23 November 2014
A Fatal Glass of Beer
29/11/14 11:47
This week has gone well. First off, the play seems to be coming together. We’ve had three full runs now and aside from a few missed lines here or there, we’ve had no severe problems. I have a rule: I’m not perfect but try really hard to not make the same mistake twice. Sunday we’re going to do the play with full costumes. I suspect that will point out a couple of tricky transitions but we’ll figure out how to deal with them. The web site for Ethan Claymore is up with our cast photos and bios.
http://www.echoplayers.ca/WebPages/1415Production2.htm
One interesting thing happened on Thursday. After rehearsal Wendy, the Director, asked if any of us were planning on watching the Grey Cup. That’s the CFL championship game. It’s going to be played this Sunday in Vancouver. Essentially it’s our Super Bowl. Anyway she asked us if we had plans to watch the game Sunday as we have a rehearsal that would overlap the start of the game. I mentioned that there were few things I cared less about than the Grey Cup, and everyone else more or less agreed. It turned out that not one of us, not even the two younger actors, Alex and Jeramy, were interested in watching the game. Wendy looked at us for a minute and then exclaimed “I love you people. You’re theatre people. You don’t give a damn about sports.”
That was amusing.
The weather turned weird this week. We started out wet and rainy with heavy clouds and mist. Honestly, this is the time of year when we can go days without seeing daylight. It was dark when I drove in and dark when I left work. Then driving up to Qualicum Beach for rehearsals was quite nasty. (I kept saying “Taint a fit night out for man nor beast”, but nobody got it*.) Things were so bad that the crew from the BBC show Top Gear got stuck in Trail BC for a day or so. We found out because Jeremy Clarkson Tweeted that they couldn’t leave and he was wondering what there was to do in Trail on a Sunday.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jeremy-clarkson-bbc-host-stranded-in-trail-b-c-1.2846812
Among the suggestions were tour the lead smelter and, my personal favourite, they could go to the local grocery store and learn how to butcher a goat. They skipped on that. I am looking forward to next season of Top Gear to see what they were doing here.
Then on Friday it turned cold. Brutal, nasty, bone sucking cold. The kind of cold you people back in Minnesota have seen for a while now. I mean it reached FREEZING. Saturday night we got completely snowed in. When I checked at 1:00am the driveway was buried in over a QUARTER INCH of snow. Admittedly it was gone by 6:00am, and to be absolutely truthful we had no particular reason or inclination to go anywhere at that time. But for five hours driving would have been very treacherous,
or at least a bit squirrelly.
Here is a link to Inuktun’s latest video that we shot a couple weeks ago. This is the video of a robot being deployed by a robot. The idea is the environment is nasty so you can’t have a person carry the little magnetic vehicle in. This shows how our big long distance system can carry and deploy the magnetic crawler to go into small spaces and hard to access corners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_vdcgbDd0&list=UUxPfRO01KCbN1hwlfmp-eZw
It’s OK I guess, but they didn’t end up using some really wonderful shots I got from the little robot. As it approached the wall I pointed the camera toward the wall and it looked like we were landing a spacecraft. Then after inspecting the weld I maneuvered into position and pointed the camera out to watch the big robot approaching. As it latched on I swung the camera down toward the surface so when it pulled the little magnetic crawler off it felt like we were lifting off from the moon. But all of that ended up getting cut. Directors prerogative I guess, but I thought the shots looked cool. It reminds me of something that happened last week. Marsha was watching Hawaii 5-O, the original one from the ’60s. They had a hostage situation and were trying to use mirrors and periscopes to see into the room. I said what they needed was one of our NanoMag vehicles. