Repatch for CPF

In clearing out some of my CPF content I found the following video. Repatching for the Crown Point Festival meant leaving the light board, perched in the back of the balcony and running down to the patch bay stage right. Sometimes a repatch had to be done in as little as 5 minutes...take a look.

All in the family

So when you're an LD, even one transitioning into the architecture world, you usually have precious little opportunity to bring your skills forth to your family and friends. Well I got my chance Thanksgiving weekend. My father chaired the Annual St. Andrew Avellino Dinner Dance an annual fundraiser for the parish where I grew up. Between the hometown connections and my father's dedication I was destined to be involved somehow. Then couple it with the new venue. The Great Hall, at the New York Hall of Science and I knew even on a shoestring budget, we could make the space a room for an elegant affair. Take a look at these photos, I hope you agree.

Now leaving Crown Point

Hey all,

So the Crown point festival is long over. It has taken me a full two
weeks to recover from the draining process the festival was. In the
end it was 40 straight days going to the Abrons Art Center from the
beginning of load in to the end of strike. I couldn't be happier to
regain my daily life. And simply work my job with Tirschwell and
company.

Dispatch from the Crown Point Festiva

Hey all,

So I know I've been incredibly remiss in my blogging lately. You see
my life has been wholly swallowed by the Crown Point festival. I will
attempt to encapsulate the entire insanity that has been the festival.

The ambitious and tight schedule we set out for in tech proved to be
both a blessing and a curse. It got us through our goals as far as
tech went. But at the same time we found ourselves getting cut short
by the relentless schedule. This proved to be incredibly problematic.
Only our shortest shows got to actually run in the space before they
opened for the public. All else, well they were forced to having a
show completely teched but never run in real time in the space. Some
shows didn't get fully teched at all.

James Bedell
917-225-9183

Crown Point Rolls on

Hello All,

So I am a terrible blogger. It has been forever since my last post. I have good excuses however....my real job with Tirschwell and Co. has been extremely busy lately. If that weren't enough my little production company Lively Arts Productions hosted a presentation of it's musical Ethan Frome this week...read up on that at here.

So what about Crown Point? Well through some diligent research I've found a ROBE rep named Dave Middleton who put me in touch with Chris Reagan of BML Blackbird here in the tri-state area. We are working to hammer out an affordable package.

Set his against the background that we are 17 days from load-in. I've had design meetings with every show and I've had full-fledge production meetings with many of them. I now have the chance to set pen to paper on the plot and move things forward.

The newest storm clouds on the horizon. Our labor budget is minimal for the show. The plan was to supplement the labor force with unpaid or low-paid interns and PA's. That staff has yet to materialize. So now its time to hit the websites recruiting load-in and tech help on the electrics side. Students willing to work for the opportunity to learn.

Know Anybody?

Gear and Crossing Over

Moving from Entertainment Lighting to Architectural has been an interesting transition. One of the things that you have to get used to almost immediately is what decisions become so important on the Architectural side, are hardly after thoughts on the theatrical side. In Architecture, details matter, really matter. From the lamp-type, to shielding and lensing right down to the color and shape on the flange, the level of detail in selection is incredibly important to pleasing your design team and clients.

Sometimes a project lends itself to more theatricality. For a nightclub project my office is working on, I got to pull out an old favorite tool of mine. The product is called NEOFLEX, I was first exposed to it on the set of Inside the Actor's Studio, lighting designer Jeff Burns used a continuous run of it to underlight the talent-platform. Needing a similar effect in the club I was able to pull it from the back of my mind, and it in all likely hood will end up accenting our club.

Of course that's not the only ghost of my lighting past that is making it into the night club. To light a performance stage some of the structural/decorative elements of the room, we are turning to an LED Wash Light solution. This one, I have used before in theatrical applications and on photo shoots. The SPECTRA PAR, by Altman lighting, is going to get employed in a more permanent way on this job.

This is the crossing over of entertainment and architectural lighting. And knowing enough about the tools that make them different and the same. When thinking about lighting the stage, I remembered back to the results I got with the Spectra lighting people....

