and bodies to move the goods – of which we had neither.

Oh and the truck driver was near to reaching his drive time limit.

Sigh.

Still, we managed to get in somewhere (and the creases will fall out once it’s flown, probably)

And the production week has now arrived.

Before I go into the shop talk, it’s important to look at the staging a little more. And it’s about this point that my family may want to engage the parental filters – there will be rude words (and I don’t just mean the crew swearing).

Each night of the performance will see the four pieces all put on – with two intervals. So we’ll start with piece one, interval, piece 2, quick pause, piece 3, interval 2 and final piece. And the pieces seem to be following a black box set-up with minimal set-up (he says) apart from the final piece that is, and there’s no real nice way of saying this, a temple of cock.

No, this isn’t some reference to last year’s peacock show, or to any other avian creature.

[shop talk]

(like what I did there )

Lighting wise is a little bit of guesswork with it being the premiere here. There’s a lot of generics up in the air alongside a few movers and a couple of large projectors (one overhead and one pointing upstage) with booms for side light. Scrollers are in abundance.

The company have chosen to use a Strand 520 from one production desk with a Strand 550 from another. I know the 520 is going on the tour – where the 550 fits into the puzzle I’m staying out off.

Soundwise, it’s a little more complicated than could be expected at first.

Basic system is our normal Midas/Mediamatrix/EAW with Max 12 sidefills. In terms of outputs, the operator has split the signal all over the path so each level of the theatre has it’s own matrix feed and groups feed the stereo subs, delay lines and so on.

There is also a flown pair of EM121 onstage acting as source for playback and additional stage monitoring.

Inputs come from the onstage Catalyst system that controls video playback for one of the pieces, including a MIDI feed that links Qlab and the sound desk; additional audio inputs from Q-lab; from a mixture of AKG mics on the orchestra for a third piece; and from more mics and some processing from an offstage quartet and Steinway 10′ from the last piece. There are also a couple of flown rifle mics and three flown DPA overhead with four of our Sony radio packs also in use for one of the pieces. The radio packs are attached to chairs mostly by cable ties, but I did found that no local hardware shop sells square saddle clips. Cheap handles can work though …

The opening piece has a few mirrored flats with projectors set-up behind them but is otherwise a blackbox. Pieces two have the scanachrome backdrop for one and a black backing for the other. The final piece has three large plastic flats on three sides with german masking behind. That’s going to be a fun interval change.

The hard flats are basically a slightly impressionistic mock painting of naked men at one of those parties that women most definitely aren’t invited to.

[/shop talk]

As far as we can determine at this stage, the first three pieces seem to follow the neoclassical ballet/modern dance mould quite closely. The last piece is really designed around the ’surprise me’ brief and seems to be particularly aimed at ribbing Catholics with pregnant members of clergy, rape scenes, and an electrocution to finish. With the Pope in a starring role and the constant backdrop of naked, intertwined men, the final piece is constructed entirely with the aim of being shocking.

Wonder how well it will go down in Rome later in the tour?

As far as we are concerned, it seems to be shock for the sake of shock without any reason for inclusion. Of couse, we haven’t seen the piece yet so we could be mistaken …

But it’s this final piece that had that lovely floor, it’s this piece that the constructors had to come back in to cut yet more holes out of the flats (the gap between naked men has ceased to be other naked men and is now gaps to see the black serge behind – maybe that’s deliberatly based on the creator of the Ballet Russes – naah …), and as two of the flats have to be stored flown out then brought in during the interval change and turned 90 degree to form the side walls (while LX strike the booms), this is the piece that has a sweepstake on the length of the first night interval change (from 20 to 50 minutes, place your bets here), it’s this piece that has all those onstage mics and the floods and LEDs set into the raised wooden floor (and which lights have been mostly cut AFTER getting them to work), and it’s this piece that cost me a nights sleep.

Not nightmares from the constant cock, mind but an actual night of not sleeping to finish adding lights.

Each piece has been given roughly two days to tech and rehearse before we put it all together – mostly this seems to be fine. However, one of the original ideas for the temple of cock was to outline all the figures with fairy light (remember this whole show has to tour …)

Sadly, this wasn’t cut merely trimmed down so the lighting crew spent the better part of a day working out how to line of the figures with so-called unbreakable fairy lights – so far not broken par se but we like a challenge …

In any case, the end of the first day saw one figure outlined and two more figures needing to be as completed as possible with two remaining strings of lights and one night.

Having already being at work for twelve hours, what I wanted to do was go home to my bed. Instead, myself and several other luckless techs found ourselves spending another eight hours drilling cock.

The flats are made from two layers of hard plastic with internal supports, kinda similar to a cheap conservatory roof. to install these fairy lights, the spacing had to be marked on the front. Then a pilot hole drilled (either carefully pulsing to avoid ripping the fabric stuck on the front – or scoring with a knife first). Then a second hole had to be drilled from the rear to widen the hole (and this had to be drilled into a scrap bit of wood to further avoid ripping the cloth).

Then a third drill had to be used for the rear layer of plastic to fit the fairy light housing in.

