So. I totally have to copy off of Scott (with his permission, of course) and blog about my top five favorite moments in the show...
Top five favorite TECH moments of the show from the P.O.V. of the SM (and in no particular order):
1. Light Cue #33. The ex-girlfriends and Rob just finished singing, "You don't represent my last best chance at a meaningful relationship and let me give you one last tip!" The lights abruptly change when Laura enters to come back for her toiletry bag and totally interupts Rob's little fantasy with his ex-girlfriends. It's a cue that I have to take without being able to see Kimi enter because the apartment flat is blocking my view. I love it because Laura totally kills his fantasy. It's sad how Rob has to snap back to reality and the abrupt light change is the most visual way which displays that. (Besides the actual physicality of Laura entering... I guess that would be the most visual... but hopefully you know what I mean.)
2. Light Cue #64. It's during "Number Five With a Bullet." Laura takes Jackie's spot on Rob's list and the ex-girlfriends are singing, "Number five with a bullet to your heeaaarrrrrt." On "heart" (that's usually when I go) the lights change into this creepy redness and Ian gets in his weird Bollywood pose and bounces like... two times... just in time for Rob to point at him and say, "What the hell is he doing here?" I like this one because it seems to set the scene for this nightmare that Rob is having. Cue #65 and Cue #66 make it even more creepier with the red lights and finally, Cue #67 (when Rob just can't take anymore) he screams "Stop! Show me no more!" I don't know... those are all funny to me and I don't reallly know why.
3. The scene change after "Terrible Things." Almost everybody is on stage watching Marie LaSalle sing her last song and I wonder if this transition looks as cool from the front as it does from the back. After Margeau's song is done, the lights change as Rob does this monologue about bringing us all up to date on why he's an asshole but while this is going on, everybody else is exiting the club. The guys go back to the record racks, the girls exit, people put mics back... it's this whole wave of movement. Everybody is moving and it's beautiful because while everyone is moving... Rob is standing still, centerstage, giving us his painfully true side of the story. It kind of reminds me of Peanut's HiFi photo of him being the only one in focus in a crowd of blurry people. It's very artsy. I love it.
4. The Conflict Resolution cues. (#132 - #141 for those who want to know). Oooooh, yes. I do have fun with these just as much as the audience has watching them. I always like the cues where the timing has to be just right. I always take four very fast beats during the black outs so everyone can reset themselves. I love how almost every night Zak gets caught mid-arm-wave for a blackout. That's probably the most fun I have pressing a button through the entire show.
5. Steve's sound effect cue when Barry enters with Klepto and TMP to sing "Turn the World Off". It's a hilarious mix of a heartbeat, evil laughter, and something else. I can only imagine how fun that would have been to create.
And those are my top 5 favorite tech moments in High Fidelity. Not as cool as Scott's top 5. But, I tried.
You thought it was over??
Oh no, my friend. THIS is not over.
What is your favorite song from High Fidelity??I have a three way tie.
"Number Five With a Bullet" sounds so great with the guitars (and did I mention that I'm engaged to the hot blonde on guitar?) and Kimi rocks.
"She Goes" I've always been a huge Aretha fan and Nikki does it right. She is spot on.
"Nine Percent Chance" - I love the lyrics. They're hilarious and pitiful and yet, Rob (and Barry and Dick) think of the percentages, small as they might be, as such a positive thing. It's funny.
I also LOVE "Laura, Laura" and the "Conflict Resolution." And the first and last numbers... Dammit. This show is just full of great music. I can't choose.
I screwed up my round 5. I lose.
Can you choose a favorite?
Hey.
I figured I'd update so Scott wouldn't yell at me.
I'm kidding. He doesn't yell. He just nags... I guess you can call it nagging.
I'm kidding again. He doesn't nag. He pleads with us through email.
Okay. He doesn't plead either.
He just asked us all nicely to update our blogs. So, I'm complying. Because he's cool... you know? And he'd definitely beat me if I didn't do what he said. Ask the others. They'll show you the shoe marks.
Ok. I'm kidding again. He doesn't beat people either.
He's probably reading this and getting really annoyed with me. Scott, I love you!! Hee hee hee. I am so annoying... I know.
Opening week is finished. Great shows. I think. I watch the show from behind. But the back of everybody's head looked really great. I was even indirectly mentioned in the KDHX review. Chris Gibson wrote, "Michael Bergfeld's lighting is well executed."
Maybe that's something they write when they don't know what else to say about a specific element... but Hey! That's my job! I execute the lights! Whooo Hooo.
I'm in a much better mood than last week. I have people (and things) to thank for this. Kimi and Katie, Mike, greasy food and chocolate, Tylenol...
