1st Show Day Tomorrow...

Silk goes live tomorrow...

It's been a challenge working with the company... one that allows the director to be questioned... but that could just be me and the fact that I don't do a lot of theatre.

Still, lots of interesting things learned about the making process that will help with future work :)

I'm already looking forward to seeing what comes next!

Good day teching for Silk :)

Didn't get to drop the load though! Disappointed! :/

Confetti drop update :)

Whoop! It works... the LEDs have stopped blowing up, the additional diode has even (not surprisingly really) stopped all electrical noise from the system.

This ran over 20m mic xlr cables with no bother too... Now to load em up, make a mess... and hope they don't get cut! :/

Flhip Flhop

A top performance tonight by Rannel. Amazing timing and super jokes.. good crowd - other than a particularly outspoken kid :)
Once again it was brilliant to welcome a lovely company into the Lab, will look forward to the next time they come this way.

I did learn a little more about effective touring LX today too, which is always useful :)

3x Solenoids

Yesterday I was making up three 3 solenoid circuits to allow remote operation of some confetti drops.
The prototyping went well, except that I burned out the 12v indicator LEDs.

So it looks like I have to add a reverse bias diode across each coil to prevent the back EMF of the magnetic field collapsing from overloading the LEDs the wrong way.
Vid of the end result will follow soon! :)

She writes again...

More Mac repairs...
The G5 editing machine has been having trouble writing CD/DVDs that are readable in our show playback. (The show playback is a TASCAM CD01U and therefore quite picky!).
Today I replaced the original DVD writer with a new one... not a lot of choice on IDE writers it seems.

The new LG went in quite easily and preliminary test burns have gone well :)

Just another day at the Mill

So after a month or so of preparation Ockham's Razor finally arrive with their show the Mill. I was glad we had done the pre preparation work, everything went in quite nicely. This is what we ended up with... Quite unusual I think you'd agree! :)

We had a great time with the company, they were all very professional and lovely to work with, would have them back anytime.
Do check out their website I have linked, they've some interesting work and videos on there.

Sketchup again...

To save model boxing a show that is being created... I offered to build it in 3d in Sketchup. It's been a while since I've run the app, and also it's seemed a good project to use to start getting to know my new MacBook with!

I started with importing PDF plans of the ground floor layout. Then overlaying construction lines that I tidied up and then pulled up into 3d. Only done some of the stage and half the seating rake so far... check back soon for a more finished view of the Dance Lab at Dance City.

Just Jam 2010 International Battle (and sequences!)

This weekend just gone has been a busy one... following the New Art Club show we had two sold out houses for a Bboy theatre show and then a Bboy international battle.
All the performances involved busy turnarounds in to various configurations.

Most importantly we finally understood how to write chases on the Congo Jr. And this wasn't as painful as expected... and it helped us to make it look like we were doing much more work than we may have been! ;)
Give it a couple of days then search for "just jam 2010" on Youtube... there should be plenty of evidence!

Backstage :)

Tomorrow night we have the New Art Club in for a performance. They asked if we could reduce the stage size down to 6m... Obviously happy to help. So we've moved the upstage tabs to midstage.
Shame we only have the extra space for one night only as we have BBoying in for the two nights following...