Stage Managing a Zoom show

[nathan1]

Hello everyone,

 

Sorry if this has been covered before.

 

We are currently looking into the option of Production Arts students having to demonstrate they can either stage manage or production manage an online theatre performance via Zoom or MS Teams or similar.

 

I think a lot of the pre-production work will be similar - production schedules, budgets, rehearsal calls and notes, communication with other departments etc. and most of the paperwork they will need to generate can be adapted, such as show reports.

It should also be easy to evidence they can chair/attend a production meeting over Teams.

 

I guess my question is can anyone point me towards any resources that exist out there to help or would anyone be willing to share any examples of work they have done to evidence stage management in an online/streaming context?!

 

Thanks,

Nathan.

[ImagineerTom]

The RSC made all their production staff do lots of pre-production work over zoom etc last year; tap them up as they will almost certainly have written reports about it and have data to share.

[Junior8]

The Terence Rattigan Society did Heart to Heart on 20th Jan. I am no longer on the committee so I have no idea how it was mounted but if it would help I could put you in contact with the people who did run it. The 80 minutes went with only one hiccough by the way and it was very very enjoyable. (It was a rehearsed reading all in CU.) On reflection this might have been the closest you could get to the experience of watching a production on the Baird system - pre Intermediate Film. Edited January 27, 2021 by Junior8

[mac.calder]

Most is pretty easy - meetings are meetings. Table reads and spoken word rehearsals are rehearsals. Any standard conferencing platform is good for that sort of thing. Making sure all people not in a scene stay muted is perhaps the most difficult thing to manage for rehearsals. For meetings - making sure people don't talk over each other is key - conferencing platforms tend to fall over a bit with multiple speakers. One other thing I will say is that if you are doing any type of show that requires timing - Zoom etc can have issues with latency - so rehearsing a musical number via Zoom isn't fun...

 

 

But do not fear. For real time work, Jamulus is the solution to your problems. It is audio only and is designed to be ultra ultra low latency - so if video is important, just run a zoom session and everyone mutes zoom. Jamulus lets you control the levels of all users individually, so you can make your own mix - so from an evaluators point of view, you can bring all the show audio right down to keep the show call really clear - and from the performers point of view, they can just drop the show call entirely. Whilst not intended specifically for your application, it really does have some cool potential in theatre rehearsals.

 

That said, if they just need to prove they can call a show, then send them a piece of show as an audio or video file and make them share the media via the in-app screen share feature of your conferencing app and call over the top of it.

Edited January 27, 2021 by mac.calder

[sandall]

Year 2s at Chichester College seem to be using a mixture of Zoom, Teams & WebEx, with the students putting all their work on individual websites.

 

Re Mac's last point: the students effectively also directed their own little shows, calling them live via split-screen.

Edited January 27, 2021 by sandall

[Junior8]

I have just been to a meeting which saved a 240 mile round trip! I'm a convert!

[kerry davies]

I have used Zoom with the kids but in my role as old f@rt tenant rep the council is banned from Zoom and has to use Team with which I have had difficulty. Before setting up all sorts of systems it might be an idea, being a sort of public body, to ask the IT folks just what you are or are not allowed to do.

 

I have asked why not but the housing people just say that they can't use Zoom or anything else but Teams on the council's IT network.

[empyfree]

ZoomOSC is a powerful way of gaining some control over zoom meetings. If you’re familiar with OSC control it’s not too steep a learning curve!

[Stuart91]

I have asked why not but the housing people just say that they can't use Zoom or anything else but Teams on the council's IT network.

 

I was told that it was a GDPR thing - Zoom can't guarantee that data will not be passed outside the EU.

[J Pearce]

They've tightened up somewhat now, but earlier this year zoom had some significant security holes that rightly worried many IT admins and data controllers.

[themadhippy]

I was told that it was a GDPR thing

id say its more a micro$oft strangle hold

[Stuart91]

I was told that it was a GDPR thing

id say its more a micro$oft strangle hold

 

In Scotland, schools are all tied into Teams as part of the whole Microsoft ecosystem.

 

A large charity I work with had banned Zoom entirely because of GDPR concerns. Whilst that was the headline reason given, there may well have been other issues driving the decision. I suspect it's easier to cite legislation than security concerns that those higher up the chain might not understand or appreciate.

 

Whilst Zoom is probably still far from perfect, TikTok is harvesting all kinds of data and seems to be becoming ubiquitous with barely a murmur of criticism.

[themadhippy]

Zoom can't guarantee that data will not be passed outside the EU

 

A large charity I work with had banned Zoom entirely because of GDPR concerns. Whilst that was the headline reason given

can somebody remind me were micro$oft is based? and of course none of there software EVER phones home.

[mac.calder]

can somebody remind me were micro$oft is based? and of course none of there software EVER phones home.

 

I mean it's cloud based - doesn't even work when it's not phoning home.... however when you set up a Microsoft tennant you can elect where the servers it floats on are based. So geographically your data shouldn't leave the country. This became a nightmare for us when our owner company decided to move us onto their o365 system in the US - as MS is still not great with "these people need to reside on servers in this country, these people in this other country" etc - and a number of our contracts with clients are very particular about where their data is stored.

[richardash1981]

There is also quite large difference (in the minds of lawyers) between a Microsoft product which you pay for, and therefore have a signed contract in relation to, and a "free" service, for which no such legal framework exists (and what does, is outside the control of the lawyers). After a slightly bumpy start, Microsoft realised that getting the big boys on side depended on making geographic restrictions happen, and all business customers are now beneficiaries of that. Zoom was a small outfit before the pandemic started, with a less refined offer, and for an organisation with no buy-in to Zoom on a corporate level, much less control.

Hence the situation Mac describes where at an organizational level, Microsoft customers can corral their data into UK facilities, whilst free tier Zoom users are routed via data centers in the USA.