With all the best intentions in the world to keep this blog updated Ive let it slip and haven’t posted much for the past few month and there’s allot to catch up on! So after Richard Slaney asking me for an update here we go, lets go in chronological order starting with Bluebeard Sanfansisco:

BLUEBEARD, SAN FRANSISCO June-2012

On the back of last years mini tour of the Philharmonias production of Bluebeard’s castle we were invited to stage the whole show again at Davids Symphony hall, San Fransisco. This was the first time we had done it since November (I think) last year. Sticking with the theme of Bluebeard technically not being one of the easiest gigs, here we had 6, yes SIX HD20 Barco Projectors because of the size of the set and also, because we could. Lining 6 projectors up onto a set with varying surfaces of different focal points was never going to be an easy thing, and we had spoke about this numerous times beforehand thinking of alternative ways, and different projector configurations on how to do this. In the end  Nickin pulled the rabbit out of the hat and spent a long time using the internal warp boards in the projectors to pull the focal point of each projector into alignment on each surface, bloody good work man!

We didn’t have allot of time to setup, lineup, and remember how to use the Chamsys again after what felt like such a long gap. Coupled with the rather strict American union rules, where we would have worked through breaks to get the job done here back in England, our breaks and hours we could work each day were fixed and limited. We did however manage to get everything setup and running for rehearsals, it felt like we were all swimming upstream against the tide for many hours the first few days but as usual it all came together with enough time to play and for me to put pictures of everyone on the set, which helped with our sanity levels at that time!

Opening night came and i think we had a full house, everyone seemed to enjoy the show and the whole concept with the projected visuals, moving set, opera and orchestra fused together this way. There were quite a few audience members came up to myself and Nickin at the operating position saying it was wonderful and asking how we did it.
During the run we had some troubles with the automation provided by a company who shall remain unnamed where we completely lost one of the automated axis for part of the moving set. It would have been nice to have spares and Steve spent rather a large amount on calling the UK for “support”

All in all it was a good version of Bluebeard’s Castle and it was great to have the whole team back together again. One or twice we did get a limo provided by the venue, below is Rich Nick and Nickin pimping it up just before a camp night in the pub as it was the evening before pride!

The following day Steve and myself decided to head into the centre of town to see what happened at Pride in San Fransisco. This day Steve decided to shave his beard leaving a classic village people style tasch and a local policeman whas more than happy to have his picture taken with the famous Barco Ninja (Steve)

Ten Billion London-Avignon

Literally a few days after getting back from San Fransisco I was straight onto the next job, video programming 10 Billion, a new show with a scientest called Stephen Emmott directed by Katie Mitchel and Video by Tim Reid associate of Fiftynine Productions. I met Tim at the offices in Hoxton where he was trying ideas in a model-box set before we loaded in and setup projectors etc at the Royal court in the following couple of days. The show itself was less of a theater production but more of a lecture/talk about the worlds population continuing to increase at a vast rate and how we as humans are having an impact on the environment around us. There’s a better interview with Stephen in the Guardian here.

We eventually got in to the royal court and i met everyone and figured out how the hell to get our projectors into place in such a little theater space. You never know what its going to be like when going to a new theater with new people but i was pleased that tey are genuinely such a good bunch of people at the Royal Court.

Above: Tim Working hard at his laptop

I cant exactly remember how long we all had to setup, tech rehearse the show but i do remember tat it wasn’t very much time at all!  Also it was the first time i had used the ETC Ion so it was a bit of a baptism of fire to get up to speed on this with such a limited technical period too. God knows how much time i spent at the control position pictured below but i think we all went a little stir cray at some point!

It was fun working with Tim and i could see he was right up against it given the time constraints. Many ideas were tried, some stayed and some didn’t, id like to work together with Tim again sometime with more than 2 days to tech a show from scratch!

This was part of my pre-show checks, before every show, maling sure the projectors were in focus, pointing at the correct part and that the catalyst keystone mix lineups were in the right place! Oh memories!

Following on from doing previews of the show in London we then took it to the Avignon festival where it was presented at a brilliant old theater space called Chartreuse de Villeneuve, converted from an old monastery. We had allot of fun here and had one or two bloody mary’s on some of the days pictured below.

Giles, Pippa, Stephen & Dan making drinks.

Tariq, Katie, Dan, Mark and myself also went and took in some of the festival atmosphere after our show and ended up in the “Dancing Room” at the festival bar. This was such a brilliant night and we all danced like idiots for a good couple of hours. Below is Dan doing the classic windmill move.

10Billion was a hard show to start off with, averaging 14hours a day for the first week even during previews but I’m so glad i was working with the people I was. So much infact I decided to make some thank you cards which also folded up into a tiny model of the set!