It seemed like the right idea.

Crown Point, Gearing Up-Pairing Down

Gear selection is a problem. The budget for Crown Point is tight. Here's the situation. The space has a lighting stock of about 50 Source Four fixtures ranging from 36 to 19 degree. They also carry 30 PAR 64's all WFL. There are 36 dimmers in this antique space. These have varying, large capacities, and are re-patched using a patch bay with sliders.

That system would be entirely adequate, if not for my needing to light a new musical act every night and create a comprehensive lighting design. For budgetary and, thankfully, artistic reasons I have really tied whatever lighting elements I pull in for environmental design to the music element. I think in the scope of the festival they share the same space for an audience member, they both represent living art the audience gets to actively participate in; whereas film, and to a much lesser extent theatre are more passive mediums. Thus the design for the environment and music need to be more alive, more personal, and more organic. To me this takes the design to a place where the entire theatre can change it's depth and form, but we can also choose to focus on individual musicians or points of interest on the stage or in the house.

There is simply not enough room in the budget for an LED and a Moving light solution. To level with everyone, my total gear budget for Crown Point is $3500, for a five week period. 4wall entertainment gave me an excellent quote on a dream package that is still about $3000 over what I can afford, before perishables.

I am going to try and pair down, it looks like renting additional dimming is out of the question and its going to be a PA’s job to run the re-patch for every play. Budget and toys are really all about resources and if we lack funding in one place we can make up for it with man-power. I hope we have lots of man-power.

Macbeth

When not ruminating on producing decisions, in my copious spare time I create lighting for theatre. ShakespeareNYC's production of Macbeth is currently running at The Beckett theater of NY's theatrerow. Despite a challenging production calendar, the show is up and looking pretty good. I wanted to share some images I have taken by Fight Choreographer and photographer, Al Foote.

Macbeth is one of my favorite plays in Shakespeare's cannon. Lighting can be created purely based on character point of view. And from there you can drive from a visual library of your own choosing. Lady Macbeth's drive to power and manipulation of her husband. Macbeth's desire to rule and his hubris, these are discussed intimately by the characters, and they can be displayed in the visual arc of the show.

As always for ShakespeareNYC, Macbeth was directed by Beverly Bullock. Her allowance for visual freedom and her fearless direction to me (it can be very dark), drove me to create a visual field of saturated color and deep contrast. While I would never call myself a designer based on subtlety, Macbeth allows for even more visual freedom. Brandon Giles set is a stark, blank canvas of floating material and black frames shaped in a flowing arc. This gave ultimate opportunity for freedom and creativity from scene to scene.



Here's some of that work.

Thoughts on New Orleans

The country is too busy watching Paris and Brittany to care about the real domestic issues of this country. I'm a New Yorker, I've been to New Orleans twice to document the ongoing tragedy of Katrina and it's aftermath.

For all those who say "why build there in the first place?" No one says that of California on a fault line, or up cyclone ally, or the Florida Coast, or Nevada which just a huge desert. New Orleans is a port city that grew into a southern metropolis and a center for culture in America. If Katrina had swung north and hit NYC, no one would have said "why built a city on an island." Enough blaming the victim. Let's come together as a nation and examine what went wrong, and why the dutch can pool resources to protect their nation, but we the richest nation in the world, can't take care of our own.

Crown Point Planning

Festival Lighting Design

When one thinks about designing lighting for a festival, for multiple plays, it becomes easy to move toward a rep plot. In New York City, every festival situation I’ve ever encountered works that way. The house or a festival designer devises a repertory light plot based on areas. Those are lit with as many of the fundamental lighting angles as can be arranged and everyone works from those confines.

I wouldn’t be working on the Crown Point Festival if that alone were to be the arrangement. As designers I think it is incumbent on us to do as much as we possibly can and collaborate as much as possible as artists. I wouldn’t work on a festival that only allowed me the resources to accomplish a simple rep, cue it and move on. Rather, I am designing each play as though it were standing alone. The only common thread among them being the cyc and scrim upstage which all but one play will be using.