Then it had to be inserted, which would normally involve a bit more knife work to make the hole in the fabric wide enough as the speed of the drill was enough to melt it to itself.

Then it had to be glued into place with a hot glue gun. Then the wires had to be taped against the flat so that they can’t catch against anything.

And where the string crosses a brace, then most likely a bulb will have to be black-takked to stop the light spilling through

And where the string crosses an upright support, the string needs to be able to break to allow for touring so the strings have to be arranged that one of the connectors lines up there, or the string cut and re-wired to accept IEC plugs and sockets (which are definitely one of the most annoying connectors to wire up).

And the stage left figure starts a metre of the floor and goes up to around 6 metres so that all needs to done at height.

But it’s not too bad as the stage right figure is only a few metres tall.

And the strings are around 20 metres, with a light less than every 10cm.

That’s a lot of holes to drill.

As it turned out, we didn’t manage to break any of them, in the sense of having broken glass. We did manage to kill two or three individual bulbs though (that’s what the black tak is also for …).

On the whole, you can see why this particular piece is not my favourite. And that’s before the standard devising rigmarole of all the artistic types butting heads and all the technical types getting short-tempered (and callouses)

There was a reason why I’ve been at a receiving house these last few years (at least one).

Still, the cock shop has been stashed for a couple of days while the projector pieces go through their tech. And contrary to popular belief and experience, it hasn’t been too painful so far.

Of course, the mirrored flats only went up today, including the piece that’s flown point down at our increasingly vunerable dance floor. And the issue of time coding the composer for the offstage quartet is yet to be addressed …

I’ll sign off here for now … there will be more …

cushion of customs

I’m going to skip pass the Apple conference we hosted (no iPhones there so you aren’t missing anything) and pass the the Canadian troupe with the red velvet curtains, mainly as I didn’t work on them and couldn’t give much more info.

Another smallist show graced our boards last week as we gear up for a couple of large incoming shows, one a four choreographer collaboration and one another festival (details on both of those will follow, probably maybe)

This show also has dancers from around the world and is set, appropriately enough, in an airport departure lounge and was with us briefly after Poland before turning around and visiting Paris straight after.

Not a huge issue til we, and more importantly they, found that the journey from Poland had been a little rough on the kit

[shop talk]

I’m starting with sound again, mainly to get it out the way. Entirely our system this week, only the playback source was brought in – a Macbook running QLab. A couple of PCC160s downstage and a Beyer MCE90 midstage in the wings each side were used for a little light lifting of some spoken words. A single T12 was added to our normal Max12 sidefill to act as a source speaker for the main set item, a mockup of an airport departure board.

Lighting wise, the show is a mainly conventionals rig with overhead washes. A single VL1000 is used for some solo spots, one of which has to traverse with a dancer.

Control is from a Strand 300, at least it is normally. While I was fishing two loose screws from the circuit innards and hunting for a 2A slow-blow fuse replacement, the company lighting tech got his first taste of ETC Eos. And no sooner had I got power back to the 300 then the companies nearly brand new DMX shutter on the projector stopped accepting DMX.

[/shop talk]

I’m dropping out of shop talk here, but it’ll still contain some technical content. The airport departure board set piece was flown and was the major item, other than 13 black wooden chairs scattered around the black box staging.

Rather than being an active piece, the words of the board were cast onto the screen from a projector flown on the number 1 lighting bar.  The words on the board change throughout the piece and are often a trigger for the next section – the dance equivalent of the Hollywood device of receiving advice from public display boards.

This requires careful lining up so that characters look like they are part of the screen rather than being projected onto it.

Which is a problem if the projector doesn’t work.

Randomly the projector would not accept any kind of VGA signal input during the set-up though the next day was (mostly) fine. And while the companies lighting board ran through an afternoon’s worth of soak test (for power, not water absorption), we found that the VGA to ethernet adaptors being used to send the video from the laptop at the sound control position wouldn’t output to VGA at the same til – which was a little dull when most of the second circle couldn’t see the airport board and were reliant on our screens permantly rigged for surtitle use.

The only way we managed to get signal to those screens was to use the VGA output of the projector – this ended up as about a 60 metre run to the VGA splitter used to feed the 2nd circle screens. all of which was fine until one of the VGA:ethernet adaptors glitched during the first show.

The projector will hold the last image for three minutes when it loses a signal before shutting down – so the first we knew of any problems was the loss of all images. Luckily a quick reset managed to bring it all back without pausing the show.

So of the technical kit the company brought in with them, it all suffered a failure at some point within 24 hours of being  through Polish customs … it may be a big co-incidence … may be …

Anyone know how powerful an X-ray has to be before it starts to fry electronic equipment?

The show is fairly short (yay!) and each of the dancers brings their own skills, whether it be kathok or classical dance. I’m sure they’d appreciate cushioned seats one day … and I presume that they don’t look at real airport lunges the same way any more …

Silence is golden

Typically it goes from one extreme to the other.

After the demand for noise with last weeks flamenco, this weeks continental visitors required no noise at all.

The choreography demands that the dancers take cues from the breathing of the other performers – which can be surprisingly hard to make out over air conditioning, rack fans and a thousand people watching your every precise move.

