With/Without Directors.

With/Without Directors.

Lighting LD Levels:

In attendance: Lighting Designer, Assistant Lighting Designer, Lighting Board Operator (me).

Five hours of programming subtle, half minute shifts in looks as characters enter and exit and move around the stage.

------------Next Day------------

Lighting LX 1:

In attendance: Lighting Designer, Assistant Lighting Designer, Lighting Board Operator (me). Director, Assistant Director, Stage Manager, Light Walker.

LD: Talking with Director. Comes on Comm: "... Delete cues 8 through 60."

Subtlety be damned. One look for an hour.

/sigh.

You know the main problem with the “live action” Lion King? Why it looks so lifeless?

The hyper realistic style is actually limiting the animators, rather than freeing them. The style makes it much harder to have memorable character designs and good expressions. Real lions don’t need to do things like emote in a way that humans can understand – but characters in a film do. The original movie was more cartoony not due to animation limitations of the time, but because that style genuinely serves the story better.

To show you what I mean, compare these two shots of Simba, from right after Scar says “run away and never return.”

Here is a clear reaction, with a strong beat for us to connect with before the character makes a decision. Even without any dialogue, even without any context, you can understand the emotion there just by the expression and the mannerisms. Is it realistic? No! He’s bright yellow and has eyebrows. But do we empathize with him? Yes!

Meanwhile, here is… a lion. Turning and running. No expression, no beats, no character moments, nothing. He actually can’t express himself because the animators are locked into the realistic style. If they tried to animate a strong expression as warranted for the scene, it would look terrible. Is it realistic? Hell yeah! Look at those textures! Look at that fur! But do we empathize with him? …nah. Not really.

To conclude: when you’re retelling Hamlet with a bunch of animated lions, cartoonish-ness is your friend, not your enemy.

Local Theatre Productions: Orchestra

Shows up for a one-off concert; Setup, rehearsal, show, tear down all in one day.

Sets up a nice stage wash cue.

Assists with chair set up and music stands and music stand lights and wiring and taping down cables.

Musicians show up.

Conductor "No no no this is wrong! There can't be any light from out there!" -flails towards the audience-.

:You mean the Front Lights?:

"Yes. Can't have any of those. Gets in the musicians eyes and they can't see me or their music."

:Buuuuttt.... They'll. Look. REALLY wierd. Maybe just at like. 40%?:

"No front light! None!"

:Are you certain. With just top lights, the shadows will fill in their eye sockets and chins and they'll look like skeletons... It'll be pretty ugly.:

"NONE."

Kills FoH fixtures. Looks like shit.

Orchestra rehearses. Conductor eventually wanders into house to admire everything.

"Why do they look like shitty skeletons?"

-.-

"Oh. Maybe just... Just a little front light..."

So that's a true story from years ago, but also an important lesson learned by me for future concert rentals. Fronts and tips can, with the right angle, make looking at their music or over at the conductor problematic. Musicians having little dancing burned retina dots while they read their sheets is not beneficial.

Another thing I learned was certain gel colours can cause havoc with any pencil markings they've made on their music, especially if the notations themselves are coloured. Trying to blend in a blue gobo wash for artistic effect maybe not such a great idea. I'll generally check that everyone's happy during a lull in rehearsing. (Or happy enough. They're never happy.)

I ride motorcycles because the speeder bikes in Return of the Jedi were so badass. Zoom! Nyyýeeeerrrrrrr!

Everyone shut up about star wars discourse from now on we are appreciating star wars like kids again. We are agreeing that the spaceships are cool and we are pretending to be Jedi.

Black Hole Update

Hello! I’ve seen a lot of people talking about Katie Bouman and her work on the black hole picture, and sharing around photos of her excitement when they got the photo, and I’m glad that she’s getting recognition. However, while Bouman herself has emphasized that the project was a team effort, a lot of people seem to be overlooking or erasing the very notable contributions of some of the other scientists who worked on it, and that doesn’t sit great with me, so I’m here to draw attention to a couple of them as well.

This is Andrew Chael. He worked with Bouman on the algorithm to construct the image of the black hole and did most of the raw coding for it.

Speaking of that algorithm this is Mareki Honma, who is the man I’m given to understand was its original inventor. Here he is announcing the photo at a press conference in Tokyo.

And here is a link to Harvard’s page on all the contributing members of the Black Hole Initiative, including Bouman and these two!

Niagara Parkway, Niagara-on-the-Lake

Friday April 12, 2019

Majestical.