Wizard of Oz Highlight reel

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Here it is!  The project I worked so hard on earlier this summer, straining to teach myself more about Qlab and MIDI.  Made the best of a situation with very little gear, and I think we did some fine work as a result.  Special thanks to director John Regis for bringing me in and letting me loose, and to my student crew who did a fantastic job.

When I was first approached about doing this show, it was very vague and I was asked (by a third party) to come in and meet with the Lighting Designer. Before I got there, they then followed up with “you said you do sound…they need that, too.” At my first meeting with John, I learned I WAS the Lighting Designer! But we hit it off so well, I was fine with overcommitting my talents to this show (Oz is a favorite).

So I needed to figure out how to run my lighting cues as well as my sound cues, without making myself crazy. Because John and I got on so well and riffed off each other, I ended up doing projection design as well. The only way I could do two of these things, never mind three, was to learn an integrated automation system like Qlab.

-brian

Teaching Special Effects Class

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Updated: November 20, 2017

I was right.  What was supposed to be a short show run at Bankstreet School for Children has turned into a long show run, and then getting into all of the other shows that were happening at the end of the school year. After the Wizard of Oz, there was A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with 5th graders!) and a series of student-written history plays, and a slew of concerts.  Lots of design time spent on the train, delivering them much more intricate work than they would normally have received.

On one of the last days of the semester, someone came up to me an said “You have worked in film, right?  You did really well with the kids here…want to teach a class in film special effects to our summer camp?  It starts next week.”

This has been an exhausting but rewarding school semester, and looks like it will continue on just a little longer. Two hour commute into NYC is getting to me and I need a break, but we’re leaving for vacation soon, so here we go! Speaking of breaks, this is how I spend my lunch – doing demos for class…

-brian

New theatre (for me) in NYC

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Got a call to do a run of Wizard of Oz in NYC.  It sounded like a crummy warehouse show, but when I got there it turned out to be a nice little theatre at a prestigious school on the Upper West Side. Everyone is super nice, and I’m being given carte blanche to do whatever I want on the show.  I have a feeling I’m going to be here a lot.

Doing a lot of digital scenery in this show.  We don’t have enough instruments to do a gobo wash, so here is one of my three projectors creating a “Summer Leaves” breakup using the actual Rosco pattern.  I’m also firing midi commands to the lightboard. Pretty fun learning!

I’ve also been bouncing up to New Haven to work at University Theatre space with my friend Alex Zinovenko for the opera that is there this spring. No pictures of that.  But it was neat breaking my fear of extreme heights, so that I was able to opt to work 87 feet off the ground in the grid. Yeah, that was a time…

-brian

Pat Metheny’s sick MIDI rig

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Got to work for Pat Metheny this weekend.  His stage setup is pretty complex.  He has all of these percussion instruments set up, with sticks being held by motors which are triggered via MIDI.

On top of that, we loaded in these massive cabinets, that had jugs filled with water and laundry detergent. Why would someone do this?

Turns out this was another MIDI instrument, an air organ that blew air across the bottles, creating the required pitches.  Here it is in action:

-brian

Pushing the envelope with video and backing tracks

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Updated: November 20, 2017

As usual, Talking to Walls did our annual Black Hearts Parade tour for the month of March to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  Was another success.  This year, instead of playing a set with bagpipers and dancers, we just played as the three of us, with a regular show that also happened to have a video wall.

For the past year or so, we have been playing with backing tracks as a way to fly in samples, keyboards, and percussion that we a) don’t use enough of to add another person to our payroll, and b) are boring parts that we don’t want to ask someone to play! We use an iOS app designed for the purpose of playing backing tracks.

So we stepped it up a notch, and went from having backing tracks to synced video playing behind us. No video engineer – just running off of our stage laptop via Qlab.  It was a LOT of work, and left no room for error.  But luckily we are used to playing tight shows, so we just came roaring out the gate and barely stopped until the end!

The Irish portion was the second half of our set, played in the middle of the crowd, completely unplugged and singing at the top of our lungs surrounded by our fans.  Great memories.

-brian

Rosco video editing project

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Updated: November 20, 2017

I’ve been working in theatre for 20 years, so I am very familiar with Rosco Labs’ products.  This month I was privileged to work on a marketing video of theirs, which made its debut at a big trade show in Germany last week.  Here is the booth, with the video looping on a screen on the back wall:

And here is the video! I did all of the editing in Final Cut, while Mary did all of the motion graphics in After Effects. We just kept swapping video files back and forth, working on our own dedicated bits, until it was done.

Because of some delays and changes, we had to do one final overnight push to render all the parts and upload it. If you work in video, you know that rendering involves a lot of waiting. So I wrote some Applescripts that would trigger and send me a text message to my phone when the render was done, thereby letting us catch some sleep in that time.

-brian

New piano for the studio!

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Happy New Year!

Echostation Recording now has a baby grand piano available for your recording needs!  Thanks to Steve Detroy and Marco Scott for introducing me to this beauty, and helping us bring her into playing shape.  If you’re not recording on it, Mary’s playing it.  So it will get plenty of love.

I also used this as an opportunity to put in a new floor in the control room, before the piano rolled in. Been meaning to do that. Sound has greatly improved!

-brian

New TV wiring and video games

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Believe it or not, this is a much neater version of the wiring behind our TV.  We have a lot of video game systems, so a lot of irregular parts and wiring to cram together.

Included systems:

  1. Atari 7800 (the only system missing parts and therefore not working…yet)
  2. NES
  3. SNES
  4. N64
  5. Wii
  6. PS2
  7. Xbox 360
  8. Xbox One
  9. Mac Mini with a bunch of emulators and media library

All of this feeds not one but TWO large screen TVs in the living room… It has all come together piece by piece, so it really needs to be pulled apart and re-run entirely, yet still allowing individual systems to be pulled out and brought outside for our annual summer parties with the big projection screen.

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-brian

Back to San Francisco…

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Updated: November 20, 2017

Corporate gig, running audio and video lecture capture for my friends Sonic Foundry at Dreamforce in San Fran, which vies with Paris for favorite city award.  I came here many years ago, and never returned.  I was just here on tour earlier in the month for a day, and now I’m back for a week.  Love it. Sadly, my iPad bit it last night, falling off my bed at the hotel, and attempts at repairs have not worked.

Tomorrow I have Green Day/Blondie tickets for a rare evening off!

Update: Last night’s Green Day show was an interesting and fun disaster due to weather.  Rain killed the PA system about 4 songs in, and they still did a 2 hour show.  Talked to one of the local union guys and learned what went on back stage.  Pretty insane, but they got the system back up and running for the end of the show!

-brian

On the road with Hiatus Kaiyote

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Updated: November 20, 2017

I’m in the middle of a two week bi-coastal US tour with Hiatus Kaiyote, as Sound Engineer and Tour Manager.  Tonight we play the Independent in San Francisco.  They have a massive analog Midas mixing desk, which is just so damn musical sounding, I can’t stand it.  Soundcheck was good, so tonight should be yet another amazing show!

-brian