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of interest…….

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    One Week

    Saturday the 5tth October and I’m back Santander to do the second leg of Los Miserable the 2013 Spanish tour of the show. Its been a mad week, generally its always a mad week which pretty goes for all of 2013 so far and I don’t expect to change anytime soon. I haven’t posted a blog since June, allot has happened between then and now, and I may touch on that someday but for now lets get back to this week.

    Last Friday I had a flight to catch to London I had been working in Santander for the week doing the initial video of Los Miserable, it was a tough long days, quite allot of fault finding, but by then end of the week the setup was in a good state for me to leave it for the week, I was slightly worried that there wasn’t going to be enough time but somehow along with some ‘unforeseen complications’ it all came together in the end.

    I arrived in London, Friday evening, eventually found the apartment I was staying in for the night and had arranged to meet Joe and his wife for some CHEESE AND WINE. It was a great catch-up, lots of geeky talk and discussing what project wed been working on, strangely we had been working on allot of the same thing from different angles and didn’t realise.  The cheese and wine just wasn’t enough so we ended up going to the new Five Guys burger joint in town. I was a bit dubious abut cuing for a burger and almost got the grump on but it was actually worth the wait. Good food, and craic to end the night.

    Saturday morning I managed to drag myself out for a run, it had been exactly a month since the last time I had been for a run, far too long, it was good but also felt like I hadn’t been for a run for quite a while. I met Megs for breakfast and a coffee we both chatted about stuff choked and said goodbye
    An hour or two later I was at Gatwick meeting everyone from the Team on Boy Blue entertainments new show “The Five & The Prophecy of Prana”. Ive been programming for  Yeast Culture who are responsible for video and set design of this pretty fun show. It was a relentless week, early starts, late finishes, lots of hours spent programming internally in catalyst and staring at screens but it’s a good team, and I think we all managed to play out part and keep moral up throughout.

    These are one of the set elements from TheFive which were projection onto, I’m going to wait until the press is over before posting any proper pictures un here but I can safely say the show is great fun, there are some incredible dances, not only dancing but martial arts too.

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    And then it was July!!!

    I seem to be getting quite consistent at leaving big gaps between blog updates so I’ve gave myself a 40minute sot this morning to get a short update done. I use the term update in the most cage terminology as LOADS has happened sing the mast update, I’m going to aim to do more frequent updates in smaller bite size chunks!

    So, I wasn’t going to post this bit for a while, but after some thought here it is. During the last couple of days of the UOS Birmingham fit up I got hit by a car and this is what was left of my suitcase.

    It was quite a surreal thing which happened I remember quite a bit but not the whole thing. I was crossing a traffic light crossing and a guy ran a red light, the police said that after watching the footage i hit the bonnet, then the windscreen, went up in the air, and then rolled off onto the road after coming down again. I do remember standing up, putting my hands on my head and shouting “fuck” quite frequently. The people around ushered me to the side of the road where there was a bench, made me sit down, called an ambulance, a motorcycle paramedic stopped, the driver of the car came over and then an ambulance turned up. The whole thing was just surreal, I called Steve and Rich who were in the building just up from the traffic lights and rich came to the ambulance. After getting checked over and hearing the rhythm of my breakbeat heart beat on the monitoring machine the paramedics said I was remarkably ok, I had gotten away with only bloody elbows and some deep bruising all over my body. I keep saying this and everyone else keeps saying it since, “I am such a lucky bastard to walk away from this”.

    I Spoke to the driver the following day as I had to claim for my case and damaged phone, he was probably as shaken as I was. It was good to chat but also, again, quite surreal, he was just a normal chap who had lost concentration for a split second and ran a red light, in all circumstances were both lucky. Two months on I still have pink elbows and a little cartilage lump on my leg, “Lucky bastard…….”

    Following Birmingham it was a short break, very brief trip to newcastle then a flight to hamburg to take out Re-Rite which had been up and running in the basement of the Elbphilharmonie.  Below, as a homage to Stephen Bewley, Edd does the getout in his smartest clothes.
    On a side note, the Philharmonia digital department has been nominated for an award by the pro sound awards for best touring installation, fingers crossed for the awards in september.

