Technical Theatre 15

Today in technical theatre we continued editing our video, but as Mo wasn't able to come in today, Elvina, Ryan and I worked on the video.
This week we were able to work a lot faster because we already know how to do the editing and stuff that we learnt last week.

We put in all the rest of the clips that we wanted to use using the same steps as last time, and it didn't take too long. But once we had used all of our available footage, we realised that we didn't have enough to cover the entire song! So frustrating, we really weren't sure what to do. We considered fading the song out, but at the point in the song where our footage finishes it sounds wrong fading out, so we eliminated that option.

We were desperately trying to think of a solution, when Ryan came up with a really cool idea. He said we could play the whole video in reverse at the end and then have it like it never happened. Elvina and I both loved this idea, and so we decided that was what we wanted to do.
But then, another obstacle arose.
Basically, we couldn't find anywhere the option to reverse clips or play them in rewind. We searched all over imovie and we couldn't find that effect anywhere. Annoyed but assuming we must have been missing something, we Googled it to find out how to do it. Our internet searches proved as fruitless as our searching around on imovie, though, we couldn't find any way to do it.
We suspected then that maybe you can't do it in version 9 of imovie, and Dominic came down and confirmed that for us. He said that in our next class he'll show us how to export our project onto another device and use different editing software to do the reverse effect, which is really nice of him.

So for now we've done all we can, and after we use the other software next class we get to start editing the completed video in terms of things like contrast and fades in and out.

Technical Theatre 14

Today we uploaded our footage onto the computer and began the process of editing it to make our music video.
It was quite a long process to upload the videos from my phone, because for some reason the phone and the computer wouldn't sync together. Dominic came in to help us out and he showed us how to upload the videos to the larger apple computer:

1. Plug my phone into the computer with the USB cable.
2. Select the files from my camera roll we wanted to use and import them into iphoto.
3. Copy the files from iphoto onto the desktop. 
4. Open imovie and create a new project, which we named "Pompeii".
5. In imovie, select "file > import videos", then select from desktop folder and select our videos. 
6. They then upload into our project on imovie. 

After we had finally managed to get our footage onto imovie (thank goodness), we watched a short instruction video on how to use imovie. 

We quickly downloaded our song "Pompeii" and uploaded it onto imovie.

Now it was time to create our music video, and these are the steps we used to select the clips we wanted, order them, and add the music track.

1. Drag the uploaded music from the event library into the project library.
2. Select the video you want to add from the event library.
3. Right click on it and select "copy".
4. Go up into the project library > right click > paste. 
5. Now you can trim the clip down in the project library to the length you want. To do this you right click on the piece of video, select "trim", then use the cutting tool at either end of the clip to cut out bits at the beginning and end you don't want, then select "done".
6. Then select the music track by clicking on it, and drag it along the whole length of the clip you have, so the music plays for the whole thing.
7. Repeat with all the footage you want to use in your final project. 

Because our project is a music video and there was already sound in our clips, we had to mute our footage so that only the song is heard. To do this we select the clip by left clicking on it and then click the little symbol of the speaker. This opens the audio controls on the clip and we turned the volume down to zero. 

We did a lot of cropping of clips today, and when we watched it back at the end it all flowed nicely, which is great to see. 

We had a proper laugh editing it today, because it was so funny watching our footage back. The time seemed to zoom by, and by the end of the session we had a total of about 1 minute of completely edited music video. 

It's looking really good now, I'm looking forward to completing it together over the next couple of weeks. 

Technical Theatre 13

Today we were able to continue shooting our music video for Bastille's Pompeii. 

When we started filming a few weeks ago we filmed a total of twenty six shots, which together came to approximately 306 seconds of footage.
Even though this is already basically enough to make up the whole time of the song, we knew that for the story of the video to be clear we needed some more shots, ones with the zombies in to explain what our main characters were running away from.
We had a few more actors from our class kindly volunteer to play these parts for us, and we headed up the our shoot location with them.

