Guest lightnix Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 As mentioned in the "Rest & Fatigue" thread I actually came out of retirement to do a show the other day. It was a conference for the National Bingo Association and in the pub afterwards the conversation turned to the variety of weird and wonderful shows there are out there. One of the noise boys said he had just been on a back to back tour with a hairdressers competition and I found myself recalling a Printing & Packaging award show, where the Sainsburys Haddock & Prawn Crumble box won an award for being... well, a beautifully printed piece of packaging I was also LD on three Teletubbies conferences a few years ago :P So, what are your memories of such shows ? I don't really mean theatre so much here, but all those funny little jobs which mean b :o gg :o r all to anyone other than those in the audience. What was your favourite ? Did you learn anything ? Would you do it again or is there one that you wish you'd been on ? Utterly pointless subject for a thread, I know. I just thought it might be amusing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thirdtap Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 'lonot a conference but a corparate do. Rig and dress a deck for a party on board a new ship that would travel across the Atlantic laying data cable on the sea floor.The party was for the companies big cheesess. Judging from the lack of press coverage I would say that the world didn't miss out on much. Hold on they are flooding back:Whilst working at a theme park a 'meeting' about changes in the park which mainly concerned several thousand pounds being spent referb'ing the toilets. A very strange event which involved except 3 techs were Austrian. Not a word of English throughout the show. Sorry no lessons to be learnt from any of these. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark b Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 I seem to get alot of weird work. Usualy with a medical Bias here are a few. 1) Video editor for a ENT surgery course. (made me quite green)2) Installing Av kit into the human disection labs at one of our local universitys.3) Designing a circular set that had three giant colons (not of the punctuation type!) I get all the glamerous jobs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James C Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 Weirdest Gig: Long one, this: Working for a TIE company a few years back, who had been asked to use a fallow day to provide actors for the re-enactment of the opening ceremony of Lord & Lady Hanbury’s “Grotto†(A Hut on top of a hill that they had had made using the shells found on their travels, and the bones of animals shot on their estate – which covered most of Walesat the time). Local Council had renovated said Grotto for its 150th Birthday and wanted to celebrate. One actor short meant muggins was transformed from black-clad stage manager to â€Langdon the Woodsman†:P who, in the course of the ceremony would be captured by two local militia (accountants from a local re-enactment group), and dragged before his Lordship, accused of poaching. Did I mention the Hanbury’s employed a hermit to live in the grotto, who was never to engage in conversation, but simply to grumble poetry and mild oaths at passers-by :o ? We provided one of them and all. All this would have been fairly low-key, had the Prutour cycle race not been suspended following a fatality, and this left local news-crews with nothing better to do than drive their very expensive OB vans along a dirt-track and up a Gwent Mountain to cover our goings-on. Suddenly my shame at taking a turn on the stage was magnified a hundred-fold as we provided background to live link-ups for BBC and ITV news! Most enjoyable gig: doing “Venue & Band Liaison†for a Jazz festival, covering the nine participating pubs (all within half a mile of each other). My job was to check that the pub was happy with the band and the band was happy with the pub. Apart from one nasty incident with a world-renowned Jazz drummer temporarily refusing to perform in a pub that offered Karaoke (though not while he was playing!), all went very smoothly, particularly the copious quantities of dark-brown liquid that grateful landlords and musicians sent my way in the course of the weekend :) :P :o ;) B) ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 In my experience, anything to do with small dance schools tends to be deeply, deeply strange and a little bit chaotic. I did one once where the "DSM" was the school owner's daughter. The only reason she was calling it was because she'd broken both her wrists and therefore couldn't dance( I thought you used your feet to dance, but what do I know? :P ) Anyway, she got way too stressed during the curtain call, and threw down her cans (mid tabs bounce), then ran off into our workshop wailing 'I can't cope, I can't cope!' Since the whole show was a busk anyway this left the poor ops mightily confused! Don't think her mum was best pleased with her, poor girl. Still these crazy things do brighten up your life a bit, don't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers Shepperd Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 Whilst working at Theatre Projects, I got called in at the last minute to baby site 4 off 4k HMI's with dimmer shutters to something at Hammersmith Hospital.Started at 6am and proceeded to be the Gaffer for a corporate video for the Hospitals waste incinerator unit. This involved getting lots of shots of yellow medical waste plastic bags going up a conveyor into a high temperature