Show Your Show

[cedd]

@Tommulliner

Just an observation, were those Selecon Pacific's top hung off of that rear bar? Might have been better getting a proper truss clamp on them. You can get away with a top hang on something small, but a profile like that seems a little large. There's also a twisting moment on the bar which needs to be thought about.

 

What was the gig? Bet power was a little tight in a venue like that. Bitter experience of church halls says you're lucky if you get one ring main!

[jonathan.1]

Having workedwith Tom on the show we had a 32 amp supply for the dimmers powering the rear bar and then the two sides of the building are on separate ring mains, the show was songs from the shows (kids choir) and then our town an am dram show

[tommulliner]

Here is some photos from the plotting session of Into The Woods which I did a week or so ago. These are some of the general states taken very quickly with a pretty poor camera as I never had chance to take pictures once the run of shows began, which was a shame as there were some much nicer shots than the ones below, but oh well! Rig Consisted mainly of Rama PCs, Par 64s, Breakups and Top and Groundrow Lui's to light the CYC.

 

http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/tommulliner/IMAG0255.jpg

 

http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/tommulliner/IMAG0256.jpg

 

http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/tommulliner/IMAG0253.jpg

 

[Aaron-Hill07]

Tom - I must admit, those ITW pictures do look particularly good. I lit this show a couple of months ago in a similar space but absolutely hated the result although I could do nothing about it!

 

My problem was the set guys got in 2 days before LX and covered the whole stage with various bits of set consisting of towers, ramps etc which meant I could access about 4 of the 50 fixtures flown on the bars. Due to the un-even staging and set which apparently 'couldn't be moved' I had to do a lot of adjustment by bringing bars in and out and making adjustments every time. And even more unfortunately, the bars in question on a winch system were the slowest to get in and out as it was all manually winched!

 

Basically, it wasn't focussed properly and the director wanted basic white wash throughout the whole show with the addition of a touch of blue-cyc during the midnights!

 

Worst show I've lit without a doubt!

[tommulliner]

We got into an empty theatre on the Wednesday, Rigged the 'set' mainly consisting of army netting, bounce focused OS and plotted about 2/3 of act 1 and with that rehearsed Wednesday night. Had all day Thursday to rig and focus FOH and plot the rest of the show in time for the first show which was Thursday night!!

 

The rig itself was what was practically already up left from the 'Nutcracker' thats on tour as I couldn't change the rig much due to timing (see above!) so I just basically re-coloured it to become a 5 colour wash with 8 ish specials, mainly being break up gobos!

 

I was pretty happy with the end result which as mentioned above, is not fully shown in these pictures unfortunately.

 

 

[Just Some Bloke]

Into The Woods set and lighting both look great.

 

Here is a picture of the Slave of the Ring from our current production of Aladdin. Not so much to show off the lighting, more to show the talent.

 

... and yes, they are real!

 

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/JustSomeBloke/Slave.jpg

[Nick512]

Finally Got around to updating my Showreel and Website Pic's, Enjoy.!

[paulears]

http://www.earsmedia.co.uk/fleshcreep.jpg

Cloudland!

[Ynot]

Cloudland!

Now THAT one I like.

Lovely crisp colours and very complimentary pink and greens.

[wycome5]

A few from projects over the past couple of months...

 

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c180/wycome5/Co22.jpg

Co2 Jets

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c180/wycome5/FlameandCo2Effects.jpg

Propane flames and Co2 Jets

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c180/wycome5/Confetti2FS.jpg

Confetti at the Royal Albert Hall

[mark_s]

The Supreme Fabulettes present Viva La Drag, Leicester Square Theatre.

 

 

[waldo]

Seem to be no shortage of Into the Woods productions at the moment! We finished ours last week. Here's a couple of pics.

 

http://flic.kr/p/f2mnh9 - Milky White Puppet

 

http://flic.kr/p/f2mgaS - Whole set

 

Have to say I thought the set looked pretty nice. We had pieces of the tree from the Olympics opening ceremony and some vine/creeper stuff from the Dr Who live experience.

 

Credits to Dave Borthwick (Set Design and Photos) and Dan Scarlett (Lighting Design)

[cedd]

It's been a while since anybody posted a "show your show" so I thought I'd share the project that's been destroying my life for the last 6 months with you.

 

I've been the Sound Designer on The Narnia Experience in Leeds. As the show approached though I've also taken on more of a production management roll, been involved in set building, rigged lighting, become the health and safety officer, been directing small groups in rehearsals, am one of 4 duty managers and am currently the on call Aslan repair man!

 

To explain the show, we're performing in Left Bank, a huge old church that's now an arts centre. Plenty of photos can be found here;

Left Bank Leeds

 

We have 168 actors involved in the show, pretty much all amateur and a large number who've never acted before. The production team is all volunteers, again most of whom have never worked on a show before in their lives. Only the 2 directors, myself, one of the set build team and our lighting designer have any previous experience. The show was performed previously in Liverpool and we have quite a large amount of their set, along with lots of our own stuff too.