First we had to put some makeup on them, which made them look unwell and zombie like... but of course, we're on a budget! So, this is the makeup I applied: A mixture of black and red around the eyes to create a bruised effect, black streaks and cracks coming down from the eyes across the cheeks to portray decaying skin, contour-like lines in a dark shade to make the face appear slim and skeletal, and finally some red around the mouth to represent blood.

It was quite a difficult task to shoot today because there were a few obstacles in our way. One of our main actors was unable to make it, and the weather was also different to when we filmed last.
But we decided to crack on as there was nothing we could do.
We filmed with only one of our main characters and decided we will have to film a little tomorrow where something happens to the other character so that it makes sense that they're gone later in the video.

Today, as I said, we focused on seeing the zombies. We filmed some transformations and then chase scenes with them, as well as the final shot of music video, where our remaining protagonist hits a dead end and faces impending doom.
Overall our footage today was around 23 different shots, and with this, our footage from the first day of filming and whatever we manage to shoot tomorrow, we'll have more than enough footage to pick and choose from for our final product.

In total we will have over 49 separate shots compiled to create our video from. The reason we decided to film it in this style, with lots of different camera angles and different scenery too was because we want the video to be fast paced, action packed, and rather scary.
The diversity in the different shots, locations and angles will hopefully make for really interesting visuals and a thrilling kind of feel to our music video.
I especially like the shots we've done where the camera is shaky and/or moving, like where we have the camera as the perspective of the zombies chasing our protagonists.

I'm pleased with what we have now, and with the final shots we're hoping to get tomorrow the whole story in our video should be completed. Then comes the editing, which will undoubtedly be a lot of fun and a lot of work! I'm looking forward to moving on to the next step with this project.

Technical Theatre 12

Last week we performed our drama assessment: The Tempest.
In this post I am going to discuss the different technical aspects of the show, what I thought worked and what I might have changed!


I absolutely loved the lighting for the show; I found it really atmospheric and it made the contrasts between scenes and even moods very vivid.
I particularly liked the lights in two scenes, the opening shipwreck scene and the scene later on when Ariel appears as a harpy.
For the shipwreck I thought that having the whole stage in a completely blue wash looked great, particularly in correspondence with the transparent sheet we had over the front of the stage. It set the scene perfectly; a cold swarm of sea and waves.
For the harpy scene, the whole stage was red apart from a white spotlight downstage left where I appeared as Ariel and fought with Alonso and Antonio. I felt this represented the danger and darkness of the scene and the fear that the characters feel.
There wasn't any lighting that I would have done differently, I believed that it all fitted the action onstage pretty perfectly.


The soundtrack was good, too. The storm scene was really made more dramatic by the storm sounds crashing throughout the auditorium, it sounded good. At first, however, we also had Toiler on the Sea by The Stranglers playing over the storm, and I didn't think it worked. It was too loud and overshadowed the lines onstage and the storm sounds, in my opinion. For reasons like this we stopped using that song for the scene after the first performance, which I was happy with.
Something I liked was how there were specific pieces of music and sound effects used for the entrances and exits of the different characters.
My favourite sound effect used was the combination of Kas, Jerome and I's voices in the harpy scene. It sounded so cool and made a real impact, which worked better than it would have done if we just had our individual voices, I think.
All in all I was pleased with the technical audio and lights for our performances.


Today we watched the level twos, year one level threes and music certificate students perform.


I liked the lighting they used, the colours seemed to correspond to the themes of the songs and I thought the way the singers and musicians were highlighted in spotlights worked well.
There were a few audio faults which could have been improved though, such as feedback from the equipment and the volume of the microphones.


I did enjoy the performance, and I think it would be good if more of the other performing arts students came to see our drama performances. Since we go and support them, it would be nice for the gesture to be returned.

Technical Theatre 6

Homework assignment:

For our homework while Becca was away, we had to fill in a sound quiz and choose a song which we could edit thirty seconds from.
I found the sound quiz all right to do, because having the extensive research facilities like the internet made it more easily accessible to learn about the things in the quiz.
The song I chose was Arabella by the Arctic Monkeys. I chose this sound because it has really strong beats and I thought it would be good to play around with them, particularly the drumming and guitar. I also wanted to play about with editing bits of the lyrics as I thought it could sound good because Alex Turner's voice is so gorgeous.

