Theatre and Technology in Hermony

After last weeks posts, it seems only fitting that I should share this article on Live Design that was posted today regarding the design of San Francisco Opera's Swan Lake. The beginning of the article is exactly where I hope things are continuing, a world where we cannot discern the difference between scenery / lighting / projections. This is when the magic is made, and this will start to draw audiences back. I'm on the bus to NYC right now, and have an article I want to write but just can't get the energy to do it. Look for it sometime this week.

http://ow.ly/16Kseo

Andrew

In Preparation for the Next Series

Which really folks, may just turn into one entry.

So, for those of you who don't know me that well. I am a HUGE movie score buff. It's what I listen to when I draft, design, read scripts, etc. I think (ironicly enough) our work as lighting designers works very similar to how lights translate on the stage (if you disagree we can talk about that later). Anyway, a recent quote of his (Re Angels and Demons) "The challenge on these films are how do you present the story and at the same time make it emotional and visceral"

also refer to this story, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3564154.ece

a commentary on the state of modern film composition. I will be writing some blogs that touch on this, maybe something process and choice driven. But I find this topic really inspiring to write on.

Have you're own thoughts on this? Leave a comment - or shoot me an e-mail

A

Sure it's great, but the problem with technology (Part 3)

MY ISSUES WITH TECHNOLOGY

The saga continues, as we all knew it would. So what's my beef with technology? Why have I even bothered write this? I write this because I think technology has become a bit a crutch, in many facets of design. Be it the advance work, or the actual work in the design, the more technology I see, typically, the less thought it seems there is in a show. However, there is such a drive to put technology into shows and flaunt it (ALA Broadway) that it can be hard to fight that urge. I have even heard people go as far as to say a particular show cannot be done with out scrollers, or moving lights and the like, which then bears the questions how did the brilliant designs of Tharon Musser and others happen prior to all the technology we have now?

Here are some things I've actually encountered in my life either directly or heard of later from others.

1) Morpheus CMY faders were brought in for a show I was an electrician for. Great, no issues with that. Then the designer called and asked that the entire rosco book be stored on the board as focus groups so they could pick colors "faster" in tech. My fiancee who was in this show had to stand frozen in a pose while they picked colors for an hour during tech for just one scene.

2) After the first 10 out of 12 for a musical, a production manager told me that the lighting designer for the show, after a rough notes session, told the group that they could not do the show without color scrollers. They had never asked until then

3) A designer for a show I worked on insisted on moving lights for a show. While doing the going through the show file I found that each of the 4 fixtures turned on once andcould have easily been made static specials.

The person in example 1, no advance thought. I saw this show, and the color in those Morpheus faders were definitely intended to try and drive the show, however, no prior thought went into what these faders would, how they would function, etc. The content was not originally thought out. It's the same but opposite problem with example 2. When we start blaming our inability to light a show well because of lack of technology, we are 1) Hurting our potential fot getting work in this house in the future and 2) Showing our lack of foresight to either a. ask before we get to tech or b. have solved the problem without. Plenty of designs came out before we had arsenals of scrollers, moving lights and other bells and whistles that were ground breaking. You can do it without technology too.

2 also touches on another issue. I have also heard of designers who will kick and scream that they can't do a show without X or without Y. Sometimes we need to learn how to sacrafice and be creative to solve a problem, especially in economic times as these. Example, demanding needing LED strips and then only using 6 colors over the course of the show.

Finally 3 brings about a special issue. On the one hand, why rent 4 moving lights when you aren't going to use them in more than 1 way. On the other, when your director is crazy, sometimes you need to have this tool in your back pocket. While the end result may not have shown foresight, the intention, to easily and quickly appease a director in time of crisis, shows a different kind of foresight that sometimes makes life easier.

While I know that maybe those examples are not the norm, it seems to be trending that way. It's unfortunate but I feel like less and less thought, especially advance thought, is going into the design of the worlds we are creating. We are here to tell a story through light, every single thing we do, the color, the placement, the sharpness, even the shutter cut of a light are there to tell that story. When we let these elements get away from us, when our grasp of these things slips from our fingers on any show, the design has less of an impact, and therefore we haven't done our job.

So what was the point of all this: Content, content, content. Really challenge yourself to think about every angle of light, every shade, and every scene in depth for your next show. Know the show backwards. Know why you are doing everything on a show. The best designs I've seen come from those who think this way. Then, when you need to solve a problem, or enhance your story, turn to technology. It can only make your designs stronger to start thinking without technology and then adding when you need it. Justify it in terms of the story. When you can do that, and integrate the technology in ways that go unnoticed, watch the designs soar.

