Today I was preparing materials to do a lecture in Korea… It’s on the evolution of modern lighting and multimedia. Kind of taking it from some of the first contemporary attempts (Laurie Anderson, Tommy on Broadway, U2’s Zoo TV… On through to recent Nine Inch Nails, and my own Nickelback)…
And I was just blown away by how absolutely right on the ‘earlier’ stuff was. People know I’m fond of that Robert Edmund Jones quote about combining actor and onstage image. I mean that was 1919 !!! The ideas aren’t recent, but man the practice has gotten extremely accomplished. I really have respect for people like Laurie Anderson and Willie Williams who led the way sytlisticially to so much of what we see today. ZooTV is pretty frickin fly man. Just try to do stuff that they haven’t already… I dare you ! Really. It’s easy to do what’s done before. I want to go out there and NEVER hear “oh that looks great, just like that U2 show I saw”… I love seeing what they did, where they’ve been, then spinning around and looking some other direction.
I’ve got a great article cooking on Artistic Intuition… Keep an eye out for it in March… Maybe April. I have several really fabulous designers talking about that first artistic ‘gut instinct’, where it comes from (for them), and how they then communicate and manifest it. Shaping up to be a real hum dinger.
Wow, what an LDI. Sometimes I approach the “off Vegas” year with less enthusiasm, but ALWAYS I come away amazed at the substantive experiences, meetings, and contacts. Perhaps away from the sturm and drang (glitter and clang) of Vegas, people’s brains can settle down enough to really drill down and talk about interesting stuff…
1st impression of “new things”… The two things that got me really excited were the new ChamSys MagicQ Console, and the new D3 media mapping and visualizing software from United Visual Artists.
The MagicQ console is the first widely available console I’ve seen (PRG has stepped up and bought substantial numbers), that treats the video programming requirements on an equal footing with lighting. Functionalities like importation of video clips right into the console palettes, plus advanced, intuitive, and very customizable ‘personalities’ for dealing with almost all the major servers make it a delight to program. The console’s ability to operate according to several familiar syntax structures (including Hog, MA, Celco, and others) makes it instantly approachable to many programmers and operators. In addition to my own experimenting, I saw Matt Mills (LD for 3 Doors Down), and Steve Fallon (LD for Skynrd and Programmer for Trace Atkins) glowing with glee as they demo’d the units. I’ll be getting training very soon.
The D3 software from United Visual Artists is a really different animal. Is it a… Media Server ? Yes. Is it a previz system ? Yes. Is it a pixel mapper ? Mmm Hmm. Is it unlike any other example of these individual things ? Oh yeah ! D3 was developed by UVA in their effort to create a fantastic, interactive, intuitive control interface for their own installations, as well as for other designers like Willie WIlliams on U2’s recent Vertigo Tour. The result is an amazing, simple, yet vastly powerful 3 dimensional control environment that lets you visualize display and lighting locations, map media across surfaces, program lighting moves… All while navigating an interface that isn’t delineated by seconds and frames, but instead within the musical paradigm of notes, measures, and bars. I think there will be a select bunch of designers who grock the power of this directly and will be using it to accomplish unprecedentedly COOL design. XL Video will be repping this software for the time being here in North America.
The Master Class sessions were phenomenal. Getting to really dig into the insights of Willie Williams regarding U2 and George Michael; hearing Caryl Glaab’s exlanations of the creative processes of Blue Man Group; SEEING Blue Man Group. Josh Weisberg’s super informative system design lecture; The BLOW AWAY case study of Bradley University’s The Adding Machine leading into the “future is Now” session with Josh Fleitell demonstrating pixel mapping with his iPhone, and video ‘conducting’ with a WiiMote… The participants literally wouldn’t allow the sessions to end, pushing the load out crew back by more than an hour and a half to soak up more MAD knowledge.
Always I get as much out of those sessions as I give.
SO once again Ellen has talked us into doing it all again next year. See you in Vegas…
Fundamental to any use of media in a design is playback. Kinetic media necessarily must ‘play’, and so therefore there must be a way !
And of ways, there are many.
Some of you might have seen my recent Blog Post about creating live. In this case the playback system would hopefully be attuned to quick preview of media and FX; coupled with equally quickly accessible controls to get that media into the channel, and doing something beautiful. This level can include some of the most imaginative, cost effective, DIY, and innovative methods for playback. But we’ll pick up that thread in a moment.
First we need to go back and examine what some might call an older world paradigm, the use of hardware playback devices like disk drive based HD decks (think Doremi, or FFV), production quality DVD players (shudder), or even decks using media like tape or (yes they still exist) Laser Disk Players. This is analog. It has the benefit of being known. It’s also surprising in the degree that it is still used.
More recently we’ve seen a proliferation of multi head playback environments that are hardware/software based. Systems like Watchout and AVStumpfl’s Wings Platinum spring to mind… But this category also contains some of the newest solutions, things like Q-Lab…
And then of course, the core of most conversations about playback among serious geeks is the computer based Media Servers able to interface with lighting or show control systems. Axon, Catalyst, Hippotizer, Maxxedia, M-Box, Pandora’s Box. These are to be found out on the majority of concert tours. They work via a methodology that their control can be unified with lighting control, and that they can serve as a combination of playback solution and media management device.
