Production Notes Alberta Section CITT/USITT - Spring 2004
Watchout Theatre Calgary!
Christmas Carol gets Digital Facelift It was late August last year when Monty Schneider, Production Manager at Theatre Calgary approached me to see if I was interested in project managing the revamp of the projection images for their annual production of A Christmas Carol. I was intregued at the thought of replacing the aging slide projectors with a fully networked, computerized digital projection system. After having done numerous shows with either 35mm carosel or large format Pani projectors, it was great to see projection entering the modern age along with audio and lighting. A Calgary tradition since 1988, A Christmas Carol was redesigned in 2000 utilising rear projection materiel and Pani Projectors on the three main set walls to describe various locations and some of the supernatural aspects of the show. The nine projectors, a variety of 2K and 5K Pani's were set on towers and accessed by a technician during the show to cycle through the large-format glass slides used by the units. While good in concept, the actual number of images that could be used was limited by the time it took the crew member (who had other duties in addition to the Pani's) to change all nine projectors, resulting in only about half a dozen looks throughout the course of the show.
Ghostly Hearse
Marley's Ghost
What was proposed by Theatre Calgary to replace this system was a combination of nine LCD projectors and a piece of software called Watchout. Watchout, by Dataton of Sweden, is a timeline based projection control system capable of handling any combination of still images, video and audio files and any number display devices from LCD and DLP projectors to Plasma screen televisions.
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Board of Directors Jeff Henderson Chair Al Welch Vice-Chair (North) Robyn Ayles Vice-Chair (South) Ian LeMaistre Treasurer Directors at Large: Al Cushing Mike Hessler Roy Jackson Tim Koll Matt LeBrie Adam Mitchell Harold Truckle Alberta Section CITT/USITT is a registered not-forprofit organization in the province of Alberta as defined under the Societies Act.
Message from the Chair It has been a while since our last newsletter. I do apologize for the lapse in issues of "Production Notes". This year more than any other has been challenging for the Alberta Section Board. Many board members have faced great personal and professional challenges. These challenges did compromise some of our programming and organizational efforts. We are now moving forward with programming and taking care of the housekeeping I mentioned in the last newsletter. The annual general meeting took place in Edmonton on November 8th. Some board members have left and I would like to thank them all for their part. Thank you to Mark Lewandowski, E. Jane Mawby, Gary Meiklejohn, Darrell Moore, Gina Puntil and Geoff George. Our 2003/2004 board is Jeff Henderson - Chair, Alan Welch - Vice Chair North, Robyn Ayles - Vice Chair South, Ian LeMaistre - Treasurer and Members-atLarge - A. Allison Cushing, Matthew LaBrie, Harold Truckle, Mike Hessler, Roy Jackson, Tim Koll and Adam Mitchell. Welcome to the new members. There are still board positions to fill. We have openings for two Members-at-Large, the Secretary and Chair-Elect. If you are interested or have a candidate in mind let me know. We can appoint Members-at-Large and will hold elections for Secretary and Chair-Elect. The board met in Red Deer for a day of discussions about the issues affecting the Alberta Section and how we might resolve them. We have implemented some organizations changes. Board member will take on specific portfolios. This will provide key people to handle the different areas of the organization. We can provide better follow up on issues and accountability to Alberta members. We have increased our meeting schedule in a way that is less obtrusive to board members. We now meet once a month as opposed to every six weeks. Every second board meeting is carried out online and the others are in person.
Yes, there is programming. See the information on the Stage Machinery Workshop listed in this newsletter. An e-mail flyer already went out to members. If you missed that please sign up soon. We expect two other workshops in April. The first is a partnership with the University of Alberta to present a fall protection course and a firearms course in partnership with Red Deer College. The firearms course will allow you to take the test for your Possession Acquisition License (PAL). A PAL is required to handle firearms for stage and film. In June we will support a panel discussion on an aspect of technical theatre at the Magnetic North Festival/On the Verge festival in Edmonton. These festivals focus on emerging performance artists and playwrights. A small technical component was well received at the first festival in Ottawa last year. We have begun discussions with Theatre Alberta to assist with their Workshops by Request program. The ½ - 2 day workshops bring professionals to communities to target a theatre's needs. In January the Alberta Section sat down with other interested parties to discuss the development of an Alberta theatre health and safety initiative. This initiative may follow the To Act in Safety program developed by Theatre Ontario in the province. Information on that program is available on their web site www.theatreontario.org. The program provides a starting point for theatres to develop their own safety policies and programs and correlates it to the current legislation. A representative from Theatre Ontario presented and discussed their program with us. A similar program would be very beneficial to the Alberta theatre industry. This is timely given the Occupational Health & Safety legislation was changed in November 2003 and implementation is expected by April 2004. The parties providing support in principle so far are Alberta Section CITT/USITT, Theatre Alberta, The Citadel Theatre, IATSE 210 - Edmonton, University of Alberta and the Alberta Workplace Partnerships Program. The next step is soliciting support and establishing a representative steering committee. One of our board members will represent CITT on this steering committee. In August 2005 Calgary will host the CITT National conference Rendezvous 2005. The Calgary organizing