Like I said in my first blog on this issue, think of it ala the movie industry. When CGI first was introduced think about how crazy movie makers went with it. And we KNEW they were using it. Now the lines are blurred. We can't tell where reality ends, and the computers begin. When we can achieve this on the stage, when we start using technology seamlessly, that it is when true magic happens, and that requires thought, not dependency.

Sure it's great, but the problem with technology (Part 2)

TECHNOLOGY USED FOR GOOD

So, I know I probably put a bad taste in peoples mouth by making it seem like I am all Anti-Technology. I'm not, not at all, I am anti technology when used for technology's sake (and let me be clear I mean in the theatre - rock concerts are different). So that's why today in part 2 of "Sure it's great, bu the problem with technology" we'll examine situations where Technology has greatly impacted designs, in ways that it would have been difficult to do the designs without. These are all designs I was either an assistant or the actual designer for.

ELIXIR OF LOVE (LD Paul Palazzo) - Color Scrollers to the Rescue

To get some background on the major challenge in this show, take a look at this link. While not specifically from the production I assisted on with Michigan Opera, It's the same set and it's also, I think, the same Lighting Designer, Paul Palazzo but in San Francisco. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsBDVHkSDI . You will notice the GIANT gazebo sitting in the center of the stage (A zoomed out shot happens around 1:25), it's kind of hard to miss in all it's glossy white glory. Roughly 23' - 0" wide and 20' - 0" deep, at it's widest point, there was only 10' - 0" of electric to hang lights before you were behind a leg, and it's shape made it virtually impossible to shoot around. So hanging space was at a premium. Add that to the fact that we were dealing with a gloss white set, and a sunset into night had to happen, color mixing by double, or triple hanging everything was not a good way to go because it would have lit of the set like a Christmas Tree and would have become "Elixir of Love" starring the Gazebo. So how did he solve it?

Lots and Lots of Scrollers. Paul put scrollers on a lot of the gear and designed the scrolls so that we could seamlessly live scroll as the day progressed into night. This really killed two birds with one stone, first by solving the limited space to hang gear issue, and then by solving the problem that may have been caused by using multiple systems to mix color. The result was impressive and made for a beautiful design. But again, this wasn't just throw scrollers in the air, thought went into it. By custom designing his strings to live scroll, Paul had spent the time at home to decipher what colors he wanted, when to scroll, and how. Sure, sometimes we are stuck with a theatre's stock scroll, however, that doesn't mean you throw the scrollers somewhere and figure it out in tech. Sit at home, look at that scroll, and use it to make informed decisions about your design.

CYRANO (LD Donald Edmund Thomas) - VL2500's and All their Glory

This production of Cyrano was a definitely on the large side (Scenery by John Pascoe). Somewhere between 5 and 6 tractor trailers are needed to move the scenery. To get an idea of how much scenery we were dealing with visit http://www.donaldthomaslighting.com/Cyrano.htm the Lighting Designers portfolio page of the show. Unlike Elixir, nothing about this show was unit, except for the giant branch which played twice. Even with the large amount of equipment and dimmer space available to us at the opera, to light all the scenery and light the people well would prove difficult. With the scenery moving in so many different ways, entire systems of light were used in mostly scene specific ways to keep the light clean on the scenery. So the question became, how to light all this scenery. While some lights were available to light scenery, they couldn't do it all. 10 VL2500's saved the day and filled in where conventional fixtures could not.

But again, some things that proved thought in their use. First, movers were placed and used in a very methodical manner, as such, the lights made sense with what ever was the key light in terms of angle in which it struck the scenery. We also spent time recording library colors for the designer, he had a specific list of colors he wanted out of the movers. Even though these are CMY fixtures and can mix MILLIONS of colors, he handed us a list of ten. Only on a few rare occasions did we mix colors live in tech. This is a HUGE time saver. This all again shows thought and process at home, in the studio, a solution to a bigger problem of how to light this scenery, and since it was all new scenery, people wanted to see it..

DANTE (LD Andrew F. Griffin) - CXI Faders adding Color

So I'll wrap up today's post with a design of my own, and this time not at some big opera company. This a production I lit for Synetic Theatre in their home at Rosslyn Spectrum. Dante was a theatrical retelling of Dante's inferno as we travelled through the 9 circles of hell. The scenery was done with 3 show portals that echoed these circles, but also looked like a spiral staircase leading us down into the depths of hell. Sadly not a lot of good portfolio

pictures were taken by our photographer full stage, here's an idea of it was though to the right. Other challenges were that it was done in forced perspective with the portals and none of the electrics flew, no box booms, no near boxes, no balcony rail, and finally, and roughly 60 dimmers in the space (I realize that's a luxury for some) depending on the week / day / cycle of the moon, we've all been in those places. Each circle of hell had to be unique, and doing this with angles was out of the question since the portals limited a lot of backlight, diagonal backlight, and other options. So the answer became color. But how to get color on the portals, and in the same token people, and how to do at least 9 colors evenly for each section (and being a dance movement company we all know that changes in music would require lights to follow along). After exploring a lot of conventional options, the answer become CXI Color Faders.

