We had a production meeting last night and the shape of the festival is starting to come together. The running order of the festival was distributed. I am starting to get a global feel for the festival and what the integration will be from Music to Theatre to Film. Some sticky choices are going to have to get made soon. The limitations of my budget are going to force some tough choices to be made between balancing the needs of environmental design and the live music portion of the festival. There will also be several party nights, brought to us by some sponsors. Integrating those aspects of the festival will mean a kinetic solution and most certainly some moving heads (a decision I had been avoiding), I fear however, if too many toys cover that aspect of the festival, we will lose out on the proper design and integration of the environmental design.

The plays needs are starting to take shape, and it seems for now will be almost exclusively handled by house gear. It’s the other portions of the festival that will need gear. Knowing now more clearly what I have to accomplish I can begin to approach vendors and see what we can come up with.

Bridget Dunlap (director), Emily French (set designer) and I had our first design meeting for The Girl Detective last night. I think there was pleasant surprise at the design approach we are taking when it comes to Crown Point. Rather than define a rep plot with two or three specials. We are taking the time to design each piece individually and address it’s lighting needs. We discussed some preliminary “big think” ideas about how the play moves, where action is directed and the need for texture within the play. We are using the upstage cyc and scrim and while I like that this can instantly change the color field of the space, I always feels a desire to integrate texture downstage of the cyc, as they tend to flatten things out a bit. We talked about possibly using haze, lots of gobo’s and some integrated scenic lighting. The play is very theatrical, the conventions are non-linear and staging and acting will inform me much more as to how the script is going to work on stage. That said, the director and designer have a firm grip on the world of the play and what it is visually, I love to collaborate with a group like that. After a rehearsal or too I will be able to make specific placement of lighting, but I already have an idea of what my gear list will be.

Shop drawings are to be submitted Friday, and we have production meeting with upper staff tomorrow. Let the good times roll into September.

Colleen and I went off to Banff to remount our latest operatic design, Frobisher. It was an interesting lesson at so many levels. At a fundamental gear and logistics level, it had challenges we expected: Having the projectors in different positions, as well as the set. Thus a big adjustment in content. It also had challenges that were unexpected. The power in Banff is strictly, uh, variable in the summer, with so much use of air conditioning and the tourist population, voltage spikes and brownouts were commonplace. Man did that make for unhappy projectors. Particularly when we relamped just prior to opening, it semed as though those power supplies and new bulbs were having an even harder time with the power. And then the air conditioning in the booth gave way leading to a fried graphics card. Ever try to find a really high end graphics card for a Hippotizer in the middle of a national forest ? We DID find one in Calgary, and after some puzzling with device drivers the Hippo was back. A visit from the kindly HVAC gods led to a restoration of cool, both in the booth, and at the production table.

This much is evident… maybe even self evident. Boy does it suck when a projector moves. Or gets replaced totally. Man what a hassle. We lost 4 hours of cueing time, time we could ill afford.

What an amazing opportunity remounts of new works are though… (was that an oxymoron?). The chance to revisit, revise, and extend the first artistic thoughts is just awesome. Coming back to the work with the experience of having done it once; the ability to analyze it and really dig in. Mmmm it was good. Colleen took the lead on this, and she was so precise, so mathematical, and so poetic. Frobisher is naturalistic, lots of representation of tundra, snow, and northern lights , a delicate palette.

We’ve been moving into a good deal of producing events, and that poked it’s head into our process quite a bit. We’re designing/producing a DVD/PBS special with the Boston Pops, John Anderson, and Belinda Carlyle in a rock adaptation of Handel’s Messiah. Worrying about getting broadcast trucks, taking care of seat kills for camera positions, coordinating among the Executive Producers (NETworks, and Half Pint Productions) and the vendors and venue… It seemed like I spent a 1/3 of my time in Banff away from the table, on the phone putting out fires. It’s really rewarding taking responsibility for all that stuff, but it’s also really difficult, and really relentless.

Just life in the Canadian Rockies.

I had my first preliminary design meeting last night. Myself, Pete Fry (our TD), Zac Chandler (our PSM), Lawrence Dial (our director), and Brian Giles(Set Designer).

The topic of conversation was beef a realistic short play about two brothers in the winter after 9/11 trying to get a grip on their relationship and their future. They are personally changing because of their circumstances and choices and the world around them is changing in the wake of 9/11 and the hip-hop culture war. Our design challenge is to create an apartment setting, that is at once real enough to support the story, but suggestive enough to invoke the larger world.

From a lighting standpoint at least in the early going that means bringing the cyc into play upstage to suggest a larger world going on around this enclosed space. It also means, in my estimation, that the apartment needs to look and feel very realistic, but the world around and beyond it can be a color-field. A suggestion of a larger world.

It was a good first meeting, I can’t wait for more of these with all the plays.

The Festival has announced local station WCBS, here in NY is going to be the official Broadcast Media sponsor of the Crown Point Festival. I know it shouldn’t, but this feels like it ups the ante for me and for all of us in the festival. Kelly Markus, our executive director has been working overtime for years to give the Festival a raised profile.

Now, I feel like I have two months to accomplish what the producers have been dreaming about for 3 years.