Ain't It Cool?

Random cool things from the interweb:

Flash Cartoon: Animator vs. Animation
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34244097/

Bizarre News: Law requires New Mexico to grow its own pot (Associated Press)
http://www.newsone.ca/hinesbergjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=22351

Fun Fact: Saturday's Full Moon Offers Strange Illusion
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070629/sc_space/saturdaysfullmoonoffersstrangeillusion

Change-over for my last Cortland Rep show tonight. Newport, RI in only a few days :-)

Ratatouille Review

Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille

Ratatouille (rat-a-too-ie) is a very strong entry into the stellar Pixar lineup and delivers on the promises made in the trailer. I'll avoid the recap, there are enough of those all over the net, and you are probably familiar with the premise of a rat living in Paris who longs to be a chef. The picture focuses heavily on this main character, Remy the Rat, and this is refreshing for a Pixar film. There are a number of great action sequences, you can almost set your watch to them, as they appear every 7 minutes or so, and though they are clearly there to keep the kiddies awake through all the "book" scenes, are integrated well-enough into the story to be successful. Particularly successful is the water pipe sequence early in the film. There is a great payoff when the camera slowly raises to reveal Paris on a beautiful summer evening.

Another item in the film that was clearly a "problem-solver" is the narrative between Remy, the protagonist, and the famous chef that is the figment of his imagination. Its a tad awkward, but its better than having the main character be silent for 80% if the film. There are a few strange "acting" moments, when things are made overly broad to communicate them more clearly, but not enough to spoil the picture by any means. As always in a Pixar film, the characters are very well developed, believable, and certainly have you rooting for them.

Ultimately, the story is strong, there are many beautiful sequences, and the characters are memorable, but it never achieves the epic of Finding Nemo or The Lion King. Feel free to post what y'all think if you see it.

Odds & Ends: the end credits stylistically look remarkably like the drawings done for Monsters, Inc.; the opening short is like a slapstick version of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs... very entertaining; the original director of Ratatoille was replaced, and some of the "fixes" I refer to above seem like they stem from this change; the title is not that name of the main character, as I thought, but does play an important role in the film; the preview for Pixar's next adventure WALL*E looks great, and even further from the mold then this one.

Mystery Light Revealed

The Mystery Light first reported on two weeks ago has been officially announced. Welcome the High End Systems Showgun:
Not a diminutive light to be sure. Without having the sense of scale of the thing before, I didn't realize that this light is clearly to compete with Martin's newly acquired Big Light range and of course, Syncrolite. The light claims to use a "proprietary, optically accurate polymer microfresnel lens allowing SHOWGUN to produce a true focused hard-edge or a brilliant soft-edge combination." The LEDs can either be custom mixed, mimic the color of the light, or automatically mix its contrasting color. See more at the product's website.


In a personal news, this morning something I thought I'd never see again came to be.
That's right, a completely empty inbox. Those of you who aren't at Carnegie Mellon probably don't truly appreciate what a feat this is, I'm sure once September hits I'll go back to averaging 20 new emails a day. Sigh. But for now, we celebrate!

LDI via ETC for JSR

I've just been informed that I'll be attending LDI this year courtesy of Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc. For those of you who aren't lighting dorks, LDI is the largest convention the lighting industry has and is held every year in Las Vegas or Orlando (it's an Orlando year this time around). I applied for the scholarship way back in March and had completely forgotten about it, so it was certainly a pleasant surprise to find out I had received it yesterday. It includes airfare, meals, hotel, passes, and of course, SWAG. Also really cool is that ETC heavily promotes the scholarship winners online and in national media (Live Design, PLSN, etc...), so just maybe I'll get my name in one of those :-) Also, everyone be sure to support ETC for their generosity, perhaps by purchasing a lovely new Eos:


Trust me, it's way more fun than the BMW you were gonna purchase with that $40k you had lying around. Random thought of the day: while Broadway is busy gushing over a musical about Puberty (Spring Awakening Box Office Ignites Post-Tonys). Here in upstate New York everyone is standing in line to get tickets to a show about the other change, as Menopause: The Musical returns for another smash engagement at Syracuse Stage. What a difference a couple hundred miles can make.

Don't Hassle the HOF

Yesterday, I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) with Ellen from the costume shop. First let me say that as a New Englander/New Yorker/Pittsburghhher I couldn't stand being so far from civilization on the two hour drive-- and its only 80 miles away, yeah, THAT rural. Cortland is tha largest town on the trip, we went through towns that in their center had one restaurant and a church.