furnace. The video had been comissioned by the German company who'd supplied the furnace and chimneys......very, very odd. The other surreal one was for P&O. We loaded into the car deck of a cross channel ferry (the "Pride of Bergundy" as I remember) as it went from Dover to Calais and then slept overnight while the ferry made its way up the Thames to Docklands. The Car deck was turned into a Ballroom along with carpet, dinner for 500 guests, and Band etc etc. The funny thing was that however glamarous the transformation you couldn't hide the stench of diesel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterT Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 My favourite every year is the College Hair and Beauty Department's annual 'Show' This involves various groups of students with hair styles that look like they've been playing with the mains, makeup that Stevie Wonder might have applied and awful Club music so they can do a dance routine and look lovely. Yet they are never really keen for our dance students to come and cut their hair... :P anyway I digress I'm ususally suplied the music a week or so before on CDS and Cassettes so I can put it all on a minidisc for the show. The edits are usually done with the tape to tape copy unit so there's a nice gap and a loud 'Clunk' when there's an edit, the levels are so low that to try and boost them you just get Hiss and apparantly Dolby IS some sort of Hair care product! All they ever want lighting wise is 'Flashing Lights' and 'Smoke' so there's lots of opportunity for expressive lighting there then! Having said all that the show only lasts about 40 minutes and there is always a Buffet after so a free feed is never turned down! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robloxley Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 Conferences are always good for a laugh. I remember one for Woolies that was supposed to be a easy one-man'er. Yeah right - YT ended up juggling 7 radiomics, video projection, data projection, a fairly involved lighting plot, and running dance music at truly epic volumes! A somewhat progressive management style... Luckily the next day was the Audit Commission with a how-to-audit day - truly the most mind-numbing stuff, though I had to work quite hard again - to stay awake!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ace Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 My most obscure show ever: Got called into my local theatre at the last minute to cover follospot, only to find that the show was the 'men-o-men' strip tour. I was not impressed as I ended up having to followspot some guy as he took his clothes off. Wouldn;t have been so bad, but on followspot I had to watch. I can see now why the in house technician had to be called away urgently at the last minute. :P Although an auditorium full of drunk young ladies, did have its merits! :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 and threw down her cans (mid tabs bounce)I hope she turned them off first! Yeeouch! Stu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 Anyway, she got way too stressed during the curtain call, and threw down her cans (mid tabs bounce), then ran off into our workshop wailing 'I can't cope, I can't cope!'Last time someone did that to me, it was near the start of the (amateur) show and the mic broke in the (tecpro) headset - leaving us DSMless for the first act! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryson Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 Obscure? Performance art is the place to be. I once did a show/installation in Nottingham about the media. After doing a spot of lighting, my role during the run was to sit in a room eating junkfood and recording any bits of news that I could from the TV, onto a string of 5 daisy-chained VCRs. Then, once there was a gap, I had to take the tapes to the installation, give them to another bloke. His job was simply to drive a scooter(!) into the gallery and give the tapes to a group of "researchers" who watched the tapes and wrote them up into news articles, which were conveyed to a group of "newsreaders" who read the news constantly for about 6 hours a day. Crazy bonkers. And, re: cans. I'm not sure which is louder: the noise of someone not turning the mic off before putting their cans down, or everyone else shouting "turn your F**ing cans off!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 sit in a room eating junkfood and recording any bits of news that I could from the TV,Was the junk food part of the performance or just a personal preference? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ketil B Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 Hi all This is the strangest thing I have seen.Back when I was in school (I was 13) I did my first gig, which was a fashion show and the two girls that where running it got two of there grandparents in for the dress to give comments, but one was blind and the other was deaf. There's a balance to all things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Russell Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 I was also LD on three Teletubbies conferences a few years ago  Surely not the job that happened a few years ago on the location set!!! The last one that we did the sound on is remembered as the worst job that any of the crew have ever done!! Just think rain, mud, a client that doesn't make any decisions, oh and you can't walk on the grass (Did I say it was in a field!!) aah the memories :P :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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