Seminar

On the 7/2/2012 Coleg Harlech hosted a seminar called Creative Technologies within the Welsh Environment. There were 6 speakers in all, 2 of them spoke as a pair, about various topics from environmental impact caused by Creative Technology to how best to market ourselves to the industry. The talks were followed by two workshops, the Inventorium from Bangor University and one run by one of Harlech’s tutors Chris Headeland.

On the Thursday before the event I stayed behind my Core Theatre Module lecture to work with Chris Hughes to create the lighting design for the event. I came up with some creative ideas to use the space effectively and make the theatre as professional looking as possible. After seeing how all the different kinds of lights work in previous lectures; I broke the theatre down into it’s component parts, stage, walls, auditorium and ceiling. The colours used were the college colours blue and purple, we then discussed the best ways to light the different spaces. For the ceiling we used two Parcan lanterns with a purple gel filter placed on the floor angled upwards, this created a purple glow in the central area of the ceiling. For the walls I decided to pair a blue light and a purple light, to create a split colour effect on the walls. The auditorium was just a dimmed version of the house lights, giving enough light so that the audience could find seats, but not interfering with the overall lighting effect. Lighting the stage was the most challenging part, I had to consider that the speakers could move away from the lectern; so with that in mind we chose a row of 4 Fresnel lanterns with barn doors on to shape the light into the area in front of the projector screen. For the lectern itself there were a total of 6 Profile lanterns, two placed at each side of the rear of the theatre, one in the side slots stage left and one directly above the lectern. Overall I was very happy with the plan and how it was translated into the actual lighting rig, unfortunately some of the lanterns were not working and we didn’t have the equipment or time to create some of the moving light effects that I had originally envisioned on the day.

The Monday before the event I worked in the theatre between 4:30 and 5:45 then between 6:20 and 9:45. A lot of the time earlier on was wasted, as with any kind of production different departments have to set up in order, due to safely reasons I couldn’t alter or program the lighting levels. Once the screen was in place we set about angling the lanterns into the correct position, I was on the lighting desk operating the correct lanterns to enable Chris Hughes to focus and shape them appropriately. After all of the lanterns were in the correct position it was time to set the levels that the lights would operate at. Initially this process went well, it was my first time in charge of the desk and I was enjoying the creative and technical aspect. However there were some quite major bugs with the lighting desk software leading to Chris Hughes spending some time finding ways around faults and flaws in the grouping of lights and pre-set levels. Overall these errors set us back at least an hour; while Chris was sorting the issue I was up in the roof space assisting with the placement of the projectors for the twitter wall and camera for the live video feed.

For the event itself I had been given the task of stage manager and started at 8am. However there were a lot of technical tasks that hadn’t been finished and/or needed checking. This included all the previous night’s work on the lighting desk and fine tuning the projector placement. As stage manager it was my responsibility to make sure that everything was running on schedule as well as checking on the different crew members to co-ordinate all of the tasks and work within the time schedule. I was having to run around a lot and frequently was going to Chris Headland (event organiser) and Chris Hughes (technical lead) to point out issues that needed resolving with the relevant team members. I was briefed on my tasks during the actual speakers’ presentations; I was to give timing cues to the speakers so that they finished on time and didn’t cause the event to overrun. Unfortunately I was placed behind the speakers. So I re-positioned myself over the other side of the stage to give the speakers an eye line to me during the talks. Thankfully my work paid off, mostly, the event opened only slightly behind schedule however the sound hadn’t been handled properly and the music failed to work. At this point it was too late as audience members were already coming in, so we had to continue regardless. One of the speakers also stepped too far back and ended up out of the lighting field, I attempted to direct the speaker forwards into the light but was unable to. I think that the even went well in all, if the sound had been done the night before then faults would have been found on the morning. I also would have liked some time to brief the speakers on the microphone set up and where they could and couldn’t stand to maximise the lighting effect. As this was my first real experience of even working as part of the crew for an event, and more so being the stage manager there was little more I could have done. A lot was leaned from this event and other than the things I have already mentioned I would have liked to have some communications devices between myself and the other crew areas, this would have smoothed over some of the bumps of the event.