Kinda a shame then that the rackmounted control equipment for our powered flying system has a number of fans that very definitely don’t run on silent bearings …

[shop talk]

We’ll start with sound as I’m already touching on the issue.

Once again we’ve swopped out our EAW JF260 with d&b E12. They sound better, are much much lighter and have lots going for them, apart from the hire cost, of course. The rest of the system is our usual in-house set-up other than the desk which is a DM2000, another regular kit visitor.

Monitors this week are being done by a pair of flown Q-10’s from upstage and a pair of our Max 12’s downstage.

Staging is black box and black marley with a large number of wooden chairs used by the dancers during the piece.

There’s a fair bit of lighting about the place – bar height is less than 6m, short for our stage and there’re a fair amount of lights on floor stands and short standing scaff poles.

This company showing two pieces on our stage this time and the second piece has even less lighting – flourescent fixtures predominant, including tubes that live and switch on at a 19m flown height – illuminating the mostly bare stage that is required for the second piece.

All the chairs are replaced by a baby grand and a few small flats with the rear facing towards the audience.

[/shop talk]

Both pieces use a lot of repetition and can be challenging to watch if you don’t have a high boredom threshold – the critics were split fairly evenly and we managed to get walk-outs – and let’s be honest, people walking out of a show is a bad thing. Despite sayings to the contrary, I do suspect that bad publicity is worse than no publicity in this case

No frontiers may be all seen before

it may say flamenco without frontiers on the tin … for us it’s just another show.

It starts as any newly devised show starts with tech requests coming in last minute – never the best idea over bank holiday weekend.

Still, hire companies are used to the score with flamenco shows so the last minute requests for kit are taking on board without missing a beat (I worry sometimes if our PITA fee goes up on these gigs …)

[Shop talk]

Despite being for one company and not several, this ends up being equivalent to our standard flamenco rig.

Five elements of Q1 on two Q-subs ground stacked to each side of the pros with a single C690 on front fill – all powered from D12 amps supplements our in-house EAW rig with our Max 12 on sidefill detail onstage for the few dancers.

Control is our Legend out front with a whole heap of dbx compressors and Lexicon, TC and Yamaha effects. Playback is from Macbook – though I never caught which software was in use. Graphics are KT DN360 – which I have to admit I’m going off – not from the sound but that I don’t entirely trust the input connectors – there never seems to be a catch and there’s far too much play with the connector for my liking. We dropped a hire company for a time because of these but I’m starting to see that with other hire, which makes me wonder about the quality of the build now (and brings that hire company back onto our list)

Monitors are mostly in-ears this time around – Sennheiser packs with Shure ear buds – and it does make the stage volumes a lot easier to deal with.

This is particularly useful as the ArrayCalc shows an awful lot of low end spilling from the stacks. There’s not much we can do from these – getting an extra Q-sub a side would allow a CSA set-up which would work wonders there but would then raise the high elements above the stalls. The engineers on flamenco seem to be able to deal with the low end so we go with it for now … for now.

Anyways, monitor desk is a H3000 with outboard as per FOH. The majority of mics are DPA4067 and 4061, the cardiod pattern preferred for more control on the pattern . All are on Sennheiser 5012 packs. The few wired mics in use for performers were SM57, SM91 and SM98, mostly on percussion instruments. A mere four PCC160 along the front and two MKH60 for the stomps – far less than the 25 we normally expect.

FOH desk was full to the gunnels (sp?) and even the larger monitor desk was getting a workout. bss active splits took all inputs to both desks and to the multi-track recording that took place each night. And we even had to break out our small 12 way LA Audio splitter once the company added extra channels of mic. The LA Audio MS1224 normally gets used so we can monitor our in-house Sony radio mics so it was nice to actually use it in anger, for what I think is the first time of supplying phantom power.

Set was the standard flamenco floor screwed into a second floor laid on top of our none shall screw into sprung floor. Musicians were arrayed in a semi circle with traditional flamenco one side and Venezualan on the other. Upstage were a number of banners in white and primary colours which were flown in and out during the show and were lit in a variety of colours, ‘overwriting’ the base colour as desired.

Lighting was a little more involved than the standard top and sides – mostly due to a batch of MAC600s. Other than control from our ETC Eos, and some incidents with Gateway PSU’s blowing up, I can’t say much on lighting – I’m normally a little busy …

[/shop talk]

The show itself was pretty good – not as overbearing as we expect from a flamenco show but still more amplified than I think such a show requires.

I mentioned in shop talk that it was traditional flamenco arrayed against venezualan instruments – guitars and cajon against cuatro and tambora (which is was) but I also remember reading somewhere that the cajon has only been in the flamenco tradition since the 1970s … long enough to be a tradition but I wonder now what they used before.

The two styles seemed to mesh reasonably well to me (as they should) though the critics didn’t seem to think as much of the non-Flamenco parts. I wonder if the presence of non-flamenco show  took them by surprise – despite the title of the show. It was a to and fro musical exchange with the obligatory mash up at the end, though that didn’t detract from the show.

