How would one like work today?

I’ve actually been working this week.

That’s not to say that I don’t work normally (contrary to what Wife Number One would have you believe)

Having squeezed in an Open University assignment around the hip hop festival, we took a few days holiday and went to visit the in-laws.

I say visit – Mr Best Man et al will be pleased to learn that this holiday up to my normal standards – that is to say it was spent doing things that aren’t covered by the terms ‘relaxing’, or ‘leisure’ or ‘free-time’

Travelling up via train (and failing to get Virgin’s free-wifi to work, despite being in first class), one of the first things I did was a site visit for work.

Not an excuse to oogle dancers, instead I got to view the insides of a self store facility. The facility I looked at was fine on the whole but I did find this little piece of careful building design.

Complete with addded pillar support dead centre …

I’ll explain more about why I was up north in storage cages later on in the year …

God forbid actually doing work during holiday days is enough, we were also handed a list of things that needed doing.

After the three days away, we had purchased and set-up two new LCD flatscreen TV’s, including one wall-mount; twice painted the ceiling in the spare bedroom, assembled two shelves (two times)  in a display of why you really should measure TWICE cut once, and even done about a third of my final assignment.

Coming back to my workplace was almost a relief from that holiday.

Well, until the Saturday night get-out …

This weeks show, from a regular company, was a mostly a mix of the new.

A triple bill, the first was a new work based around a circus mime family and was a nice gentle piece that even had the audience going “awww” at one point.

The second piece was a return of a work that is choreographically based on the movements of cockroaches. It premiered with a HUGE lamp shade which didn’t grace us this time around and which removed the piece of the scale that it needed.

The third piece was one of the largest pieces the company has done certainly for a while, possibly ever. Based on Bazilian movements, it had the entire troupe of dancers plus some extra’s from the associated dance school dancing to four percussionists doing their best samba thing.

[shop talk]

Lighting for the first two pieces was atmospheric general dance cover (sides, top, the normal drill) – the last was predominantly a whole heap of SOurce 4 profiles focussed to tight squares that covered the stage in a ten by ten grid and gelled with ‘disco’ colours. All up together it did mock a disco floor but was used to provide individual lights to individual dancers with quick snaps as the dancers moved around the stage (about two dozen).

The percussionists had a bunch of drums of all flavours with a Latin American theme and associated toys, including a berimbau. They were also fitted with DPA 4061 on Trantec and Samson radio packs for vocalised parts (first time I’ve used toupee clips sinxe starting here I worked out later) and had headphones for a click track.

The click was fired from a ProTools LE rig and the whole lighting for that piece was timed to the beat – whether by MIDI from ProTools or a timed cue sequence, I’m not certain. It was bang on everytime – though here was a vague thought that the dancers should be clicked up as well …

[/shop talk]

It all worked extremely well – the first night I saw it the audience got four curtain calls … and that was without a full standing ovation.

The atonal structure of the middle piece is not to everyone’s taste but the big bang finish was very good and came together nicely.

Very distinct shapes under the duvet (SFW before you wonder …)

Our annual hip hop festival came around again – but for once I managed to mostly avoid getting (too) involved with it all – call it karmic payback for years of flamenco …

[Shop talk]

Most of the technical gubbins from last year applied again in any case for those interested in the shop talk sections (last years post here) – this year though SCS was up and running and a majority of pieces had their music controlled from PC rather than CD

No UHF 58’s this year (in fact no beat boxers at all) but we did have a small keys/tabla combo that had to be miked for one piece – not on the night I worked however so I don’t know any of the details. No sending people out on shopping trips this time though.

We did have to allow space for one company to add their O1V96 and Q-Lab playback, routed through our Midas.

Set wise, this years random items included a three seater sofa that I’d driven over to Haringey to pick up inbetween visits to Ikea Wembley and Ikea Blue Water that saw a lot of use offstage …; a couple of working traffic lights (American style); a DJ set-up on wheeled table as a prop (ignore how the music starts when the power gets plugged in – despite no audio cables attached …); a wooden chair,  and a camp bed.

Lighting was slightly simplifed from last year but with the addition of some MAC600 to our in-house MAC500 for some variety.

And then, because it would be too easy otherwise, we are in the process of switching from our old Strand 500 series lighting control to ETC Eos, though, of course, the subsequent tour has to be programmed for Strand.

But only after it’s been created on the Eos

I’m going to skip straight past that now …

[/shop talk]

I’m going to mention the AV set-up outside of shop talk as it’s something that seems to be amassing interest in various places.

It seems that TV manufacturers and film producers alike are trying to get 3D vision up and running properly. Well, theatre is doing it as well as we handed out 1900 sets of silly looking paper glasses out for one of the pieces.

Rather than the old red and green colours, the improved concept of stereoscopic vision utilises polarised lenses – think your sunglasses but with one of the polarisations at 90 degrees to the other. This is replicated at the two projectors both showing the same image with the result that each eye sees a slightly different image and re-assembles it in your brain to form a 3-D image.

It works pretty well, and had appropriate gasps from the audience, though it’s a little more blurry and less 3D at the edges – something that I noticed when watching Monsters Vs Aliens.

The show went very well the night I saw, and got good reviews the other nights – I have to say though, I enjoyed actually having a bank holiday weekend off work – which means I’m tempting fate for a few days annual leave I have coming up …