About Chris Van Patten

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Young Designer’s Forum

Today I toured the Young designer’s Forum at the Hilton Hotel. It is a mini exposition that showcases young designers currently enrolled in MFA programs. I viewed the work of designers such as Nathaniel Sinnott, Dwayne Burgess, Izumi Inaba, Dan Stratton, Melissa Torchia, and Holly Griffin. Viewing their exhibits showed many examples of different presentational techniques. Most of them utilized drafts, photos, models, and research. A few used video, props, and large-scale art. I took up a “collection” of resumes for research to improve my own. The scenic designers had incredibly detailed models, which I looked at everyone trying to discover the materials that they used.

On a side note, I did research plagiarism, but it will take a few more days to compile the information.

The last day here….

For the last time ever form Cincinnati….

Hello all you beautiful people!

Today was a very sad day in Cincinnati as it was the last day of the USITT conference; however a very interesting session this morning sure did start it off right. Katie and I went to the lighting accessory top hats session this morning which proved to be more interesting and useful than we had expected; more on the specifics of this session can be found in Katie’s blog today as we are back to writing our individual blogs.

The next stop in our day was the young designers forum; this is a presentation of design work by third year graduate students. This turned out to be a very valuable experience to me, not so much for the work I saw but rather for seeing what it really means to be a young up and coming designer in this business. The displays were pretty good, some better than others, and the photography quality was not great throughout. However I found the value of going to this forum to be more in how it helped me realize some things about this business. I have been struggling lately with the desire to become either a technician or a designer and the ideas of whether it is worth another three years to go to graduate school. I am not saying that one needs to chose one path and never stray from it, but you do need to chose a field of concentration. I had always thought that I was better suited in this profession to be a technician despite my love for design work. But after having seen the product of what these students accomplished from seven years of design schooling and seriously looking today into the world ahead of them and other young designers I have seriously reconsidered my standing in this field. Though one walk through of a few graduate students’ design work doesn’t completely convince me, the experience was still invaluable as it opened my eyes to what I now feel is the much more appropriate field of study for me, Lighting Design.

Now to finish off our trip to Cincinnati we will be attending a play at the Cincinnati playhouse tonight, the same play we got a backstage tour of earlier this week.

Andy

Question and Answer day

At this last day of the conference, I went to the portfolio review and received feed back on turning my portfolio toward a lighting designer and not let the design of portfolio take away my theatre design work. Since I have be learning so much to be an graphic designer or an artist this portfolio help me to the right director of presenting myself as an lighting designer. And then I went to different school booth and gather information about further education in lighting design and what are these different school providing to their students and what skill I will need to build up more and how can I decided the path after graduate from university.

“emerging from the mist”

The past two days have much to report. Meetings have provided me with ideas and inspiration on ways to get more students involved and in attendance to the 2011 PQ. After attending the Upstate NY Regional Section Meeting, The USITT Regional Section Communicators Meeting, And The State of The KCACTF Meeting, facilitating communication between KCACTF and USITT is in the works.

Moving beyond meetings at the conference has also been beneficial. I was an active part of going live via webcam to UB’s THE106 class from the stage expo floor. We introduced the class to new stage technology, new acquaintances, and old ones too, as we have caught up many UB alum (both expected and unexpected). I was able to literally “emerge from the midst” of a new fog machine and give the students a live update on my conference findings.

A session on Deborah Landis’s new costume design book was fantastic. She was really able to shed light on the significance the costume designer has on the performer and how important that relationship is. She was also able to exploit how important choice making in while selecting what garments to put on someone else and ourselves as costume designers. As the soon to be new costume design chair at UCLA, Deborah’s session only added to my difficult graduate school decision process.

On the graduate school front, this week has also brought new knowledge. The possibility of attending Northwestern with a primary focus in scenic design with a secondary in costume design could perhaps happen in the fall of 2009. There have been further developments with the University at Maryland, details to be forthcoming, and I have been accepted to UCLA, awaiting details regarding a financial package.

After attending the KCACTF Summer Intensives, working at PCPA, and going through the U/RTA process, attending the conference has been a new experience for me, now knowing many more members of USITT. It’s made me realize how the industry is seemingly huge, yet at the same time even smaller than I have previously thought. Also, each and everyone I’ve had a chance to catch-up with has his or her own personal thoughts regarding my educational future. Of course, the choice is ultimately up to me, but these thoughts have made a tremendous impact, and my survey of them will be considered in my upcoming decision process.

