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January 11, 2013

Vermin in My Boots

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:43 pm

Have you ever been grossed out by a pest problem at your theatre? Ronica Reddick feels your pain. Our “Ardelia” hates mice, and the mice seemed to be making the Silence! dressing rooms their summer vacation destination this past year.

Naturally Ronica did what anyone would do, and wrote a song about it. And then recruited one of our musicians, Nick Williams, to record it with her. And then recruited me to co-direct and edit a music video of it. And finally, she got every single person who works on the show to be in the video, all without letting them in on the secret of what the video was about.

It was something of a closing present for us, before going on hiatus. Our theatre shows movies sometimes when we’re dark, so we were able to do a fancy screening of it for everyone, including popcorn. The video even made it to BroadwayWorld.

Check it out:


September 9, 2012

Opening Wishes

I call this: Uncategorized — Posted by KP @ 12:23 am

Tonight was (or is, I guess, it’s 9:03 there) the opening of Silence! in LA, which production I am very grateful for, as it’s the whole reason there was a job opening for me in New York.

Many of the people I’ve met in my short time on the show are working on that production, and all of us at Silence! New York are very excited to hear that the show is wowing audiences in LA.

For the past week, we’ve been asked to prepare an opening night gift for our LA colleagues: to shoot a congratulatory video backstage, and to take individual photos holding up a sign expressing our best wishes.

I helped out with taking a lot of the photos, and shot and edited the video. Today the Silence! LA Facebook page presented a compilation of our photos and video to the LA cast, as seen here:

The people I work with are crazy, in the best possible way.


July 10, 2011

“The Mac is Kicking Ass” Music Video

I call this: computers,mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 1:36 pm


OK, I’m not a huge fan of autotune, or stupid YouTube videos, and I clicked on this one with very low expectations, but it won me over with its charming tune and visuals.

It’s Phil Schiller at Apple’s recent WWDC, auto-tuned and set to music.*

In other news, I am impatiently awaiting the release of Mac OS X Lion, rumored for July 14, which is 4 days from now, and entirely too far away. I think perhaps I should watch the WWDC keynote again to refresh my memory about how some of the new features work so I can get down to business once it’s installed.

*one note: for some reason the video uses a clip of the $129 price tag. That was part of Phil showing what OS upgrades used to cost. Lion, like Snow Leopard before it, is $29. Much more kick-ass.


December 20, 2010

Comedy of Errors: Video of the Day

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:00 pm

In our rehearsal process we occasionally start the day with a YouTube video that somehow relates to our process (Abbott & Costello and Charlie Chaplin are frequent inspirations).

Today’s video of the day is a British commercial for Barclay’s Bank featuring Samuel L. Jackson giving a speech from Comedy of Errors, which happens to be the scene we’re starting with today. Crazy.


December 19, 2010

Video Proof I Miss All the Fun

I call this: theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:49 pm

OK, I haven’t gotten the backstory on this yet, but it has come to my attention on Facebook that a video has been placed on YouTube featuring… pretty much everyone at the Majestic Theatre dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough.”

I’m sorry I can’t embed it, but please follow the link.

Yeah rehearsal is going well, I paid the rent and my credit card bill on time again this month… but I am not making an ass of myself on this video, and that makes me very sad. The closest I’ve come is orchestrating Ye Olde Tyme Romeo and Juliet Crewe, and that isn’t even remotely in the same league as this for elaborate backstage shenanigans. I don’t know what the hell is going on back at the ranch, but I’m glad to see that it continues to defy its old reputation as “the House of Hate.”

I’m having a great time on the tour, but I really hope that my life works out to give me some quality time with the Phantom phamily this year.


August 23, 2010

FLAT – A New Movie

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:04 pm

If you liked Backstage Flood, then you have really low standards of entertainment, and you will love FLAT.

FLAT tells the story of an event that happened during our second-to-last performance of Hairspray. Before the final performance, we made a movie about it. The production values are much higher than Backstage Flood‘s. Which is not saying much. But we actually, like, put thought into it and stuff.