For us all these show reinforce is the necessity of pre-planning, tidy install, GOOD labelling and quick thinking.

And earplugs.

It does always leave me wondering though why shows that place such importance on the sound (and rightly so) bring only one engineer. They don’t expect the engineer to be in two places at once (not always anyway) so why not bring monitors and FOH. I would have thought the extra cost would be worth the investment for ensuring the show always sounds it’s best. On this occasion, our in-house engineer had worked with the company before and the show was well-received.

Ah well, another one gone and more to come …

No wacka-waving here …

Had another of those holidays where we actually go away and don’t help someone move house, or remove fence posts, or rewire a house.

It all kinda came together a little oddly.

‘ Let’s go visit family in Wales’ said Mr and Mrs C. ‘ Let’s spend a few days in the rest of Wales first as a small holiday.’ ‘Let’s see if a couple of friends what to join us.’ ‘How many have we got joining us’ – ‘over half dozen and we don’t know at least one of them.’ ‘Oh’.

Mr and Mrs C were making their way from Caernarfon in North Wales past Cardigan Bay to Swansea. Mr Ben and Mrs Mr Ben had decided to spend the same week camping in Snowdonia. Sgt Stubbs had agreed to come along with Mr and Mrs C and test the capabilities of his liver. Wife number one and I decided to spend several days in North Wales. Jon-O was to come up for the weekend and young Kevin was to spend the weekend finding out what Mr and Mrs Ben saw in camping.

And all this arrangment took place via the medium of Facebook – modern looking people that we are.

Mrs C mentioned that for the couple of days in Caernerfon they would be staying at the Menai Hotel.So we duly switched on the Internet and hunted down said hotel in the glorious town of Bangor.

Wife number one had been looking after most of the organisational arrangements but on the train up, I did remember something about Mr Ben going to Caernerfon before coming to say hullo to us but didn’t think much of it.

We arrived in Bangor and carried the bags up what would turn out to be a comparatively shallow hill, past a local Morrisons and reached the B&B&B of the Menai Hotel (that’s Bed and Breakfast and Bar to the uninitiated).

As we signed in, we casually asked if Mr and Mrs C had signed in yet.

“No one of that name will be signing in at all.”

Oh.

Headed up to our room, we sat for a moment wondering the absence of Mr and Mrs C. Then we remembered the free Wi-Fi and the mention of Caernarfon and did a little searching.

Who knew that there was Menai Bank Hotel?

Anyways, Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin turned up to say hello. Young Kevin was a little nonplussed to be back in Bangor as he’d already spent a couple of days exploring Bangor town – only to find, to be honest, that there wasn’t much to find there.

We meandered down from the Menai Hotel on to the high street and noticed that post 6pm on a Sunday is a very bad time to try to find any kind of something to do.

Even the fish and chip shops were closed.

The choice was between Yates and Weatherspoons.

We choose the former and there was a minute or two of ‘have we made the wrong choice?’. Then the football game finished and the pub emptied, leaving us to enjoy a very good pub meal in relative peace.

It was still early when the others returned to their campsite to set up beds for the week. Wife number one and I wandered down to the third B of our hotel to see what they offered. I noted the chocolate fudge cake for later consumption, there was a single dart board, digital jukebox and two pool tables that even had a selection of different sizes cues.

The next morning, we ate a continental breakfast of toast, Alpen and tea then made sure we had our all weather gear handy. Today the plan was to scale the tallest mountain in Wales names after a lord with the intent of meeting Mr and Mrs C, Sgt Stubb and Jon-O at the top.

Yep, we were planning to brave Snowdon. Though while we were looking at the what we thought would be easy Miners Track, the others were going to take the train to the summit.

It seems a little like cheating to take the train up a mountain but hey …

By the time we had left Bangor, reached Pen-y-Pass, saw the lack of parking spaces, started to drive down Llanberis Pass, parked under a rock, caught a double decker bus back to Pen-y-Pass and posed for the obligatory pre-walk group photo, it had passed midday.

The timer started and we began. It took about five minutes before we doffed the all weather coats and fleeces and put on sun glasses. It was a little surprising, though welcomed, to be out walking in North wales and not be rained on.

We walked past several of the lakes on the mountain and frowned slightly at the presence of grey clouds obscuring the summit itself. Mr Ben was on the track on the way up, and I don’t just mean on the Miner’s Track. As we reached Llyn Gladow, I was the first to spot the subject of his search, half-hidden in ruins.

It cheered up Mr Ben to see the sleek green lines of a land Rover part way up Snowdon. We continued up and, after a quick asthma attack from Mrs Mr Ben, by Glaslyn Mr Ben was even more pleased to find a white long wheel base Land Rover – which is a nifty trick to manage up a single stony track.

Unfortunately, at Glaslyn we also found the highlight of Miners Track – a steep scramble up to join with Pyg’s Track.

It was about this point that wife number one reached her stride and we began to range ahead of the other three.

For those still curious as to why two land rovers were up the mountain – at least one of them was providing transport for the team who were building steps up the steep near climb where Pyg and Miners meet. not bad for a day job “What did you do today dear?” “Well we put steps onto Snowdon.”

