Thanks!
Wow, thank you for the warm comments and questions, with all the trash talking and the back stabbing that goes on between the technicians at my school, it's nice to hear kind things every once in a while.
I really like the look with the masked men in blue with the green cyc and the pink smoke. It is really a unique look and one that I am guessing really fit the moment.
That sequence looked really great from the audience perspective. As the show progressed, more and more abstarct looks were written. Because of the bare
stage (Four
scrim walls on the
edge of the 24" raised
platform acting area with staircases DSC, SL and SR of the platforms) a lot of the mood came from the lighting, more so than any other show I have lit. With this particular q, Spider (The
top hat fella played by Will Unger) is singing about the main theme of the show, facades. The surrounding "fates" are the chorus (which is revealed later after the climax when they
reveal themselves, it's supposed to be obvious though), and they crawl around him originating US and then slinking past him right into the faces of the audience on the curtain of the
stage. It looked a lot like the staircase scene in The Exorcist, or more recently The Grudge. Thankfully I had the use of four
Martin Mac2000's hanging above the
stage (they were the workhorses in this production) to really downlight the fates in a blue, which riccocheted like crazy off of those plastic
face masks, while the USR spot technician (We had originally four spotlights on scaffolding just offstage, but took it down to two for Nebraska, this particular spot q was provided by Andy Gomez) nailed Spider in a Bastard Amber. Sillk Green was used for the bottom of the
cyc. What really changed the colors though was a black
scrim just US of the platforms, but DS of the floorlights and the
cyc. We had holes in the platforms and a
hazer that shot
smoke out through pipes under the
stage to them to create effects like the cloud behind Spider. I could really
nail it with the
par-can high-sides but keep the light off of Spider and the resulting
effect was downright crap-your-pants-scary. (Sorry, I realize I split things up a lot when I type)
On another note... our school would never be allowed to do a play like that.... just judging by the costumes (or semi-lack of them more specifically).
All I can say is that around four o'clock in the morning, on a school night mind you, one of our
theatre teachers comes in holding a Cosette head in front of his (we used the Le Mis picture and blew it up to put above windows and stuff in the
lobby during our production of it in 2002) and says in his best girly voice "Look what Mrs. Hardgrove has been buying" as she comes on
stage with two bags (out of a lot more) of Victoria Secret totaling something like $1200. Mind you, lighting that late at night already prompts some dirty, silly, and funny jokes but the addition of Mr. Edwards talking like a girl and Mrs. Hardgrove showing us the costumes that nobody had any idea were going to be as racy as they were had myself and Mr. Morris (The Tecnical teacher and my lighting guru) rolling for a good half-an-hour. I then proceeded to sleep in the
theatre for two hours and go to school the next morning.
The look where he is at his workbench and the bench seems to be glowing really brightly is also very cool. did you have lights in the counter or just very focused overhead lights? Please share!
Ha, at first I was going to say that those
Mac's were my friends during that show. And yes, they are in this q, but we had already burned one guy alive earlier in the show and this was just another fire
effect but on his lab
desk after he smashes a beaker. It was one of those
face tingly moments in a song, and Taylor (The actor playing Jekyll) just moves so well that this turned out being one of the better moments in the show. I'll see if I can find my archival photos of the show back home in Las Vegas so you can really see how it turned out.
Thanks again for the questions and comments, I love talking shop. I really look forward to seeing what else is out there, so I hope there are a great number of show shots following soon.
second take a look at my 