Most importantly, Matt Korinko. He may be miles and miles away but still remains so supportive. He really cheered me up. I wish he could be here with us.
After the show on Saturday, we all hung out and I stayed up till 5am trying to switch my sleep pattern around. Sunday, I went over to Dad's for Father's day and gave him a gift card to Best Buy so he could buy some more crappy "B" movies which he enjoys so much. Tortured my brothers by turning on the Tony's. My family is so lame.
Worked midnights. Decided to quit one of my two jobs. This morning at 4am I drove out to North Co. and put in my two weeks. My last day is July 1st and I will be an employee of just one department... not two. My life will be a lot less complicated. Still in the process for a full-time job. That will probably take a couple more months.
And this blog just totally turned into an update of my life... not the show. Crap.
So with the SHOW...
I'm getting into my groove. I love having a routine before and after each show. I can't wait to do it all over again.
But that's about it. A friend from work taught me about the whole torrent thing and now I'm sitting here downloading megabytes and megabytes of music. It's awesome. I'm listening to In the Heights now. It's pretty damn cool.
I wonder if all this is fucking up Peanut's internet connection... if so, I'm sure I'll get a call sometime soon with him complaining that his free internet just isn't working right. Hehehe.
Kidding. You can freeload off of us anytime. Just kill the freaky bugs when Mike isn't home. That's all I ask.
... And now the whole world thinks our apartments are infested...
They're not. Stupid house centipedes. Seriously, go do a google image search for them. You'll see why I can't sleep on some nights.
I'm done rambling about stuff that doesn't pertain to the show. I'm going to go visit Mom and eat her food since we haven't gone grocery shopping in like... 2 months.
-Trish
So our preview went very well last night.
There were only two light cues that I screwed up on.
We had some mic issues last night. Really weird. They were working... only sometimes... and would come in and out. Then we couldn't hear Zak.
Steve fixed Zak at intermission and it turns out that the hand mics switched places somehow. That still doesn't explain the in and outness... hmm.
I always like to know what causes problems so we can prevent them. And when you can't figure out why something isn't working... that sucks and I continue to worry.
So while Scott and Steve talk via headset (and Steve is frantically pushing buttons and turning knobs and making the monitors in the booth go off for short periods of time so he can isolate people and making it hard for me to hear the lines that I take cues off of) I'm sitting there going, "Pay attention. I've got to pay attention. Don't get distracted. "
And of course, I end up turning to Steve to ask him something... and whoops... that was a cue right there.
The second fuck up happened when I was watching the show. Like really watching the show. And really interested in it and drawn in. Then I realize that Jeff just started a monologue that has a special. WHOOPS. That cue was... obviously... late.
Today, I'm going to try to make a danish out of cardboard and paper bags. Vicki has mentioned to do this and I totally forgot about putting something in the damn bag until the preview. Nikki held up her bag of danish and with the lights shining on it, you could totally tell that there was, indeed, nothing in the bag.
I could just buy a damn danish and call it a day. Then I'd be able to eat a danish after the show because it would go stale and I could buy another one. Then I could eat that danish. Then I would gain like twenty pounds from eating danishes every night after the show... Fuck it.
But we open tonight. I think we're ready.
Hopefully I don't screw up anymore. The past week, I've felt like I've been doing nothing but screwing up. Not just lights. Everything I do is wrong. It's a really crappy feeling that I hope goes away soon.
Okay. My body needs some chocolate. Brownies for breakfast, anyone?
-Trish
Caution. This will be a very long post.
Lots has happened since my last post. Especially with the tech side... In fact, almost everything technical has come together to collide. So let me try to think back.
We had load in which was... interesting. I've never worked in the space before. I knew what things had to get done but I wasn't familiar with anything in the space. Everything moved along very quickly which was kind of frustrating to me. One person would learn how to do something and just start bossing people around. The much more organized and efficient way would have been to have a couple of people in different areas so more than one person is learning how to put crap together. We could have worked as a team but like I said... Everything was moving so fast and some people (not from New Line) seemed to be in a fucking hurry to get the hell out of dodge... so whatever. We got it done. Now that I know what happens, perhaps strike will be a little more organized. Poor New Line has been a bit nomadic, so we'll have have to start all over again when we move to the Ol' CBC place.
Next we had a couple rehearsals in the theater. I sent off my last line notes this weekend. The cast has been doing incredibly well taking the line notes and trying to correct themselves.