At the point where the track we followed reached the railway up and the path up from Llanberis, we pretty much walked straight into the cloud we’d been viewing earlier.

Back on went the fleeces, coats and hats.

We reached the summit a little over 3 hours after starting up for a view that could be measured in metres.

Then, in true English spirit we had a cup of tea.

However, in, not quite true, English spirit this wasn’t drunk luke-warm from a thermos – rather it was drunk inside the cafe at the top of Snowdon.

I had jokingly asked a fellow mountain walker on his way down if he’d left the kettle on for us – he said yes and that the sausage sarnies were very good. I didn’t go for those – instead wife number one and I shared a Welsh Oggie (it’s a Cornish Pasty) and a cream scone.

Then Mr B blinked nicely at the station master and we managed to buy tickets for the train journey back down the mountain.

Some of you might think that taking the train down is also cheating – bear in mind, firstly that we had made it up the mountain. And secondly, by the time we were down and had reached the bus stop to return to where we’d parked it had gone 6pm. After last nights close down of Bangor we were a little cautious – it turned out to be a good thing we were as the last bus of the evening up Llanberis pass was at 6.17pm.

Back in the car and we went firstly to the campsite in Beddgelert where Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin were staying for showers and clothes and tea from a wok then up to our hotel in Bangor via a quick stop at a local shop to purchase a puncture repair kit

Apparently Mr and Mrs Ben’s air mattress wasn’t Welsh sharp stone proof.

We left them in the bar and had our own showers and changes then all headed off to meet the others who had been up and down the mountain and had then gone underground to a slate mine.

Readers concerned that we had chosen Yates over Weatherspoons last night can rest easily that we meet up in Caernarfon Weatherspoons.

The food wasn’t as good though, and the chocolate fudge cake was sorely lacking (I do speak as an expect chocolate fudge cake consumer).

We were dropped back off at our hotel to leave Mr Ben, Mrs Mr ben and young Kevin with the fun task of breaking into their campsite which closed at 10pm (about as we were all ordering dessert) and then attempting to repair the air mattress. In the Dark.

Jon-O returned home the next morning via Bangor. A crafty bit of scheduling last night meant that yet again wife number one and I could enjoy a lie in then get picked up – this time in Morrisons cafe. Morrisons do a good coffee and bacon sandwich.

We travelled this morning with Mr and Mrs C and Sgt Stubb with the intention of meeting the other others (keep up) in the car park for Port Meirion.

Unlike the vague hope of meeting at a tourist exhibition yesterday (I doubt that Weatherspoons counts) we did actually manage this time and all headed off to look at the set of The Prisoner.

It is a very picturesque town but in our usual vein, we were there for ice cream and cake. Wife number one and I stopped for cake and tea while the rest made do with ice cream for now and a stroll past the concrete boat to a sea side tower.

Meeting back together we got distracted again by the cafe – this time for lunch proper (Welsh stew I think I had) then meandered through the acres of ground that lie in the Port Meirion estate, including the Dog graveyard and a tree stump with numerous coins embedded in the top.

Expensive way to stop people sitting down, I thought.

Choosing not to wait for the castle to open for dinner, we returned to our respective cars (myself and wife number one now back with the Bens) and departed. Back to Beddgelert for us and I finally succumbed to the lure of cream tea. It came with a piece of Welsh cake which I left til later as we had the debate of cream or jam first on the scone (it is quite patently jam first BTW).

It now being around 6pm, we decided to head back to our hotel. Via Argos

Why?

Apparently Mr Ben’s brand new puncture repair kit didn’t repair punctures all that well.

It also seems be be nap time … and here’s the proof:

I have comfy shoulders

Argos was open (contrary to Bangor tradition) and we found on the same business park estate an open Tesco. Why the two ladies wanted to go clothes shopping at 7pm on a Tuesday in North Wales, I have no idea but they weren’t going in my holiday bag so …

My credit card yes but I have to draw the line somewhere.

We stopped at the bar again to allow Mr Ben to show off his pool shark tendencies then they left early to avoid a repeat of last night.

Apparently the catering truck driver was a little miffed when he had to drive through a hedge because some idiot had parked his Land Rover on the approach to Beddgelert campsite in an attempt to break in and repair an air mattress.

I say attempt as the air mattress wasn’t repaired, of course.

Slightly less of a lie in the next day and a distinct lack of orange juice and marmalade at breakfast but we made it to Bangor to see young Kevin board the daily train to London (the one that Jon-O boarded the previous day and the one that wife number one and I were scheduled to be on the following day

Mr and Mrs C had kidnapped Sgt Stubb and were even then subjecting him to a day along Cardigan Bay. Brutes.

The four of us left decided that what people don’t do enough of is visit power stations. So with some slightly suspect map reading from the Sat Nav we made our way to Dinorwig – the Electric Mountain.

Actually it’s a slate pile with a lake top and bottom.

When we got there, it turned out we would have to wait over three hours to get on a one hour tour. There was a shop selling cake – the decision wasn’t difficult.