Another great session was one which honored the distinguished achievement in Scenic Design of Franco Colavecchia: internationally known designer for work with the New York City Opera, Chicago Lyric, The Roundabout Theatre and Center Stage. Franco Colavecchia has displayed his work throughout the country and his designs have been included in the Prague Quadrennial multiple times.

3-Dtastic

Today on the exposition floor I picked the brains at the Vectorworks booth on 3-D drafting. In a short demo, I learned much about this software. A huge note for anyone new to Vectorworks is that anytime you draft in it, whether it is in 2-D or 3-D drafting, you are drafting in a 3-D environment. Here we’re a few tips that I believe will help everyone;

-All of the 3-D view shortcuts are loaded on the numeral pad, and make shifting between them instantaneous.
-They admitted that using a scroller on a mouse is still buggy, PC users should use CTRL-SHIFT 1 and 2 for zooming in and out.
-Extruding surfaces into objects, the original surface remains in place. The extruded surface is relative to the original surface.
-CTRL E is the shortcut for the Extrude tool.
-Utilization of the clip surface tool is key to 3-D creation. A simple example; A small square inside a large square, both are selected, and when the clip surface tool is used, it takes the smaller square and allows you to delete that portion out of the larger square. In short, you just made a hole for a window or doorway.
-In 2-D, Classes are often used for different line weights. In 3-D, Classes are best used for surface rendering.
-When creating a new class, if you check the box labeled “Use at Creation,” any object thereafter will change to that class if you select it then choose that class.
-Subclasses can clear up clutter in your class menu. Upon class creation, label the class as “Class Name-Sub Class Name.” It will automatically be recognized and placed into a separate submenu.

Additionally I also learned a great deal about the basics for 3-D animation. The two presenters Geoffrey Hall and Geoffrey Eroe both demonstrated several different programs they utilize for this tool. The goal of their seminar was to explain how this visualization tool can help communicate scenic designs to a Director. They recommended a You Tube Video for further references. Barring explanations of how to manipulate the software, a recommendation for surface rendering was to create a physical rendering, and then scan it in to the computer. Here’s a list of a few top programs that were recommended;

-Strata 3-D (30 Day Free Trial)
-3-D Studio Max (30 Day Free Trial)
-Blender (Freeware at Blender.org)
-H264 Compression Software
-Combustion (Video Editing)
-Google SketchUp (Non-professional alternative)

Jane is not absent from her class

The theme of today is how to choose color of lighting design, “Jane is not absent from her class,” walking around the stage expo and 3D animation communication.
What I get from the color choosing section is when you are deciding the color you should be able to answer the question “ why you use color.” By adding gel you are subtracting to color from the continuous spectrum of light, and since there is different range of light in a single source it will be very helpful to understand what color in the spectrum is the gel letting through it in order to understand how it would interact on the surface as well as the light will or will no pick up the skin tone, costume or set. Another thing is that keeps on experimenting different gel rather than stick on a few amount of choice and use the light see really how the color looks like. An easy way would be using swatch book and a little clip lamp if not using a real theatre lighting instrument.
In the afternoon, during the class time of TH106 in Buffalo we are doing a live presentation through Skype to communicate to my classmate telling them what we are doing and here and we invited some of the exhibitor to explaining their products. Besides, I show up on the scene to prove that I am still in class ^.^ and I was in the Rosco booth showing the double gobo rotator.
At night Jeff, Chris and me went to the 3D animation which is more about how the presenter use different software to create their model and do 3D rendering video to show the textured and lights effect model.  More, what these different program differ from each other and how they work. Program they used such as 3D Max, strata, AutoCAD and vector work.