My thoughts on the technical aspects of the second year's drama performance:

I thought that the sound and lighting for the performance really added dramatic effect to the pieces of drama, and had a large influence on the atmosphere.
The sound was used interestingly, I was particularly taken with some of the sound effects and music that they used for the third story, a nice combination of these creepy, almost inhuman sounds and eerie melodies which really made you feel on edge and like you were in the dreamland that was in the story, or rather in the main character's mind.
I also thought the lighting stood out at several points, the ones that come to mind are also from the third story, actually, although there was nice spotlighting in all three pieces at at least one point.
In the third story, the lighting turned very dark at some points and added to that dark theme of the drama, which made it look really cool.
I can't think of anything I would have changed about the technical effects for the performance, it all seemed to be perfectly on time and I thought the lighting and sound all fitted really well.

Song editing:

Today, Wednesday the 21st, we spent the lesson putting our songs into Logic Pro and editing them.
We were split into teams, my team was Ryan, Mo and I.
This is how we did it:

First, we needed to rip the music we wanted to use. To do this we had to use an MP3 converter online, by copying and pasting the Youtube urls from the videos of our songs into the converter before downloading it. Then we used ITunes to transfer it from downloads into Logic Pro.
Next, we started editing our songs, cutting them together.
We had to have thirty seconds of each of our song within our project, but the seconds could be spread about wherever we wanted them.
We listened to all three songs, Mr. Blue Sky, Body Language and Arabella, and then we decided which one we wanted to be the start of our piece of music.
We chose Body Language to start with. About seven seconds in, we cut it, and edited Mr. Blue Sky to start then, from about two seconds in.
Then we cut to the chorus of Mr. Blue Sky, then cut in the chorus of Arabella. Once the end of the Arabella chorus came, the bridge of Mr. Blue Sky came on and Arabella continued to play at the same time. Then we cut out the chorus of Body Language and set it to play at the same time as the two bits of the other song, so that all three were overlapping, with the other two being the backing to Body Language.
Arabella and Mr. Blue Sky then stopped after their instrumental parts ended, and Body Language played through to the end of the chorus and stopped, ending our whole song.
To edit the different seconds of the songs together, we had to work out which seconds we needed from the songs, and use the Split by Playhead button to cut those parts out.
At first we were just getting used to it and made a few mistakes, but once we got to grips with it it was ok.
We played it through a few times at each time the song changed to make sure the transition would sound good, and once we had put all of the clips together, we listened to it the whole way through.
Once we were sure we were happy with it, we saved our work and named it "Mr. Usher Monkey", which is the name of our team.

Technical Theatre 9

Today we worked further on the music video project, as now the difficult part came about. We had to finally choose a song to use and storyboard our video.
Mo was here this week, but he had to work with the others catching up on what we did last week, so Ryan, Elvina and I left to work on picking our song.
We had a few different options, but in the end we chose Pompeii by Bastille, because there's a fun, clear narrative to work with.

This is our idea for the video: 
It starts with a huge blackout, then fades up to meet our two central characters. They are waking up to find that the world around them is different, something frightening has happened. They see somebody writhing in pain on the floor, and they watch the person transform into being creepy and different.
They run away from them, but find that more and more people around them are changing into these weird human like creatures.
They have a close encounter where one of them is caught but saved by the other and they manage to escape. The one who got caught is infected but doesn't tell their friend.
The rest of the video is chasing around and trying to escape as the world around them "crumbles" and people continue to change, until they are the only two left and they have nowhere left to run.
Then, the infected friend changes and joins the masses, leaving our other central character all alone. This is how it ends.

This is the storyboard we drew up: 

We have to think about locations we might want to film it in over the next week.
These are some ideas I have, but we might not decide to use them:
- In and around the college as the starting point
- The fountains outside UAL
- A park
- Perhaps a closed down and abandoned underground station

Technical Theatre 7

Today in technical theatre we continued to work on our songs. 

