The first day at USITT was amazing. The day started off with cheering as we rushed off to grab free bags. I was very interested in a new type of color scroller, which uses magenta, cyan, and yellow gel to mix color. The reason I was interested was the gels had holes in them that ranged from quarter sized holes to pin pricks in order to let light through as the color mixed. They work so much better than scroll through 10 different solid color gels.
I continued to walk the floor and received many free trinkets from IATSE, Apollo, and everything else I could get my hands on. The salesmen operating the booths were both informative and friendly and helped make every conversation interesting. I especially enjoyed working with three girls that ranged from graduate students to seniors. Together we had an hour to design lights, scenic elements and costumes for the play Gluttony for ‘Emerge Prague’. Collaborating with the girls was easy and they were very nice and valued my input. We were proud of our finished product and Collin even said he would put up our picture of us posing in front of our display on the Emerge website!
The day ended with a seminar on Lighting control. The speakers showed a PowerPoint of lighting boards from the past to the present. It was fun to hear the rivalry between the CEO of ETC and the creator of Strand. It was really interesting to hear questions from the audience. One man asked if the companies have ever researched color printing since it involves mixing of color, which has been around long before it was incorporated into the theatre world. I cant wait for tomorrow!