A new energy

Dear readers,

Welcome one and all to the first blog post of many, in this my third and final year at the Academy. It seems like only yesterday I was writing my first post, and now I find myself with only 9 months of study to go before no longer being able to call myself a student. Where did all the time go?

I’ll keep this post brief as its been a long day. So far, we’ve only had 4 days back at uni, but a 4 days it has been. The Academy has had quite a transformation over the summer, and so has the course. I don’t know what it is, but the teaching staff have an energy about them that I have never seen before. The changes they have made to course are everything that we have been asking for for the past two years. They also seem to be a lot more available too. Its far easier now to get hold of them, to schedule tutorials and to just ask for some of their time to talk things over. And I can already feel that energy rubbing off on us students. Following our module brief the other day, I felt pumped and excited for the year ahead; a welcome surprise. Long may this trend continue, as it can only be positive for everyone.

As for me, things are going OK. I was quite nervous over the summer about going into my management roles pretty much blind, and to be honest, I still am a little. However, I am rather glad I chose Gilgamesh over panto. Its rather a simple show, so it will make a good first show to manage.
This year, I am fully focused on the course. I really dont want to cock up Gilgamesh, so I’m really trying to keep on top of the paperwork. I know there will be some slip ups, but if I keep them to a minimum, I thing I’ll come out the other side in pretty good shape. I still don’t properly feel like I know what I’m doing though. Winging it would be the appropriate term here I feel. But, so long as I keep my cool, get the paperwork done and keep my crew busy, I shouldnt think itll go too badly. Only time will tell I guess.

Till next time, adieu.

Diary of a Master Carp #4

Sorry folks, its gonna be another short and blunt post this time, seeing as i’m writing this at 2am.

Today was a mixed day.  Daniel and I started out slowly.  We first checked the truss for square, then moved onto laying the MDF floor.  Meanwhile, Ben was working on the circles and the tie line in the shop.  This is where we got unstuck.  We did not question Ben when he said how he wanted us to lay the floor, but ran into problems when the seems lined up.  This meant we had to shift the whole deck, cut it flush and then replace the holes created.  After that we hung the circles, shimmed, strapped and secured the truss down, rigged the duvy cyc and fitted an apron to the front of the stage.

For some of today, the mood in camp was not great.  What I learned from the reason for this is that 1) if youre going to make a punch list for people, make the instructions idiot-proof, 2) if from this punch-list they require materials, state what it is, where it can be found etc 3) be in the space whenever you can.  The peace of mind it gives your crew is invaluable, and will make the whole thing run smoother.

T

Diary of a Master Carp #3

Evening all, welcome back.

So, in the past few days Daniel and I routed the circles, stuck vellum on one side of them and drilled holes in them so they can be hung.  We also drilled 2 additional holes in all the 12″ hemispheres so that they could be hung too.

Today went well.  With the help of Justin and Byung, our team and Dan raised the truss around the graduation stage.  I always love a bit of truss work, so this was good fun.  Also, I had never rigged free standing truss before, so this was a great chance to learn how its done.

I’ll go into more detail next time guys.  Right now, I need sleep.

Thomas, out. x

Diary of a Master Carp – Post #2

Welcome back, folks.

Continuing my graduation journal, here is an update on the recent events:

In the past 3 days Daniel and I received our order of acrylic, and the order of hemispheres, and moved them both to their respective racks in the shop.  Tonight was spent with Daniel, Ben and Jane (our lovely volunteer helper) routing out 12″ circles from a sheet of acrylic.  Its messy work, but pretty easy.  We managed to get 31 circles cut and glued on one side to the vellum.  So far everything has been pretty smooth, but then again we haven’t done much.

I’m looking forward to graduation very much.  Theatre is fine, but theres all that style BS and whatever.  I prefer more informal, live eventy type stuff, so this should be right up my street.  Plus, who doesn’t like working outside either?  Especially when you’re a pasty-white European.

What I will say is that it’s nice to be in a position of some responsibility for once.  I feel its making me up my game, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.  I don’t know if its the workload here, but I feel like I’ve been taking the easy way out of things recently.  This also makes me wonder if my lack of effort will show in my grades.  Maybe I’m just saying this because I’m nearing the end of my time here, but I know I’m always going to look back on this and think I should have done things differently.   But hopefully I’ll end on a strong note.

Now for the bloggy bloggy, personal reflection nonsense.  I’ve started to feel really settled here recently.  I don’t know whether its just the period of time I’ve been here, if my work ethic has changed or what, but I sure am going to be sad to leave this place, and everyone I’ve met here too.  I guess it is partly due to the fact that this course allows more opportunity for creativity.  I know most of our time back home is dedicated to production work, but class or personal projects here are a great way to do something more fun.  Sure, making flats is all well and good, but how often do you get the chance to make a giant safety pin?  People have hinted at me transferring over here, or applying for an MFA, but I really don’t know.  Its such a big decision, I’d need to think long and hard about it.

