There and back again

Not much rest here…  After the super intense spring season, I had 3-4 days off, and then Mary and I jumped in the car and drove across the country with our friend Steph and her 2 year old.  Did a little bit of work from the car, designing some digital scenery for Rocky Hill Community Theatre’s “Whistle Down The Wind.”

Being stuck in Seattle for almost a week with car problems meant that Mary and I had to drive back ASAP for gigs back on the east coast.  San Jose, CA to Bridgeport, CT in 70 hours – sleep/drive/switch.  Truly a Cannonball Run.  I was home for about four hours, and then dashed off to NYC for a video shoot that I was Technical Director for.  (Mary was home for a few more hours, and then headed to New London for a couple of weeks of shooting a Lifetime movie.) Special thanks to my buddy RJ Van Deusen of Rodney Productions for covering my absence the first day, as we were still racing through Oklahoma. My good friend Chris Scalzi from Distilled Minds (who has shot Talking to Walls countless times) came in to help us with the videography…and gave me a spot to crash that didn’t involve a 2-hour commute for the rest of the shoot!

Mary and I started buying Christmas lights when they were on sale, in prep for our future wedding. Which means I have a pallet of them! This video shoot was really working off the cuff, so between using dozens of string lights for a diffused lighting effect, we also used my short throw projector to throw up some video and text effects.

Got home from that shoot in time to start Fairfield Teen Theatre’s production of “Shrek, the Musical.” Being stuck in Seattle meant that the week I was to spend designing the lighting in the show and figuring out the rigging of flats was lost, so it felt like the whole production was in catch-up mode. Taught myself Qlab’s custom geometry features for projection hurdles, besides for the preshow look. We had an amazing Darla puppet, and for the final scene where she busts through the window, we went with a video projection instead of her coming back on stage with the puppeteers, due to blocking and cast issues.  So I took the video that had been used for the director’s prior run of the show, and re-cut the audio (I’m a sound guy who just can’t leave well enough alone!) To make up for the loss of the puppet, I really wanted to rumble the subwoofers. My friend Joe was the sound engineer, so he happily gave me a feed, and we were off!

-brian