In fact the biggest reason was the horizontal rain that started up as we were at the wrong end of the car park. The slate museum was not very far away at all and we could have gone there and come back.

This was true Welsh rain though and the shop had caramel shortbread and chocolate cake.

Two and a half hours later, the craft fair, gift shop, art exhibition and two science bits (some banners and a machine to demonstrated the power of an empty tube with a hole in the lid) we were wondering if we’d made the right decision.

Three hours and five minutes later when the opening video presentation to the tour was audio less, we were really wondering. Then it was CountryFile explaining about the tour and things were really getting to a point.

Luckily at that point, they decided to drive a bus into the mountain to keep us entertained.

Actually into the tunnels under the mountain so we could see for ourselves what a power station using pumped water looks (and sounds) like. If you have an interest in big machinery and don’t mind being underground, it’s interesting.

Otherwise, Snowdon is just across the road …

Our interest sated, we checked the map to see what no longer rain-swept part of North Wales, we wanted to visit in the late afternoon hours of Wednesday.

“Anglesey” said Mrs Mr Ben randomly.

So we did.

We didn’t go to Holyhead – deciding to stop in Rhosneigr instead.

Nice if you have an interest in kite flying (the kite was back at Mr Bens house) or wind surfing (so was the turtle wax) but nothing else, on the island appealed.

That said, the fish and chip shop in Rhosneigr does a brilliant chips and fish – and even has Vimto in a can!

Bypassing Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on the way back, we stopped for a quick Kodak moment past the Menai bridge then returned to the bar for the final time to try the food at last and have one last game of pool.

Not bad but again the chocolate fudge cake was disappointing.

One final lie in then a brisk walk down to the station to catch the regular train for our return to the Big Smoke. Mr and Mrs Ben staying on to visit the slate museum and drive along the coast scaring sheep.

More photos can be found at Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhares/sets/72157622211736733/

More photos can be found also on Facebook – if you know where to look …

One day I’ll take a day off and not do anything …

It has been a busy month.

While the current show has been proving to be something of a handful … of which details will follow … I have already helped out yet another person whilst on a day off.

Actually, that’s a slight misnomer.

This time, it was one of my work colleagues who had had the electrics fail to her boiler.

With wife number one being the trained sparky that she is, I volunteered her to my colleague.

What started as a simple site visit to replace a short length of cable ended up involving an additional electrician, and three days of testing different ends of wires in an attempt to map out the ring main (and finding out that it was actually two radial spurs) and finding out just how much damp had seeped into the walls (and then into the wall boxes).

Then with my colleague encouraged to not be present in the flat for a few days (we figured three weeks camping in America was far enough away), began the process of gently pulling up floor boards to see how much damp had made it into the floor supports.

Gently in the sense of crowbar.

Three weeks later and it transpired that my colleague hadn’t gone far enough away and she opened her front  door to find an absence of hallway floor and someone checking to make sure that using the service pipe to hold the floor up hadn’t done anything too damaging (read expensive).

Maybe we should have sent her further.

Still, she now has totally checked electrics, brand new floor (including joists, support mounts and laminate), space to finish the decorating in the bedroom and a big hole in the bank account.

Luckily for me, most of these was carried out in my absence also.

Unluckily for me, that absence was due to the current show.

The first day of show didn’t start particularly well for me. what with a 9a.m. start. It finished worse with a 4.30a.m. end.

Yes that is the right use of a.m. in this instance.

A full day loading the sound kit in followed by most of a night lining up the projectors for what is proving to be a recurrant theme of having to work with projectors …

[shop talk]

Sound wise it’s a full Meyer MSL4 rig on mains with E3 delay lines. Our Control 1’s are also being used as a little bit extra, though we’ve bypassed the MediaMatrix for this show.

The particular feature about this rig is that is near enough identical to the show that went out the night before – but that show heads straight off to Russia and the carnet already had all the serial numbers.

I did offer to go around and swap the serial number stickers over but there was something to do with maintenance records …

Control is from a Soundcraft Vi6 which seems very shiny. I’ve not sat hands on to it but our sound guy seems to like it (for a digital desk) and it sounds fine. It has it’s foibles but I’d be interested in having it back again.

Audio for the show is from a 18-piece orchestra on 3m high steel deck onstage with a standard layout of brass, strings and percussion. I don’t remember all the mics in use but it’s full of the usual suspects (Schoeps, DPA, Sennheiser and so on). There are also a coupe of shotguns, one each side of the pros and four more mics along the front to help pick up the tap dance sequence.

Two UPA’s are hung directly under the platform as an upstage source (and monitors for the dancers) with our Martin SB218 underneath for some low end. USW have replaced all our subs in the main house.

The stage, as already mentioned, is dominated by the band platform, faced in black with an open entrance way central to the platform. The musicians are often obscured by a black scrim and a curved screen made of vertical uprights. The screen curves from DSL to DSR and raises from just over head height on DSL to a few metres on DSR.

The floor is raised to allow for a revolve and several dressing items are flown in or brought on as part of the blocking and flown up. These include a large white silk which starts as water with a little careful lighting and some billowing to become a street walkway, several chandeliers of different sizes, various sizes of bunting and a disc from the same material as the screen.

