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.
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/
