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Showing posts from 2011

Happy endings, new beginnings

Tonight is kind of a sad night for me.  One of my friends is leaving and heading on to a new journey in life.  How appropriate on New Year's.  She will be greatly missed.  She's actually from the light side of the theater.  She is a bright shining star who will be benefitting a city filled with stars who don't shine nearly as bright as her.  I hope my friends in her new area will have the chance to benefit from her spirit. There is often the division between performers and technicians.  Heck, I have been one to say "An actor [performer] without technicians try to emote, standing naked in the dark, while a technician without an actor is someone with marketable skills."  Funny as it is, it is just as negative as the nasty performers in our lives.  After all, with our marketable skills, we should be able to make more money than as stagehands.  We don't because we love what we do (or we don't stay in the business).  While I will be sad that my friend is mo

Know where you are going

When I was starting out in college, I majored in theater (emphasis on technical theater).  Silly thing is, I only received an Associate of Arts (2 year degree program) in theater, because I wanted to be an archaeologist.  So, yeah, I went to another college/university to get my degree in that.  But I digress. While getting my degree in theater I had to take acting classes.  Acting can be fun, but I prefer to be behind the scenes.  Something very useful that they teach the actors is to know where you are going.  This is useful for them when something goes wrong (someone forgets a line, there is some technical glitch, whatever).  It is obvious when you have an amateur actor on stage when something goes wrong because they will often freeze, run off stage, or do something really stupid.  On the other hand, a well trained actor will handle the situation so well that you, in the audience, will be hard pressed to know if they are covering up a faux pas or if they actually rehearsed it that

Preparation can be confusing

I like to be prepared.  I don't like surprises (in a bad way).  So, yes, when I travel, my bag is usually packed with more than what I want, and hopefully I won't end up needing anything.  Such was the case with a recent business trip that I took.  First of all, the system that I was responsible for was tested and fully planned for any problems that could arise when arriving on site.  I was very thankful for that since we ended up with other challenges. Now, this event had live performers as well who would be doing some stunts.  In preparation, we trained before hand as well as on site to make sure that if anything were to go wrong that we would be able to get our performers medical attention as soon as possible.  This goes along the line with normal training in basic first aid and CPR that normally goes into my work.  We also train in electrical safety (had my electrical hazard, safety toe shoes on for the entire event) as well as other hazards we may come across. So, with

I really need to be more organized

We have all been instructed that it is important to back up our files on our computers.  After all, hard drives crash, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I know some people who are extremely good about this.  I went out and purchased an external hard drive and have backed up quite a few files, even if I don't do it on a schedule yet.  Yet, I still seem to never get around to organizing all those files, I just know they exist multiple places. Sure, this goes along with physical things as well.  I know that I have boxes of things that I don't need (hoarder?, just in my garage) and should get rid of.  At least when I moved from Arizona, I had a wonderful opportunity to purge.  The people at Goodwill knew at the sight of my car that there would be a lot to unload (actually exceeded my IRS allotment for donations that year).  Even at that, I know that I really need to purge more and also organize what I have. So, today, I had my laziness bite me in the rear.  I save emails.  All the time.  H

Where have I been

Aside from being busy at work, I have been creating a second blog.  This one is not theater related, but was requested none the less.  You see, my wife gave me a set of Zombie Magnetic Poetry for Christmas and I started writing poems on the refrigerator.  My youngest happened to be collecting them in a notebook, so when I was asked to share them, I created a new blog.  Please enjoy the poetry and comments are welcome. http://eerieedgar.blogspot.com/ I'll get back to the theater related posts soon.  It's just been a busy season as I'm sure you all understand.

I think I may have "misunderestimated"

Sorry to anyone who was a fan of President George W. Bush for me borrowing one of his terms.  However, I tried to think how better to express how I felt after giving a presentation last month.  I volunteered to give a presentation on the basics of video for theater at the Nevada State Thespian Convention.  Since I was a Thespian in high school and there was a definite shortage of technical classes, I felt that I could take the opportunity to help out the next generation, as I do moderating ControlBooth .  So here's how it goes.  The announcement comes through that they need presenters.  I say, sure, I'll help out.  I've been pretty busy at work and home and don't take a close look at the date when I do so.  I go home and check the calendar to make note of when I'm going to do the presentation and the date seems off.  Usually these sort of conferences happen over a weekend, and I was pretty sure that I signed up for a Saturday.  So, I get on my email to check thing

Who should protect us?

Earlier tonight I was reading about the OSHA fines for Spiderman Turn off the Dark .  This got me thinking about another tragedy that happened a couple years back when a performer in a Christmas pageant fell to her death after a similar mishap.  In both instances, the performer did not have their safety device fully engaged which resulted in the accident.  Regardless of fault, both were the result of human error.  The biggest difference between these two incidents is that one had an employee injured and the other had a volunteer die.  Since OSHA only covers the workplace, then the church who had a performer die had no repercussions. Sorry about the short post, I'll add more soon.