Lighting is a mix of side, and overhead, with a little from out front. Pipe ends and boom are PAR64 and Source 4 in equal measures, some with CXi scrollers on. All of our MAC500 are in the rig, though they don’t do much. All of our Pirouettes are also up in the rig with their Rainbow scrollers on and which are only used once (quite probably our Alto’s could have done the same job). But then the show was premiered here so some of this was to allow for options.

There are also Martin TW1 doing overhead cover and VL3500Q doing the lighting effects (and not breaking as much as usual – I think we’ve only swapped a couple out so far) and very old cloud FX wheels which are just about holding together.

There’s a couple more VL3500Q on the circle rail and, as long as we don’t have them switched on with the shutters close, they are only mildly annoying for noise levels.

This is partly due to the projection though.

Onstage is a pair of CML projectors that are the usual rock solid dependent projection. The new toys though are the four Barco DML1200 moving head projectors on our pros booms. These have been a pain in the ass since even before they arrived. Control for the video is a Catalyst system with a Road Hog desk.

[/shop talk]

Now, normally, I’d keep the tech info out of the non shop talk sections.

This time though most of this is going to be featuring on the brand new moving head projectors installed for the show.

The show itself is based on the music of Richard Rogers, though with no lyrical contributions from Hart or Hammerstein and seems to be a girl in every port love story.

For us the show has been a matter of ‘ what will go wrong with projection today?’

The first indication of imminent doom was a site visit a couple of weeks before the show get-in day in which the idea of projectors. There were issues about the weight and size of the projectors which would be doing the curved screen. How heavy and big are we talking about? ‘Oh less than 100kg but we’ll need about a metre in every direction. What’s the load limit for your circle rails?’

The projectors we are talking about are these little beasts:

Barco DML1200

Various options for mounting and positioning these were mooted and the decision was made pretty quick to not hang them on the circle rails, less due to the chance of overweight and more for the time that would be lost in having to contruct boxes to enclose them in a theatre with no dedicated workshop to minimise noise leakage.

Loud fans then? ‘Oh, only slightly more than standard moving lights.’

Ah.

Then there was the meeting with the supplier of these behemoths as he tried to work out the best place to install these things.

After having worked out the best places for projection angles, there was the casual mention of ‘oh and if we can, it would be nice to run in some cables ahead of the get-in’. Seems fine, what sort of cable are we talking here? ‘ Five way co-ax video cable. From the control room through the innards of the building (that’s about 100m) to the likely mounting positions. For each projector. Which includes two more to go overhead.’

That’s six 100m long looms of six cables each to be run from the control at the rear of the first circle, through a hole, down a three storey ladder, along a narrow corridor, through a fire hatch, through a boiler room past all the dead fluorescent tubes and fire extinguishers, through another fire hatch, over a corridor, past another hatch then up onto stage.

And we have a good cable run for this sort of thing.

Then it took the better part of a day to rig the scaffolding required to take the weight of these – which to be fair did include painting them black rather than the building service rainbow supplied. And the rest of the day to haul them up into place – where, typically enough, the clamps would never line up – and all this assembly while the rest of us installed lights, sound and set around them.

Then we switched them on and the trouble really started.

Now, I could go off on a long meandering tale concerning these but my fingers are already starting to hurt from the typing. Suffice to say, that the DML-1200 are new to the market and still have a couple of ‘features’ (bugs) that possibly (almost certainly) should be addressed before being used in a show in anger (and anger is the right word).

The chief feature is that the units do not seem to hold onto all the data needed to project images. Each day the projectors would be lined up, have their resolutions checked, and looking lovely before the show.

Each day.

So far for several weeks.

One would hope that anything that projects would be able to hold onto positional data and projection information.

Apparently these can’t yet.

“oh but they should do” say the suppliers and manufacturers.

But they don’t now.

And as a measure that we know it’s the projectors to blame, we had one day where the same switch on and align routine was carried out four times.

The first time they didn’t line up properly; the second time, one side did line up and the other was fixed in a rainbow shaped image. The third time, there was something like electrical snowstorm coming from all four of the moving heads. Then we had the afternoon show – sans DML1200. Then we did the same routine a fourth time and all four lined up perfectly.

Our operator is tearing her hair out – one day everything will line up first time, next day it takes two times using the same procedure. Then three will be fine and one will be off. Then two.

It’s not even consistent in it’s failing.

My only recommendation with these is not to use them yet.

A moving head projection that can also be used as a light is a great idea – but give these units some time before attempting to deploy them.

Not that projection was alone in it’s issues.

We found out the day before press night that there would be no lighting operator from the company after press night – a last minute change.

This is a potential issue for a summer show when all the full time staff have holidays booked  over the course of the run (as we were informed that we would be needed as duty techs – not show staff) and most casual workers seem to drift towards Edinborough. Apparently there’s some festivalt that happens there during these months.

Since, the control was from our still new ETC Eos (yep we’ve ditched Strand) which does have it’s little foibles but does actually work most of the time.

