“Man the optics of this lamp are really bad what’s going on??”
…. The things you find at maintenance. #lxblr #lightingDesign #techblr #techtheater #techtheatre https://www.instagram.com/p/B–GztrjoRq/?igshid=1ajoaoj566mzu
It’s always better to be the person who asks “hey remind me what lamp type goes in a source four?” than the one who does this. That must have been pretty funny though.
So I was meant to be relighting a show but the old LD dropped off the face of the earth and left no documentation, and the producer said fuck him guess what you're designing a new show now. I have a week until the one week of rehearsals. 2 days for bump in and tech? In a venue I don't know. Does anybody have a paper bag handy Jesus pushbiking christ
Romeo and Juliet opened the other day. It has been amazing being lighting designer on my first play. And working outdoors in a heritage venue has been challenging but very rewarding.
Technical deets: no hanging positions outdoors means all footlights, sidelights and practicals. 12 hexpar 12 equivalents, with 4 on US & balcony wall wash (next year hope to purchase some pixbars for walls). 7 as sidelights due to uneven stage shape, and 1 as special for side of building (the church). 17 dimmed channels including 5 par56s, 4 footlight boards of 3-4 150W QIs, 40 globe festoon string, and the rest in 300W QIs around the place. Colour palette: L136, L501, L711, L603, L206, L205, L204, L795, L244 (first four in gels & LEDs, remaining only in LEDs).
(Photographer: Seiya Taguchi)
2nd universe going through a custom pixel controller box to control 450 pixels hidden in a rope hanging across stage, for star effect in a few spots. (Below: testing the pixel string and half of festoons)
Going for an interview tomorrow to possibly design part or all of a season of Shakespeares for a small but well respected company’s summer season of productions aimed at school students. Super excited, this could be a foot in the door to professional lighting design work! Wish me luck!
I got the gig! It’s exciting. Two shows (R&J, 12th Night) running in rep at 3 outdoor sites. Plenty of challenges, but I can’t wait. Already been chasing up some leads on gear I could borrow and suitable hires.
Going for an interview tomorrow to possibly design part or all of a season of Shakespeares for a small but well respected company’s summer season of productions aimed at school students. Super excited, this could be a foot in the door to professional lighting design work! Wish me luck!
Finished putting the rig in today and tested the UV paint with the full complement of UV LED pars. It looks great!
We’re definitely behind schedule though, today was meant to be for focusing but I only just finished rigging. I don’t know what they expected with only one me to do it all. And the LD hasn’t even been onsite at all. He didn’t even bother sending me a plan, I had to ask the prod manager. Tomorrow is going to be interesting...
Sorry I’ve been so quiet recently! I’ve found other online places I’ve been enjoying (mastodon). Here’s an overhead shot of the set for this year’s Conservatorium Opera, La Finta Giardiniera. The LD has a lot more movers than previous operas, I’m a little nervous how much time I’ll need to spend making palettes.
I’ve updated my TouchOSC layouts with a number of improvements including fix for the Go key, updated Encoder tab, and Direct Selects & Faders that align with groups of 10.
Get it at https://github.com/cortices/OSCLayouts/tree/master/User-Submitted, the ones labeled “Sophie Parker”.
Hi there! I just downloaded your excellent Eos/Gio TouchOSC layout but i'm having problems with the Go button not working - it's the only thing I can't get to work, if there a setting I'm missing or something? Many thanks for sharing your work also!
Unfortunately this seems to be a bug in current Eos versions (appeared in 2.8.X, still present in 2.9.0). Neither “eos/key/go” nor “eos/key/go_0” work for triggering the go button on the master fader pair, but “eos/key/stop” or “eos/key/stopback” both work. Nothing much I can do until this gets fixed unfortunately. I’ll be making sure there’s attention to the issue on the forum.
This is only ⅔ of the patch for this show. It’s damn near maxing out the dimmers. These forests of 150+ 5kW patch cables each side make finding the right circuit tricky! There’s also 2 other layers of subpatch (multicore to looms patch in grid, and breakouts on the LX bars to fixtures). And this is only 1 of 2 major patch bays with 6 minor bays.
This post, except it’s my two electrical tape pockets (which each hold 2 rolls) so whenever I hear that quiet “shit” from the technician next to me who’s just run out I can be the Mum Coworker and not only offer them a spare but give a choice of colours.
I cannot figure out how to change the name of a PSD list on ION XE. Help?
Cue 1/ label???
To avoid using the label on the first cue (which you might want to be an actual cue label), use [Cue] [Home] {Attributes} {Scene} “cuelist name” [enter].
Here are my favourite photos from the Psyche opera I designed! It was a blast, I was super happy with how it turned out, even though I didn’t have much time. I got so many compliments on it.
There were a few tricks that really pushed the four moving profiles to their limits — a beautiful section with rotating gobo and prism together (unfortunately photos were blurry), and that first image with the vertical pillars using the prism in a way it’s not even meant to work. I’ve never seen either done before. And my two-part to/from black cues were *chef’s kiss*.
For those asking about the rig, it was the standard fixtures of the venue, somewhat modified from standard configuration.
8 MAC Auras, 4 Clay Paky Alpha 800STs (doing the breakup & branch gobos and stripes using framing shutters & prism). Then 14 fixed zoom profiles (all too big), 6 1.2k fresnels, and 9 par64s. I would have really liked to have had 19° profiles instead of 36s which meant everything was super washy. Plus the optical quality of SPXs is just terrible. And more fresnels instead of the parcans.
Here are my favourite photos from the Psyche opera I designed! It was a blast, I was super happy with how it turned out, even though I didn’t have much time. I got so many compliments on it.
There were a few tricks that really pushed the four moving profiles to their limits — a beautiful section with rotating gobo and prism together (unfortunately photos were blurry), and that first image with the vertical pillars using the prism in a way it’s not even meant to work. I’ve never seen either done before. And my two-part to/from black cues were *chef’s kiss*.
Took nearly all of my time to rig and focus today, but here is my production desk setup (new and improved) and a state I made that looked really nice on the shiny yellow drapes that are the ‘set’.
I’ve been super quiet but there’s a good reason for that. Today is bump in for an opera I’m designing! I haven’t designed anything since uni, I can’t wait. Pictures to come over the week!
I'm wondering what is/are your favorite cue(s) that you've made, or sequence of cues that were successful?
I remember a cue I programmed for a narrow scary opening to an opera by Poulenc. The actor started crouched down low DSC at the lip of the stage. It had a single backlight LED wash in blue at 0.5%, and 2 MR16 footlights at 30%. That was it. It looked magical and spooky. That designer taught me a lot about being reserved and minimal effectively, and how to not just get brighter because you can.
More recently, on the Skate show, I had a 3 minute sequence with about 15 cues and 10 submaster bumps to hit exactly by visual, and when it landed it was super satisfying. And a few other “snap snap snap” cue sequences.