July 7, 2010

Company Video – Shipoopi

I call this: summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:09 pm

It seems like these days every show needs its own company YouTube video. By this I mean, like every company has its inside joke, its catchphrase, and so forth, it seems in the modern age that most shows I’ve done lately have also had a favorite YouTube video that is frequently quoted and referenced.

On the Acting Company tour in 2008-2009, we did a play called The Spy, in which it’s revealed at the end that one of the characters has actually been George Washington in disguise. Our company video was this amazing “Washington” animated song (warning: bad, but very funny, language).

This past year’s Acting Company tour of Romeo and Juliet had the R&J edition of “Sassy Gay Friend.”

On this production of The Music Man it’s the amazing clip from Family Guy where they devoted a huge portion of an episode to a recreation of “Shipoopi” that includes an extended dance break with the original choreography. We can’t quite understand what percentage of the viewership appreciated this gesture, but there are about 70 of us on this production who do! Our Marcellus also does a pretty good Peter Griffin voice. I hope he’ll use it once during tech or something.


May 27, 2010

Must-See 8-bit Gaming Video

I call this: gaming,tech — Posted by KP @ 12:32 pm

So this guy made a stop-motion video on his desk, recreating famous 8-bit games with bits of construction paper and produce. I heard about this video for the better part of a day, and thought “Meh, that’s probably cute,” before I actually sat and watched it. It is so much better than I imagined, and if you love classic NES gaming, you must watch it, and watch it all the way through, because each segment is better and cleverer than the last.


February 1, 2010

Tour of Our Bus

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:59 pm

Nick and I have another video blog for you — this time a tour of our bus. This is where we live, with our TD, lighting, props, sound and wardrobe supervisors, and of course our one-and-only bus driver, Bart.

We shot this video the day the bus arrived, after having only spent a few minutes checking it out, so you can see us figuring it out for the first time too. Most of Pioneer Coach’s buses have a similar layout, but each bus is a little bit different, so finding how light switches, coolers, appliances, thermostat controls, etc. work takes a little exploration.


August 17, 2009

Fun with the ETC Ion

I call this: mac,summer stock,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:12 am

Reagle’s regular light board is the ETC Microvision FX, an example of which is shown here.
MicroVisionFX
It’s ancient. It usually works OK, when it doesn’t double-go, but for anything complicated, like color scrollers or moving lights, a newer console needs to be rented. La Cage is just that kind of show.

This time around we got the ETC Ion, shown here (except we don’t have the one with the row of faders on top):
ion

It’s very cool. It saves the show onto a thumb drive instead of floppy disk, and so forth. I haven’t had much time to learn how to use it (I can barely bring a cue up), but while we were in tech our lighting designer invited me to play with the scrollers. It was definitely the highlight of tech. There are a couple different ways the board can help you choose color. There is sort of a color swatch screen that shows you the gel numbers and you click on the one you want. The dials at the top can also be spun to change color, saturation, etc. But the one I got to play with was the color wheel.

Since I’ve been doing a lot of web design and graphics lately, I have been kind of obsessed with color. So when I saw that the board had a color wheel, the same as you’d find in Photoshop or wherever, and you can click anywhere on it and it will put that color onstage, I thought that was incredibly cool. Of course the specificity of the color it can produce is limited by the variety of gels you have in your scroller, but even in my random clicking I was able to get it to look pretty much like I wanted.

I made a short video to demonstrate this feature. Unfortunately the color wheel got pretty much washed out on the video, so I didn’t spend any time looking at the intricate differences in color since you can’t see exactly what the mouse is pointing at, but you get the idea.

Also, as a side note, I shot this video with the iPhone 3GS, and edited it with iMovie ’09, which is the first time I’ve successfully created a movie with the new iMovie format without having to stop before I smashed my computer. Even with something so simple I was frustrated by stuff that I apparently couldn’t do, but it at least gives me hope that I don’t have to hang on to iMovie ’06 forever just to get anything done. Just the ability to upload to Youtube without worrying about formats was worth it.