The fourth member of our group was here this week so we added her song too, which was Maps by Maroon 5. 

We decided that the chorus of that song, which is about thirty seconds long, should play at the end of all the other songs. We put it there and made sure it sounded right, and then we learned how to edit the volume of the different tracks. 

To do this, you have to click on the automation button in Logic Pro, Then you have the option to edit the volume on each track. We made sure all of the songs were the right volume, and then we did some research to find out how to make the songs fade into one another. 

We discovered that you can use the crossfade function to do this, and we spent some time making all of the clips fade into one another. 

Then there was a moment of panic when we realised we had made a huge mistake, Becca said we weren't supposed to have the songs overlapping and playing at the same time. 

We panicked a bit because we only had about ten minutes left, but as a team we managed to rectify our mistake in time. We moved every clip along so that none of them would be playing at the same time, and fortunately it turned out to still sound good that way.
We edited the crossfades to make sure they still worked and then we saved our project. 

Close one, but you learn from your mistakes, and at least we sorted it out!

Technical Vocab

• Fresnel: Fresnels are very commonly used lanterns. They provide a short edged beam of light, which you can adjust by moving the lamp.
• Profile: Profiles provide a very direct beam of light. You control the light in a profile by moving the lens. You can further control the light with gobos and iris's.
• Spotlight: A spot light is a lantern which focuses its beam of light on one thing, and is usually used to highlight a particular person on the stage.
• Flood: A flood is a long light which can cover quite a big area of space, which when used with other floods can provide a basic cover.
• Moving lights: These are lights which you can personalize with gels and gobos and control using pan and tilt. You can have profiles and fresnels as moving lights.
• Iris: An accessory which can alter the size of a beam of light.
• Gobos: Gobos are accessories which can be added to a light to project a particular pattern or shape.
• Barn Doors: These are an attachment added to the front of a Fresnel light.
• Scrollers: A scroller changes the colour gels on a light.
• Gels: A gel is a sheet of colour which is put in a lantern to change the colour of the beam.
• DMX: DMX is what connects the light to the lighting board, and allows them to communicate with each other. Some lights need to be able to talk more using DMX than others do.
• Congo Board: The Congo Board is the panel you use to control the lighting in a theatre.
• Safety Chain: A safety chain is an accessory on a lantern, which is attached to the g-clamp, used to secure it on a lighting bar.
• G clamp: This is a small clamp used to screw in a lantern onto a lighting bar.  

Technical Theatre Assessment

Finally the time came for Jack, Elvina and I to do our assessment, which we had been planning over the last several weeks.

As Bosonova Baby played, we had to light the stage as if there was a performance happening.
This is the lighting we used:

As the song started, the entire stage lit up in a deep, warm pink colour. Then, the centre spotlight came on, quite an intense white, with a head shot light just over it, but neither of them were too bright for whoever would be singing.
We had set the shapes of the lights which shone on upstage right and upstage left to form a quarter of a circle each, and they faded up one after the other, up stage right first.
It was Elvina's job to hit "Go" on our set states at the appropriate times and make these first four lights fade on at the right time.
Once the basic lighting was set and the song got started, we had red and blue lights in two strips horizontally across the centre of the stage, two red lights and two blue, which flashed on one by one very quickly. Jack was manually controlling white lights which he made flash up at every one of a particular beat in the chorus, and Elvina and I now moved on to sliding on and off blue and green and red lights in centre stage. We controlled these manually and had them coming on and off in time during the chorus, and the bridge. The four red and blue lights we had already set continued to go off during the verses.
The bridge of the song is quite long, and it was really fun to just play around with a medley of colours during that part, the bright whites which Jack was doing, and the red, blues and greens which Elvina and I were doing.
When it went back to the chorus, we continued in the same pattern as before, fading up the red, blue, greens with each "Bosonova", having the whites flash on the beat just after that, and then playing with them all during the few musical notes where no one is singing.
On the final beats of the song, we had all of the lights go off together except for the spotlight in the centre, and that's how it ended.

