Category Archives: Bit of the ordinary

Something from everyday goings on.

Bit of the ordinary

Old 78’s online

Here is something to liven up your week. There is a gentleman that is digitizing his entire collection of 78rpm records and putting them online.

There are links to mp3’s for every song. He hasn’t cleaned up the audio, but you might find something you’ve always wanted. Or something you forgot you wanted.

Bit of the ordinary

Can’t get no Satisfaction

Well, I have opened the two shows I was working on. They are up and running, but I am not happy with them, as usual. For almost all of the shows that I design I am ultimately not happy with the final product. What I see in my head as I envision the show is always different than the final outcome. But most of the time, what is realized onstage is lacking. It falls short of my vision in it’s detail and form.

There are always compromises in the course of mounting a production. There are always more constraints on your work than anything else. Restrictions on time, space limitations for both where you are performing as well as where you are building, and you are also limited by your personnel. But the biggest thing that changes your design is production team. No matter what you do, the director always wants to change things. Or even they want something totally different than you. The actor can’t work without ‘X’, and the costume designer has a certain color scheme for different characters.

All of these things can pull you off course from what you want the design to be. And after listing those things, it seems amazing that I can be happy with anything I do. But a lot of the time I can be pretty happy with the final product. Other designers or the director can give you some good ideas, or they can lead you in a direction that you never would have thought of.

But these shows weren’t like that. To start off we only had four days to tech two totally different shows. Usually you have five or six days to tech just one show. And on Sunday, while the theater was getting set up, we pulled the set pieces out onto the parking lot to get painted. Minutes after we finished the first coat of paint, it started to rain. So we hurriedly pulled out some tarps to try to wait out the rain. But it increased to a deluge and we just had to run inside and let the set get soaked. The rain never really let up so we had to pull the wet scenery inside at the end of the day.

We never got back on track. So there was no way I was going to be totally happy with these designs. But the next set is looking promising, but I still have to talk to the director about it…

Bit of the ordinary, Design Stuff

Late nights and fighting the dew

I’m in tech right now, listening to the show and waiting for it to end. Waiting for it to end so I can get to work on notes. Tech rehearsals are this weird time when you’re tired from working all day, and excited to see it come together. I find myself dozing off during techs sometimes, from being tired but also to rest up for spending three or four hours painting scenery or doing changes in the lights. I’m getting used to holding a paint brush at 1am. The only problem is when the theater has shop spaces outside. Paint loves to dry during the day when the sun is out. But at night, there is not sun and the dew comes out. All that moisture really gets in the way of getting the set painted. The high humidity extends the drying time of things. That can be helpful for some techniques, but if the humidity is to high it can affect the ability of the paint to stick to the surface. When that happens, it can really slow you down.

Right now, I’m about to do a heck of a lot of woodgrain, and install a railing. By the time I get to post this it will be finished and the show will be open. Fun fun fun.

Bit of the ordinary

Corn starch fun

One thing I love to do with the girls is mix up corn starch and water. It is thick and goopy, and at the right mixture, it turns into a solid when force is applied. So when you scoop up some in your hand and squeeze it it turns from runny into this solid play-doh like stuf, and tehn shifts back into ooze.

Here is a video of corn starch that is being bounced around by someone’s speaker:

You can also find it here.

Bit of the ordinary

Amazing talk from Chris Jordan

I just watched a thought provoking video via the TED Talks podcast (iTunes link- it will open up iTunes and send you to the iTunes Store to ask you if you want to subscribe to the Podcast feed).

It was by Chris Jordan, an artist who:

   

Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics — like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.

You can view the individual talk here