Anyway, back to the Hall. For the most part it was very well put together. The only weak parts were the "The Art of Baseball" and the multi-media presentation which could be described as "Disney's Epcot presents the Wonder and History of Baseball," the best line from the movie was, I shit you not, "There will always be baseball, because baseball celebrates life." Wow.

The best exhibit, by far, was the collection of materials from the Negro Leagues and the integration of African Americans into baseball. And I say that with no intent to seem politically correct. The exhibit itself was very well set up, with a timeline showing US history above a line showing baseball history, and appropraite artifacts on the wall above the timelines. It had several multimedia kiosks where you could learn more about specific items in the exhibit as well.

Not nearly as groundbreaking, but also interesting were the Babe Ruth section (I never knew that he only ever pitched 5 games for the NY Yankees) and the section on the ballparks and the fans. I didn't get to see Curt Schilling's bloody sock from the 2004 ALCS, don't know if I missed it or if it's no longer there. I would encourage anyone near the area to check it out, even if it means a few hour drive. Next on the agenda is the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH-- only 2 short hours away once I get back to Pittsburgh.

I Dream of Genie

So, I don't know if it was all the wine and cheese I consumed last night at "Dip Night" (which was amazing by the way). But I had quite the collection of odd dreams, including being questioned by police for haning outside a house the didn't belong to me, and being the architect of a luxy home.

But the prizewinner was about driving around in a fully extended (~35ft.) Genie Lift at night. The dream was a repetition of the same path three times, some of which included roads from my hometown in Somerset, MA, while others were from the dream "backlot" I've developed-- that's right, I've got a whole cache of falsefronts and flats available just for use in crazy dreams. Other highlights from this dream were forgetting to turn the lights on while driving the Genie (yep, it had headlights) and at the finale crashing into a large tree.

Off to Cooperstown later today to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame, full report tomorrow!

Wine Country

Yesterday I went along the Cayuga Wine Trail (in the Finger Lakes region of central New York) with my Mom, up to visit and see one of my shows at Cortand Rep, and her best friend Sue. Most of the vineyards are solid and the scenery is gorgeous.... Speaking of gorges (nice segue, hunh?) we also took some time out for the short hike to Taughannock Falls. First of all, Taughannock has to be my absolute favorite word... Taw-gaaan-ook. If I ever direct a Cirque du Soleil show, this is what it will be called. Not only is it a beautiful waterfall, but it also reminded me of being there with my Syracuse pals just before we graduated, almost exactly a year ago, and all the things that have happened to me since then. I got a little nostalgic/sad at the thought of it, but there've been some really great times since then, and with luck there'll be some great stuff just over the horizon. It was a beautiful day for it, cool without a breeze so walking was fun. Overall it was a great day.

As for the vineyards, in order from worst to best, they were Thirsty Owl (1 star), Lucas Vineyards (1 star), Bellweather Hard Cider (2 stars), Six Mile Creek (2.5 stars), Goose Watch (2.5 stars), Hosmer Winery (3 stars), Americana (4 stars), and the absolute favorite, Buttonwood Grove (5 stars).

The region definitely does best with white wines and wines that are very sweet or very dry. I found the desert wines and chardonnays to be particularly good throughout the day, with honorable mention going to the "Cayuga Whites" which are made by a special grape bred at Cornell University, specifically for the region. With that said, drum roll please, and the 2007 Wine Tour picks are (fumbles around with envelope)...........

Buttonwood Miss Kassie
Buttonwood Reserve Chardonney
Goose Watch Classic Cream Sherry
Six Mile Creek Reserve Chardonnay

Honorable Mention:
Americana Sweet Rosie and Americana Cayuga White

Industry News

Color Kinetics, innovator in the LED products market, has been purchased by Philips. I am not surprised at all by the transaction, I fully expected it to happen, but I am surprised by the timing... I thought we were still two years away from seeing this company swallowed up. My guess is that the recent legislation in Europe and Australia to eliminate the use of incandescent fixtures helped push the time frame on this one. It also makes sense that Philips wanted to get a jump on this before the industry heavyweight General Electric got into the mix (for the record, GE's market capitalization is $400 Billion... yep, that's a B).

MORE: http://livedesignonline.com/news/color_kinetics_acuisition_philips/

There Goes the Neighborhood

The Tony's are going to the dogs. That's right, those slovenly half-wit technicians commonly referred to as "Sound Designers" are now eligible for not one, but two Tony Awards (best play and best musical). Clearly we simply need to placate the poor folks' inferiority complex by making them feel equal to the big boys. I guess I can stomache Sound Design as a category, I have seen a solid half-dozen productions where it actually felt like design (KA, LOVE, and Lestat come to mind). I do think it would have been better to have one Tony for Sound Design (musical/ non-musical together) and the other for Music Composition for a Straight Play, but that's splitting hairs. Let's just pray that Projections Design and Hair/Make-up Design aren't next-- it's getting crowded in the TONY row at tech meetings.