My personal favourites were the blue, red and green ones which we controlled manually and the white ones which were also manually controlled, as I found it most fun to get to play around with them and decide when they should go on and off.
It was actually really cool to see our work go into practice, and to watch the stage lights knowing we were doing them.
It was awesome :)

Link to our assessment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6SntVzOFV8&app=desktop

Drama: Weeks Eleven and Twelve

Monday 8th December 2014 

Today most people performed their assesments while the rest of us observed, but Elvina, Katy and I were not able to, because unfortunately Katy was unwell. 

Tuesday 9th December 2014

Today we did our poems assessment in the recording studio, and we also watched The Tempest.

Wednesday 10th - Thursday 11th December 2014 

On these days, I worked tech on the musical theatre second year's pantomime. 

My job was to control the follow spot. 

I worked four performances in total.
It was actually pretty fun to do the follow spot, and although I thought it would be difficult to manoeuvre, it was fine really.
I had three characters I had to follow. For act one, I had the follow spot set to red, and it had to focus on the pantomime villain, the wolf.
After the interval, I changed it to pink and followed Dame Robin through a dance number, and finally I changed it to blue, and it followed the ghost in the woods.
That was it, really!
It was nice to get used to working backstage, even if it wasn't the most fascinating job to do.
I think I was being assessed on this job, and I feel that it went well.

This is the formative feedback I was given on my work for the pantomime:

You came into the role late in the production process, but you learnt the skills quickly and the director felt that you needed little guidance or direction during shows. You were confident enough to ask questions if you were unsure of what you were doing and this helped you to learn how to operate the follow spot quickly.

This is my action plan: 

My plan of action now is to continue to build on the skills I learnt from this experience, and use the knowledge it has given me for other productions that I take part in. Now I have learnt these skills once, I'd like to be able to be a bit more confident when using them again in the future.

Monday 15th December 2014

Today Katy, Elvina and I performed our assessment. I feel that it went quite well, however I was not thoroughly satisfied. I was not able to get into this particular assignment as much as our previous one, as personally I found the Greek Theatre more compelling than Our Country's Good. 

But, it was enjoyable working with Elvina and Katy, and it did all come together nicely, I think. 

Prior to performing our piece, the entire class did voice work in the morning. 

In the afternoon we sat down and discussed the Tempest, and the different parts we would all like to play. I said that I would like to play Ariel. 

Technical Theatre 5

Today in technical theatre Jack taught us how to use moving lights.

• Type in the number of the light into the keyboard and press CH/ID
• To change the intensity of the light, you scroll the wheel on the keyboard
• To use the moving lights and change the settings of them, you use the four rotating buttons
• To change the focus, you press "focus" on the keyboard and then scroll the first button around until it is where you want it
• To change the tilt, use the second button
• To change the colour, press the "colour" button on the keyboard and scroll on the first button to change it
• To switch between Gobos, press the "beam" button on the keyboard and then use the third button to scroll. To rotate the Gobo, scroll with the fourth button
• To reset the lights, press the buttons rather than scrolling on them

We also put the finishing touches to the plans of our light states for the Elvis "Bossa Nova Baby".
Jack, Elvina and I selected the rest of the colours we wanted to use and added them to our list, before sending our finished state plan to Becca.

Technical Theatre 3 and 4

Technical Theatre week 3:

Last week in technical theatre we started looking at planning and programming a state of lights.
We were shown a song, Bosonova by Elvis, and we had to split into teams and plan a state of lights for it.
In that session we were to just visualize it and see what we wanted to do with it. We looked through all of the colours and chose which ones we wanted to use.
That was our only task for last week.

Technical Theatre week 4:

So, today we went into the theatre and learnt how to program the lights on CONGO. Woo!
We watched a video on Youtube that explained the newest version of Congo and showed you how to use some of the features. It looked pretty simple, but it would still be intimidating to go up to the board...
In our separate teams, we then got to go upstairs and learn practically how to use the board.
Rebecca taught us how to set a state of lights and then record the state, then we were each given a chance to record our own state, which had to be made up of three lights.