What you will use will be, must be, driven by a balance of what you absolutely need to meet the design requirements of the show and how much money you have in your budget.
And it is a balancing act that will continue throughout your career. Shows with limited budgets often provide amazing creative opportunities. Shows with bigger budgets allow you to use robust gear, and have the comfort of redundant backup. But both scenarios allow for satisfying the design, satisfying yourself, and even breaking new ground.
I’m going to finish this discussion at LDI, in the Projection Master Classes… Why don’t you come and check it out ?
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.
Today we were busy running numbers on some upcoming projects. Once again I was forced to see the absolute necessity of this process. It’s not something that’s intuitive for me…
When we first started designing projection (10 years ago now !) I’d listen to the producer or director explain what was desired. Then Colleen and I would try to grab a number out of space that seemed appropriate. We always tried to keep it really cheap (we thought this was critical to getting hired), and we’d try to think it through and wing an estimation. Yeah, let’s see… We’ll take some pictures, grab the DV and film that little thing… Hmmm, some time in compositing…. Then encoding. Being in the theatre of course…. Uh, how about, uh, $15k ? How ridiculous it is in retrospect.
We work in a BUSINESS. And if you think for a moment that any producer outside of the non-profit arena is doing it for love of his art, then you are charmingly naive ! Same for the vendors. I know plenty of people who occupy those positions who are passionate about this business, don’t get me wrong, but ultimately it’s business.
As designers, it’s not always intuitive to apply good business practices. There is scant instructions on this aspect in most MFA programs. After all we are artists right ? The focus is on creativity.
It gradually dawned on Colleen and I that we were losing money on most gigs. The cost of equipment, of freelance help, of studio space rental, of business insurance, of health insurance, of travel, of attorneys, of accountants, of, of, of… it was eating up everything. The important word is accounting. We weren’t accounting for our expenses against what we were charging. If you total up all those factors I mentioned (at least) for a monthly period, and then divided by 160 (the average hours in a work month), then you begin to see what your COB is… Cost of Business. This forms the basic level.
The next step for us was to try to develop a formalized budget process for gigs. Our process would be to sit down and fill in all the cells in a spreadsheet to total the cost of doing the work on a gig.
There are a variety of commercially available project tracking and budgeting spreadsheets. None of them is perfect for our business. Some of the one’s that are close include MovieMagic’s budgeting app, or even the classic film producer’s budget, known as an “A to K”.
But as I said, these weren’t exactly right… they weren’t ideal. SO we set out to build our own budgeting spreadsheet tool, which we dubbed the estimator.
The estimator, simply put, is an excel spreadsheet that we fill out on a per project basis. We break any project down into it’s sub parts. For concerts or musicals, that often means musical numbers. For installation or architectural it might mean the different spaces involved. For each one of these columns we then go down through the rows. Will we buy some stock footage ? How much ? Estimated cost ? How many hours of editorial ? How many hours of compositing ? Animation ? These things all need to have an established rate for your estimation. Will you shoot elements ? For us, this opens a whole page within the spreadsheet. How much will the location cost ? Grip package ? Camera rental ? Makeup artist ? Director of Photography ? Generator ? Permit fee ? Transportation ? Catering or food ? Talent costs ? This just touches on it. Once this page is filled out, it yields a total number for the shoot for that particular part/scene/song. We repeat this process for all the various musical numbers or locations, or whatever the logical parts are. The total is our costs. Add a reasonable profit margin. Add a contingency (for the unknown things that are going to pop up). Often the contingency should be as much as 10% of the whole budget number. If you don’t use it, you can make the producer happy later with a little reduction in budget as the process plays out. But if you DO need it, it’s already there. You aren’t going back, hat in hand, to explain how you didn’t foresee something, and now you need more money. Boy that’s ALWAYS fun, right?
This spreadsheet has taken us years to work out. We discover new things that cost money all the time ! But we also find what we call “Profit Pockets”. For instance, it might be much less expensive to animate a partifular thing using 3D CG, rather than shoot practical objects, in terms of hard costs. You could probably charge the client much the same fee though, as the service is more valuable. But your cost is lower. This is a profit pocket. It allows us to think about shows, making sound economic decisions right alongside the aesthetic ones.
The first result when you adopt this process is a bit of shock. Man it can be expensive to do what we do. But the other end result is that after so much carfeul estimation and analysis you have a real road map to completing the gig, AND you have good solid information to share with the client that shows them exactly what they are getting for their money.
The secondary, and critical part of this spreadsheet is a twin space for what the numbers ACTUALLY turned out to be. This allows us to analyze a gig after it’s done, and see where we were estimating wrong, so we know where to look in the future.
I know math isn’t always fun. And spreadsheets can make you dizzy. But a one time investment in bringing in somebody who does know how to build one, and having them help you build your own estimator can make the difference between having to work non-stop just to maintain a hand to mouth existence, or doing your work and getting paid for what it is worth.