    Following on from  Hamburg I was working with Karl Bromage doing a project for Stage One which involves translating Artnet lighting data into a table in some custom software and then passing this on over HUGE a network via TCP to some custom electronics. I guess thats all I can say at the moment. Below,  computers galore surrounded by an Envy, MBP, Envy, ASUS, and a custom Amplicon. This was a great week and we got a hell of allot done!

    Now were into the start of July,where I was at the Royal Opera House, working for Tal Rosner on behalf of ArtAV. It was really nice to be working with Tal, and our composer Chris, this was a R&D week commissioned by the ROH, sometimes bizarre, sometimes hectic but more often quite fun!

    Faces in places! They’re  everywhere, I don’t know how many photos I have on my phone now but heres a recent one.

     

     

     

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  • A Philharmonia month!

    This busy period had been approaching since mid last year when Rich told me that the Philhamonia/Rite digital and multiple bookings for various projects practically back to back in a very short period of time. The projects are Universe of sound and re-rite, 2 of the Philharmoinas sucessful video instalations consiting of many projectors and LED tv screens playing back synchronised recorded footage of the orchestra so visitors to the installation can find themselves inside the orchestra via the medium of sound and video. Both projects Universe of sound and Re-rite are similar on the surface but both required their own set of planning and logistics for each one of the venues they were touring to. In addition to this, there were two concurrent bookings for Re-Rite which meant a second entire system needed to be built to fulfil this! The diary went something like this..

    Canterbury Christ church install of universe of sound.
    Steve, John, Rich, Bob, Graham, Bea, Greg, Ash, Adam, Matt & Myself

    Halfway through the install Bob, Graham, Steve, Bea, Ash go to Salzberg to begin the install of re-rite. The rest of us stay on and completer the install and open onetime on press night.

    Rich flys to Salzberg to oversee the install and Myself/Iain/Richard fly to Hamburg to begin the install of Re-rite hamburg. After 1 day in Hamburg marking up the site  Bob and Graham join us to carry on the install and then later we wee joined by Dicky and John.
    Rich fly out to Hamburg just before opening to oversee things and then we have 2 press nights.

    At this point there are 3 of the Philharmonias video installations up and running in Canterbury/Salzberg & Hamburg. After a short break of a few days Steve, Rich go to Canterbury and meet Amy, Greg, John and the others to take out the instalation of UOS Canterbury. A couple of days later we (Rich, Steve, John, Bea, Bob, Graham and myself) are all back together in Birmingham to begin the install of Universe of Sound Birmingham! Currently where are well ontrack with the install and all is looking really good, at this point Bob, Graham and Ash are taking out the install of Re-Rite Salzberg and the past month feels like quite an amazing blur of activity. Re-rite Salzber/Hamburg, & UOS received a great reception and I’m hoping the people of Birmingham like it just as much when we open to the public on Saturday. Were installing it in Birmingham’s old municipal bank building which has remained closed for the past 15 years and is quite a cool building. Heres a quick photo recap of the past month!

    Rigger Rich at work beginning on the truss work at Canterbury Christ church.

    The lifting of the Dome at UOS Canterbury

    A Sharpie birthday message to Marina in the office from us after enjoying some very nice Belgium beer in Canterbury!

    Just one of the MANY marketing posters for Re-rite Hamburg, no pressure! In the background is the Elbphilharmonie building in where we were installing the gig.

    Men not at work the bridge to work was up to let boats through so we were just a little late!

    The beginnings of partitioning the car park where we were installing the projections, lots and lots of acro-props.

    Beginning the projection lineup in “The Helix” we were mapping the spiral ramp which the cars climb to access the various levels of the car-park. With some tricky rigging and projector positioning we managed to hit all surfaces with the projection raster.

    Using catalyst to visualise the mapping and draw the mask areas and render templates.

    A little bit of self promotion for people on site visits to the Elbphilharmonie!

    Mapping the orchestra onto the windscreen of a pretty expensive BMW!

    The start of UOS Birmingham with John taking the lead with the clipboard!

    Utilising the old post room to store kit, there was lots of random old stuff left in the building, apart from the army men, they came from Canterbury

    Later in the week after getting ahead of the game with the install we soft edge blended 3 of the projectors on the UOS dome using Catalyst and had a movie night, watching Run Lola Run. Watching a bank robary whilst sat inside a bank was quite fun!

    Updates to follow soon!

     

     

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