Overview
For Pornography my given role was LX Operator and programmer. I also helped out where I could with other areas such as stage build when needed.
My designer in 3rd year was Isaac Ash.
Design Process
A lot of the design for this show was handled initially by Issac as the pornography rig was also mostly shared with the other studio A shows, we did however have a load of specials for the show which were brought to life in our meetings or while taking notes in the limited rehearsals we were able to go to. The main notable ones were the booms, sunstrips and strip special.
The booms were in the design of the show from the beginning and were really effective in the show being a big part of a lot of the scenes. The sunstrips were my initial idea and were used to do effects and we could make use of each individual cell as I patched it in its 10 cell mode which were ideal for the subway train scenes when we just wanted the cells above the actors. Originally we tried rigging four a side on the grid as an easier option however they were way too high and acted more as an entire room wash. In the end they put all eight in a line across the stage rigged on some Scaff which was a lot better.
The strip special was a line of light which was more defined across the stage, it was an idea adapted from spring, they had a small section and we refocused to make it reach all the way across. This was also something we liked and made use of.
Some picture above taken by the photographer making use of the boom specials.
Programming & Tech
When it came time to programme we were ready to go, due to the show having extra setup and experimentation time it meant the show file was well setup. The file had also been adapted from spring awaking since that was the show file that had been created for the first show, I also had my hands in creating this original show file. Brigg and Issac also had some time to add to it while I was working on pavilion shows.
We had a custom direct select sheet with groups, colours, effects, beams and focus so everything was there in front of me additionally we also had a magic sheet which I created for spring which was again adapted for porno with the major change being the sun strips.
This layout was essential to my programming and it meant that I could quickly throw up lights and scenes especially when it came to washes, quite often washes would be repeated and I could just copy cue from a labelled preset in the list.
Issac designed from the floor with the director and then communicated what he wanted over comms up to me on the ETC Gio lighting console. There was times when I would add in lights or effects when designing a scene to see if Isaac liked it which often it did which meant I designed some of the scenes like the dream scene. I respected my boundaries as operator when he was designing but he valued my input and it was also helpful for him to build on ideas.
When it came to haze I was left to decide on when I needed it for myself the only scene that was regulated was the flying scene shown in the images above, this must have been one of our favourite scenes to design. Haze was hard to do in that room you had to keep it regulated for the booms but you could clearly see it when you didn’t want to, it also wouldn’t reach the roof and the fan was really noisy. The hazers themselves were really delayed so you had to pre-empt the scenes you wanted a boost in, I filled the room before house opened so I wasn’t struggling during the performance.
We only had a couple of runs before the live performance so it took me a little while to find my balance but eventually I found a routine that worked the best but still wasn’t ideal mainly down to placement and the nature of the traverse stage.
We manually programmed a load of effects including the mid show transitions which were a swipe on the sun strips from one side to the other based on cells and follow cues, then the final scene where I manually fire 52 cell cues on the sun strips for each fallen person. These were really tedious but we got them done, a couple were cut and revised but overall the director was happy.
Another effect we programmed which was a flash bomb as part of “scenes of hell”. It took a lot of fine tuning to get it to line up perfectly with the audio and create the effect the director wanted. A lot of the extra time for fine adjustments as I said was used for effects but was also spent adjusting timings between scenes and making it flow correctly.
In total we had 144 lighting cues, The 52 cues at the end I would call myself as they were vocal and we found it was the easiest way to do it without delay as I would have to listen to the numbers from the actors.
Image above shows the sunstrips in their final position for the show.
Show Time!
Pornography had four shows, Issac was present for the first and last show however I was trusted to run lx independently for the shows. It all went smoothly the shows had a DSM so I was just listening to cues and adjusting haze.
There was a couple of times were cues were missed or were late due to technical issues on sound however we continued on as normal and rectified the issues. Other than some small little things the shows ran smoothly and everyone enjoyed the show.
I learned a ton while working on this show when it comes to EOS.
References
Etc (2020) Common effects and how to program them on an Eos family console, Electronic Theatre Controls Inc. ETC. Available at: https://support.etcconnect.com/ETC/Consoles/Eos_Family/Software_and_Programming/Common_Effects_and_How_to_Program_Them_on_an_Eos_Family_Console