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Sunday, June 19, 2005

Tech Expo: the theatre special effects "Science Fair"

I remember when, as a grade-schooler, I went to my first Science Fair. It was held in a big high-school gymnasium and several classrooms and consisted of hundreds of geeks and nerds with their exhibits. There were Van de Graaf generators, Tesla coils, tornadoes in a bottle, lots of pickled animals, a demonstration of how "washboard roads" happen and all kinds of original machines and their creators who talked about them in intricate detail and excited tones. Some of those kids were insane. They all went on to become scientists and engineers. A few even went into theatre. I dreamed of growing up, being an engineer and travelling around the world to industry exhibitions and trade shows where I could see the really neat stuff that big, wealthy companies were inventing, fresh from the laboratories.

So I did it. Grew up, I mean. That was pretty easy, actually. Becoming an engineer was easy too; I just kept doing geek stuff and next thing I knew, they stuck "engineer" on my job title. Then I got to go to the trade shows and exhibitions all over the world. They were okay but something was missing and it took a while to figure out. All of the booths were totally professional and they were staffed by marketeers and scantily-dressed models but, well, the engineers and inventors weren't there or any of the kinds of models I would really have liked to have gotten my hands on. (The scantily-dressed ones were not actually available for fooling around with.) The products on display were shiny, assembly-line ready-to-buy things, not engineering prototypes. No fun. And nobody talked about them in intricate detail and excited tones.

Now, marketeers do have a role in the creative process: they start it. They collect the customers' wishes and write the specs. Then it all goes to engineering. "Can we build this and make money?" they ask. The industrial lab isn't like the science fair; stuff is designed to be mass-produced at a profit. The science fair stuff is all one-of-a-kind (even the Van de Graaf machines; hell, I built several of those and each one was different.)

So we come to the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) and their biannual (every two years) Tech Expo held every odd-numbered year. This has been going on since its beginning in Minneapolis in 1987; Tech Expo 2005 was held last month in Toronto. It's worth the $95 to join USITT just to get their quarterly magazine: Theatre Design and Technology. The Spring 2005 issue, which just arrived, had articles on six of the projects featured at the Tech Expo in Toronto and they were all reminiscent of the excitement of the high-school science fair: unique and often mechanically complex solutions to problems that engineers in industry seldom ever get to work on. One was a pair of CO2 gas-powered, fully articulated angel wings for a show at San Diego State University two years ago. Another was a zombie effect for a dead body to rise out of solid ground. A 40-foot bridge span that could hold 18 dancers while rising eight feet into the air. Fun stuff! Geeky, one-of-a-kind special effects to dazzle an audience and perhaps never be seen again.

The next Tech Expo takes place in March, 2007 and entries are due in the fall of 2006. I've made myself a promise to get an exhibit in this one and I'm excited. It's a feeling that I haven't known since the high school science fair. See you there!

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Kids today: Instant fame!

I posted a comment to Scott Guinn's blog (Great Scott! It's Magic!) the other day that I thought I'd share (dump all over you) here. I don't know anything about Scott's performance but he writes extremely well and his archives are well worth reading. Scott posted about why so many young and inexperienced magicians, with no developed stage presence or following, are putting their "creations" on the market to the financial dismay of buyers and the viewing dismay of audiences. I wrote:

Today's youth are a product of the lessons of Hollywood. In "Legally Blonde," a bim stumbles out of the cheerleading squad into Harvard Law School. There's a lesson in the work/study ethic disguised as "native talent." Then, get this: she hasn't even graduated yet and her first case, FIRST case, is before the United States Supreme Court! And what do you suppose happens? Does she win? Huh? What do you think? "Native talent."

Peter Parker has just figured out how to flip his first wristful of sticky goo. What does he do? Immediately tests it... by jumping off a 20-story building. There's your lesson: "You'll never know if you don't try." "Shoot for the moon." "Don't be afraid of failure." "Get 'er done! Go for it!"

