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GridGirl

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About GridGirl

Previous Fields

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    Working in the industry
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    Moved from full-time stage manager and sometime lighting tech to Operations Manager for an opera and ballet orchestra at the beginning of 2011...
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  • Full Name
    Anna Dodgshun

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    kiwitech
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  • Location
    Sydney, Australia
  • Interests
    Music, travel, hiking, snowboarding! I am also a roller derby girl and in the derby world go by the name Hammer Montana.

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  1. Controlbooth is effectively the US version of this forum. In terms of stage blood, I’ve always found that makeup artists or prop managers have their own recipes - I used to work with a makeup artist who swore by adding blue tinted dish soap - which also meant it washed out much more easily. Maybe contact some props departments of big opera companies and see if they can help - opera seems to have a lot of stage blood so they’re experts!
  2. Think the loudest peak I’ve seen was 130db(C) some years ago. Actually, that’s the loudest peak from an acoustic musical instrument (it was an absolute unit of a brass shelled Rührtrommel field drum), we did a ballet which had a stockwhip crack which peaked at about 145db(C) until the lash was altered so it couldn’t physically crack that loudly. This is what happens when someone on the ballet staff was a junior stockwhip cracking champion who taught the dancers how to do it properly… Legally we have to keep the LAeq at 85dB(A) over an 8-hour time period (so louder over a 3 hour show).
  3. Still used in small towns with volunteer fire brigades in New Zealand. My parents have a holiday house in one such small town and as kids we got quite accustomed to hearing it go off. Out of interest I’ve just looked it up and they generally attend 70-100 call-outs a year.
  4. This isn’t an official job ad, but Opera Australia is looking for a Head of Lighting and from what I can see, will be accepting international applicants. It’s a reasonable salary even for Sydney’s high cost of living, and I’m probably biased but it’s a good company to work for. As someone who moved to Sydney to take my job up, it’s a beautiful city to live in, and I still don’t get tired of walking around the corner and seeing the Opera House gleaming in the sunshine! All the details at opera.org.au/jobs if you want a change…
  5. I used to work for a large and well known opera company, outside of the UK. We got in automation technology for followspots in about 2017-2018 (can’t remember exactly when). First show they got used on, there was a panic booking of spot ops halfway through the production period when the system just did not work well enough. Since then a different system (BlackTrax, I think) has been introduced and is markedly better - but there are still spot ops on each production, it hasn’t replaced them completely.
  6. So we’ve had apocalyptic rain here on the eastern seaboard of Australia over the last week or so. Concert at a local theatre had the floor give way under the carpet due to piers shifting because of the rain - the carpet held and no one was hurt, luckily.
  7. I don’t know how well it will work with a haze machine - I’ve ducted fog with no issues though. Worth a shot! We always seemed to get the best results with the pipe end a couple of inches away from the machine nozzle, for whatever reason it created better airflow. Flexible plastic piping will be fine, you shouldn’t have an issue with it melting. You’ll just have to experiment to figure out what works best for you. On the odd occasion that we did have the piping in contact with the machine, we just gaffered it on - no need for anything special!
  8. That’s an excellent point. When we had our big refurb in 2017, part of the new pit setup was removable acoustic panels which attach to the ceiling (so we can adjust absorption and reflection according to the work being performed). Obviously, being in the ceiling means we needed a pair of ladders to put them up and remove them and the opera house didn’t skimp. They brought a ladder specialist in, he looked at what we needed to do, the average height of the staff doing the job, where we needed to position the ladders and recommended a particular ladder (with a work platform at the top) for the job. I don’t know what they cost but they were not cheap! However, they’re perfect. Lightweight, easy to move around, exactly the right height for the job, exceptionally stable - I’ve never felt anything but totally safe on them. Worth every penny that was paid. The only problem we have with them is stopping other departments stealing them...luckily the House has a myriad of doors and corners where a lot of people never go, so we found a good (and convenient!) hiding place for them and they’ve remained safely in our possession!
  9. GridGirl

    Yamaha 01v96

    Moderation: Moved topic to the Sound forum. Anna (mods)
  10. Moderation: I’ve moved this topic to the Sound forum which it’s better suited to! Anna (mods)
  11. The Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903 also had a big impact on theatre safety laws (and building fire safety codes as well). Reading about that one always gives me chills because there was so much that went so wrong.
  12. You might have more luck asking over at ControlBooth which is as close as you’ll get to a US equivalent of this forum!
  13. Slightly off topic but still important and on the subject of radio telescopes: I do hope everyone here has seen the film The Dish. It’s centred around the Parkes radio telescope which played a big part in broadcasting pictures from the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Wonderful Australian film - well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.
  14. Three years ago when the Opera Theatre at the Sydney Opera House was undergoing renovation, there were news headlines screaming about “asbestos found at the Sydney Opera House! Is this iconic building safe?!?!” This, of course, threw our players into a frenzy, thinking that they’d all been exposed to asbestos and so on. We were 99% sure that it was nothing to do with the pit and none of the players had been in any danger (and of course if it’s undisturbed it’s not usually a problem); to try and calm them down we ended up calling the staff member who was our liaison regarding the renos and of course it turned out to be fine. He said that they knew there was asbestos in the building, and that they’d undoubtedly find it during the renos, it was just that they didn’t know exactly where it was - the plans of the building are not very accurate, mostly due to the mid-construction changes that were made. Plans had of course been put in place before the first sledgehammer was swung, it got removed safely, statements were issued basically saying the media had made a mountain out of a molehill and we never heard any more about it. Interestingly enough the Concert Hall renos, which are now about nine months in, haven’t had the same headlines. I do love how musicians overreact and go to DEFCON 5 at 1000 miles an hour though. The last fun one I had to explain was that a 5Ghz wifi router was not the same as a 5G mobile cell. There’s a router in the pit because audio use an iPad connected to the sound desk a lot and without a router in the pit they were having connection problems. Had to get my computer engineer husband to write a plain English explanation of the differences for me that time!
  15. And on a larger scale - just been sent this from Sydney http://postimg.cc/V0y3Htfq https://I.postimg.cc...se-12-11-20.jpg Link isn’t working for me but I’m guessing it’s this one? https://ibb.co/VHnJC5T It’s stunning in person, one of my favourite SOH projections.
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