Setting the states and recording them:

1. Choose a light you want.
2. Type the number of that light into the keyboard and then press CH/ID.
3. Type 100 into the keyboard and press @level to set the intensity of the light to the maximum.
4. Repeat the first three steps two more times to add the next two lights.
5. Highlight the three lights you just set on the screen.
6. Hold down CH/ID and press the "record" button on the keyboard.
7. Give your state a title and then press record on the screen.
8. Then, to turn on the state you just created, press "GO BACK" on the keyboard and then press "GO" on the keyboard.
9. To save the work you have done, go to the browser on the left hand side of the screen, click on the arrow next to "files" to expand that section, and then click "save" and title your work.

Technical Theatre 2

Today in Technical Theatre we prepared the theatre space for the induction performances which are happening next week, but the first thing we did was take a trip up the trap door! Pretty exciting, if a little scary.


Our job as a group was to move the scaffolding poles and rig some lights.
I worked with Elvina and Princess. Once the others had moved the scaffolding poles, with a little help from us because they're so heavy, it was our job to rig the lights.
We had to rig two Parnels onto each pole, one at head to mid height, the other at mid to shin height.
These side lights had to light the stage for dancers, so they were in zig zag formation.


We were able to rig the lights quite quickly because we learned how to do it in the first week, but we had a few issues with the G clamps being turned the wrong way, and the wing screws being too stiff. After a bit of jiggling them around with a wrench, we managed to get all of the lights rigged. Elvina, Princess and I did the four on stage left.


I find it nice and easy to rig lights, it's pretty straight forward, and we all picked it up quickly.
It was nice to go in today and have everybody get to work straight away because we all understood what we needed to do.


The course which I am on is acting, and next week for our induction performances we're doing short pieces of Greek theatre, as the practical element to our classical theatre unit.
For performing classical theatre, the lighting we'll need is just a general cover, not anything special!

Technical Theatre

Today in Technical Theatre, we learned how to rig and de-rig a light.

Here is what we learned about rigging the light:


1. The first thing you need to do is check that your lantern is fully equipped with all of the accessories it needs. For example, you should never use rig a lantern which doesn't have a safety chain attached.


2.Once you have made sure your lantern is fully prepared, take it with you to the lighting bar.


3. Place the lantern onto the bar and secure it by tightening the wing screw attached to the G Clamp.


4. Loop the safety chain around the bar, a few times if it is too long, and secure it back onto itself.


5. Focus and position the light so it points where you want. You can use the handle at the back of the light and the turning knob on the side to move it without touching the actual light.


6. On the top of the lantern you will find another wing screw. You can untighten this and it allows you to move the lantern during rigging and focusing, but then you must tighten it again to make sure that the lantern is secure.


7. Now you can plug the flex into the socket. If there is excess cable, you can wrap it loosely around the bar before plugging it in.


And this is what we learned about de-rigging the light:


You basically do the steps you just did, but in reverse.


1. Unplug the flex from the socket.


2. Take off the safety chain.


3. Untighten the wing screw and remove the lantern from the bar.

We were taught the names of different lights and what they do.

1. Fresnel: Fresnels are very commonly used lanterns. They provide a short edged beam of light, which you can adjust by moving the lamp.
2. Profile: Profiles can provide a very direct beam of light. You control the light in a profile by moving the lens. You can further control the light with gobos and iris's.
3. Flood: Floods can light large areas of the stage, but you can't control the beam of light from them.
4. Parcan: Parcans are like floods, but not as intense. The beam from the Parcan can be controlled using the lamp itself.
5. Follow spot: Follow spots are also very commonly used. The beam of light they provide is a circle which can focus on an actor and follow them around the stage.

We were also taught the names of some different accessories.

Barndoor
Gel frame
Safety Chain
Gobo
Iris
Gel
Shutters