That's what these kids know. Why, the magic boards actively promote this agenda to one another! "Take a chance. Take the bull by the horns. Get out there and do it." Today's youth believe that the Wright Brothers just slapped some rubbish together in their bike shop and it flew first time. Why? Because they had "the courage of their convictions."

That's why you're seeing so much crap out there, poorly-thought-out, poorly executed and poorly received. These are what used to be called "first attempts", "youthful exuberance" and "embarrassing foolhardiness" disguised as "courage" and "native talent." If it doesn't work, they say, so what? I tried.

Houdini would have drowned.


Be afraid of failure. Be very afraid. Be so afraid that you study, research, practice, test, re-examine, restructure, re-test until you have eliminated all but the tiniest possibility of failure. That's how they put men on the moon in the 1960s. That's why today's rocket scientists are in deep shit: they shot first and asked questions later... several lives, billions of dollars and three wasted decades later. Fame doesn't come by shotgunning the market with crap in hopes that one pellet might hit the target. You get there by using a rifle and aiming very, very carefully.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Cardboard: it's not just for props.

You can construct wonderful modern buildings out of paper tubes. Well, at least these Japanese architects can.

Lightning Wire Angel Halo

The current show I'm working on has some fun special effects in it, one being a "Snow Angel" that shows up with flapping wings, glowing halo and a pair of jumper cables. (If you don't know what those are you obviously live south of the 40th parallel.)

We're playing this for comedy so an obvious-looking wire loop is funniest. Lightning Wire (EL Wire) is the perfect solution for this gag. Three feet of EL Wire makes a halo about a foot in diameter (11.46 inches) and the whole thing can be lighted with a 9-volt battery or a pair of AA cells driving a small power inverter, all available from Fiber Optic Products Inc. at the above link. The power drain is so small that the batteries will last for weeks of intermittent use.

I wanted the largest diameter of white EL Wire I could find, 5 mm, but the order form on the site didn't offer that color in that size. I e-mailed the company and they fixed the order form. Cool! The entire apparatus was less than $12.00 which makes it perfect for school Christmas pageants as well.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Special questions for superheroes

With all the superhero movies coming out again (and again and again and again), each one promising something that we really need to know, that could never be told before, that promises the true story behind whoever-the-hell-man (because all of the previous movies were lies?) I have composed a final list of questions that, if they're finally answered this time around, will eliminate any need to ever, ever re-make these same movies everytime Hollywood runs out of ideas and needs to re-milk a dead cow. Yeah, that's gonna happen!

Hey, Batman! Where did you get all those cool toys without anyone becoming suspicious that Bruce Wayne was up to something weird? Did you build them yourself? Did Alfred build them? Where did you guys learn how to do that? Where did you get the materials for bulletproof cars, wires that don't break, flameproof suits, rocket engines and all of those fancy computers? I know you're wealthy, but did you just walk into Acme Defense Systems and say "I'd like a small nuclear reactor and a dozen pocket-sized antiaircraft missles? Just deliver them to Wayne Manor? No, I'm not up to anything... they're for a party?" I'd better see you with a damned acetylene torch in your hand in this next movie looking like Jesse James with a machine shop that rivals West Coast Choppers or I'm going to be really pissed.

Hey, Spiderman! You swing around the city every night looking for trouble and leaving miles and miles of that sticky web shit everywhere! Who cleans it up? How come people aren't swearing at you as they walk down the street looking like they just fell into a cotton-candy machine? How do you make all that stuff, anyway? Do you stop every block to drink a gallon of Mrs. Butterworth's?

Hey, Superman! If pieces of Kryptonite make you so sick, how come you didn't die back on Krypton where the entire planet is made out of the stuff? Huh? Huh? Why is that?

I seriously expect answers to all these questions in the upcoming remash of all these movies. Sure, I do. I also expect peace on earth, cooked vegetables that taste good and a cure for cancer by next Tuesday. Get a move on.

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