Live Design Article on the Inclusion of Sound Design

In all seriousness, here's hoping that recognition of sounds helps further the area, much as it did for lighting design which also started being recognized (1970) before it fully found itself.

1 out of 3 Ain't Bad

I get to recue How the Other Half Loves todaybecause of the electrical storm we had yesterday. For most of the day we were down to one phase of our three phase power. We got the rest back just in time to run the preview, only to discover that two of the four dimmers are seriously pissed off. After some repatching we at least had a show with frontlight. I'm more over than I can tell you. And that's before we lost a phase again during a second lightning storm at the end of the show.

To make it worse the important phone call I alluded to earlier got pushed back some indefinite length of time... sad. Starting to wonder if it might not actually happen. Today's agenda includes bringing the two cranky dimmers in for diagnostics/repair and recueing the show collapsed into two dimmers. Where's the booze?

Your... Ghost Host

Your Cadaverous Palor Betrays and Aura of Foreboding.

Look familiar? All I could think to myself when I walked in to the 1890s house in Cortland, New York was the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. Sadly, the staff had no sense of theatricality and denied up and down that not only was the place not haunted, but they lived on the third floor and nothing creepy ever happens there. What a bummer. All I can say is that with a little flair they could make way more then $3 for students and $5 for adults when their open between 1-4pm on weekdays. So what exactly were we paying for if not a creepy haunted house? A house built by the inventor of screens.... that's right, metal screens. The house did have some intriguing architecture and would be incredibly lavish is built today.
In other news, I've got an extremely important phone call to make soon... Am I Ready?

Mystery Light

Seems High End Systems is trying to generate some buzz factor by slowly leaking out information about their first new moving yoke fixture in years (not counting the "digital lights" they've been creaming themselves over). Showgun is either HES's code name for the light or the actual release name (my guess is the latter). Anyone know more? You can view two impressive videos of the light at: http://www.highend.com/hesdirect/showgun/ and http://creative.highend.com/showgun/

It appears to be a light aimed at creating very bright aerial graphics with the added cool-factor of a ring of LEDs around the main lens. From the video it appears to technically be a wash light, though with a very narrow beam and some simple gobo capabilities. The second video includes shootout between the Showgun and a Studio Spot 575, and quite obviously the Showgun puts its older brother to shame given it's 2kw source.

Welcome to WAL-MART

I again had Dunkin Donuts issues this morning. After waiting in line at the Carousel Center in Syracuse, NY I ordered "A seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese." Now, the cashier had to re-enter this information because, the "ham, egg, and cheese" option must be selected BEFORE the "seasame" option. She asked if I wanted anything else and I responded "Medium French Vanilla regul... (ahemm) cream and sugar" (grumble). And guess what. We get to start from scratch because the "Value Combo #4," which I now had qualified for, has to be ordered first.

So the correct syntax is not the natural, "I would like a seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese and a french vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Nope, it's "Value Combo #4, medium, ham, egg, and cheese, on a bagel, seasame. French vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Okay, not the end of the world. But for all the flack we give minimum wage employees for being incompetent, we've also set them up to fail. It should be spectacularly easy to write a software program that allows options to be selected in any order, and then parses them when the "total" button is pressed. They're screwed from the get go much like the irritating "Welcome to Walmart" people who are required to welcome you even if there is a huge line forming at the only open cash register. Seems the middle-management operations-types making 10x what their underlings do aren't any smarter.

Milestones

With all the mini-milestones lately I've neglected to mention that the Mazda3 turned 10... 10,000 miles that is, on the way down to NYC. It was 1am and I was driving down the highway at 75 miles an hour so I was robbed of the perfect rollover pictures (although it's a digital odometer so it would have left something to be desired anyway). The best I could capture with one free hand was this, but certainly something to commemorate nonetheless.

Also, I finally got my pictures from Almost Heaven photoshoped. Click here for more.

