I'm stage managing for the first time in over a year and it is proving to be more of a struggle for me to jump back into the swing of things than I had originally expected.
However:
It is a Fringe festival show.
All the rehearsals are skype and g-chat based.
My computer is a dinosaur and the microphone doesn't work.
So basically during rehearsal, I am the scribe.
The silent SM sitting alone in her bedroom, taking notes about accents and dramaturgy.
Scrolling through Pinterest because they can't see my screen to know that I am not doing anything productive.
I am spreadsheet, word doc template, and google calendar-ed out.
I want to sit on my useless computer and do nothing. Absolutely nothing. No skype, no documents, no internet. I want to just sit and stare at my background with blissful ignorance.
I'm sure that once I actually sit down, print out the script, start color coding and making notes, I will be more in-the-zone than I am now. But until then I will be forced to sit, an isolated Stage Manager, with no blocking, no cues to note, only table work to write down and calendars to create and confirm.
If only I could have Ryan Gosling for an actor... A girl can dream. :)
Monday, June 10, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Caution: Splinters ahead
So I've just survived my first round of designing scenery for film. I am going to be taking a break from that for a little while.
It started out fun, like any other project I've worked on. You get to design, bounce some ideas around, try to figure out what will work best.
The issue was the lack of trial and error that I was able to perform. The materials that myself and my designer figured out would be the easiest time and labor wise to build and use, were not the best choice when it came to things being on location, in the weather - snow, rain, high wind, locusts; you name it, it happened.
This experience will be filed under "Learning Experience" at the best. Supposedly the cinematographer is a genius and everything that they ended up using looks beautiful and inspirational and like it's a real place instead of just a scene that was built.
It was the building it that was the nightmare - the designs were simple, we made them that way on purpose, but there were problems with getting help in the actual building of the scenes. I basically ended up building most of one of the locations by myself, and somehow magically there were more people than we knew what to do with for the other two scenes, but we were lucky if they knew the right side of a screw driver.
I had a complete meltdown in the middle of a wine vineyard, and talked to my mom more that week that I think I have all month. My amazing boyfriend, who is a film major in school and has had his share of the stresses associated with a film, pulled me out of my hyperventilating, sobbing ball of stress that I had curled into and rallied people to help me complete the project. He assured me that all that was going wrong with the project was not my fault because I had not been adequately prepared for the job.
Going from working in a theater and having all of my resources at my finger tips - scenic shop, tools, supplies, petty cash - to working out in the middle of a vineyard in the snow with no access to power to charge the tools and needing to pay out of pocket to get all the tools and supplies I needed was just powerfully overwhelming.
I will be working on another film or two very shortly here, but not in a capacity quite as large as the one I was just in, which will be nice. I miss my safety net. And not having bruises and scrapes and scars everywhere.
It started out fun, like any other project I've worked on. You get to design, bounce some ideas around, try to figure out what will work best.
The issue was the lack of trial and error that I was able to perform. The materials that myself and my designer figured out would be the easiest time and labor wise to build and use, were not the best choice when it came to things being on location, in the weather - snow, rain, high wind, locusts; you name it, it happened.
This experience will be filed under "Learning Experience" at the best. Supposedly the cinematographer is a genius and everything that they ended up using looks beautiful and inspirational and like it's a real place instead of just a scene that was built.
It was the building it that was the nightmare - the designs were simple, we made them that way on purpose, but there were problems with getting help in the actual building of the scenes. I basically ended up building most of one of the locations by myself, and somehow magically there were more people than we knew what to do with for the other two scenes, but we were lucky if they knew the right side of a screw driver.
I had a complete meltdown in the middle of a wine vineyard, and talked to my mom more that week that I think I have all month. My amazing boyfriend, who is a film major in school and has had his share of the stresses associated with a film, pulled me out of my hyperventilating, sobbing ball of stress that I had curled into and rallied people to help me complete the project. He assured me that all that was going wrong with the project was not my fault because I had not been adequately prepared for the job.
Going from working in a theater and having all of my resources at my finger tips - scenic shop, tools, supplies, petty cash - to working out in the middle of a vineyard in the snow with no access to power to charge the tools and needing to pay out of pocket to get all the tools and supplies I needed was just powerfully overwhelming.
I will be working on another film or two very shortly here, but not in a capacity quite as large as the one I was just in, which will be nice. I miss my safety net. And not having bruises and scrapes and scars everywhere.
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