Ecotainment

Been reading through this month’s Light and Sound International and noticed a link to Ecotainment

It’s not much to look at at the moment but I’ve registered in the hope that it will lead to bigger things

The followspot operators just thrown himself off the bridge – look he’s waving at you

The last show has been fairly easy for once. Nice, when it’s a week with no days off (the mortgage continues to grow and it’s hard to find sound proofing on FreeCycle)

Classical ballet in terms of set (blacking masking and upstage backdrop or cyc), content, lighting (incluing a fair few 5K fresnals) and sound (mainly orchestral, the only micing was a stereo pair for the foldback and a PCC160  to pick up an on-stge cellist for a solo).

This weeks interesting tech tidbit was the followspot position. Unusual Rigging came down and rigged a ‘bridge’ just upstage of the house header.  Suspended from the house flying system (another advantage of powered flying), the bridge could be flown in and out so there was no requirement for climbing up a ladder to reach it. The next upstage bar had three Pani beamlights rigged from it for the spot ops (two from the incoming company and one of our own casuals). The bridge had a similar build to box truss with a proper catwalk in the base.

What happens in the event of the powered system failing though? Well, Unusual also rigged a simple system for quick evac. All the op’s were harnessed off (of course) and at one end suspended from the grid was a rope through a pulley block suspended from the grid with a auto-locking hook clamp at either end. All the ops had to do was to clip one clamp onto their harness, pull up the slack as much as possible then step off the bridge and let go. The pulley was basically a friction block so the rope would only travel through at a maximum speed – long enough that when we tested it, he almost got bored waiting to reach the deck and hence the title of this post

Yippee-kay-a

So, what’s next at the theatre?

We’ve already had more shows since. The end of the first week of november was a piece called Yippee! Or maybe it was called Yum! I’m not entirely certain. Different people called it different things. It was a contemporary dance piece worked on by two different companies and had some interesting ideas. And some not so interesting ideas also.

Another no-masking show (must be the fashion), though at least this time we didn’t have to remove all those bits that go into a working theatre because they aren’t aesthestically pleasing. The dance floor was a very shiny gloss black that was absolutely lovely before it was used on the tour for this show. Our monster booms were used (a little under 5m tall and over a 1metre squared; they are some of the largest moveable booms I’ve seen – I’ll post photos at some point) as well as booms that held 6 Source Four Pars apiece that the dancers moved during the piece. Costume changes were done in view and the sound of the clothes rails was actually miked. That’s definitely the first time the sound of clothes hangers has been wanted.

Music was supplied by a threesome upstage centre: keyboard, guitar (with an obscene amount of pedals) and was was referrred to as ‘bass’ – a ‘hole buncha synth pads. With the amount of instruments amps, we could have managed without the PA (sound levels 3m from the speakers were at around 85dBA, with peaks at 100dBA)

Lighting was mainly from our booms and a shedload of PARs, clear of a hundred, doing toplight duty. Three hazers were used as well!!

Now this I don’t get – the company asked for a hazer with an option on a second (fine) and wanted them running all the time (again, with the correct settings on the fire alarms, fine) to achieve a ‘pea-soup’ effect (fi-huh?). The point of haze is to provide a little atmosphere and pickout the beams from the lanterns not to emulate London’s clement weather surely.

Lust for Laughs

Yes, it’s everywhere.

But this rider for Iggy Pop should be the new model technical rider.

If the flight from Mars has just landed and you are missing a clue, have a look here

Lookit Ma, No hands …

The StageCraft online mailing list has been discussing the validity of the following video: HamBand

The general consensus is that it’s faked though a few dissenters point out the similarity to the guys who work on pylons. Myself: I can’t tell on the quality of this clip either way – yes the clothes flutter but then why isn’t the pole swaying more? I’m leaning towards the real view though. It looks too cheap to be CGI’ed!

 Have a butchers.

missing the tiger …

Two days back to the grind and two different gigs under me belt.

First was Anastasia Kolochkova (sp?). A one day event that was centred on the aforementioned, with support from a number of fellow Russian ballerinas And whatever the male equivalent is.

The most noticeable segment started right at the end with the star in a cage all hooded (think Friar Tuck with less curves) and turned into a piece where the entire crew were just waiting for Seigfied and Roy to bring the white tigers on! The rest was, I afraid to say, a fairly standard medley of ballet pieces. Nothing particularly wrong but some rehearsal time would have been nice. Ah, well.

The second piece was a conference on pensions from a large banking corporation who have a funky buncha adverts on the go.

A conference on pensions is exactly as interesting as it sounds.

I was going to say try to ignore the posting time – it’s not for the faint-hearted, especially when you know that I’ve been awake for around 24 hours, give or take a bit. But WordPress doesn’t show posting time. Suffice to say that dawn hadn’t broken when I, yet again, got up before the alarm and that dawn is not that far off right now.
The matchsticks have snapped and the caffeine has been used up so I am headed to bed.