Almost all of the Les Miserable Korea tech team
I’m sat here on the flight back from Soul after spending 2 weeks working on the install of Les Miserable Korea, which will run in Blue Square theatre, Seoul until August this year (2013). I think the last post I did we were just commissioning the automation floor tracks which involved spending allot of time on the floor on our backs tighining bolts and tweaking pulleys.
The following week we were into tech rehearsals where, generally in the morning, we did allot of running around fixing and maintaining stuff and then the rest of the afternoon was sporadic work when we got access to the stage.
It was around this time when we got into later starts so I decided to go for a run around he area by the hotel. I had sort of planned a route in my head and had a look on Google maps so I kind of had an idea where I was going. What actually happened was different, I ended up running to Seoul tower which was quite hard work but the park area its located in is pretty nice. However, on the way back down the hill I took a wrong turn and ended up not where I thought I was going to end up, I was lost! Luckly there was a police station near buy and one of the officers spoke English so she pointed me in the right direction and after another 30 mins of running I was back at the hotel, panic over!
My unexpected running route
Later in the week we did a projector clean and then a lamp change for the long run in Seoul. There was quite a bit dust on the robot/filters but with a good bush and some dry air combined with the new bulbs the image was rather punchy again.
Steep angles and wide lenses, such a small distance from the lens to the screen
The projection on the show consists of 4 projectors all together. 3 x onstage soft edge blended pointing at the back wall at quite an acute angle, and one out front which covers various scenic elements of the set, such as the show cloth and the sliders. All of the media playback and main/backup switching is handled by a pair of Catalyst servers, which in turn is controlled by the Eos lighting console.
Black projection surface which takes the image quite well.
Later on in the week when we all had a day off, Simon, Dickie, Ali, Booney and myself decided to have a walk up to Seoul tower and actually go up the tower to see the views. It was quite a warm day the steep hills on the way up got our hearts beating!
Ali, Dickie, Booney, Simon
During the last few days there was quite allot of time where we were unable to do any work on the show when they were rehearsing. So together with Simon combined with is VB knowledge and understudying of the automation system software and my skills in VVVV we collectively created a Les Miserable Automation set visualiser. This receved packets of UDP data from the automation which we could read the encoder count and axis number. From here we created a very basic 3D virtual world of the set which moved in real time when the physical set moved onstage.
Before we knew it it was opening night, he show went well and we all had snack and drinks in the restaurant adjoined to the theatre. It was good to see everyone the and have a good chat now that all the work was finally done. Ive met some really nice people whilst doing this job during all 3 visits to Korea, it was nice to be going home but also sad to be saying goodbye. What was disconcerting was the currently escalating concerns about North Korea and the war threats. What felt horrible was that even though we were flying home the following day was that for our Korean friends Seoul is their home at threat. I really hope the situation gets sorted.
We’ve had brilliant translators on this job who’ve helped make things easier helping us communicate and negotiate with the non English speaking crew. Also thank you Tina & Heaven for my Korean name “Sang Soo Kim”, which kind of translates to Stage Left Smith.
Tina, Heaven, Myself & Simon : photo taken by BJ