Yeah. The answer is a tad
bit complicated. NOTE: this whole post is not an explanation of the complicated answer. That's the first two paragraphs. The rest is basically design ideas.
We have two
express boards. a 24/48 and a 48/96. The smaller one is backstage in the prompt corner, and the larger one is in the booth. Either can be connected at once. We currently have the smaller one connected so we could do a show w/ the audience onstage.
I was thrown headfirst into light designing the show during tech week. No preliminary design had been done. For obvious reasons, my hang was extremely inefficient. (The less obvious reasons: we don't own any PARs larger than 38, so we had to be a little
bit creative about
FOH lighting; many of the fixtures I would have wanted to use were in the
catwalk, and loading fixtures to and from the
catwalk is a multi-hour ordeal; I am 16 yrs old, and have school for half the day; I am 16 years old, and an inexperienced LD; the list of problems caused by my age, student status, and experience goes on. anyways...)
Basically I've used nearly all 48 channels on a 1:1 patch for a space that really should only have required 24 channels with a 1:1 patch. Not to mention that a 1:1 patch really wasn't the ideal for programming the show... Long story short: I don't have the luxury of submasters. Next time theres a show onstage, I'll definitely have a more efficient design, and probably some submasters too! Might even save the patch of the large
desk on a floppy and simply move it onstage.
It's a mix of both. They warm themselves up and engage the audience (woo audience suggestions!) with games, and then invariably move into long form with an improved scene about "funny poses" or a meta-scene about long form.
My Dreams about the games they
play most, and a couple of thoughts about realizing them:
When/if the group plays
switch (This game is not in the encyclopedia of improv games! Basically two people do a scene, except whenever the OP calls
switch, the actor who said the last sentence has to change a noun or verb in that sentence, or both. Also, the noun/verb requirement is extremely fluid.) I give them a
cyc somewhere in the blue or green range. when the OP calls "
Switch" i bump the
cyc blue or green; whichever color I used more of in the initial
cyc color. I'd love to be able to give the game operator a godspot for every game with an OP, but especially
switch. (this particular
effect can be produced by spiking where the godspot will shine, and parking the godspot on at the beginning of the game, and asking the OP to stand there for every game. Until they move. I'd hate to restrict their movement!)
For
Revolver, I'd love not to have one color per group for every show! The audience suggestion for a couple in revolver was once purple. A more subtle example: a blue doesn't fit a scene that ends up adversarial. Ideally I'd be able to program and override
cyc colors on the fly. Maybe a very clever inhibiter
submaster setup would allow for this? Keeping
track of four different colors for four different scenes that can be called up in any order (OP calls "
revolve twice" or what have you...) in about one second, then re-recorded just as fast seems nigh impossible without some very, very specialized board! Maybe an extremely clever
macro? Oh, lets not forget a godspot.
For
Bad Advice, I obviously need to be able to bring up the
house lights, but thats a necessity in every show. A very
neutral wash that looks like studio lighting would be awesome too! Actually, I have no idea what "looks like a studio".
Neutral is a guess. Maybe a couple very bright, very sharp ERSs focused where the actors invariably put the chairs or couch (there are often leftover set
props lying around after shows.) for bad advice would work.
During longform (The way we
play: Starts out with a scene about funny poses. When one of the performers wants to start a new scene, that performer will run across the
downstage end of the theater with his/her arm up saying "swoosh". A new scene will then begin. At any time, people who aren't preforming can yell "Let's see the x" x being an event or something related to whats going on in the scene I.E. "Let's see their first child" after a kiss or a wedding proposal. the performers will then make that scene happen, usually quite briefly. The person who called the "lets see..." can
call "Cut Back" to
return to the original scene.) I manually
crossfade the
cyc using three channels in between scenes. If the feel of the scene changes dramatically, I might even change the
cyc during a scene. I would love to have the ability to very suddenly give a cool
wash with one special on a particular actor, in case of a dramatic aside. There would be specials hung to hit, say, three different spots from two angles. only one special would be used at a time, but you need one coming from sl and one coming from sr in case an actor is obstructing one of the luminaries. for "lets sees" and "cut backs" a
cyc change is a little too heavy handed, but no change is not enough! I really can't figure out what to do there...
I've actually never really played around with
chase effects. I barely have a concept of what one looks like! I would love to see an explication about them, and an explanation about how to make them happen.
