300 plotting for Fathom at Saddlers Wells

Today Andy Coates was in pre-plotting a show for The Fathom Project that we are both working on at Saddlers Wells, as they have a Strand 530i there. I designed the original lighting for the shows at Dance City quite a while ago.

This 300 is the old DC house desk. It came with the original installation of the Dance Lab and really didn't last very long as a reliable desk. It received some tlc from service engineers but the "0" button remains a bit of an issue as spares are now unavailable for it!

Nevertheless it is still a handy piece of kit to have about for those techs that come in that just don't have the time to pick up the syntax of the Congo Jr.

Tonight I'm trying to put together a vid to the show on Saturday. Video isn't really my thing. I'm happy cutting up a single camera shoot down to something that is DVD ready... but this time I enlisted some help and shot with two cameras.

I wish I had more time to set them up properly... they aren't quite white balanced the same or even leveled the same. Ho hum!

I do a lot of the video stuff at home as there just aren't enough hours in the day at work. Here I use Sony Vegas and this is due to growing up with Soundforge I guess. Vegas certainly seems to be good value for money and fairly easy to get good results with.

Goodbye and hello :)

Today was the last day of Fiona Wright's residency at Dance City. Fiona gained a place in a pilot scheme we are running called Labspace. She had a good week in our Dance Lab working on video and material for her ongoing work. She's off to Berlin again now but we are looking forward to her coming back soon.

Then it was hello to my Venue Assistant, Clare, who's had a few days off. With her back, we managed to get a head start on tomorrow's performances by pre focusing and then more or less dressing one of the pieces that we'll be presenting. There is a great vibe around tomorrows event. Hopefully I'll be offering a bit of video of it soon after.

Gobo wash for Michaela and Rachel

Here are the lanterns that are making a gobo wash for Michaela and Rachael's piece to be performed this weekend. Selecon Acclaim zoom profiles are what they are. They are quite bright considering that their rating is 600W and generally a tidy fixture. Downside to them are that the yolks always need tightening up, they take an 'M' size gobo (this size isn't a popular one to tour it seems) and the lamp can be a bugger to get out in one piece.

We generally use gobos from Rosco and in particular you would find 77406 in our lanterns.

Just when I thought it was over...

Whilst sat at home this evening, nursing a beer, I received a call from work saying that part of the CCTV system wasn't working. As I was about to set off I thought it would b a good time to see it the remote access to the server would finally allow me through to the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) over the network. Woop, woop! One VPN (Virtual Private Network) jump and a scratch of the head, trying to remember the IP for the DVR, later I was on! All was actually well with the system... so no need to leave my nice warm flat.

It would have been nice to have actually finished something today :o/

Today was when I started to prep the Lab in earnest for this weekend's Public Announcement event. So setting up the lighting desk ready for plotting as the opportunities arise was a priority. The desk is a Congo Jr. It's been a bit of an experience getting used to it and installing version after version of the operating system. Fingers crossed the present Beta software is stable. Good results so far. (Posting on the Congo may be quite regular btw)

Other than lighting in the Lab, there was point to point patching of video around the building - successful... eventually! And coaxing into life of an obsolete microwave proximity sensor that controls the lighting in one of the public areas.

First post... hope it continues and I don't get bored! :D

This is what I am doing now... Working on a 3d model for a gig that I am the site and production manager for. You will probably see more of this in the future as we get nearer to performance day. It will be a site specific dance piece to live music.