Due to limited FOH hanging space, the only way to light the portals was booms with two units a piece in front of each corner of the stage as up lights. This lit the portal well, and also acted almost as an FOH toner on the bodies as the lights crossed across the stage. I explored the option of scrollers, but Faders allowed me to leave the lights on and cleanly change from color to color live. Again, as I mentioned before with the previous examples, I sat at home with the Wybron CXI color wheel and figured all the colors I wanted to use prior to getting in the space (even made a handy magic sheet with the front and back string intensities for each color) and made minor adjustments in tech. The only real pain was adjusting times so the faders would fade through the colors I wanted as we went from scene to scene, or music change to change as the case sometimes was. But these really made the show, and allowed us to accomplish something seemingly impossible with great limitations. (More pictures here http://www.andrewfgriffin.com/Andrewfgriffin/Portfolio/Pages/Dante.html and the video trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4JdStJ9x4Q)

So where am I going with all this? Technology, when thought out ahead of time can be an incredible asset to a show. Not only can it solve problems and take design to another level that previously never thought of, it can save time and money by hanging fewer lights, taking less time to focus, etc. It's when advance thought isn't given and technology is used for technology's sake, or when a designer uses the technology as a crutch that it becomes a problem. Next time in part 3 we'll talk about that.

Sure it's great, but the problem with technology (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION

So let's start with how the idea for this was sparked. I was recently sent a questionnaire about design, and one of the questions was along the lines of what technology has influenced your art the most in the last few years. It made me really sit down and think about the question, in fact I have yet to respond to it.

I want to begin by saying, I have nothing against technology. I am not some old man who is afraid to touch technology, in fact I'd rather not even share my age since I am younger than most people think I am. Further, my next planned post is going to be a very pro technology post. I want to be clear about that fact, because technology allows us as designers to do what some people years ago thought was impossible. We can hang 2 systems of back light and get 32 colors worth instead of 2 and whatever we can mix with them. We can hang LED strips and have near infinite options of color on a cyc. We can have 24 dimmers, hang color faders and never have to worry about turning off a system because we can get such clean fades between colors. The list goes on, and on, and on. So in that regard, technology has influenced our art. We can do way more with WAY less.

But that's the problem, we can do way more. I will go into this further in a later post, but it seems like less attention is being paid to the smaller details, not to mention some are beginning to forget our origins. I was in a theatre not too long ago where I surprised a person by mixing red and green on a cyc to get a yellow / amber we were looking for. It's becoming easier to put off designing a show until we are in tech, and as a result some of the thought is starting to leave our designs. We are starting to do more shows entirely on our computer, and less work by hand (and again I am a young whipper snapper by some standards so I am NOT anti computers).

Where is all that going? I think we are starting to lose touch with the fact that we are there to serve the production. Not do something that looks cool. Think of it like when movies first discovered green screen and CGI. Remember how sick we all got of watching movies that were all very clearly done on a green screen? By Star Wars episode III we were all ready to just see something based in reality. What took CGI to the next level was integrating it into film in such a way that way that we forgot it was even there. Such as Gollum in Lord of The Rings, look at the roaring success of the effects in Avatar or even watch the designing the movie special on Angels and Demons, it will blow your mind to see how much of that movie is CGI and how much is real. This is what we should be doing, going back to our roots as designers BUT using technology to then further our designs, and mask from the audience how we do it instead of flaunting it. There is a happy marriage here.

So I think the answer to my question on that questionnaire will simply be "Pencil and Paper", in fact in the last 9 months that's how all of my plots now begin. It's the reason I even got those questions to begin with.

Stay tuned for more thoughts. Hopefully tomorrow will bring us the "Pro" side of technology. If not, stay tuned and it will be here by the end of the week.

A Return to the Design Blog

So, wow, I totally forgot about this thing, as is usually typical for me. I think I am going to be a bit more active on the blog for a bit. I've had some recent frustrations when it comes to design that I want to discuss in the blog-o-sphere, here are some topics I want to hit, but feel free to contact me if you have other issues you want me to tackle:

Big Ideas

1) Sure it's great but, the problem of technology

2) "If lights and sound don't go together, the terrorists win"

3) The recent Mediocrity Epidemic

4) Collaboration - Theatre artists are collaborative, not solo performers (even those one man shows have a team)

5) The problem with getting into a rut / The problem with being unpredictable

Small Ideas

1) Getting Work

2) Presenting Yourself

3) The value of Assisting

And I'll try to think of more along the way. 1 - 5 will turn more into essays, which I haven't done since college. I am hoping to stick with it this time, and I am already brainstorming "Sure it's great but, the problem of technology" and hope to have it out by the end of the week.