On the other hand, however, I’m looking forward to going home and putting what I’ve learned and picked up here to use in the Academy.  I’m a mixed bag right now, but there is also more than enough work to keep my mind occupied.

Anyway, thanks for choosing my blog to lose brain cells to.  More later. x

Diary of a Master Carp

Good evening, dear diligent readers of this mediocre blog.  Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this.

This blog comes to you from the wonderful land that is the US and A, as I am currently on an academic exchange to the California Institute of the Arts, LA, and have been since mid January of this year.  With 4 weeks to go, and a master carp position to do, this blog is going to be a lot more active in the near future, so watch this space.

Well, what can I say, its been an amazing few months.  Firstly, thank you Uncle Steve for pushing me to do this exchange when I was thinking of backing out due to what I’d miss at the Academy.  I have no regrets about coming here, and I highly recommend doing an exchange if you, reader, get the opportunity to do the same.

I came to CalArts with high hopes and an excitement towards what I might learn, and although 1 semester is not long enough to get fully into some subjects and get to the level I might have liked to achieve, or some classes not being exactly what I thought they might, I have certainly learned lots.  Probably more than I would have at the Academy,  too.  There are many things I want to take back and use at the Academy, many personal skills I have picked up and would like to use as a TSM in my third year.  I have also really valued getting to experience to course in two institutions, and observing their differences.  Sure, its all too easy to complain about the Academy.  I certainly have in the past, but I realise now each place and each course has its pros and cons, and that we have to make the most of what we have available.  I know I’m going to do that when I return.  I guess paying $40k a year really lights a fire under your arse; a luxury we don’t have back home.

I am really looking forward to taking on a master carp position for the CalArts graduation ceremony.  My first time in any sort of management role, I really don’t want to cock it up.  Hopefully I can take what I learn here and apply it to my management roles in the Academy.  People have said in the past that I’m a good team leader, but in actual fact I’m continuously screaming in confusion on the inside.  Please interperate from this clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbf0BCex99I), between 00:14 and 00:21.  Just takes practise, I guess.

Anyway, I’ll no post up more of my thoughts, musings, observations, anecdotes, feelings, impressions, digital media and such soon.

‘Till next time, God speed. x

A bit late, but hey…

Hello, and welcome, everyone.  My sincerest apologies, but it seems I have not blogged in two months.  This is going to make this post all the more difficult, so please bear with me if I ramble.

I look back on my last blog post, and my experience from panto, and smile at how optimistic I was prior to working on it.  Maybe I had not matured as a techie as much as I thought I had.  Naturally, every production will have its ups and downs, but I clearly was not ready for what panto had instore.

The first thing I noticed when we started working on panto, was the stark difference between my line managers for The Seagull and Sleeping Beauty.  Don’t get me wrong,  both had excellent technical skills, and pulled off great shows.  What surprised me was how much the interpersonal skills of ones line manager can affect ones experience on a production.  It puts it into perspective, just how tricky it is to get a good balance of technical know-how, delegation and communication skills and the ability to make quick decisions when under pressure.  I was in a good position to see first hand how two different people coped with this challenge.  It really made me think how I would fair when my time comes.  To be honest with you, I feel I am seriously lacking in two of those areas.  I’ll let you decide which two they are.

Still, being DTSM, Sleeping Beauty was my first semi-senior role at the Academy, and so gave me an opportunity to practise being a line manager.  Looking back, I feel I only had 1 really good day when I balanced doing practical work myself with delegating jobs, making progress and in turn, maintaining crew morale.  I always tried to make sure I was polite, and explained anything fully for the benefit of everyone involved.  However, my confidence drops when asked to manage a situation, purely because I feel inexperienced.  I prefer doing the dirty work.  It is what I enjoy the most.  But it is clear that having my name barked at me all the time, with questions about how things are to be done will have me floundering.  Tip of the cap to you, Calum.  You did good.

How can this be solved?  Practise, I guess.  I think part of my concern, is that I did not know what was required of me as a DTSM.  Being given a management position for the first time, and being told “Good luck..”, I feel is not the best way to get the most out of a first-timer.  To be frank, I did not feel like a DTSM most of the time.  I felt like a regular technician.