[shop talk]

Things on the Eos that I’d like changing:

- No control on the gooseneck lights is dull – and there are expansion areas that could easily take controls if the wiring is there to dim the dratted things

- Information is shown on tabs – but the tabs don’t hold their position when the console is switched off. If you want to show playback and live channels tabs at the same time, you have to piddle about with tab, expand and page buttons. Really, can this not be added to the save file for a show?

- The encoder wheel for intensity sticks – something I’ve never noticed on any other desk. It isn’t possible to do a smooth fade up or down with it.

At least they are consistent, I guess.

[/shop talk]

It doesn’t take long to pick up a show however, and a few of us now can run the lighting for the show.

The show is harmless enough but isn’t particularly engrossing.

I’d like to say I’m looking forward to seeing the next show – but it’s flamenco …

Vader Time

Stop, it’s Vader Time!

(apologises, my inner geek wins this time)

Keep on moving

Another day off, another person to move.

In a moment of weakness, I agreed to help move Mr Ben’s brother into his first new flat.

Note to self, days off are to relax and not to carry boxes up and down stairs.

Still, that particular weekday morning dawned brightly as the sun shone straight through a crack in the curtains and onto my sensitive eyelids waking me up moments before Mrs Mr Ben left for work at ungodly o’clock in the morning.

After the first cup of tea of the day, we got into the van borrowed for the days jaunt and headed on the drive out into the country to the house of the parents of Mr ben. Arriving there presently, we headed up to the room that Mr Ben’s brother had called home thus far to find him removing random screws from his bed. We hastily devested him of tools and sent him to cut the cake.

Parent Mrs Ben devested him of the cake knife shortly there after.

Pausing only to check which cake went better with the second cup of tea, we loaded the van, and two cars and headed out on the road again.

For all of ten minutes.

Yep, it really wasn’t all that far to go before Mr Ben was parking with precision on the garden path of the new flat. We got the essentials out first, lifting weights, cleaning products and the Xbox then emptied the remainder of the cars and van into the first floor flat that was to be Mr Ben’s brothers new home.

Pausing to retrieve the footwell mats, we got back in the van and returned to the rest of the garage that needed transporting while the cleaning was going on. And the locating of the electric meter. And the locating of the water meter. And the pondering why the bathroom vent didn’t work.

We returned to find that none of these jobs had been accomplished.

But there was tea and cake so it wasn’t all bad. And once we had unloaded, the move was pretty much complete – mainly as most of the furniture had yet to be delivered from the shop.

With a job well done, we walked past the neighbours (Sainsbury’s) and headed into a pizzeria for lunch where i introduced the family to the delights of pesto for which they kindly repaid me by paying for lunch.

Of course, you know that most moves I undertake don’t finish that easily and you would be right again.
Leaving Mr Ben’s brother to admire the non-functioning vent in his kitchen, we checked the bed and rabbit hutch were still in the van and set off.

Did I not mention the rabbit hutch? It’s hand painted and everything. And it was taking up room in Mr Ben’s shed that Mrs Mr Ben could better use for more bedding for the rabbits. Yes they have another hutch – it’s best not to get into too many details.

The bed was our first port of call somewhere along the M4 – whereas this morning it had been the resting place for a 6 foot tall strapping lad, his university degree still fresh, from this evening it was to become the bed of a three year old lass, the daughter of a friend of Mr Ben.

let’s take a moment to regard the bed.

This isn’t a regular pinth and mattress style bed. Nor is it a pine frame. Nope, this bed is four foot tall with cupboards, drawers and a desk built in.

The little girl is three foot and change high. And she was asleep so we had to put it together in what will be her new bedroom very, very quietly.

Luckily her sister was up past her bed time so she got to try out the bed once we had reconstructed it. The sister was around four feet and it was lucky that there was a Mr Ben to give her a lift.

We suspect that a ladder may be a new, and quickly added, addition to the bed.

But we hadn’t finished yet so pausing for a fortifying cup of herb and hot water (tea) we drove back along the M4 and took a left towards some hills. We needed the tea as we were to face a formidable beast – yes we had to stand ankle to face with a beagle – still recovering from a recent operation.

As we had turned up in a goods van, we were made to walk around the house with the rabbit hutch were we noticed that the hand painted grass matched quite well with the real grass in the garden.

There were a few minutes where we used snips and pliers to cut up some chicken wire (yes we carried many things in that van) to repair holes in the guinea pig hutch where a friendly fox had tried to say hello then we made our goodbyes.

We were just too late for lasagna apparently and didn’t get tea, though we did get a good selection of cereal bars and some lemonade.

Then the beagle relented and let us go into the dark for another bout of Radio 2 on the way back to Mr Ben’s.

We did stop for one final cup of tea then I was deposited at a tube station to find my way home.

Where wife number one had already locked up, switched off and was an indistinct shape under the duvet.

Theatre Etiquette

A quick post to put up this link from the Daily Telegraph of the golden rules of Theatre Etiquette. Please note that, despite the articles’s tone, these rules are compulsary and shouldn’t be broken on pain of, well, pain:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6535773.ece