Taniith’s Relto

Well, I guess I might as well get on with it. I’m bored anyway ;p

So, Les Mis. The show went well, all things considered. If we had had one more week (One Week More!… sorry), then we might have been even better, but I can’t complain all that much. I still think I would have made a better Javert, but I think our Valjean really pulled his act together…. I didn’t even realize that he had lines written on his hands on opening night!

So, lets see. Thursday (opening), I was writing cues for the battles 40 minutes before the show opened… then I had to hang a light/make a gobo for a star field 20 minutes before the show opened… (oh, and by opened, I mean started… not the doors). But other than that, things ran well.

Friday was good, except that the barricade wouldn’t come out. On Thursday, they had trouble putting it away, and so they rammed it into its box thingy and broke something. Well, Marty got some sleep for the first time in ages on Thursday night, and then fixed the wrong thing on Friday. Essentially, there are two similar strips of wood… one that does god only knows what, and one that is wider than the entrance. The second is to be pulled out of the way to slide the barricade out, but he accidentally screwed it down, and then didn’t test it.

Everyone was freaking out on the headsets, and then suddenly they were all asking ME what to do! I thought I knew what was wrong (I assumed that it had never been repaired and that a piece was in the way that had broken off), so I said to send costumed actors out during Eponine’s death to pull the thing away. Well, they were too loud, the death moved too far center (right in front of where the barricade was to go), and it wasn’t nearly as dark as I thought it would be. Regardless though, we settled on using chairs to portray the barricade. Tina, our director, was talking to me about it, and commenting on our resourcefulness… and then mentioned how much she wanted to kill “whoever suggested sending people out during Eponine’s death!” Oops…

Oh, and I made a joke, after we decided nothing could be done, that someone should get Marty into costume. Well, Marty later told me that the guy on headset for sound actually told him that we wanted him on stage. Marty’s response, as we discussed it later, was something like: “What am I supposed to do, go up there with a period screw gun?! An 1840s Makita?” Very funny. Oh, and I later learned that Ms. Yolles was also wondering what I would do in the situation…. somehow I have acquired that role o_O.

Saturday was the big one though. First, the haze machine decided that it wanted to stop working. It did this often…. when it was on for an arbitrary length of time, it would stop working until it was un-plugged and then plugged back in. No wait to re-plug it. *shrug*

Then, the headsets to backstage died less than halfway into the first act. We couldn’t tell them when it was safe to move the bridge (They managed to do it flawlessly anyway), I couldn’t cue the fog (he got it right… if a tad too little), but I told everyone not to tell Marty till after the show. He was there with his kids, and he is always pushing his whole ‘it’s your show on opening night’ thing. So, we dealt with it and I told him on Monday. I fixed the hazer, and Adam fixed the headsets. He had run the cable from his belt pack to backstage such that the cable ended right behind a speaker onstage. One more foot and it would have been backstage and fixable, but he made things difficult. Needless to say, I came up with a contingency plan in case they decided to stop working again; aka, the old crappy Radioshack headsets were backstage, so I gave one to Dave Weintraub and took the others to the balcony. We didn’t need them.

All in all, I was very happy with the show, and even now I keep getting praise about my lighting! I mean, I’m used to being included in the “that show was wonderfull” comments, but I’ve been getting a lot of “The lighting was amazing,” and, “Those lights really held up the show!” comments. It is nice :)

Oh yeah…. my nails are currently painted with some nailpolish that changed between purple and green depending on the light/angle. What can I say…. it was Julia’s birthday, and she wouldn’t stop asking to do it *shrug*

-Taniith

Ok, so my google front-page has a lot of feeds coming into it. One of them was there automatically when I first set it up, and it gives constantly changing links to “advice” from wikihow.com. I find the following to be absolutely pathetic…. How to Be Happy. I mean, honestly! Figure it out for yourself! Don’t use some stupid website to try and ‘learn’ it.