I had a very mixed experience on Sleeping Beauty.  On one hand, I got to achieve something I had asked for in a PAT tutorial, which was to fly op a show.  Although, granted, I did not have the rig, strike and paperwork to worry about, it was good to learn a new skill.  On the other hand, though, this was only possible due to the crushing fact that the automation was cut.  Gutted did not even come close to expressing my feelings.  The reason for it getting cut?  A number of factors really.  Fore mostly, however, I believe it was a lack of understanding within the Academy as to the implications of using automation, particularly performer flying.  If we had had a good 3 to 5 days uninterrupted onstage with performers, I feel we would have been better placed.  Automation is not like LX where everything is instantaneous, and it doesn’t affect too much those onstage who may need to work.  Plotting automation takes time to program moves and run them over and over.  Time we simply did not have.  This, coupled with the fact that we are all very inexperienced with it, led to it’s demise, and with it the best opportunity I had to op automation at the Academy.  It is still a bit hard to swallow if I am honest.  Sometimes I wish that I could start my studies at the Academy in 10 years time, when the automation has been properly used in the Academy for a while, and more is known about it.

To summarise, I have a quiet satisfaction with what we achieved on Sleeping Beauty.  It was still a great show that we gave the public, but I will always know that it could have been so much more.  I strongly feel that my manager and the crew we had very much acted as damage control, and we achieved a great deal.  I am not entirely happy with my performance on it, either.  I was not as competent an automation technician as I hoped to be, and not as much of a deputy as I should have been.  But,I guess all I can do is use it to learn from and move forwards.

From one to another

And so we meet again, good Sir Blog.  First time for a long while, though.

Apologies, folks, for the substantial absence, but it is clear evidence of the nature of the course we study on.  I just haven’t had the time in the evenings to blog.  Some might say, I was pooped.

Today marked the end of one production for me at the Academy, and the immediate commencement of another.  I can look back on The Seagull with a quiet smile.  Not my favourite production ever, not my best performance as a techie ever, but not a bad one either.  Pretty uneventful, really.  Nothing bad happened, to be honest.  One day melted into the next without incident, and before I knew it, we were striking it.  I think its in a way, an odd testament to our TSM crew.  We could not have asked for a better TSM in Kirsty; her interpersonal skills were exceptional, her ability to delegate was second-to-none, and along with Scott and Marvin, we worked very well together.  All of us listened well to Kirsty, and got on with our jobs without much fuss.

I think I’ve noticed that I’ve matured slightly as a techie.  I found myself more capable of completing tasks myself, without someone babysitting me.  I guess it’s because now that I’m a second year, I’m expected to know things, so people aren’t looking over my shoulder all the time.  Also, by not being under tremendous pressure generally during the production, it gave me the opportunity to look at the production, and the course from a more objective point of view, and perhaps see where I might have done things differently, or pick up tips for when I am in a management role.

Tomorrow we start Panto prep, and I must say I am tremendously excited.  Not only because its my favourite production of the year, but that I’ll be able to see it through rather than being put on it half way.  I do have my concerns as to what is expected of me as a DTSM, what my duties are etc.  On the other hand, I cannot wait to op automation for it.  Its exactly what I hoped I’d be doing on it, so I can’t wait to prove myself as an automation technician and put on an amazing show.

Sorry for not doing the best blog ever, but its got to be done.

’till next time, this is Thomas, signing off.

Production prep

Hi again, folks.

Tonight’s blog post comes live from the couch in my living room, due to the fact that I’ve got time to kill, having mopped myself into the corner in preparation for tomorrow’s flat warming party.

The past week has been rather enjoyable, but like so many instances on this course, one day seemed to melt into the next, and all have passed in a blur, leaving me sitting here struggling to recount what we did.

One thing I can remember is using the automation last week, and finally getting a chance to fly people in 2D.  This was thoroughly enjoyable, and confirmed for me that automation is definitely what I want to make a career out of once I graduate.  It also really made me look forward to panto, and the challenges and responsibilities being automation op bestows on me.  What was a little disconcerting, however, was being told that there is no Academy Automation level 2, and that the brief guide to sculptor and visual creator I was given is all the training I am going to receive before 4 people put their trust in me this Christmas as I fly them about a theatre.  Sometimes I think I would like to start the TPA course in a few years time, when the automation technology is not in it’s infancy, and there are more classes and training attached to it.  But, feck all I can do about that, so I’m going to have to make the most of it while I can.

Our week concluded with a day in workshop, finally getting to hang our doors, and put into practise all the skills we had learned the week before.  To be fair, it was quite selfish of us three lads going together in a team, but we worked well together, exchanging and VETOing ideas, before coming to a decision and implementing it.  I was last to attempt to hang my door, and I was very happy with my efforts.  Its also nice to be finally signed off on all the workshop equipment, which I’m sure will prove invaluable in the future.  This was actually put into action today, in fact, as I had to cut scaff legs for The Seagull.  What was not so enjoyable was grinding the ends smooth after cutting them to length, as the vibration from the grinder sapped all my grip strength, leaving my hand tingling and my fingers weak.