Still though, common threads among these shows will inevitably creep in. Some might even be of my own creation. One of the design devices I am looking to employ as often as the festival directors are interested in, is the idea of actors physically changing their own lighting. This can meet anything from booms on dollys to practicals to calling for lighting changes. It is a way to give the audience that much more to believe in. It is , I think, a way to lay bear all of the tricks and give the audience no reason not to believe in what you have presented. I hope to make it a common thread as often as possible.

More later, had some great design meetings this week with Tom Ridgely of Persians and Stephen Brackett of Ixomia. I’ll be sharing some images and design ideas on those shows over the weekend.

30-3

I know this has very little to do with lighting...but I can't help but comment on the 30-3 game last night between the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles. If there was any doubt this is the era of power hitting in the major leagues, its put to rest now. Its all about the deep ball.

Tough to be a pitcher these days.

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

Playing right now at NYU's skirball center. I finished the slap-dash, run for your life tech of this funny, outrageous show on Sunday.

Perhaps as a theatrical designer you have never be through a Fringe Festival technical rehearsal. If not allow me to give you a sense for what one is like.

First some background....Goldfarb is a full-length musical. That is to say it's supposed to run a little over 95 minutes. The Fringe Festival allows 2x your run time for technical rehearsal. In that time you must run the show once. So in truth you have exactly the amount of your run to tech the show.

at the time of application, Goldfarb was running a 2 hours this gave us a 4 hour slot between 12:30 and 4:30 to tech. This is not my first Fringe rodeo so I came in prepped and ready for thunderdome. The skirball center is a brand new venue for NYU, only about 3 or 4 years old, 500 and some-odd seats and a proscenium house. It's very nicely equipped with a nicely maintained rep plot. With magic sheet in hand I sat at the tech table, the staff informed me that I wasn't getting a console or monitor, those were upstairs. So I began to program watching the stage and little else. Our sound team rapidly and hurriedly arranging the audio gear for a 5 piece band and 12 mic'd up actors. 90 minutes of blind writing cues as the cast runs back and forth checking props and costumes. We finally hit the top of the run.

The tension is high as I know there have been script changes since the last time I saw the show (48 hours prior). Things look pretty good, I find out a number is cut entirely, and another scene is paired down. By and large the cue sheet matched up.

There is no time for fine tuning. On the same clear-com channel as Stage Management and the backstage crew, I am trying to give my board op notes upstairs and give the SM notes on cue placement. It is a harried scene. As the show progresses the notes begin to fly as I am frantically speaking notes to the programmer, who does a nimble job keeping up with my motor mouth. The director, a friend and long time cohort knows I am doing the best I can. He is more worried about how the transitions aren't working, and the actor's are hitting his marks. The band sounds great but they are too far onto the stage and people are missing their entrances because of confusion backstage.

That was my tech for John Goldfarb.

Notes I received after opening:

1. I have a cue 80 but there was none programmed, should I disregard.
2. The belly dance number was a little dark.

Not bad.

The current plate

One might say my dance card is rather full. This fall, I will do the following....

Maintain Fulltime employment with Tirschwell and Co. (Hopefully)
Design Macbeth for ShakespeareNYC
Design 8 Plays and a rock showcase for the Crown Point Festival
Produce a fundraiser for Lively Arts Productions' Ethan Frome
Stay Sane (Hopefuly)

I will be journaling all of these things and more on this blog, but look to the Live Design blog for Crown Point Updates and for Frome, always at Ethan Frome Sings.

Yet another blog

While I think it is rather insane for me to attempt to maintain a third running blog of commentary on my career and general going's on, I also recognized that the Crown Point Festival Blog I maintain on Live Design, and the Ethan Frome Sings blog I maintain here, were not quite sufficient to cover all of what I do and what I can expect to keep doing. Right now I don't know I will be doing much by way of promotion of this blog. I think if people google me they should be able to find it, and if I get the kind of content together that is worth promoting, then perhaps I shall. Till then its me and the blogosphere.