The card unfolded

Folded!

Rings of Colour

During 10Billion being performed at the royal court the whole Olympics was going on. I had been working at Stage One  earlier in the year as part of the technical team designing some of the hardware and specifying part of the automation infrastructure. A good friend Karl was in town at the time and he invited me along to come and help out (see) the control center for the rings on London bridge. It was pretty cool to be up to the top of one of the towers. Stage One provided the rings and the lifting mechanism as well as the custom weather alert system programmed by Karl which gave constant updates on weather around the bridge via text and email to the main operators. In the event of high winds the rings would be lifted horizontal for safety.

Its always nice and pretty cool to get invited to places like this and see the views.

also during 10Billion, the day we arrived back from Avignon was the opening ceremony. Megan (my fine lady) was working as assistant to the video director for 59Productions and we were both invited to 59’s studios in Hoxton to watch the opening ceremony with many other people who had been involved too. We both had had some sort of high end involvement and it was pretty nerver racking watching this knowing our friends were inside the stadium pushing the important buttons and making sure it all worked!

In the end it did all work and it was a bloody brilliant show, we left Hoxton pretty pissed and relieved that night, a great end to a long few weeks!

Friends at the Proms

One Sunday by good friends and partners in crime were also pushing the buttons at the Wallace and Grommit’s Musical marvels at the proms in the Albert hall. Nick Hillel got us in to see it and we met Steve and Iain pictured below, who had all had a long morning of rehearsals and technical surprises! It was a fun show to see and great to catchup with some friends.

Iain on the buttons.

ReRite Overhaul

Following a busy year for the Re-Rite Kit, from a  long stint in China and then another long stint in a dusty old disused tobacco factory in Turkey it was due for an overhaul and some hardware improvements to make the installs quicker and easier!

It was ace to finally have some time in the Philharmonia’s new warehouse space to get the whole kit out, clean off the the dust accumulated after a busy 18 month! It was a good few days with the kit prepped and packed ready for 2013 wich looks to be a busy one already!

Media Player Custom Plates

Earlier this year working with Steve Holmes we installed Universe of Sound, a large synchronised video instalaltion for the Philharmonia orchestra. As a progression and improvement for the next install I designed a custom plate and mounting method for the media plates used in the install. Below is the prototype incorporating the projector mount, media player and projector in one unit.

The final production units were anodised black and the overall height was reduced to the previous versions. the whole unit sits in a flight-case fully plugged up with the hanging bracket already attached so on the next install it will dramatically reduce installation time.

ARTAV Isaac Julien Copenhagen

Mid August i did a job for ArtAV at GLStrand in Copenhagen installing a 1 screen video piece for artist Issac Julien.

It was quite a straight forward instal but had to be incredibly precise with the focus and projector position as we were using one of ArtAV’s custom borderless screens (pretty).

After a good long day and a bit assembling the screen, mounting the 5:1 surround system, and projector, and then making the cabling invisible, it was pretty slow and precise going but was the only way. The colour balance was important and ended up having a long phone conversation with Isaac explaining how he likes it to be saturated.

I had a few hours to pass in Copenhagen after the install was complete and Jon from GlStrand recommended i went to Christiania, a huge hippy area in the centre of Copenhagen. I highly recommend it, its a pretty cool chilled out area, and this poster below pretty much sums it up, if you find yourself in Copenhagen, go visit this place.

 

HOLIDAY!!!!!!!

Finally I booked a holiday for me and Megs to Vancouver, we went all over the city, hired a silly little sports car and drove to Whistler, and met up with some old friends living out there.

Also on our wanders around the city Megs discovered Vancouvers answer to Charity Peter. This was a great break after an already busy year for both of us!

Berwick Film & Media Festival

And finally, at the end of this, MEGA (thinned down) catchup, I spent a couple of days with Steve, I’ve worked with steve allot this year, working on Berwick Film and Media festival. One of the taking installs was a 24Screen syncronised video piece by Jason Dee with was pretty nice. Below is Steve debugging and getting the playback system to work FRAME ACCURATE!!

So thats the end of my mega catchup, I’d like to think that im going to keep ontop of this blog again and not let stuff slip so much but to be honest it may be a week, a month of even 3 month before I repost, We’ll See!

Andy

This seems like agens ago now but it was only a couple of month back in May (2012) whe I was working with the good people at the Philharmonia working on the install of Universe Of Sound at the Science Museum London. Roll back to January this year and we were doing the filming for Universe of Sound at watford. After much painstaking editing, stretching, tweaking and cutting of the footage it was time to install the infrastructure for the exhibition. To explain what Universe of sound is, heres an excerpt from the website:

Conduct, play and step inside a virtual Philharmonia Orchestra, joining 132 musicians and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, performing one of the most spectacular pieces of music ever written. Universe of Sound is an extraordinary free interactive digital installation, allowing you to explore an orchestra from the inside out as they perform Holst’sThe Planets.

