I have been working non-stop lately. It has just been one thing to the next thing for the past few weeks, but that is the life of a lighting designer. Things started off with spring break in the middle of March. The break really meant about 2 days off, 2 days of travel and 3 solid days of work. It was more of a time to catch up on everything that is happening at school. I did manage to fly back home to the East Coast for the week. I worked a lot on laying out some ideas for the Opera I'm designing (the preliminary plot is due tomorrow, yikes!)
I also got into NYC for the day and met up with a few CalArts designers. And I was incredibly fortunate to obtain a seat to see the revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center. It was an excellent production, but if you want to see it try and find any remaining tickets now, the run looks like it is going to be sold out for a while. It was a really nice experience, because we have been working on individual scenes from the musical in our light lab class for the past few weeks. It was refreshing to see the similarities and differences from our projects to the actual show.
I also had a final paper project due for Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry, which I hope to post at some point in the future, and various light rigs and focuses at school. This past week I have spent most of my time around Orange County assisting at the South Coast Repertory theatre. The current show is a new work called ‘What They Have', as part of this Pacific Playwrights Festival. I think the play is an incredibly funny, interesting, and a very modern style piece. I think it will do well over the course of the run. There are a surprising number of CalArts alum and faculty working on the show too. It has been a very comfortable show to work on. Previews started the other day, and the show opens next week, so things are calming down a bit, but not that much. Overall, it has been great working with the LD on the show. The coolest thing in the show by far is this mobile fish tank that has LED I-Cove units and a wireless dimmer to light up the fish tank. It's pretty sweet, especially when it changes colors.
In other news, Kevin Adams going to be in town on Monday and is guest lecturing at school. Additionally, he's a CalArts alum. Seriously, alums are everywhere; I really don't try and find them. Regardless, I'm excited to hear his lecture and have class with him. A few of my design elements in the Opera are right up his alley, and I'm interested in hearing anything he has to offer about them. I was really tempted to go see Passing Strange when I was in NYC, but I'm planning on going to BLMC in May, so I figured I'd wait since the master classes are going to see it.
I think that covers just about everything that has been going on in the past 3 weeks. I have really been meaning to put up a lot of images about the Opera at school, so below are a few shots from the set model. Let me just explain how detailed this model is. Not only are there plastic lighting instruments hanging in the grid, they each have an individual fiber optic source in them to make them glow. They are not practical at all to actually light the model, but they look cool. I also have some metal bulb guards that are over some A-lamp foot lights, which were even soldered and made to scale. It's pretty crazy; the photos barely do the set any justice. So here is to a full day of working in Vectorworks and making my light plot look nice and neat. Cheers!
photos and sketches courtesy from my set designer Kit Stolen