Then on Saturday, we had our Cue to Cue. Just like with the load in... I had absolutely no idea how this was going to work. It's up to the designer and where he is in his design. Whenever I do get used to a particular designer and how he works Cue to Cue, we go and have a new guy come in for the next show. We've had C2Cs where the designer actually writes the cues. We've had C2Cs where the designer goes through the show and edits. I think this is the first C2C that I actually ran the light board. I had a dry tech with Michael and then we ran through Act 1. We had a lunch break while he fixed some things and then we ran Act 2. I wish I could tell you how the design looks but unfortunately with the way the booth sits... I get to watch the show from behind... Very weird.
Excuse me for a minute... I have to figure out why this CD is deciding to skip while I'm trying to tape the damn thing...
As I expected. There is nothing wrong with the CD. Stupid CD player... I'll explain in a bit. Where was I?
Oh yeah. So with the way we've got the box set up, I am in the corner completely opposite of the band. It's very weird. At first, I was worried about being able to hear them. K. Well, that's no longer a worry. Phew.
And then yesterday, we had the sitzprobe. My lovely fiance (one of the two guitar players) wakes up fifteen minutes late. I'm trying to get some props together and battle him for being the first to take a shower (I win). We load up the car with his two guitars, an amp, music stand, his music, my backpack, a bag of ten or so beer bottles, and a strip of cardboard that I had spray painted black two hours prior. We're on Forsyth when my phone rings. It's ten till 1pm. If we were really good we would have been there twenty or thirty minutes ago. It's Scott. I answer the phone with, "We're on Forsyth." I can already tell that he's starting to get stressed.
The sitzprobe. Hum. It got off to a slow start because Steve (my adoptive little bro who is and will always be the New Line baby) was trying to figure out how to get Jeff to come through the band's monitor. I'm sure he was trying to figure out how things were hooked up. Being in a totally new place takes some getting used to... but once you figure it out, everything seems to fall into place.
But anyway, time is ticking away. Scott knows this. He knows how much work there is to be done. The cast is bored. Things are taking a long time. The band is trying to figure stuff out. The whole process is kind of painful... but not too painful... It's painful like - I want to say like ripping a band-aid off but I know some people like to do it really fast and get it over - No, this was like going really slow so it hurts just a little but it takes a really long time to get through it. And when you finally do get through it... you're good.
Me? I laid low the entire time. I spent most of my time underneath the risers setting up the prop table and Xmas lights. Kimi and I also put up our makeshift air vent cover. So now, the back row won't be blasted with cold air during the show and the actors below have a nice stream that they can step into while waiting to go on.
Although, you can still feel it if you're sitting in the two last rows on the stage right side. So, if you sit there... bring a jacket.
And the band sounds great. This show is going to sound like a rock concert. I asked Mike how he liked his partner (the second guitarist) and he says that he's awesome. Thank God. Mike can sometimes be pretty picky when it comes to playing guitar. And Jim has played with New Line before... He frightened me during Urinetown as the trombone player. He was awesome... but I have a fear of trombone players... possibly related to my fear of robots. Playing the trombone looks very robotic to me... Okay. I'm rambling. Anyway, Jim is a lot less frightening as a guitar player. :0)
Anyway. We got through it. Scott didn't kill anybody. I've actually seen him at his worst... maybe it was his worst... the Ivory was a nightmare.
Lastly, poor Chris Peterson! That poor guy went like... a whole five hours without having a cigarette. And Holy Christ was he doing a great job of not lashing out due to lack of nicotine. You wouldn't of even known it 'til he stood up after sitzprobe ended and excused himself to go take a -much needed- cigarette break.
And that pretty much brings us up to date. As Rob would say. Right now, I'm winding down after working midnights, where I spent most the night rewriting the light cues in my prompt book (It was dead out there last night). Having myself a black cherry rum and coke. Which would explain the fragmented sentences and bad grammar and random punctuation... Aw, who am I kidding... I hate grammar and I like random punctuation. I'm putting together the preshow music. Yes, I actually found a job to steal from Scott so that he can do other things of more importance. So after work this morning, I went to Walmart (I know. Ew. It was the only place open at 7am that sells cassette tapes) and get this... I had to actually ASK where the blank tapes were. It's virtually an extinct form. There was only one brand and they came in a pack of five for about seven dollars.
And I'm going to go do some laundry. I need to get some clean black shirts... I'll need 'em this week. And maybe some dishes. Then I'll join the fiance in the bedroom and take a little nap until it's rehearsal time.
I'll make sure his ass is on time... Well, we have to drive separately anyway because he'll have to leave for work.
Alright. Congrats if you've read this entire thing. I'll write more later.
... I love this Beastie Boys song...
Peace out,
Trish
