(td)squared

Today was a very busy, and tiring day.

It started with our regional USITT meeting. It was quite frustrating and unproductive. Had Lynne not been there, nothing would have gotten done. I believe that it needs some restructuring.

After that meeting (at which we were promised breakfast – but received none) I went and got breakfast.

Then I had down time for several hours, during which I had an awful run in with the bank.

After finishing up on the phone with the bank I hopped on over to my first session of the day, The “False Faces” of W.T. Benda. He was a mask maker and illustrator in the early part of the 20th century. In his time he was very famous, but he never published many well known books, and so his fame didn’t last far beyond his life.

He coined the “Benda Girl” (one of the many “Girls” gracing the cover of Time Magazine – this was during the “pretty girl” era.) These were exotic illustrations of pretty girls. These illustrations translated into many of his masks.

His masks were beautiful, grotesque, and every other word you could imagine. They were all beautifully crafted, weeks of work into each of them, and then the insides of each of the masks were decorated as well.

After this I had my interview for the Shakespeare Theater in New Jersey for this summer. I’m pretty sure I nailed the interview. I felt really good about it. The beginning was a little awkward for me, as it was my first interview ever for a theater position outside of academia,

After that I went to another mask creation technique seminar. There are so many different methods including latex, latex like products, leather techniques, (as mentioned above) paper techniques, mache techniques, and as many ways as you can imagine it, you can do it.

After that I went to a Cirque Du Soleil makeup and costume session where they convinced me to sign an application for an internship for the summer.

After that we went to a new technology forum, but it ended up just being a lot of screaming for t-shirts and so we left early.

And now I’m blogging.

So long kids.

Today was a very long and filled day at the USITT Conference, beginning at 8am with the Upstate New York Regional Section Meeting. The meeting was short and mostly dealt with new members signing up for the section and making plans for next year’s section meetings. After this meeting there was a break until 11am when the stage expo opened for the day, so we took the opportunity to get breakfast and some of us grabbed a couple more hours of sleep.
The stage floor this morning was spent seeing many of the booths I haven’t seen yet, with the exception of Vari-Lite because I am planning on spending at least an hour there tomorrow and I didn’t have that much dedicated time today. The first session of the day was “AutoCAD and Vectorworks: Working Together” this session was in many way valuable, however in the end it was less than I expected. I learned many great tips and tricks of how to integrate the two programs and will utilize these tricks in my future drafting. However, I was expecting to learn new ways in which the programs cooperate with one another and function as one; this was not the case because of the fierce competition between the programs I had never realized before.
The next session I went to later in the day was “Basic Electricity 201”, this session was very nicely laid out, but after about ten minutes I realized that everything they were teaching I already knew very well. I decided to leave and go across the hall to a session called “Evolution of the Production Electrician” here I heard from a panel of people from various positions in the lighting and electrician world. The gave a lot of great advice on how to be an effective electrician and where they believe the field will be in the future. They spoke a lot about how with LED’s, intelligent lighting, show control, and increasingly complex lighting boards have changed the position of electrician from a true electrician, to more of an electrician, computer scientist, and administrator hybrid.
The last event of the day was the “New and Old Products Showcase”, this was a fun take on the traditional new products showcase which give vendors an opportunity to display their new technologies. This year being the 50th anniversary however added the twist of vendors presenting their new technologies through a history lesson of how they got to where they are today. There enough free SWAG, new products, and excited technicians to make any conference goer ready for a good nights sleep.

