I had a really enjoyable Don-day this week. No Don-day is not a typo, it is what I fondly refer to Mondays at CalArts as. To explain a little further, all of the MFA lighting designers have class with Don on Monday, and my class year has a straight 6 to 6.5 hours with him. Monday is the one day each week that he flies into LA from any show he is working on, teaches class, and then flies back that night.

I was working in the studio on some assignments Sunday night when others told me that classes were canceled for Monday because of the brush fires in the area. After a few phone calls we found out that Don was still flying in for class, but that was fine by me. When someone flies across the country to teach, I’ll certainly show up for class. Our schedule was changed a bit, and light lab was canceled, but everything worked out well.

Don-day turned out incredibly well this week, considering that southern California is engulfed in numerous wild brush fires, the air smells of smoke, many of my friends here were unfortunately evacuated from their homes, and CalArts canceled classes for Monday and Tuesday.

Even though classes were canceled, my fellow lighting designer and I still managed to have most of our regularly scheduled classes. I had a performance piece that I was really excited to present at 8am, but due to the lack of students in class it has been pushed off to next week. I’ll blog about that next week though.

In Don’s class I got to present my research and concept ideas for Edward Albee’s play Three Tall Woman. It is our current paper-project for class. I got some really useful constructive criticism on my ideas that are going to help my design a lot in Act II. Next week our final plot and paperwork are due and I feel confident in the direction my design is heading.

Class ran longer than normal since light lab was canceled, which allowed us to look over a lot of Don’s light plots for shows like Gem of the Ocean, Movin’ Out and Thoroughly Modern Millie. It was a lot of fun looking at the plots, but also a bit nerve racking in the detail and complexity of each drafting.

After class had finished up, everyone decided to go to the restaurant down the street go grab a late dinner and talk about the touring version of Movin’ Out we saw 2 weeks ago. It was a enjoyable night of six lighting designers sitting around a table and talking about topics that we are really interested in. By far this was the best part of the day, and probably where I learned the most. On top of that I sometimes wonder what the waitress must be thinking as she came by the table and overhears us talking about the opening of the Lion King, or Mike reading his concept statement about Three Tall Women, or a discussion about Twyla Tharp’s choreography. I mean if she’s not into the art/theatre movement it means nothing, but I’m sure it sparked some questions in her head.

Amongst the fire and smoke burning down thousands of acres of land in southern California right now, there is a bit of beauty. Below are a few photos I snapped of the interesting effect smoke has on sunlight. It would be amazing to recreate some of these looks on stage. These photos were taken at 2pm in the afternoon.

Sometimes in the creative process there is no moment like the one when you are throwing paint at the canvas, drawing the bead on a weld, chipping at the wax with a little chisel…

Most of the time I create content using tools like After Effects which is necessarily an iterative process: I try something, I preview it, I tweak it, I try it again, I find my way to what I’m looking for.

I’ve spent the last few days taking myself out of that creative comfort zone, and using tools that create in the moment. Sometimes there is magic in that all or nothing moment. It’s there to be mined, if you have the heart, art, and courage to join with it.

To that end I have been using Livid Instruments Union software to create content very fast, and very much in the moment. It inspired me to go out and do more in the moment stuff… I used my phone today while waiting for a lunch date to shoot a whole wad of pictures of peoples feet on the sidewalk as they passed me. When stitched together, showing up for maybe 9 frames a piece, I got an amazing, kinetic yet stopped montage of sidewalk traffic.

I brought this into my clip bin for Union, which is essentially a dual channel video mixer with effects banks and live input. It’s been targeted at the VJ and live video performance market, and it does “in the moment” extremely well. With some great tunes dialed in, I’ve taken my foot traffic piece and whacked it around, applied effects, mixed and mashed it. One great aspect of Union is the ability to record your output. So all of this experimentation has quickly led to about 30 different, wickedly cool clips, each affected remarkably differently, each an expression of what I was grabbing and tweaking in the moment, without a lot of conscience thought.

I think that choosing to create this way has an analogy in musical jamming. Sitting down and jamming is a great visceral experience. There is definitely a part of our brains that is wired to do this, and may I add it comes with the reward of extraordinary endorphin rushes when you are really nailing it. One could also create music by composing, which is the other side of the analogy: a process much closer to that try, tweak, and try again process I mentioned before.

But today I am jamming, and loving it.

I thought I would do a little self-promoting and post a link to an article I wrote in this month’s issue of LD. If you have the current issue it is on page 20, otherwise you can find it online here. Click. The article is about my decision to work for year after I completed my undergraduate degree, and also includes helpful facts and tips I think all graduates should know when looking into graduate programs. I hope the article will help others in picking a program, because I know I was certainly in the dark for a good portion of my experience. If you are a recent graduate I hope you will take a minute and see if any part of my experience can help you out.

Continuing with my past updates from last week, I had the opportunity to see two exceptional national tours this past week. I saw Avenue Q at the Ahmanson theatre and Movin’ Out in Thousand Oaks. The performances were excellent, but I’ll just say it right now, I enjoyed Movin’ Out the most. I’ll clarify that it was my favorite because I love watching dance, and also because I got to go on a backstage tour of the show and talk with the production electrician of the tour.

I have listened to the Ave. Q soundtrack over the past few years, but never got around to actually seeing the show. I figured while the show was in town, I should finally go see it. I had a great seat, just a few rows back in the orchestra, which really gave an interesting perspective on the performance. While the show is dominated by puppets, it’s nice to see the expressions and movements of the puppeteers in relationship to their characters. The show is full of puppets, but there are also a few human characters as well. The thing I was most impressed about was the scenic design by Anna Louizos. The thing about the set is, that it is this unique combination of a real set and a puppet theatre. There are life size doors and windows into houses, but then parts of the set open up to reveal the smaller living quarters of the puppets. I just thought the versatility of the set was great!

Movin’ Out was another show I was never able to see on Broadway, so I was thrilled when I found out my lighting class would see it when the tour came through the area. I really enjoyed myself at the show because I was in the mood to watch a Rock N’ Roll style show that incorporated dance. I have always enjoyed designing and watching dance, but some of Twyla Tharp’s choreography just captivated me so much. I had never seen combinations and so much cohesive movement before. I am not surprised that she won the 2003 Tony.

The most enjoyable part of the show, was of course getting to go backstage and talk to Chris Herman, the touring production electrician. As a lighting designer, you sit, watch and enjoy a show, but all you’re really trying to do is figure out what type of lights are being used, color choices, and if anything is broken or not working right. So it was some relief actually finding out that Mac 2000s and Mac 500s were used for the bulk of the show, and a lot of conventional fixtures with scrollers. It was also interesting to find out about the load-in and load-out process for the tour and problems that are encountered and have to be solved. It was certainly an interesting perspective to find out and be reminded that things don’t always run smoothly

So the winner of the national tour battle is Movin’ Out, but Avenue Q came in close behind in my book.