So!………. Another roller-coaster of a week starting with last Saturday 21/01/12 spent my last weekend at home for a while catching up with friends and family. Thnkyou James & Charlie for a pleasant lunch on saturday and Dan for a funny night of Beer and mysterious shots (Coffee Tequila!).
Sunday night I traveled down to Watford to spend a day with the Philharmonia helping prepare for the new video installation Universe of Sound following the success of Re-rite. This was a 36 camera shoot of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa Pekka with the installation due to go into the Science museum later this year. The rigging had been done the day before and Lighting were making a start with a load of Spacelights!
We started early 08.00am, and began plugging up the kit, multi-viewers, SDI camera looms till we had a controll station with 4 plasmas several smaller monitors and lots of cable.
Mark from the Philharmonia had been working on a recording skeletal tracking data from the Kineckt to track Esa conducting but was having trouble with the amount of light around the place from the space-lights which was tricky. Erick may have solved the issue using some F:Stop Gel but I’m not sure if the conditions made it possible to capture this data as I wasnt there for the shoot. Hopefully he managed to capture something but sometimes its impossible to anticipate these things which crop up now and again.
We worked quite late, until we had all of the cameras out and a signal running through, at this point the whole room looked quite techie and rather matte black.
Callum, Ana’s fella came around to lend a hand and he showed me the GoPro Hero2 camera and some footage he had filmed and cut with it which looked great check out his Vimeo here: Callum Cooper. I headed back to the hotel arround 0:30 whilst Richard, Marina & Mark stayed a little later to finish off with the audio guys.
The following day I was on the train back to Newcastle at 08.00, at around 09.00 i had to call the police station as my card had been broken into on Sunday night, the window smashed and the police had had to take it away. Lucky James had my car keys so he helped me out HUGELY by traveling to where I had parked it dealing with the police on Sunday eve. Between 09.00 and 10.20 on the train travelling back I spent ages on the phone to get my car released from the compound. I was passed between departments so many times and to so many different people it was a chore to say the least! I very much dislike the 101 service to call the police, when you just want to speak to a duty sergeant at one police station it is nearly impossible to do this at ant speed! I finally got the answer to ay my car had been released, and Iain had offered to pick me up from the station so i could pick up my car, take it to auto-glass to get the window repaired then I had to leave for the airport at 15.00, to catch a flight to Berlin for 7 weeks. Thanks to Iain, i managed to get sorted and was set and in a taxi to the airport mostly on-time!
A short flight, a switch at Amsterdam and then a short flight to Tegal Berlin, I landed, grabbed my bag, and followed Jon’s directions on how to get to the apartment. i managed to get off the buss one top early and found myself a little lost until I got on the next one to Jacob station.
I was then to get the train from here to Hermanplatz, i got so far then we were transferred onto a replacement night-bus, thats what I assumed at the time and thankfully I was right! After a quick call to Jon after i got lost again, (my sense of direction can be somewhat terrible on occasions) I was in the apartment which is to be home for the next 7 weeks.
Im working video programming for 59Productions for a remount of an opera called Al Gran Sole Carico D’Amore which were staging inside a disused powerstaion on-top of the famous Tresor Nightclub which was still going at 10.00am this morning (28/01/12) as we came into work. The opera directed by Katie Mitchell is hugely complex which involves 5 live cameras filming actors acting out the scenes and this being projected and cut live above the stage where the action is happening. As well as this there is an orchestra playing a score written by Luigi Nono, Opera singers and a full choir bringing music and atmosphere to the production.
Its big, complex, geeky and exciting!