Today we woke up at 7am and headed over to the KCCC (Kansas City Convention Center) and met up with the Upstate NY Regional Section Meeting. There was a wide variety of people and we went through a comical if not completely unnecessary process of handing a board member $5 and having them give it back to us. Lynne Koscielniak and students such as John Blitstein talked to the members and represented the students’ voice. This brought up talk about more employment opportunities in the future.
After some lunch at a local bakery I hopped on a snowboard and flew HIGH above the conference, I was literally 7ft in the air, it was insane! Later I went to ‘Lighting Designers Then And Now’ Seminar. I went alone but I gained valuable information about the politics and business of Lighting Design and also about all of the different types of design you can branch into. These include Theatrical, Architectural, Zoo/ Aquarium Exhibit, Television, Theme Parks, Music/ Rock, Malls, Restaurants, and Movie Lighting Design. This opened my eyes to the vast field I could immerse myself into in the future.
After not being allowed into the ‘Outdoor Scenery Seminar’ because the room was full to the brim so I decided to go to the ‘Queer Nation Seminar’ since it was right down the hall. Everyone was very open and there were nonstop conversations. To end the night we went to the ‘Old and New Products Showcase’ which was basically if you took a little of ‘Late Night with Johnny Carson’ and mixed it with a live auction. There was a lot of cheering and shouting and throwing of prizes. I even caught a jump rope which counts how many jumps you do per minute which has nothing to do with Design Technology or Tech Theatre. Can’t wait for tomorrow!

I arrived in Kansas City yesterday with flat expectations. After landing in the KC international airport I was fully prepared to be greeted with a landscape dominated by the horizon and bible-thumping middle Americans proselytizing me for my sinful yankee ways.

I was completely wrong.

Kansas City is beautiful, and the people couldn’t be friendlier. We’re staying at the Hotel Phillips less than two blocks from the Power & Light district, KC’s well designed downtown entertainment district. On the main concourse several franchise restaurants and bars surround a covered atrium reminiscent of the Vegas strip, with LED lighting fixtures and a pro audio system for us techies to drool over. Of course,  I’m not here to review the Kansas City nightlife. The USITT 50th anniversary conference called bright and early Wednesday morning so we retired to our rooms to rest up for the opening excitement.

First thing in the morning–after receiving my full conference pass–I met my companions in line for the Stage Expo opening. And what an Expo it is! Lighting fixtures, people flying systems, gels, drops, vinyl dance floors… a theatre geek’s dream, and LOTS of swag, I spent most of my time on the floor today getting the feel of things, I’ll be having some more in-depth conversations with presenters over the next few days.

After the Expo it was on to the first of many sound sessions; the first I attended was given by John Leonard, an internationally renowned sound designer from the UK. He began the session with a retrospective view of the last 50 years of sound design technology, contrasting the system for the 1960′s era West End production of Oliver, which consisted of 5 floor mics, 4 or 6 speakers, a single 100 watt amplifier and 78rpm vinyl disc playback with the contemporary production which uses over 100 speakers, three separate mixing consoles, highly complex processing equipment and over 50 wireless microphones for the same size cast. Overall I found the session interesting and informative, but not particularly useful as per my CURCA grant goals.

In the afternoon I attended ‘The art of sound for dance,’ a panel session featuring four prominent sound designers sharing their insights on the subject. I found this session tremendously useful, Darron West (resident sound designer and founding member of the SITI company) encouraged us to be more proactive in the rehearsal process with the final goal of creating a performance where “both sound and choreography can stand on their own and combine to create something magical.” Mr. West also commented that sound design for dance could use theatrical sound effects to open new worlds of creativity for both choreographer and designer.

This is my second time in USITT, the theme for this year is about the evolution of technology and design in the past five decades. I really look forward to the sessions as well as the exhibition of the design from famous designers about their own progress.

We arrived at Kansas City yesterday afternoon, on the flight a student from SUNY Fredonia who sat next to me. He said Fredonia also have a large student group coming to the convenience. We are going to meet the whole group tomorrow in the Upstate New York USITT meeting.

I went to the “So you think you know everything about Top Hats” that is a lab session that demonstrate the use of and the need of top hats. Basically is the same section from last year but providing a more theoretical and mathematical way of explaining 45 degrees cutoff. If you do not quite understand what and why top hats is important, top hats can reduce the viewing angle to the lighting source that can be annoying or distracting to the lighting designer that it is possible that there is spill light to the auditorium and we see shadow of the audience. The 45 degrees cutoff is that the length of the top hat always equals aperture to achieve the angle.