Career decisions

Check this out, two posts in one day. Anyhow, I like the idea of improving myself in my career.  By this I mean, I don't climb the corporate ladder just to be above everyone else or purely for more money, but I like to challenge myself and not stagnate.  Even if there is not an opportunity at the moment, I try to go to trade shows to learn from industry representatives and read trade magazines to see what other people are using and give me an idea of whom I should speak with when I get to the shows.  So a little while back, I was given the opportunity to maybe make a career advancement.  In some ways it is scary.  I have a family with young children and so if I make a change that takes me to a new city, it's a big change, no matter the job.  A little over three years ago, I made that choice, uprooted my family from our home of many years, and moved to a city that I'd never really considered living in.  The job is amazing.  I make almost twice what I did before.  I have

My brain hurts

No, I don't have a headache, I just had to dredge up some old knowledge today.  Today, we are working on a 3D movie - reshooting some scenes and new footage for some others.  This of course is in a custom built theater, with a permanent show (thus pretty set lighting package), and we haven't changed much of the equipment since it was installed.  On top of that, the equipment that was installed wasn't all top of the line at the time either.  For instance, two of the lighting consoles were the last two made by the manufacturer before they discontinued it for their new line of consoles.  The other consoles were in their prime at the same time Windows XP was rolling out.  Anyhow, cameras see the world differently than the human eye.  In order to make the end product look normal to our eyes, quite a bit has to be changed on the front end, usually making it brighter.  This is especially the case on this particular show as the lighting designer tended to make it fairly dark in t

I'm not just a stick in the mud

Lately it seems my blog posts have been quite preachy.  Let me tell you that I do practice what I preach.  On the other hand, I have been told that the posts don't reflect me very well.  While I am a stickler for safety and want to help everyone succeed all the time, I'm usually the quickest to give a friendly smile as well.  Heck, I decided it was time to liven things up a bit, so to speak.  I added a new section to the store (now located down at the bottom of the page for easy viewing).  I titled it Zombie Apocalypse .  I will continue to add to that section just as I am continually adding to the other sections.  I'm not new to the Zombie Apocalypse band wagon.  I have been a fan of monster movies since I was a kid.  Well, that takes a little clarification, I've been a fan since I figured out how to not be scared of them.  I remember watching a vampire movie and having nightmares after my nap.  After a good sit down with my grandmother who assured me that I was sa

Keeping it "real"

I work on what could be arguably said to be the largest show in the world.  While I don't work with the latest and greatest equipment, I have the resources to keep the show up and running.  It takes a lot of resources to maintain the multitude of lights and other equipment running. Am I bragging?  Not really (though I do love my job).  What spawned this was the reality check that I recently received.  Last week (seems like ages ago, really), I took my two youngest children to see Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day   (example of this production here ) which is a musical adaptation of the children's book of the same name.  This was not locally produced, but was brought in by a children's theater company out of California.  Needless to say, it was not the biggest budget production out there.  Lighting was simple washes.  The set was a single drop with set props to designate scene/place changes. Why did this make an impression on me?  Well, for sta

STEP RIGHT UP

STEP RIGHT UP Get a glimpse of how things run for audio and video for three different Cirque du Soleil shows.

Choices

I may be faced with a very difficult choice in the near future.  That is to either stay in my current position or move to another city with a promotion.  This is something that I brought on myself, as I was the one who initially sought the promotion.  Now I face the potential reality of my choices.  This is after I have studied whether or not the pay and benefits will be acceptable to my situation. On the surface, there's little to worry about.  After all, most anyone would jump at the chance to improve their situation.  As a stagehand, it makes me concerned to jump into a new market.  Three years ago, I made the move to a new city and state, and that was a huge undertaking on my part.  I had spent the previous decade and a half building relationships in the community and had little to worry about when one employer didn't have work for me.  I'm not saying that it was always easy, but one summer when I had been laid off, I was able to make a few phone calls stating that I

Consumer Electronics Heaven

So, I finally made it to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year.  I have had show floor passes for the past three years and something has always come up at the last minute.  If you are unaware of just what this show is all about, there are numerous "geek" sites out there who can more than tell you about it including Cnet, G4, Make Magazine, and innumerable others. To be fair, I only went for about three hours on the final day (which is often the best day to really get to see a show because the masses have thinned).  However, this is definitely not the amount of time if you really need to see the show.  After all, it takes up all of the Las Vegas Convention Center as well as meeting and convention space at many of the large hotels nearby like the Las Vegas Hilton and the Venetian.  So, even if I didn't stop to look at any products or talk to the vendors, there's no way to see it all in that amount of time.  But, it really isn't my industry.  As st