Last, let’s get back to my topic of the lighting of Olympic yesterday. Since, there are so much lighting fixtures in the venue it take as much people to handle the lighting job and as 300. 44 spot operators, 11 lighting team with stage manager. They started the designing process in the year 2006. The lighting team started installing trust and electricity in April and May then move to focusing. Before they go into the space they use ESP vision to visualize the spread and area of the light, help them speed up the process and get a near accurate position. In order to control over thousands of light and 63 projectors they have 3 grand master console control and 3 backup systems and it took 2 month for programmers to program all the moving light those programmers almost gone mad. Synchronizing all the projector is a great challenge, since there will be at least 1 to 2 film of delay between projectors, to solve that they choose abstract image that the little differences among projector would not be so noticeable.
Although there are so many instruments all of them are retailed, all they spent on this production is around 90,000,000RMB(around 12 million USD). There is interesting question during the section, “did the lighting team ever turn on all the light at full and see how it looks.” The answer is the brightest that they did is 60~70% at the entrance of athletes.
I think that is all for today’s blog~
tomorrow is the last day of our conference

LED’s go Swanky and Restricted (Part 2)

Hello all you beautiful people,

Please notice that this is part two of a blog on LED at the USITT. To read part one click on the link here. http://tdsquared.org/2009/03/leds-part-one/

Today we spend the day walking around the trade floor looking at LED instruments that could begin to replace the Source Four, the Fresnel, and the Par. We found that the LED could be classified into fixed position and moving head instruments. Our first stop was to look at a compact moving head light called the A7 manufactured by JB LED lighting. This fixture is three color diode fixture that has the added feature of a moving lens plate. This feature allows for zoom from 8 to 28 degrees without losing its beam or field attributes. This 17.6 pound fixture has smooth dimming a feature that is becoming a more prominent feature not just in this light but in many that we saw. The Delta fixture manufactured by DTS lighting an Italian company showed some promise in the compact moving head fixture world as well. The delta an indoor and outdoor fixture was valued for the control features more. The fixture was a three color diode fixture but was designed to be controlled with four sliders red, green, blue, pre-calculated slider that mixes white color temperature. When it comes to fixed LED fixtures Altman takes the very traditional approach in maintaining the variable lens style of our current PAR fixture. This allows the LEDs to mix at the lens rather than on the surfaces which it projects on to. This traditional lens usage allows for common accessories like barndoors to be added to the instrument. Like in traditional 1k PAR fixtures it is common practice to swap lamps to change field size from very narrow through wide. Altman’s LED fixture duplicates the ridges and valleys found on the surface of these different lamps on a lens placed in front of the LED multi source point.

As a result of people we met on the trade floor we were invited to a private party for the unveiling of Vari-Lite’s new instrument the VLX. The VLX is a full-blown LED wash moving head fixture that contains a number of groundbreaking new technologies. The most prominent technological advancement is definitely the lack of color shadowing, even at short distances. The color mixing incorporated both a very true metal-halide white as well as a very accurate tungsten colored white; this will allow the VLX to be seamlessly integrated into any stage rig containing either metal halide or tungsten sources. Other very impressive technologies found in the VLX are its ability to change its beam angle, eliminating the need to change a barrel; as well as, its immense intensity created by a mere economically friendly six hundred watts. The techniques which allow this incredible instrument to accomplish all these prominent advances we are unfortunately not allowed to discuss publically until the VLX public revealing on April 1st.

Katie and Andy

Illusion, imagination, visualization- story and number of the Olympic lighting

Today is a very exciting day learning the keyword, metamerism, and the back-story of how the lighting and projection effect created by the lighting team from China in the Olympic Games in China. From what I have learn from the session using and mixing, diachronic, and LED even thought we are using same gel or diachronic we will not get the same color with different instrument. Metamerism is the matching of apparent color of objection with different spectral power distribution. The perfect example is under the same environment and same color object, people see that color differently in the eye. Also when two objects put together human eye would try to distinguish and enlarge the difference between them. The research that Adelson did at MIT with an image really proves that how our eyes try to skew the same intensity of gray and recognized these two separate sections in the image is different.

During the opening ceremony of Olympic Games in China last summer August 8, I was watching that on TV when I was in my home town Macau (China). At that moment I was amazed by the idea of how the creative team put together and highlight the 5000 years of historical culture to the whole world. The design team achieved that by the integration of different light source, such as traditional lighting instrument, video, and projection, performance and sound. The lighting technical side of this event is not that I have ever imagined of. It is such and ambitions project to accomplished and see how projection starts to get involve in this kind of huge venue of international event.

