nickb12345 Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 Hi Our school is doing a production of Grease the musical in december and I have been asked to stage manage it! The scripts we have been given are small books, with no space for making notes! The school has paid the appropriate royalties and everything is ship-shape with the law! Does anyone now where I can get (or have) a digital copy of the script (so I can print it A4 with double line spacing for notes), preferably free! Otherwise I will have to type ie or photocopy every page of the book and enlarge it! Many Thanks Nick Baker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam.henderson Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 for recording blocking cut the a5 pages up and tick the in the center of an A4 page using the usual ring binding method. Sam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickb12345 Posted September 28, 2004 Author Share Posted September 28, 2004 I think the scripts are on loan so we cant do that I will have to check on that one! Thanks anyway Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GridGirl Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 I'd suggest photocopying the script so that you've got 2 A5 pages to one A4 page, cut it in half and stick the A5 page in the top LH corner of an A4 page and then put them in a ring binder. That way you have space on the back of each script page plus space to the right and below the script itself to make notes and take blocking down. I find that it's easier if you have it set up so the script is on the LHS of the binder - seems a bit strange to start off with but it works well for me. It takes a fair while to put a stage manager's book together like this but it's worth it in the end. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 don't mark anything on the printed (photocopied) text other than reference points, text changes or cuts - make all your notes on the opposite blank page. usually this is set out: text on right, blocking / cueing notes on left, but some DSMs prefer to reverse that, as it is easier for a right-handed person to write on that side, and because we read right to left. Although it is a pain, it is really worth enlarging the text to A4 size on the photocopier, as you will be reading it in low-light conditions, so a bigger point-size helps a lot. When writing cues and blocking -always write in pencil. Don't ink in until the last possible moment - I always used to take this to mean after the final performance, but officially - as I was taught at Drama School - it should be after the first performance, as there shouldn't be any significant changes after that. However opinions as to when a production should become "set in stone" have changed over the last few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucy_ironside Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Don't ink in until the last possible moment - I always used to take this to mean after the final performance, but officially - as I was taught at Drama School - it should be after the first performance, as there shouldn't be any significant changes after that. Certainly in commercial theatre you will only generally come across inked in shows when they hae been sitting in the West End for a fairly long time. I have been a DSM for a pretty long time and I would only ink in a book when it had been up and running for a significantly long time. As for the first performance being the end of changes, that is certainly not my experience at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 I've re-typed far more than I'd like to have done. As I can't touch type, it takes a while even though I'm quite quick. Worst was Return to the Forbidden Planet - the psuedo Shakespeare was a devil. I'm tempted to try a laptop/printer combo for my next show. update and print hard copy on the laptop, just printing changes, then run from the laptop with the hardcopy as back-up. I've re-installed xp with mimimal clutter and am thinking that excel could be a good way of doing it. Anyone tried it who can tell me NO............?paulI'm working on the principal it has to be solid - so far, touch wood, it's been very stable - time will tell, but it's got to last 71 performances without major snags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Don't ink in until the last possible moment - I always used to take this to mean after the final performance, but officially - as I was taught at Drama School - it should be after the first performance, as there shouldn't be any significant changes after that. Certainly in commercial theatre you will only generally come across inked in shows when they hae been sitting in the West End for a fairly long time. I have been a DSM for a pretty long time and I would only ink in a book when it had been up and running for a significantly long time. As for the first performance being the end of changes, that is certainly not my experience at all.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> agreed - my point is that what you learn at drama school might be good theory, but not best practice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 I've re-typed far more than I'd like to have done. As I can't touch type, it takes a while even though I'm quite quick. Worst was Return to the Forbidden Planet - the psuedo Shakespeare was a devil. I'm tempted to try a laptop/printer combo for my next show. update and print hard copy on the laptop, just printing changes, then run from the laptop with the hardcopy as back-up. I've re-installed xp with mimimal clutter and am thinking that excel could be a good way of doing it. Anyone tried it who can tell me NO............?paulI'm working on the principal it has to be solid - so far, touch wood, it's been very stable - time will tell, but it's got to last 71 performances without major snags.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've tried using excel for modifying documents such as contracts with lots of clauses, only some of which may need to change, and to set up an "A/B comparison between original and revisions, and the problem I found was in identifying a consistent cell size, with bits becoming invisible as I used an adjacent cell. This might be a problem encountered when using it for scripts? there may be a simple solution to this, but I haven't found it yet... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickb12345 Posted October 6, 2004 Author Share Posted October 6, 2004 if you turn on the text wrap in the cell then as you go over the cell morder it moves to a new line, and then extending the depth of the row! nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 if you turn on the text wrap in the cell then as you go over the cell morder it moves to a new line, and then extending the depth of the row! nick<{POST_SNAPBACK}> I do use this facility, but I still find that if I'm inputting a lot of text, some of it vanishes into the ether. Is there some kind of limit on information in any given cell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richard_cooper Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 I do use this facility, but I still find that if I'm inputting a lot of text, some of it vanishes into the ether. Is there some kind of limit on information in any given cell? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes there is a limit in excel, I can't remember what it is though. For this kind of thing I have found that the spreadsheet component of OpenOffice.org is much better. It does not seem to have a limit on the amount of text in a cell, and also has a handy "Optimal row hight" feature. This automatically resizes the row to the content. I've never found a decent way of doing this in excel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P. Funk Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 For this kind of thing I have found that the spreadsheet component of OpenOffice.org is much better. It does not seem to have a limit on the amount of text in a cell, and also has a handy "Optimal row hight" feature. This automatically resizes the row to the content. I've never found a decent way of doing this in excel.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> double-click the line between the cells, and it will resize to fit the content. http://www.offminor.net/excel.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jagardner1984 Posted October 9, 2004 Share Posted October 9, 2004 I have seen this done for shows with a scanner and OCR software. It will be very interesting to see over the next few years whether someone comes up with a reliable, easy to use, computerised book system. At the moment I am using a widescreen laptop, and I find it easy to read text on the two pages function in Print Preview, so maybe a wider than normal screen would enable a DSM to see blocking, calls and the script in one easy page, which the DSM could scroll down from page to page. What do other folk think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freddie Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hi Our school is doing a production of Grease the musical in december and I have been asked to stage manage it! The scripts we have been given are small books, with no space for making notes! The school has paid the appropriate royalties and everything is ship-shape with the law! Does anyone now where I can get (or have) a digital copy of the script (so I can print it A4 with double line spacing for notes), preferably free! Otherwise I will have to type ie or photocopy every page of the book and enlarge it!My school's also doing Grease but only the cast got those little (yellow?) books. All of the crew got photocopies blown up to A4. It helped that our resident technician was friendly with the photocopy lady - have you tried asking her? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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