I have been working non-stop lately. It has just been one thing to the next thing for the past few weeks, but that is the life of a lighting designer. Things started off with spring break in the middle of March. The break really meant about 2 days off, 2 days of travel and 3 solid days of work. It was more of a time to catch up on everything that is happening at school. I did manage to fly back home to the East Coast for the week. I worked a lot on laying out some ideas for the Opera I’m designing (the preliminary plot is due tomorrow, yikes!)

I also got into NYC for the day and met up with a few CalArts designers. And I was incredibly fortunate to obtain a seat to see the revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center. It was an excellent production, but if you want to see it try and find any remaining tickets now, the run looks like it is going to be sold out for a while. It was a really nice experience, because we have been working on individual scenes from the musical in our light lab class for the past few weeks. It was refreshing to see the similarities and differences from our projects to the actual show.

I also had a final paper project due for Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry, which I hope to post at some point in the future, and various light rigs and focuses at school. This past week I have spent most of my time around Orange County assisting at the South Coast Repertory theatre. The current show is a new work called ‘What They Have’, as part of this Pacific Playwrights Festival. I think the play is an incredibly funny, interesting, and a very modern style piece. I think it will do well over the course of the run. There are a surprising number of CalArts alum and faculty working on the show too. It has been a very comfortable show to work on. Previews started the other day, and the show opens next week, so things are calming down a bit, but not that much. Overall, it has been great working with the LD on the show. The coolest thing in the show by far is this mobile fish tank that has LED I-Cove units and a wireless dimmer to light up the fish tank. It’s pretty sweet, especially when it changes colors.

In other news, Kevin Adams going to be in town on Monday and is guest lecturing at school. Additionally, he’s a CalArts alum. Seriously, alums are everywhere; I really don’t try and find them. Regardless, I’m excited to hear his lecture and have class with him. A few of my design elements in the Opera are right up his alley, and I’m interested in hearing anything he has to offer about them. I was really tempted to go see Passing Strange when I was in NYC, but I’m planning on going to BLMC in May, so I figured I’d wait since the master classes are going to see it.

I think that covers just about everything that has been going on in the past 3 weeks. I have really been meaning to put up a lot of images about the Opera at school, so below are a few shots from the set model. Let me just explain how detailed this model is. Not only are there plastic lighting instruments hanging in the grid, they each have an individual fiber optic source in them to make them glow. They are not practical at all to actually light the model, but they look cool. I also have some metal bulb guards that are over some A-lamp foot lights, which were even soldered and made to scale. It’s pretty crazy; the photos barely do the set any justice. So here is to a full day of working in Vectorworks and making my light plot look nice and neat. Cheers!

photos and sketches courtesy from my set designer Kit Stolen

I am going to try and keep this brief, and hopefully let the work speak for itself. On Monday my final plot for David Rabe’s Streamers was due. It was our first paper project of the semester. I have been meaning to upload past projects, but after spending a week working on them, and staying up late on Sunday night to put the final touches on the plot and print paperwork, I’m exhausted and just want to forget about the play. Well I stuck it out this week, so here is a fairly good example of what is expected at our final plot presentations. I also did the plot in Vectorworks this time. The class has been hand drafting the plots, but to speed up my paperwork, I just exported all of my info to Lightwright. I still do work-sheeting and a rough plot by hand. Included below is my concept statement for the show, some early research and model lighting photos, channel and instrument schedule and the plot and section. Magic sheets are also expected, but I wrote them out by hand, and have not digitized them. I think you’ll get the point though. Hope everyone enjoys it, comments are welcome. Thanks.

Conept Statement

Streamers - Light Plot

Streamers - Section

Channel Hook Up

Instrument Schedule

It has been a pretty busy for me between homework, light rigs and focuses, projects, research, over-hire gigs, reading plays and budgeting. Nothing that grand or worth blogging about has actually happened in the last two weeks which is why there hasn’t been any updates. The only real thing of importance right now is my show for the spring, Platee, has gone into budget proposals which has taken up a lot of my free time. The design team has been collaborating well together, so I am not expecting a fight to the death over money for everyone’s budgets. When things start to settle down I’ll start discussing more about my ideas for the show, some photos of the model and my inventory etc… Until next time.

This past Friday I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with The Wooster Group at CalArts. We were graced with sixteen members of the cast and crew to discuss their recent version of Hamlet during our monthly all-school meeting. It was incredibly nice of the company to spend some time with students, discuss their design process and answer our questions about the show. It was a unique experience, and I’m glad I was able to participate. Many thanks to the entire company for taking time out of their schedule to visit.

Two weeks ago, I was able to see The Wooster Groups’ version of Hamlet when it arrived at REDCAT in downtown LA. (For reference, REDCAT is the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theatre, which is our more professional and flexible black box style space.) There were free student tickets, which were a huge plus, and I had the pleasure spending a night at the theatre with a lot of fellow designers. The show was incredibly interesting to say the very least. I had read a brief synopsis about this performance, but was by no means prepared for what it actually entailed. The best synopsis I can offer is the actors re-enact a 1964 Broadway film recording of Richard Burton’s Hamlet with their own unique and very technological twist on Hamlet. I’ll admit, I was very lost at the beginning of the show, and it took me a while to catch on to the unique performance style. There are moments when you fast-forward through part of the show, skip scenes, and hear a song from a possible new hit musical. It’s weird to say the very least, but after you adjust and start to understand what is happening you get hooked.

I was able to talk briefly with Scott Shepherd, who plays Hamlet, about what design elements in the show affected him. A big question I had for him was how he dealt with having the blocking for the live-show be based 100% from the 1964 film. His reply was of particular interest, as he summed it up and explained that in some sense it was very freeing because he could focus more attention on other aspects of the performance.

Overall, the video and sound design for the show was most impressive. Taking almost two years to create from start to finish, it was pretty amazing to watch. I would also be a miss if I did not comment on Jennifer Tipton’s and Gabe Maxon’s lighting design. While sparse in nature, it supported a lot of the design choices made in the video, like short flickers and glitches, and kept me in the world of the black and white film.

Just a quick note today….

A while back I mentioned that Nemetschek decided to start offering free educational versions of Vectorworks to students and faculty in the industry. It was around the time they had just released VW 2008, but they were only offering VW 12.5, including renderworks, as a free version. I figured that as each new version was released the older version would then become the new free copy. Well I was wrong with that guess, which is a good thing.  I just filled out all of the information required to get a copy of VW 2008, so it should be here in a few weeks.  So if you’re looking for VW2008 or VW 12.5 both with renderworks included you can get it here: Click