Getting colder

HA! Thanks to the TONY Awards I am now one step closer and am only 2 degrees from Kevin Bacon. This breaks the 3 degrees record set only 6 months ago:
Jason Read lit Incognito starring Michael Fosberg
Michael Fosberg was in The Presidio with Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan was in In The Cut with Kevin Bacon

The new Jason Read-Kevin Bacon seperation is:
Jason Read assisted the Tony awards with Frank Langella
Frank Langella is in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon

8:00:12:01

I was watching from the production truck when at exactly 8PM, 0 minutes, 12 seconds, and 1 frame the video signal from the truck cleared the 12 second censoring delay and my life had changed by just a little bit. At that moment the Tony Awards were live on CBS and for the first time I was part of the lighting design team for a nationally televised event. But let's start from the top.

Production morning definitely came with a different feel from the days before. We were doing last minute notes getting ready for a full dress rehearsal that included all the performances live, all the presenters, and a live audience. When that was over we barely had enough time to distribute notes to the three light board ops before lunch break.

After lunch was another run-through, this time dry-- no live performances or audience, and with stand-ins announcing and receiving the awards. Some point after the second run-through was over it all became a blur. It seamed I barely had time to get into my dress blacks before the red carpet arrivals were coming in. I rushed to get a program for my parents, only to be turned down by some woman who will be a probably be a dung beetle in her next life. I spent some time guarding the moving light board operator's line of sight to the stage from the 12 photographers (the guy from USA TODAY kept unsuccessfully hitting on the production escort for the photographers).

At 6:55 I left the house to go to the production truck. The "Creative Arts Awards" began filming live to tape at 7:10 and we cut it extremely close to clipping the front of the true telecast. First major drama of the night came when the HVAC was sucking all the haze out of the air and the lighting designer had to turn off the air conditioning in the theater to restore it for the "A Chorus Line" opening, which brings us back to where I started. The first shots of the evening were the ones we taped Thursday and Friday nights in front of Radio City. If you looked closely you could tell that the streets were shut down when we showed the dancers, but when we showed Marvin playing the piano there were cars on the street.

I stayed in the truck until the end of the third act when I went out to the moving light console to watch Mary Poppins perform in act four, and stayed for the performanceless act five. Act six had Marg Helgenberger (you know, Catherine Willows from CSI) so I went back stage for that and got to see her (she's about average height). I was back in the truck for acts seven, eight, and nine, before finishing the night backstage and in the process bumping into Zach Braff (surprisingly tall), Fantasia (plus entourage), Matt Cavenaugh (the "Grey Gaah-dens" dude), and Angela Landsbury. Everyone was out of there by 11:15PM. It was an truly incredible night, one of those times that I won't soon forget. I learned a lot, had fun, and got to be a small part of something big. There are tons more stories to tell and I'll probably post some more tomorrow, but feel free to give me a call and chat.

Anything can happen if you let it.

Quickie

Last chance for me to remind everyone to watch the 2007 Tony Awards tomorrow night at 8PM. The morning production meeting starts at 8AM, so it'll be a 16 hour day.

Full details of the craziness when I get back to Cortland on Monday. Oh, and for anyone near there, go check out "Almost Heaven".... it actually ended up being really good (funny how that always happens after god-awful previews).

Almost Hell

Preview went relatively awful last night. Why? Well that's a story for another day.

But here's the schedule for the next two weeks:
Almost Heaven (lighting design) opens today, 6/6
2007 Tony Awards (lighting assistant) telecast Sunday 6/10
How the Other Half Loves (lighting design) opens 6/20

That's right, two shows and a national telecast in the footprint of exactly TWO WEEKS! Needless to say, if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm not dead.... or maybe I will be?

Your Attention Please

It is often said that our collective attention spans are being diminished by the influx of advertising, 30 minutes television programs, hell 12 minute television program (yeah Aqua Teen). I've certainly held and voiced that opinion. Recently in a conversation I witnessed the length of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 came up. On one side, one who felt that the film was boring and too long, on the other, one who felt that the film was great and the other person simply couldn't handle a cinematic masterpiece of such girth. It got me to thinking, Pirates 3 is a dumb summer popcorn flick (see review below), and it runs an ass-numbing 2 hours 45 minutes. How can this be if we're so collectively ADD?

Here's an interesting comparison:
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End -- 165 minutes -- 2007
Citizen Kane -- 119 minutes -- 1941
Casablanca -- 102 minutes -- 1942
Wizard of Oz -- 108 minutes -- 1939

Here we have a dumb, summer, loud-explosions movie clocking in significantly longer than 3 films that rank in the top 10 of the "AFI 100", that is, the American Film Institute's top 100 films of all time. Maybe we're not becoming such sheep after all. Could this possibly be a "when I was a kid we used to walk up hill in the snow... both ways" perceptual bias? I'm starting to think so. What do you guys think?