Reasons that creates light spill is the fixture mechanical design, especially some less sophisticated optical like PAR or Fresnel also dust, haze and poor maintenance. Other reason is it can be a decorative accessory.

Here are some images of different top hats:

(the speaker also consider barndoor as one kind of top hat too)

Day 2 in Kansas City was Day 1 of the USITT Conference. My goal here in Kansas City is to generate a fact sheet about each of new automation options/ what you need to need to advance them, the best way to distribute power / easy equation that will be used to convert power draws, and to develop a list of common vocabulary that can be used help the production manager interact with the different groups of personal within the theater industry.
Rock n Roll all night, session one of today was a panel run by Jim Moody. His left and right were flanked by Paul Dexter and a female associate of Jeff Ravitz’s. The session was an awesome series of hands on stories directly from the road of the concert industry. There was no sugarcoating going on in this room – these stories were as real as they get. The format of the session covered tips on how to make freelance and roadwork a business ie the differences between 1099 / w2, and tips on the pre-designing the tour. Each slide of the powerpoint came with bullet points. What made the session valuable and exciting were the stories from the road that littered each and every bulletpoint.
The second session of the day was called Automation 101. Here is a sneak preview of the list of terms that will be defined in the automation language dictionary. The first term is feedback is the process in which part of the output of the system returns to input half of the system to indicate location of the moving device along a designated path. The feedback of any device can be either be in absolute or incremental measurement. Absolute encoders measure distance in binary via dark and light lines on a series of concentric circular wheels. Incremental encoders measure the distance via holes. If there is NO Feedback then you are in real trouble.
More updates to come. Check back soon!

Hello all.

At the USITT conference, I will be exploring the development of theatrical lighting fixtures, from their humble beginnings as candles, to the complexity of today’s LED fixtures. I will be focusing on the most recent developments in lighting of this kind. What cutting edge lighting instrumentation is available to modern-day scenographers? My research will yield a comprehensive timeline, both in visual and textual formats, of the development of the lighting fixture, from its conception as a controllable element, to the complex, finite control we have today
Today’s seminar was entitled “Evolution or Immaculate Conception: Lighting control over 5 decades.” It covered lighting instrument controls from 1913 to present day. On the panel of presenters were Kirk Starks, Tracy Fitch, Gordon Pearlman, and Anne Valentino. These people represented the masterminds behind controls such as the LS/8, the Obsession, and the Piano Board.
They started with Autotransformers, which were the first movement forward in the industry circa 1913. Previously resistance dimmers were used, and after auto-transformers were marketed, the Met was the first to switch over their entire system. Soon thereafter, the idea of the dimmer panel was developed starting in 1915. These ideas were then combined with the Fred Bentham’s Light Organ. It looked exactly like an organ, and it consisted of a keyboard that controlled a clutch that drove the motorized autotransformers. This was developed in 1935. Soon, Strand came into the picture and developed the first completely electric control desks. Their first break through however, was the IDM 1967 control desk. Its revolutionary idea was simple; it was a board that had a memory. It cost $150,000, and only had 16K of memory. In 1979, the Light Palette was created, and this was the first board that integrated the lingo that theater technicians used then and now. Shortly thereafter, the Morpheus Commander was created, and this was the first board to recognize moving light controls. A nifty little tidbits, is that the idea of the moving light, was invented by sound designers, not lighting designers.
To this day light boards continue to progress, and add functionality. At the same time, large strides are difficult because learning to use these systems takes time, and sometimes time is not a luxury. Slowly but surely, control systems for lighting instruments continue to develop in our industry.