The Importance of Paperwork

This article may seem very obvious for some, but these are some I had to learn the hard way. I would also love to see your comments below on how you handle your paperwork.

It was said to me very early in my career, "The one show you don't document will be the show you have to remount." At the time that advice went in one ear and out the other. About 9 months later I did a small production somewhere of a christmas that I did a TERRIBLE job documenting. That Christmas show went on to remount 3 times, and all I had was a script with cue placements and a low quality DVD. Live and learn right? Since then I have moved on to bigger remounts, and sadly when I look around me it seems like there is an epidemic of bad paperwork floating around. Remounts in Opera are not THAT uncommon, and I get incomplete/insufficient paperwork all the time around here from previous productions, for example:

This past fall we did a production of Margaret Garner here at the opera house. It was a production we own and when it was done originally it toured to 3 or 4 other cities, so it wasn't a secret that it was going to tour. I go up to our archives and all that was there is the original plot and original paperwork. No focus charts had been done, no updates had ever been added, and the person doing the remount wasn't even the designer but his associate. He and I spent a lot of time on the phone remounting a show from a magic sheet because that was the most accurate final document from the show.

All that being said, here are things I find incredibly important that should be with the archives of any show, and again the idea here is to be an open forum if you disagree share below, if there's something I am missing please add it:

-A final plot and a final lightwrite file for the show are the number ones here, but something that can be more helpful than you may think are all the old versions of the LW and Plot files. Why? It helps you remember why you may have made certain choices you made so the same mistakes aren't made, OR, if you're in a house with certain limitations you can always revert back to what you originally intended to do. Maybe one venue doesn't have a footlight trough but you wanted them, in the next house they can go back into the show easily.

-A Channel Usage list. This is something that I generally add a text column in the LW file for. If you're on an obsession go into channel usage, or any of the Expression, Express you can do about channel (I am pretty much an ETC boy, I get my first Ion experience in 2 weeks). Is there a channel that never turned on in the show? A show I am remounting had 10% of the fixtures never turn on, that's almost 40 fixtures I don't need to hang, color or focus when I move it to Lansing which can be a big time saver. If you are sending the paperwork off to someone else, that's 36 units they can choose to cut or retask in future productions.

-Focus Charts. LW has them, use them. It makes focus a breeze and it's really easy to save focus charts into the LW file. This can also help you figure out what you need scenically so you can focus things in the right act or scene. A little cheat I like to do is look at the focus on an open deck when you are done focusing the show and make notes on what a light looks like on an open deck, the less you have to move scenery, the faster focus can move.

-Cue Sheets with GOOD cue descriptions. A cue description I will use from a show I assisted on the remount of not too long, "Absolutely Beautiful Night." Was it a beautiful night cue? Yes, if I was another theatre remounting this show would this be useful, not at all. Talk about what systems are moving where, do you have scrollers, what colors are they in (we had 80 in the show and there was NO mention of scroller colors anywhere in the cue descriptions, another unhelpful thing) do you have moving lights, what focus group are they in and what are their attributes up to? You get the idea.

-DMX Accessory notes. This can include, but is not limited to, what your focus groups are (if anyone doesn't know the immense value of focus groups, at least in the obsession line, leave a comment and I'll certainly get back to you) so it's a quick easy check when you arrive to your next venue, and a quick edit if need be. A scroller break down, what scrolls go where and what they should be profiled to at the console. And anything else that can make things move faster.

-Spot Sheets. The bane of many ALD's existence are keeping the spot sheets up to date. Don't just do a master follow spot sheet, but make a cue script for each of your spot ops. Let them know when they have color changes, pick up changes and the like because the more information they have the easier the tech process can move.

-Boom and Ladder locations. Get the final US/DS and SL/SR positions of all your booms and ladders before you leave the theatre. DON'T do it from the proscenium line. That's boned me in the past. Do it from something off the set. The set may not land in the same place off the plaster line in every venue so maybe from a deck edge is more reliable. Find that piece for every show, trust me it will save you. Now in your new venue you can go and just tape X's on the floor where all your booms and ladders go.

-Trims. Get your final trims to electrics, ladders, and any flying practicals you may have.

-Running sheets. Does your show have electric moves on the deck such as rovers, and things that need to clear for scenic moves? Write this down so you don't have to remember as tech goes on you can just have a running sheet for your deck elec from the start.

-Finally, the thing I like to archive but it's optional are work notes. They turn into a good point of reference. What things were problematic during the first time you did the show and gives you insight as to what to expect in your next location.

Feel free to comment below.