Improbable Fiction

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The 39 steps had over one-hundred lighting cues. Improbable Fiction have over three-hundred. Perhaps you can see where this is going.

I don’t believe I have ever been as deeply involved in a production as this one. I was initially to be the lighting designer and technician for this show which I did, but in the end I; took on the role of assistant director, gave up a day of my university education to keep the show on track, learned an entirely new type of digital lighting interface and got involved with other areas of the production on a minor level, such as props.

I’ll start by recounting what I had to do for the lighting aspect of the production.

First of all the venue we perform in had installed a new DMX lighting system. This was new to me as I had been trained on an analogue system at school. Now although the original lighting system was still in place I felt an FX demanding show like Improbable Fiction could benefit from the versatility of a DMX LED based system. So I had to learn how to use this and purchase the relevant hardware required to interface a computer with this DMX system.

All in all with five different time/scene settings, lighting, spot lights and suggestions of ‘off stage spaces’ through lighting, there were as I’ve mentioned, over three-hundred lighting cues which is by far the most I’ve ever attempted for any production. However this was just the beginning of the challenges for this show.

On the day of out set-up we discovered that there would be three other local organisations that wanted to use the venue at the same time as us. To start with a dancing group wanted to use the venue for their performance thus meaning that we couldn’t set up our lighting properly until the first night of the production, which did render our technical rehearsal a bit of a frantic nonsense.

We also discovered that a local primary school would be in during the week and that they would want to set up lighting for their nativity play. In the end the only way I could prevent this from disrupting our show was to take a day off of university to stay at the venue all day to ensure that all of the groups got the lighting they required in the morning and then spend the afternoon re-configuring the entire lighting setup in time for the first performance, that evening.

Thankfully I had the cooperation of all of most of the groups involved and more importantly I had the support of several of my fellow members of the amateur dramatics group who gave up their afternoon to help and support the group, the others involved and me as well.

Now back to that new DMX system, the keyword in that sentence being “new”. Three of the DMX fixtures were already broken in the few months since it had been installed. These had to be bypassed to allow the rest of the system to function properly.

What a frantic setup!

A real sign that group appreciated these efforts came in addition to the kindness and support given by so many of the people who were there. I was awarded another society award. This was awarded by the cast to the back-stage crew member “who had gone above and beyond the call of duty”. The lady who gave it to me said that as far as she knew no group member have ever received both of the society awards consecutively. The support of the society and the appreciation shown is something I shall never forget.

The Rivals

#0012
 

I’ve headed down south for this character.

Ok, no not literally. This time I was back at Little Moreton Hall for my second acting role, this time as Thomas the coachman in Richard Brinsley Sheriden’s “The Rivals”. Now let me explain the “heading south” statement. For this role I had to learn how to speak in a board Summerset accent.

Now accents have never been my strong suit. I have been known to make attempts at Welsh only to somehow end up enunciating in Indian. Don’t ask me how I managed that and I apologies to both those cultures as neither accent could be called convincing.

Thankfully I had the help from two very experienced cast members who gave me advice both on how to maintain the accent without losing my diction as well as how to project.

In the end all of the coaching and practice paid off as I was awarded a society award for my Summerset accent.

Now the weather was glorious which for me was both a blessing and a curse. On the up side we had all six of our productions outside in lovely evening sunshine but this resulted in a costume problem for me. I had to wear some chest padding under my coat to bulk me out a bit. As a result I was steadily cooking until the evening had progressed to dusk. I should say that this didn’t detract from the enjoyment of acting in this production at all.

Although I have to be frank and say that there is still plenty of room for improvement with my accents.

Small Spaces

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Small Spaces

While working on a recent project there were a number of problems that needed addressing. All of which involved doing the most I could with the minimal amount of gear.

Why the gear restrictions? Well sometimes you could work on a filming project where the location simply doesn’t have the physical space for a crew and an endless amount of equipment. I these situations it is best to have the minimal amount of crew and equipment otherwise everyone is going to be tripping over each other and that how people get hurt and equipment gets broken.

 Shooting a promotional video. Note the lack of equipment, or more rather the lack of space for equipment.

I would have liked to be able to use both my reflectors, sound recording gear and shoulder rig on this shoot, but in a small space that simply isn’t possible. It was therefore necessary to make the best use I could of the cameras exposure, shutter speed and aperture settings to create either the right lighting for the video or to create and exposure that could be corrected in post-production. Making use of the cameras ‘cine colour mode’ helps as well. This makes the recoded video appear less saturated. This allows for greater colour correction flexibility in post-production.

Filming products through a glass cabinet.

Here is another reason why using bright lighting equipment would have been unsuitable for this shoot. Glass is a highly reflective surface, which means that if you shine a light at it the light is simply going to bounce off and cause a nasty reflection.

Working on shoots like these involves forward thinking. It’s easy to think of just slinging all your gear in a bag and then seeing what you use when you get there, however doing a bit of forward thinking means that you don’t have to drag excessive amounts of equipment around with you.

The God of Carnage

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The God of Carnage

Quite a different show to what I’ve previously been involved with.

Although the lighting wasn’t at all difficult the play itself was an interesting piece of writing. The single act play, by Yasmina Reza, managed to sustain the growing tension between the four adults without it ever seeming gratuitous. Even though arguments are a somewhat unfortunate part of many people’s lives, recreating them in a written form is, in my opinion, an art in itself.

Each night I would watch as an initial disagreement would escalate into a chaotic shouting match. The one regret I do have for this production is not watching the entire rehearsal process to see how it was directed as I can only imagine the level of thought and skill required to bring this text to life. Sometimes the two couples would be united. At other points the different genders would band together against their partners. Then everyone would stand their own ground. On this feud would go, as the result of an inspirational piece of writing.