First of all, how they can light this massive open air “bird-net”. It turns out to be using over 2500 moving light installed in the stadium, also 63 projectors and LED installed on the floor to creates the visual images. Another problem is how to balance between these 3 different light sources luminosity and contrast in the stadium so they are at the same level of light to fulfill the need of acting at site, on visibility of screen and other lighting area. In order to get the same brightness of the projection image in the air as LED, they lower the intensity of the LED to 30% and layer 3 projectors together at the same spot to increase the luminosity…

p.s as this post is getting to long and it is 3:30 in the morning …. I will update the rest later~`

USITT Day Two

Organizational meetings for the Upstate New York Regional Section and the International Committee, a Reception for first time conference attendees, and a session where I learned (or attempted to learn) more types of knots than I knew even existed are just the highlights of what I have seen at the conference thus far. However, in my quest to research new, innovative, and community-changing theatre, the following sessions really pertained to that theme.

Producing at a Temporary or Non-Traditional Event Site

Two producers detailed their forays off the beaten path in the session “Producing at a Temporary or Non-Traditional Even Site.” Andrew Cady, who has also been general manager of Buffalo’s own Studio Arena Theatre, shared his experience of bringing the Sand Diego Symphony Orchestra into the jungles of Mexico to play on the ruins of Chichen Itza. As fate would have it, their concert fell on Columbus Day, which unbeknownst to the event organizers, is a day celebrated by the Mayans as “the day of indigenous resistance,” where thousands of Mayans from the surrounding region descend upon the ruins and have religious ceremonies amongst the ancient rocks. However, despite humidity wreaking havoc on the wind players’ reeds, having no canopy to shelter the orchestra from the threatening rain, and a very elusive town mayor, Mr. Cady managed to overcome the challenges of this space deep in the wild to have a very successful event.

The other project, the Woyzeck Project at the University of Minnesota, was produced in a condemned building on campus, presenting its own set of challenges. She managed to coordinate an entire production utilizing many spaces both inside and outside of the building with three directors, all with a budget of less than $5000. One unexpected result of the project was that now, everyone is clamoring to do a project in this previously ignored building.

Theatres as Catalyst for City Revival

This session, presented by the architecture commission of USITT, featured three case studies of theatres spurring economic development in communities, a topic Buffalo might benefit from paying attention to. According to one presenter, the arts are growing, despite the down turning economy, and the non-profit theatre industry alone was worth $166.2 billion in 2005. “Threshold anxiety,” in his opinion, is what is preventing many of our theatre buildings from becoming the performing arts centers of the future, which embrace and engage their communities.

In order for a next generation performing arts center to remain pertinent and vital to a community for as long as possible, it must be able to fulfill six requirements:
1. Does it educate?
2. Does is foster innovation?
3. Is it an agent or catalyst for change?
4. Is it a showcase?
5. Can it host the traditional performing arts?
6. Does it incubate new experiences for the community?

One of the cases presented, the Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee, fulfills all of these guidelines, as well as addressing the issue of threshold anxiety. The architect behind the project, Scott Georgeson, stressed that they are a “jeans and T-shirt kind of place,” and mentioned that the original name of the company was the “Comic Opera Theatre.” The company performs operas in English, not Italian, and the fresco of the 18th century Italian style theatre features whimsical portraits of supporters of the theatre as well as Milwaukee landmarks. In other words, for a theatre to be successful, especially in an area where the object is to draw people from outside of its immediate surroundings, people cannot be intimidated by it.

Quick and Dirty… Model Building

Today’s adventure included an early morning regional meeting, an exposition floor race, model building techniques, design interviews, and much more.

What I found to be fascinating was the model building seminar entitled “Quick and Dirty Model Building.” The presenter Paul Shortt showed us many of his models, and explained how quick and cheap materials can be used to create simple, effective, and gorgeous models for the scenic designer. His materials of choice, plain paper and hot glue. He described how hot glue can be cleaned up with a soldering iron to create sculptures and clean adhesions. In my opinion, his best example was a flown tree flat model piece, composed almost entirely of hot glue, with paper backing and piano wire reinforcement. He had lots of little tips to improve models. For cleaning tweezers, one can use lighter fluid. Just make sure that those particular tweezers are not used for soldering…

Additionally, on the exposition floor I managed to find the Vectorworks booth. However, today their booth was incredible packed, and for the types of questions I had, was bad time to ask them. Tomorrow it’s a personal mission.