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December 3, 2009

Groundplan Stickers

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:43 pm

Everybody’s got their own thing when it comes to how they set up their script for blocking, especially as it pertains to having a shortcut for drawing blocking on top of a premade groundplan of the set.

I don’t generally bother with having big pages with a large groundplan on them once or twice. I have a template for that in the database, and will print some out because I know our lighting designer likes them, and in case I need to draw a really big stage picture for some reason, but the way I handle my groundplan drawing needs is with stickers.

I buy some label paper (Avery 5164 usually, although it doesn’t have to be), and print a bunch of mini groundplans on it. With the paper I use, there are six stickers per page. I fit two groundplans on each sticker and then cut them up, so I get a total of 12 per page. But that’s totally up to your preference for how big you want or need them to be. The really low-maintenance way is to pick a label size that’s exactly how big you want your picture to be, but I stick to this size because it gives me the flexibility to make bigger ones if I want.

I like to keep most of my facing page of the script free for blocking, and then have a tiny diagram only where I need it. This way I don’t have to bother printing lots of sheets with groundplans on them for every page. When I come across some complicated blocking that requires a picture, I peel off a sticker and place it exactly where in the script I want it.

Depending on what kind of show you’re doing, the amount of work and expense to make all the stickers might be worse than just printing the groundplan a couple times on all the back pages of your script, but I find it very flexible. I can have no groundplans on a page or 10, and they can be wherever I want to indicate exactly where in the text they relate to.


November 26, 2009

Rorscharch Test

I call this: computers,gaming,mac,On the Road Again,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:30 am

Screen shot 2009-11-26 at 3.10.52 AM

What does this look like to you?

If you said Luigi driving a Model T, you may be an 80s gamer.

What is it really?
It’s the desktop icon of a PDF with all the plans for Romeo and Juliet. By default on a Mac the icon is a miniaturized version of whatever the front page of the document is.

So is our production set in the Mushroom Kingdom in the early 1900s?
Well no, now that you mention it, I’m kind of disappointed that it’s not.

Here’s a bigger version of how that image got to look like Luigi behind the wheel of a car:

Screen shot 2009-11-26 at 3.15.12 AM

It’s been driving me crazy all day. I keep wondering what that icon on my desktop that so clearly is Luigi driving a car is doing there, when I’m trying to keep only things work-related in front of me. Finally I looked at it and actually realized that what I’m looking at is the Guthrie’s McGuire stage and our set being scaled down to approximately 1/1680th of its actual size.
(disclaimer: I suck at math. I really suck at math. And I don’t have the scale drawings with me).