Oh, and I know you are probably wondering why I haven’t made a poast about Les Mis yet….. well, I am still unwinding from it. I have strike today, and then I will try to make a nice long one. Lots of interesting stuff to talk about.

Also, once I get the portfolio back from Ms Zuckerman, I might put up some of the better pieces from the Film and Writing class that I took. I’ve been encouraged by people to share them.

-Taniith

PS Blogger is owned by Google, and yet the spellcheck doesn’t know the word “Google” ;P

Thank you Alex Firer!

-Taniith

Linky

Well, I just got back from a rehearsal…. erm, tech day. Sorry, my mind is nearly offline again. Hey, last time it happened was in crunch time for Blackout. I got there after a nerve wracking night/morning trying to deal with getting some version of last week’s rehearsal off of my computer onto a disk. My laptop is in the show, and using the network to use my brother’s DVD burner was impossible, so I gave up until 1 PM last night, when I figured out that I could make one of those Super-Video CDs like I did for Hedwig’s rehearsal.

So they have finally gotten me to go up AND sit on the top of the tressel ladder. Well, not really they. The full credit goes out to Marjorie for persevering even after Marty told her that she was wasting her time (”he’ll go up when he feels like he has to”). Its not all that bad once you get up, its just swinging your leg over the top to get up and down/the transition to the vertical part that is scary.

So yeah, I finally left at about 9 this morning, after leaving school last night at about 10/10:30 PM. It was raining, and I had never driven at night before…. but I didn’t realize that problem until after it was night so I figured I might as well just do what I needed to do before I left.

I left Beaver tonight at about 12:30 AM. More night, heavier rain.

But yeah, 20 minutes before we were going to start (hours late I might add), Dan walked in. He proceeded to fix our broken dimmer, give me some tips, tell us some more Beaver Tech history, and “indefinitely” lend us his homemade stagepin A/B switcher box. Nice guy.

Well, I have pulled two late nights in a row on the musical of my senior year a week before the show goes up. I was there past midnight tonight, being the second to last person out (Marty was still there, though our director left about a half hour earlier), and I went to Eagles with Marjorie for lunch. All in all, I feel I have fulfilled my duty as Student Head of the Tech Crew.

I think I wanted to say other stuff, but as can clearly be seen, this is already becoming unintelligible.

I need sleep.

-Taniith

So the rental order came in yesterday. The moving lights are SOOOOO COOL! I’ll tell you more about them some other time (or you could come see the show….), but I have a funny story for now.

So, I was having some trouble with one of them…. not keeping my programming, overheating/shutting off by itself. So finally today Marty told me to give ALPS a call. So someone answered at the front, and I told them that I had a moving light rental and needed some technical help. So they transferred me to a woman to help me. She took the info, said it sounded like a fan problem, and went to get someone from service.

Dan: Hi, this is Dan.
Me: Hi…. did Nicole tell you the problem?
D: Yep
M: Any advice?
D: Well first I’m gonna need some more info…. what kinda units are they?
M: Mac 250 +
D: Maaac……. two-fiftyyy……….. Plusss. Ok, what space are they in, Bradley or the Black box?
M: (Pause for a minute since I know the people I’ve met at ALPS don’t know our spaces)…. Uhhhh, Bradley….
D: Ok…. Oh, I’m class of ‘95 by the way, so I know the spaces :)

Ok, so he didn’t really smile through the phone, but I can imagine. I don’t know about you, but I found this to be hilarious! Out of the blue, I happen to get the technician who is also a Beaver alum! He’s stopping by tomorrow with another unit to swap with ours. How’s that for service!

I wish Alienware did that…..

-Taniith

There’s also a press release. I am just totally excited by this! Hopefully we wont have to use the GameTap client to access it, but I guess I could live with that to be able to have Live back again!

-Taniith

PS. StarLogo is angry at me. Somehow I keep using the programming languages for this programming course and finding the one thing that I need to be done incorrectly in the documentation so I can’t use it!