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[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 25th June - Second show

Today I came in at twelve to sort out the amendments that needed to be made to the lighting using the lists that I made during both the run and the first show.

Also Denise had cut quite a bit from the longer, duller scenes and wanted to add another state, so Caitlyn, Dan (Sound) and myself had a meeting with her to go through the changes.

The show tonight went a lot better than the previous nights performance and my list of amendments is significantly shorter. The only big problem i had tonight was that the footlights on one side were kicked into the band pit when an actor fell over, the next set of footlights is linked up to it which meant that the set that got kicked were hanging down the side of the apron. We solved this by speaking to the band on cans and asking them to lift it back onto the stage. I then checked them and re-positioned them during the interval.

[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 24th June - First show

Today we started by running the through the rest of the second act (making a few changes here and there), as this had been plotted the night before, we expected this to go quite quickly and planned to start a dress run at half eleven. However (In true miskin fashion) this run didn't start till about half past three; it was here that we discovered that both acts run over an hour long and with the interval included aswell this now meant that we had less than half an hour until the house opened.

We raced to get the lighting desk out of the space and in the control room as quickly as possible and whilst i was setting it up everybody else was getting their presets done and taking out the production desk. Unfortunately this meant we had no time to correct the lx notes we made in the run. 

The first show went well, and there were no major catastrophes. There were some clearance issues and a couple of late cues. But for a first show it went quite well, especially since we started teching less than a week ago.

[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 23rd June

Today I came in to be told that Mig had left, I am not sure why, but she isn't coming back. This meant that I would be plotting the rest of the show by myself. 

We continued the day with me plotting and designing the lighting states, I did this by looking at the scene (the location, the mood, where people were on stage and what they were doing, etc) and combined this with what the directors were asking for as well as what lights were available. I had some designing help from Alan as he is more experienced, but did do some states on my own. I have kept in with the theme of an old fashioned, pollocks style theatre by mostly using generic lights in the states and trying not to use the movers very much, especially the A7's which have bright LED's.

We spent the rest of the day plotting the second act, we wanted to finish it completely as the show opens tomorrow, so when the actor's left at nine o'clock, Me, Caitlyn, Alan and Denise stayed behind finish it along with a few other techies and directors who volunteered to stay and help by walking the stage. We finished plotting the second act at about quarter past eleven. We will run through it with the actors tomorrow.

[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 19th June

Today we started teching straight away from where we left off, Mig was there to help in the morning but had to leave in the evening so I was left to do It independently (getting design advice form Alan when I needed to.)

We managed to get quite a bit done today and have now finished the first act.

[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 18th June

Today we spent the morning getting ready for the tech to start this afternoon. We made more some groups and palletes and I set up a birdie under the rake for the av operator.

In the afternoon the actors came in and we finally started to tech the show, we have made the first 14 cues and covered about eight pages of the script.

[jakeayrisblog]

Lx 16th June

Today we focused the rig for “Oh what a lovely war.” I called the focus, whilst the others took turns up the tallescope focusing the lanterns. We did bars 2 and 3 easily, bar 4 was a bit more tricky because of the thrust, but we managed to do it using the tallescope where we could get it and the zarges where we couldn't.

The lamps on either end of bar 5 we managed to reach by climbing the front structures. However we couldn't get to the middle of bar 5 or bar 6 Because of the raked stage, so we had to use a technique called bounce focusing.

We also had to bounce focus bar 1 as the only ladder we have that can reach it has gone missing.

Bounce focusing is when you lower the bar to ground level, then attempting to guess the focus of the light without being able to see our in position. You then have to fly the bar back out to see if you got it right, if not you have to lower it and try again. Bounce focusing is not the preferred way of focusing, nor is it good industry practice, but we couldn't find any way around it.

To do this focus I learned to use the riggers remote, which allows you to perform basic operations on the desk without having to be near it, this was helpful as it meant we could have everyone down on the stage helping instead having to keep someone by the desk.

The actors did not come in today as plotting has been pushed back to tomorrow.