Hello from Kansas City MO!
I’m currently working on trying to find some answers to organic design in the theatre, specifically in the realm of fabric manipulation and in preparing that fabric for a flame proof stage.
I started out my day by going to the design expo. While I was there I was able to gather various catalogs and discern which booths would be the best to request more information. I was able to narrow it down to Rose Brand and Rosco via Syracuse Scenery and Stage Lighting Co.
From looking at the Rose Brand catalog I was able to grasp that their fabric manipulation lies in curtains, ceiling drapery, and various spandex and wire forms for lighting. I realized that most of the fabric manipulation that I’m interested on will be learned through experimental methods using costuming techniques of layering and draping to different forms.
I also learned that there are multiple forms of flame retardant, coming in forms such as paint additives, pre-mixed, liquid flame retardant, and instant flame retardants. I also found information on which flame retardants worked best for the various surfaces found in the theatre world, from acrylic fabric to wood. Since at UB we do not have a paint shop with ventilation I will be asking Rosco what form of flame retardant will work best in a non-ventilated space.
After the design expo I went to a session “The Future of Theatre Minds In Immersive Design! A conversation with 5D The Future of Immersive Design Conference.” In this session the speakers really focused on the concept of design and where it is going in the future. The term 5D applied to the concept of narrative design – and the 5 ways in which design applies to narrative design; experience design, interactive design, film, animation, and television. Theatre rests between that of experience design and interactive design. In theatre our purpose should be to create an experience – one that will allow us to transcend into another universe. One of our objectives should be to focus on the spaces that draw people into a building, create an interactive environment in our theatres that will make audience members want to come in and stay. Audiences are forces to sort through a pile of information and cling to something that is tangible and real. They really stressed the concept of a forum on youth. From this pool of youth we are able to discern what is most important to them and from there we can steer are art to broadcast to the public. In order for art to survive it must respond to the current trends and culture of the times.
For the next session I went to “Working Outside the Black Box”. It was essentially a forum of people who were previously designers and technicians in school but found jobs elsewhere that they really enjoy. Many of them are salesmen for large brands like Rosco. They mentioned backstagejobs.com, artsearch, jobworld, and esta.org. In order to survive in the design world you need to have more than a passion, you have to be happy in the constant collaborative environment. If you can’t manage both of those tasks it is best for you to network and explore other outlets in the field.
So I’m looking forward to tomorrow!
Kansas – OUT!

After a long and tiring journey we finally arrived at Kansas City Missouri at about 7pm yesterday evening and finally checked into our hotel. After exploring the immediate surroundings around our hotel in gorgeous weather we found a little supermarket to buy dinner and settled down for the night. We woke early to register and set off for our first day at USITT. The Stage Expo floor opened at 11am and every one flooded through the doors and up the escalators. It was madness! Everyone rushed towards the stalls with free merchandise and with heavy bags of pens, flashlights and t-shirts we explored all the interesting gadgets and new technology that was available to us.
At 1.30 I tore myself away from the Stage Expo floor to attend a seminar session on “The Future of Theatre Minds in immersive Design; a conversation with 5D The Future of Immersive Design Conference”. This session was every bit as heavy as it sounds but an eye opening experience never the less. 5D is a philosophy, a way of thinking, of immersing yourself and the audience in a total narrative experience like no other. Its aims to create an alternate reality by using new technology in conjunction with old conventions. We have to be more in tune with the up and coming generations in order to progress in our art. Things change so fast and we need to keep up with the changes. It’s about interactivity and saying “Hay, I want to play”. In a nut shell it a about total design.
After this intense hour and a half, I came away with a contact and a possible job opportunity for the future. At this point I was already ready for bed and begrudgingly wondered into my next session on Automation 101. This was about moving scenery and the mechanics behind it. Very technical. Form this I took away that this technology was around to support the set and lighting designer as well as being able to run many things simultaneously.
Over all a very productive day and I’m looking forward to the rest of the week and the new interesting things I’m going to learn about. Tomorrow I hope to attend more sessions and explore the Stage Expo floor more.