Obsessions Too

So I did a show today. I like to say I'm semi-retired from life in Bohemia, and I've only taken the odd lighting gig since leaving the ships, but they were both big and challenging, in the way that there was TONS to do in No Time At All. Today was one of those. My cousin volunteered me to light a dance show for a friend of hers. It was in a theatre I had never met, with a light board (controller) I had never seen before, and intelligent lights that I had never worked with. And, as mentioned, last week was finals week. :-O

So I spent the odd hour in the last two weeks catching rehearsals in between finals studying, and thankfully a prelim design was requested two weeks early, so I had at least a skeleton to build from. Then, the last few days I really threw myself into it, making sure that all cues were where they were supposed to be, and one number, which was a medley of 10 songs, in 5.35 minutes, and 11 spotlight cues-- oh.my.god.

I actually had to script out what I was going to say, and make sure there was enough time to say it, and cut things out where there wouldn't be enough time! (I even recorded the sound of me saying it over the music, to make sure I could enunciate everything clearly.) It turned out that there wasn't nearly enough time to make the show as detailed and complicated as I wanted, but I was prepping for the worst (best?) case scenario :).

And last night was an almost all nighter, where I stayed up late to cram details about the lighting board and moving lights into my head. The lighting console was an etc obsession2 which I had never worked with, so I knew that I had to be prepared. The moving lights, VL one thousands, were also new to me. I mentioned the schedule earlier- 1.5 hours to design the 2 hr show-- which meant knowing what I was doing backwards and forwards. gack!

(side note: It's now a few days later, so the drama of a week ago has kinda drifted out of my head so this wont be nearly as interesting as if I had written this ontime :))

I did a similar cram before doing the ship a couple of years ago in Australia, remember? 10 shows in 10 days? (ok 15 days, I exaggerate. Or wait, do I? Maybe not bc it was 10 actual design days on the ship... possibly. anyway.) But the cramming helped! I felt validated for my efforts when I knew shortcuts that the board op didn't know! I had shortcuts for chases, I had a more efficient way to change intelligent lights (using numerical values instead of the damn wheel which drives me nuts) and also how to copy cues from blind. There were a few things that I wish I had time to do, like writing a color chase, or a moving chase, but that would have taken too much time that we didn't have, so I made do. Luckily I had a board op who was very professional and allowed me to almost literally run the show with very few suggestions and no arguments whatsoever; having witnessed other less professional board ops I can't tell you how grateful I was for this.

So the final count was, +/- 70 cues and 3 fx for 20 numbers in 2 hrs, some were copies of that group's number in the first act. I would've liked more specific cues, more and different effects, more time-- heck even one or two more hours would have made a huge difference. (Originally the producer asked me how long it would take to design a show, I said, well, at ~least~ 5 minutes per cue, a little extra in the beginning as I get used to the board, a little less at the end, and she said, Oh that's all? I was flabbergasted... 20 numbers, even at a minimum of 3 cues each that's 60 times 5, or five hours. Math, anyone? Generally I like to have a preset black look, maybe an opening look, a main number look, maybe a build in the middle, then a build near the end and a bump AT the end, before a fade out or black out. That's seven cues per number.)

I'm about 70-80% happy with how the show turned out in the end. Considering the time and equipment constraints, I'm pretty satisfied with what I was able to do. It was a super cool opportunity to get back in the swing of theatre things, and to learn a new board and light... I miss my ship though! :)