Using giant visual displays, touch screens, unconventional projecting surfaces, movement-based interaction and planetarium-style projections, you can take part as musicians, conductors, arrangers and composers. Universe of Sound has been created by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The installation also features a new companion piece to The Planets, by composer Joby Talbot, called Worlds, Stars, Systems, Infinity.

SOURCE

The week started busy, and then to the middle of the week it continued busy, and nearing the end of the week and right up to the opening, it remained BUSY. Our task was to install the technical aspect of the install wich included all of the Projectors, LED screens, network/power infrastructure and construction of “The Dome” below in its flat pack state.

In addition Chris Plant was also involved creating the interactive software patch for the Conductor pods, where your hands get tracked by a Kinect camera and you try and match the movements of the conductor. Its great fun and it was nice to finally meet Chris, pictured below, patching in one of the conductor pods.

As the week progressed we continued mounting projectors, fabricating, stands and mounts for various speakers and dome additions. there was allot of network cable to terminate and general stuff to be done, so we were joined by some guys from RNSS and XLvideo for a couple of days to keep us on track. As install and construction was taking place we had a team of people still editing video and Steve was working relentlessly autoring and setting up the synchronised playback system.

I must say it wasn’t the easiest install partially as there wasn’t a huge timescale to do things and partially because we had to use the museums preferred suppliers for certain things, which on some occasions was quite frustrating. It was as always good to be working with friends which made the long days easier and we soldiered on getting things in and up intime for the opening night.

The install is currently up and running and thoroughly good way to spend a couple of hours for all ages. For a better ilustration of what the install is actually like take a look at the excerpt which was featured in Newsround a few weeks back here: UNIVERSE OF SOUND NEWSROUND

The install will run until the 27th of august at the Science Museum london.

Im back dating this post back to May (It’s now July) when we were in Izmir, Turkey installing Re-Rite. It was a busy week with Rich, Bob, Graham, Mark, Bea, Hillelabad, Ash and myself.

The trtip started well meeting Rich and Bea at Heathrow for the start of our journey to Izmir, flights had been delayed as bad weather in Izmir and we got stuck in istanbul airport for a few hours. Luckly for us we got a free drink and a really rubbish sandwich with non discript meat inside it which made everything allright!

We eventually got to out hotel in Izmir at silly o’clock in the morning, met everyone at breakfast and then headed to the museum building where we had a meeting about the fourth coming weeks work. During the meting the adopted museum cat made a visit and took quite a shine to bob!

After the meeting the work began and we got all of our flight cases unloaded in to the venue which was an old disused tobacco factory we done a recce on earlier this year. Some of our kit was still stuck in Izmir due to some customs issues with our kit leaving china, whilst Rich got on with sorting this, we unpacked what we had and marc setup his office.

Due to the storms and the gae of the building we had quite large pools of water lying around the venue where it had leaked through the roof onto the third floor above us and then continued to leak through the floor onto where we were, creating various large puddles! The floor below us was not used , so, Graham had a grat idea of drilling drain holes to clear most of the water!

We worked on diverting water upstairs to try and avoid any future storms flooding our floor again and repositioned some projector positions to make sure the electrics didn’t get wet! As many other jobs like this progressed, along with allot of work, there was allot of friendly piss taking, Graham outdone himself when he used his Ipad to make an islaney! Ha!

The week continued very much like this with lots of graft and lots of silly banter, Bob & Graham did well with putting up many fixing points for our screens and projectors and some places there were ready made holes. The old disused fan ducts in the commentator rooms were ace!

During the week, even though Rich was working in another room, the eye of Slaney never blinks!

The final room was the conductor room with a 4 projector setup and an interactive screen where you can conduct alongside Esa Pekka, Bob & Grame did well getting all these fixings up, I mounted and cabled and Bea done the final focus which looked ace! when we had all od the content on, good fit!

It may have been around this part of the week when we had a massive storm and it rained like hell with some amazing thunder and lighting all night!

Luckily with the pre planning non of the lit got wet and there wasn’t too much water on our floor! The rest was pretty plain sailing getting the install finished ready for opening night. Keeping witht e fun and games of the week Rich and Bob had a hand wrestle, you can probably guess that Rich won outright leaving Bob shattered and in tears.

The following day were were on our way home, after a few celebratory beers from a successful opening night. The plane journey was pretty uneventful so Nick and myself entertained ourselves with the inflight pillows. I dont think the cabin staff appreciated this as much as we did!

Contrary to all of the silly photos allot of work went on this week, another successful re-rite installation!