D double T
Sunday: My crew get's placed on edge b/c my boss shows up and has a huge issue with the paid crew handling the requests of the academic show.
There's no good way to explain this - We're striking a show that the center produced, and I have a list of requests from the academic show that seem reasonable. Somehow it's wrong that we are trying to make the two shows flow together. apparently we're wrong b/c we didn't consult my boss.
So the crew is on edge b/c he's questioning why we are working an things for hang instead of strike throught the morning. my answer? b/c it's not so much strike, then hang, it's a changeover spread thru 2 days.
soft good changeover was also an issue. fortunately he had left by the time the TD arrived to do softgoods, so I was able to work with him (actually making the changeover safer - but that's another rant) and make the softgoods happen.
rumour has it that he has been eternaly grateful that there were another set of hands to make that happen.
whatever, i'm wrong again, and huzzah, i'm leaving.
Monday, load into the concert hall. except I don't have any information about what the group needs. but I do have 2 year old paperwork that I need to get up to speed (ed. note - it's Wed. and I still have bugs in the paperwork) So the day is spent tracking down changes, making new patch and troubleshooting burnouts/high impedence air gaps and other such things. Monday night I'm in tech in b'more with the promise that the group is arriving at 8 am sharp to pick color.
Tuesday - arrived at 8:10, to find the group hasn't arrived. spent part of morning picking nose. 10 am, Doug arrives, spends an hour fliting around the concert hall and looking at the different sets of lights, and asks twice if we can gel the houselights. and we had this gem of a conversation.
Him- So those lights over the boxes, can we gel them?
Me- No, they aren't theatrical lights
Him- Can't we tape gel to them?
Me- No. we're not allowed to tape notices to the walls in the hallway, there's no way we can tape something to the ceiling of a performance venue.
Him- How about spray adhesive?
Me- *blink*. No.
Him- but they didn't say anything about spray adhesive.
Me- No.
and right off the bat I don't like this guy.
So we go off to pick gel.
He'd like to gel the downlights blue. this involves 45 units. we don't have 45 cuts of any one color, and they have no money to buy gel.
So, he decides that he'll use 3 different blues - Dark, Medium, and Light.
...
okay. that's 15 cuts per color, and for some reason, we don't have that either.
So now we have 3 'dark blues' 3 'medium blues' and 3 'light blues' - there are at least 9 different colors mixed in this wash.
those of you who know a bit about theatrical lighting should be able to figure out that we are setting up for a big ole wash of a wet dirty substance.
so he'd also like to gel the conductor
Me- We don't usually gel the conductor, it makes him hard to see either from the orchestra, or the audience.
Him- He's a friend of mine and hired me, he'll look however I tell him to look
Me- *blink* *this guy is a total tool*
after an hour and a half of picking color we have
about 13 different blue colors for downlight (we also gelled the choir in a few blues)
Lavender front light for the conductor (R56 for those playing at home)
teal side light for the conductor (R65)
teal light in a special, focus TBD (R65)
Lavender light in a special, focus TBD (R57)
Rose like light in the choir front light (R35 + L102)
and a horrid yellow green backlight on the conductor, which is also the color the orchestra will see him in.
during the gel pulling process, every time he read over his list of lights and saw the houselights there was a request to gel them.
each time, if possible, my No. got shorter.
and then he flitted off to lunch.
other gems of the day:
Him- after seeing the strip lights - are those the colors I sent you or did you pick close matches
Me- those are the colors you sent me
Him- oh, I had a professional lighting designer pick those blues for me.
*there is a blue, a blue green and a pink in the strips and they are pretty horrid*
Him- After seeing the R56 on the conductor - wow, that's so lavendar it's almost pink
Me- *brain. clawing. to. escape.*
and then there was the projections.
over heard during the day
Crew member- wow, what are you doing with the projectors?
Him- actually, we don't know yet ha ha ha.
'round 5 they decide to test the projectors, they have a source, and they have something they want to show.
they have mac's so I inform them that I'm mac illiterate and hopefully their machine is smart enough to figure out the external monitor.
Him- oh, i forgot my cable, do you have one (a DVI to DVI cable)
Me- No.
Him- well go buy one.
Me- No. you'll need to take care of that, or deal with one projector.
so she has an iBook which we plug in and get a signal from, however it's a second version of her desktop. so I ask if she's run power point on two seperate monitors before
Her- yea, I do it all the time
Me- great, can you do it now? 'cause i don't know how to do that with a Mac.
Her- oh, well we were going to use quicktime
Me- great, well, you need to set up a second monitor so that we don't see you double clicking the file to open it.
Her- well doesn't anyone here know anything about Macs?
Me- nope.
Him- what? do you all use PC's?
Me- yep, and they work just fine.
Her- well, we can't have this tomorrow, does anyone here know how to make it work?
Me- *it's your laptop, I would hope that you do* at this point I walked away from the conversation, left them with Jackie, who has a powerbook and thought she could be useful to them and called Joe, the only person I know who could answer the following question
Me- "can you do an external monitor on an iBook or can it only do cloning?"
Joe- The powerbook can, but I believe the iBook can only do mirroring (cloning)
Me- that's what it was looking like - thanks.
Me- yea, your iBook can't do this, you'll need to get the powerbook to work
Them- well don't you have computers to do this?
Me- nope, besides, how are you going to get the information onto any other computer? (it's about 4-8 gigs of video, and they don't have a burner)
Them- well, isn't there somewhere we can plug two computers together
Me- possibly, but we don't have any computers with video editing software on them
Them- well, why not?
Me- *I'll kill you*
Them- the image seems really pixelated and erratic, there's also a fuzzy edge around it. is there something wrong with your projector?
Me- I think your source is a little small (when they opened it, quick time opened a box about 3" by 4" so to fill the screen they were at about 400% magnification, and their image was fuzzy around the edge)
after finally taking the image and re-sizing it to 100% they finally got what i was saying to them, and determined that they needed to re-write the video files
Them- oh well, we'll just plug into Jim's (the place they are staying) phone line and download the trial package tonite, re render the video
Me- you're going to download adobe after effects over a modem?
Them- yea, it's no problem.
Me- okay.
more to come... apparently they are working this morning, and even tho' when we set the schedule and said, wow the person striking the show will have to be here late, they'll come in at noon that day. that works until any one else is effected. they are in at 9 and need a board op (this need was given to me last night 'round 10, until now it's been notes- needs tbd) today's my day with no one in the shop in the morning.
guess i'm in for a 16 hour day.
...
i'm excited about that.
in that way that makes me want to call in sick.