Watchout.... continued One of the big benefits for a large format projection as in the case of A Christmas Carol comes from the automatic blending of overlapping projectors. Anyone who has done projection knows that one of the big headaches is having to overlap images in order to fill an oddshaped surface with a stock lens and the resultant "double intensity" of the overlapped areas. Watchout deals with this issue intuitively and banding and hot-spots are virtually eliminated. The whole system is run off of ten rack-mount PC's mounted in road cases. Each projector requires its own PC to drive it and do the math for that projector's portion of the image. One additional PC, known as the Production Computer, deals with all the editing and control of the display devices. Each of Theatre Calgary's machines is custom built with P4 2.8 Ghz processors, 512 Mb of Dual Channel DDR Ram, one 80 GB Western Digital Caviar ATA 100 hard drive and two Seagate 120 GB Barricuda serial hard drives run in a mirrored RAID for data protection. The graphics are driven by ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB video cards and the whole thing is hosted on Asus P4C800E - Deluxe motherboards. As for projectors, Unique Communications of Calgary supplied nine Eiki LC-X986 3300 Ansi Lumen units with eight wide angle Four Rack Mounted PC's in Case lenses and one long throw zoom lens. While the units are not professional grade, they still pack some surprising output while keeping cost reasonable. As always with LCD or DLP projectors, the big issue is dousing and the fact that no projector on the market will generate true black. To eliminate the screen glow when the rest of the stage is in black, the tried and true method of using scrollers with mylar frames was resorted to. Truly a person could get rich by inventing an econimical douser that integrated with the projection software. Everything is networked together with standard TCP/IP cabling. As an alternative to the fragile standard blue Cat 5 cable with the plastic ends, we went with Pro-Plex Cat 5 cable from TNB and supplied by Christie Lites Calgary. The Pro-Plex has a rugged black PVC jacket on the outside, braided shield on the inside and has Neutrik Ethercon XLR style conectors on either end to withstand the maximum amount of abuse from your average theatre setup or stirke. The system is a dream to deal with from a cuing and adjustment standpoint. In the case of A Christmas Carol, Calgary graphic artist Ty Semaka generated all of the images for the show in Adobe Photoshop. Watchout will take media in a number of different forms, including native Photoshop files with all of their layers in tact. During video and lighting level sets, we were able to make adjustments to images on the fly by bouncing them back and forth between Watchout and Photoshop. Gone are the trial and error days of taking images back to the studio and guessing what the difference between a computer monitor and a live show environment will be. The screen setup is a multi-track, timeline-based interface with simple graphic commands for editing fades, changes in position and scaling called "Tween Tracks". The best way to describe the layout is by saying that it behaves like a Two Projectors with Spectra Q Scrollers on front
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Watchout.... continued combination of Photoshop, Pro Tools and Power Point. By combining various Tween Tracks and manipulating various individual layers of certain Photoshop images, we were able to generate movement within an image without having to resort to rendering full-on animation. Since the initial run of A Christmas Carol, Theatre Calgary has used the system in their production of Fire. Seattle Opera was featured in Entertainment Design Magazine for their use of a Watachout system in their production of Parsifal last summer and it is rumored that the Banff Centre is going to use a system for an upcoming opera in the summer of 2004. I would not be surprised to see more and more projection used in the future. This latest version of Watchout brings projection to the almost the same level that lighting and audio are at. I would hope that when more people in the live theatre industry start using the technology, future versions of the software will be even more "theatre friendly" than it is now. (Christmas Carol Images are copyright Ty Semaka 2004 and are used with
City Scape and Scrooge's Office
permission)
Mike Hessler
From the Chair.... continued committee has begun its work. What do you want to see at Rendezvous 2005? Let us know at Albertasection@citt.org. The Canadian exhibit for the Prague Quadrennial last year will be presented around Alberta in the spring and summer. Keep your eyes out for it and see a cross section of Canadian design work. Proposed cities are Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary and Banff. We need your help and in turn we can support you. Every day you can find yourself asking, "How can I do this?" or "Wouldn't it be great to learn that?" And every day someone else asks those questions. I am sure you know an individual or company that has the answers. Bring us the idea and we can provide you with the support and resources in answer to those questions. It could be a guest speaker, workshop or even a master class. Maybe you already took the bull by the horns and have a program coming up. Are you short a few participants or open to more? Let us know and we can share the news of your program with the CITT network. You can contact the Alberta Section at alberta-section@citt.org or any board member at firstname_lastname@citt.org. (eg: jeff_henderson@citt.org. (There is an underscore between the first and last names.)
Jeff Henderson
RENDEZVOUS 2004: Conference and Trade Show
French Connexion August 12th - 15th Montreal, Quebec
Check www.citt.org for details.
Upcoming Workshops: Edmonton - Stage Machinery Join Tracey Nunnally from the Northern Illinois University School of Theatre and Dance in a day-long workshop devoted to Hydraulics, Pneumatics and Control Systems for theatre applications. When: Sunday, March 7th, 2004, 9am - 6pm Where: Timms Centre for the Arts Scene Shop, University of Alberta Campus, Edmonton Cost: $ 20.00 for CITT/ICTS & USITT student members $ 40.00 for student non-members $ 50.00 for student non-members (includes membership) $ 50.00 for CITT/ICTS & USITT members $100.00 for non-members $120.00 for non-members (includes membership) Contact: alan.welch@ualberta.ca for registration and details
Red Deer - Canadian Firearms Possession and Acquisition Licensing Brian Kent of Pro Line Shooters in Calgary will do a one day workshop which will include safe procedures for film and stage, an outline of Federal regulation and how it relates to the entertainment industry and course materiel and exam for Federal Firearms Possession and Acquisition License. This workshop was a great success last year and is a must for any user of theatrical firearms When: This workshop is TBA late April. Check www.citt.org/alberta/sect_ab.htm for updates. Where: Red Deer College Arts Centre Contact: ian.lemaistre@rdc.ab.ca for preregistration
Calgary - Live Mixing 101 A one day workshop for audio technicians and the rest of us. Focus of this workshop will be on the practices of live sound reinforcement for stage with special emphasis on integrating the band into a musical. This workshop is still in development When: This workshop is TBA for early May. www.citt.org/alberta/sect_ab.htm for updates. Where: TBA Contact: mike_hessler@citt.org if you are interested.
Alberta CITT/USITT programming is presented with funding support from Theatre Alberta and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
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