It's written for key stage 2 children and groups of 30 arrive in the entrance hall (done out like the professor's house - books on the walls and wood panels everywhere), they meet Lucy, Edmund and Susan and get split in to 2 groups of 15 (one group being Edmund, the other Lucy). They then go through the wardrobe under the premise of playing hide and seek. They walk through a load of fur coats and emerge in a forest with 50 real pine trees and lots of fake ones. They meet Tumnus, the White Witch, Mr and Mrs Beaver, plus others. They visit their houses and interact with them. Finally they arrive at Aslan's camp and sit in a big tent, where they meet our 8 foot tall Aslan puppet, who gives himself up and is killed by the White Witch behind a painted gauze (which transitions back to being front lit just before the kids see a lion getting stabbed!). Aslan returns, wins the day, and the kids go off to be crowned kings and queens of Narnia.

It's a beautiful show! The kids properly get attached to their actors, so we've had kids saving spaces when they sit down in the houses so Lucy or Edmund get to sit next to them. At the crowning the kids get to put the crowns on the actors' heads and we've had quite a few tearful hugs of characters when they had to leave Narnia through the wardrobe.

 

It's also been a technical nightmare! Our stage managers are all volunteers and a lot of them are parents of cast members. Only 2 of them have prior experience. The show is operated by push buttons around the set that trigger sound effects such as wolf howls or the river. Aslan's voice is pre recorded and has to be played back on cue, along with our beautiful film-style soundtrack which has been composed by a local writer. Making it simple to operate (literally some buttons marked "push for wolf") has been the hardest part. The lighting is timed from the first sound cue which is the kids entering the wardrobe. This plays an owl hoot through all the speakers to warn the cast of an entering group, and starts eerie wind noise from above. Lamps are timed to light set areas up 5 minutes before they're needed and fade out 5 minutes after a group have left, to save on lamp life and keep our energy consumption down (very limited power supply).

Other favorite bits of the sound design include the whispering trees - 5 JBL Control 23's hidden in the trees. We funded the project partially by a Kickstarter campaign and one of the prizes was the chance to voice a talking tree. Each tree whispers as the kids walk past it, and with 5 of them all around you, it's quite an impressive but simple trick. The soundtrack also follows you around the venue, so the music for instance fades out from Aslan's camp when the kids walk to Cair Paravel, where it's now faded up. This saves the very reverberant space from being excited too much.

 

It's been amazing fun but a lot of work to put on!

 

To defy convention, rather than showing some pictures, here's a local news report covering the show;

 

Tech specs;

 

Talking trees and river spot fx - JBL Control 23's

Aslan's camp playback (Aslan's voice and music) - 2 x Tannoy V12's, 2 x RCF ESW1018 subs

Wind playback - 2 x Tannoy V12's

Cair Paravel - 2 x Tannoy V12's

Spot FX sounders (Tumnus' fireplace crackle, Beaver's Lodge crackling frying pan) - PUI USB Programmable sounders

White Witch's castle atmos and pre recorded whisper - 2 x TOA F-500SR

 

Playback is by 2 PC's running Multiplay, interfaced to the push buttons using U-HID Nano PCB's and my own built control system driving the push buttons. Each PC has 2 M-Audio Delta sound cards.

 

Lighting (whilst not my field) is controlled by Chamsys, using macro's and another U-HID device to interface with the push buttons, driving the playbacks.

Over 30 American DJ Mega Battens on 4 trusses suspended over the sky to give the blue wash (that transitions from day to night as the show progresses) along with 10 or so Source 4's doing cloud and star breakup gobo's as required. Source 4's and T84's also doing the lighting on Aslan's tent, along with a bunch of Par's. There are also a good number of Birdie's around doing face light in the smaller scenes, like the Witch's sledge.

 

 

A very complicated show, but only because of its' apparent simplicity. We've had to do a lot of work behind the scenes in building the cue lists to ensure that all the operator sees is a big green button that they press when they've been told to. Certain cues lock out others, others fade out previous cues automatically and the whole show resets itself once the exit wardrobe button is pressed, giving the crew working light and taking both cue lists back to the top of the show, ready for the next group to walk through the wardrobe in about 5 minutes.

 

It's been great fun. We're now sold out - 5000 tickets gone, which isn't bad to say each performance only seats 30 and lasts an hour and a half! 12 performances a day (they overlap a bit) for 14 days in a row. Busy busy!

[henny]

Just a little x-mass doo pyro show from tonight -

[birt]

MONO, a dance production by Thomas Hauert (belgian premiere at Charleroi Danses, european premiere at Forsythe Company in Frankfurt).I did the lighting and scenography. the backdrop is made of a thin paper like fabric in 24 pieces of 65cm (5m high). these are all individually rigged with 1 wire each so they can spin around. they all have a plastic tube at the top with magnets so unless you manipulate them, it looks like they are fixed together. one side is black, one side white.

lighting is 19 profiles, 8 PARs with gobo's, 16 pc's, 8 fluorescents, 2x 2KW fresnells and 2x 5K fresnells.

 

http://scontent-a-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1450102_10152012468184078_1983442543_n.jpg

 

 

http://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1394400_10152012468234078_635320009_n.jpg

 

 

http://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1468610_10152059273514078_734211515_n.jpg

 

 

http://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1474449_10152059268899078_1810465434_n.jpg

 

 

http://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1472804_10151773466243388_1877947892_n.jpg

 

this last picture was not made by me. it shows the pattern of the profiles crossing the stage from different directions but the photographer messed with the colors. they are simple 1K profiles with only a 132 rosco frost. so they should be more yellow than this.