"Titanic" - The Musical

[Diane]

Hi All - I am SMing the above production for Knowle Operatic Society in the Solihull Library Theatre in Mar. 07

 

I went to see the Production at Nottingham (Theatre Royal) and have some concerns over set size! The stage area dimensions at Solihull are as follows -

 

Proscenium 9.0 metres wide x 4.0 metres high

Stage 13.0 metres wide x 11.5 metres deep (includes forestage/apron) x 5.7 metres high and the house has 15 fly bars - manual system...

 

I would be interested to hear anyone's experiences/challenges if they have worked the production as I have a couple of concerns...

 

a) I have a relatively inexperienced flycrew (took two of them to fly a gauze out) so am concerned about

the size/weight of sets I have seen. (although I can probably poach crew from other companies I work with - but I

can see it being a sensitive area!)

 

b) I would like to use projection through the lighting desk (Strand 520i with LD90 DMX) - how feasible is this?

 

Well - just chucking a few queries in the air here... I've got a while before rehearsals kick off but wanted a bit of a steer...

 

Cheers

 

Di

[Rob]

b) I would like to use projection through the lighting desk (Strand 520i with LD90 DMX) - how feasible is this?

 

What exactly do you mean by this - Do you mean you want to cue the video elements from the desk? This is quite possible with a Catalyst system or similar, but possibly over complicated / expensive. It will also need suitably trained / experienced crew to make it work, which given the aparent competence of your fly crew may be an issue.

 

Also, I've never heard of anyone integrating video with a 500 series. Although I cant see any reason why it wouldn't be possible, it would be interesting to know if anyone else has tried this.

[mikienorth]

I was involved in this last year for an amateur organisation.

They scratch built a set to fit our stage, which is rather a large one, and may still have elements remaining, but I believe most of it was scrapped after the show.

 

Video projection wasn't used, but I seem to remember slide projection featuring, which wasn't run from the desk (too expensive)

 

They also didn't try and tilt a set, and it still worked. They made a lot of use of trucks mind, a couple of white cloths, and one ridiculous flying, piece, a gangplank, that was used. I recall they spent over £80,000 on the set, but they had audiences around 16-1800 every night too.

 

Lit entirley with generics, 1kW fresnels and loads of specials basically.

 

They rented a scissor lift from scena? to use to raise a lifeboat from the pit, fill it then lower it from the 'deck' to safety. An effect that was well worth the hassle of doing properly, just get a forklift to move the lift, we 'borrowed' a JCB from a nearby site...

 

Sorry to sound like I'm being obvious here, but if it is an amateur production, make sure a quantity of crew are proffessional, and everyone else is prepared to take the week of the production off work to fit up during the day, and dry tech during the day. I am in the middle of an amateur event where people are not committedfully to the project and the product has suffered to an embarrasing level for the visiting company.

[LeeStoddart]

Diane, Are you using the same set that you saw in Nottingham? Or is the society hiring a set from somewhere else, or building one from scratch?

 

I lit this show in 2004 and will be lighting it again later this year. This is for two local societies, the set for these two productions will be completely different.

 

In the 2004 production the set was very simple, a single raised area (approx 4m wide, 3m deep and 0.5m high) was mainly the bridge of the Titanic but it also became the deck of the ship when the lifeboats were loaded. The whole production was very stylised. Each part of the stage served multiple purposes and changes of locale were suggested by lighting. A projector was used to show images on a large screen upstage to represent the areas of the boat. Effectively projected scenery. In this production absolutely nothing was flown (if you discount the large fixed screen).

 

I'm sure that this year's set will be much more complex and that many elements will be flown. And I imagine this year's production will be no less demanding on lighting to create mood and setting.

 

My point is that staging any show can be done in different ways technically, your production team might well have a large set in mind, or maybe they will use a simple black box. Discuss the thoughts and ideas first. When you have some details of the requirements then come back for more advice and suggestions on how to achieve the desired effects if you are responsible for them.

[mac.calder]

What sort of flys do you have? If they are counterweighted, I cannot imagin it needing two people to fly anything unless the lines are poorly balanced. One can train a person to be a competant flyman in less than 10 minutes (with the exception of loading and unloading bars and cradles correctly)

 

That said, small stages can be great fun - I have not read the script for titanic and I have never seen it before. That said, provided your set designers work to complement the stage size, instead of hoping to fit the actors into the space left after they cram as much scenery as they can in, things will work out fine.

 

Just remember - make the space work for you, don't fight it. Small spaces can provide elements that large spaces don't.

 

Projection controled from the LX console is a royal pain in the rear, unless you have a few hundred to blow. Instead, either employ someone to operate (usually easiest) or make LX multitask.

[andy_s]

If by "through the lighting desk" you mean to start and stop projection, then by using a media server such as hippotizer or catalyst this can be done using DMX from your lighting board.

 

as you mention the dimmers you have, does that mean you want touse the projector like a lantern and fade it in and out with a dimmer? This is unlikely to be a viable option - I don't know of any "dimmable" projectors, although they may well exist...(?) We recently used our hippotizer to run video that was faded in and out and crossfaded using the hippotizer software ( as you would with a vision mixer). all these video sequences were recorded like cue states, and the "go" button set everything off on cue. The projector stayed on all the time, and a mechanical shutter was placed in front of the lens to cut off the light from the projector when necessary. It's possible to get DMX operated shutters; as our operating position was quite close to the projector, we used a bit of cardboard, some gaffer, some tiny pulleys, a long piece of string and a few 17mm hexnuts to add enough weight to the cardboard in order to allow it to close when the string was released.

[pete LD]

hi will post more lata cuz I'm late for work but thought id put something down.

I am lighting the same set (scenic projects) in October on a smaller stage. the director saw the set in Nottingham and loved the set, then put the deposit on then we got the set plans! but scenic projects have helped. we sent a cad plan of the stage and they worked it on to it! as for flying this is in a hemp house to and its not going to be easy, heavy cloths and flown flatage and stuff!

any way going to work!

Pete

[Ellis]

For those that want to know, Solihull is a hemp house, numbered from the back wall!

 

I have in the Past seen a projector dimmed using a scroller with several different levels of ND filter making up the scroll - that could, of course be controlled by the 520. It should be quite possible to trigger the slide advance using a DMX relay module. If you are thinking of using a data projector, Rosco do a DMX device to control Powerpoint.

 

As for the set, they could do worse than ask John Plush to design it for them (if they can catch him in this country) and Stuart Bishop to build it (they both have a lot of experience of Solihull from recent pantomimes).

 

HTH

 

Ellis