This week we have pyro show, which I am really looking forward to, as I get to op automation for.  I was to know that when asked who my peers thought should op automation, my name was suggested.  Its nice to know those I work with trust in my abilities.  Come on, group hug.  Other than that, its more Seagull prep.

‘Till next time, adieu.

A new era, a new energy, and a new frame of mind

Hiya pals!

Welcome back to my blog for what promises to be another eventful year.

Well I must say its good to be back at the Academy.  The summer really did drag on a bit towards the end.  On the other hand, I did have a fantastic summer.  I spent the entire month of August in Edinburgh working at the Edinburgh Fringe, and the Military Tattoo, and I must say it felt good to be getting some decent industry work under my belt.  This is partly due to the fact that I found I had an abundant lack of it in first year.  I’ve also been feeling that I have been behind the pack in my year in some way due to coming straight from school, and not having made many industry contacts etc.  To be honest with you I was suprised more people from our course were not over in Edinburgh, considering it is the biggest festival of its kind in the world, and its right on our doorstep.

Nevertheless, I came away from Edinburgh feeling good about my performance, and that it was good progress in making a career in this industry.  I also learned during my time there, a motto that I will try and remember for all future work that I do, which goes something like:-

Every job is just another job opportunity

In other words, I will always try to make the most of a job, and see where else it can take me.  For example, despite being a followspot op at the Tattoo, I got speaking the the Big House Events guys who were doing crew work at the Tattoo, and volunteered my services for the Tattoo out.  Although I may not have got that job, it got me on their books and two shifts with them at the BBC Proms in the Park.    This epitomises the nature of this industry for me.

Also this summer, I wandered down to PLASA ’09, and literally had a pants party at all the tech there.  Things like the Visual ACT stand, and the Funktion One demo room were simply staggering pieces of technology.  This too proved very productive as contacts that I got from there have now turned into possible 3rd year work placements, just after a couple of emails.  I certainly feel I have been charged with this new energy towards getting jobs and making contacts.  I want to get the stage were I won’t be stuck for jobs once graduating, or better yet, walk straight into an automation position somewhere.  Whats wrong with aiming high?

And this brings us back to today.  We had a week with Zander in workshop last week.  I really enjoyed this, and despite it being somewhat slow and repetitive at times, I certainly did learn things.  It was a different story today, mind.  We started our LX/TSM refresher with a quiz this morning, and my word was it embarrasing.  I was astonished at how little I knew.  It may be all well and good having it be light-hearted and joking around, but everything that we were not getting correct, was the information and knowledge that we should have learned in the classes we never got in our first year.  A few simple classes on industry professionals for example: who the important people are, who we should know, what do they do, etc.  You might say this is up to us to find out, but I am at the Academy to learn these things.  Teach me, please.

Cralph’s tweet earlier raised a very good point too.  I felt I was partially responsible for the dire lack of motivation and work speed today in what should have been a basic lighting rig.  At the time I kinda unintentionaly felt that I already knew how to rig lights, so didnt have to bother so much, and also that I was the TSM one of the group, and so that it didnt apply to me in some way.  I know this was quite arrogant of me, and is something I need to rectify in some way.

Enough Academy-bashing for one night.  Tomorrow we have time with the beautiful MA, and automation and hippo time later in the week too.  Should be fun.

Should I finish with a joke?  Nah..

erm…where did Africa go?!

And so my SM allocation continues.  I still don’t seem to have that much to say, but I’ll do my best anyway. 

After some time doing SM now, I can report that it ain’t that bad at all.  I realise that I am probably not getting the same experience as my peers on Opera 3, and in turn the same taste of SM.  CPP allows me to be more creative than usual.  Before I went in to my SM allocation, I thought that it would comprise mainly of making and updating lists, taking notes, making phone calls, sending emails and the like.  To be honest, I have done very little of this.  I have spent most of my time in the applied art departments making things.  Thankfully though, all the globes are finished now. 

Spending time in scenic has reminded me how much of a perfectionist I am.  Trust me, making 20 globes made this fact abundantly clear.  I found myself trying to match every contour and shape of the continents and islands on the map in front of me, where as Jamie took a somewhat more gun-ho approach to marking out the globes (the title of this post refers to this).  I don’t know what it is about me.  I like to think its just that I put my all into any task, but it has got me thinking, is such a trait a help or a hindrance when it comes to TPA, and in particular, TSM?  When I am in a senior role in 3rd year, will I be anal about how things are done?  Will I insist things are done a certain way?  Only time will tell, I guess.

Here are a couple of pictures I managed to snap during CTP4:

Anyway, hopefully you will hear from me today tomorrow because I still need more content for my reflective summary.

Good night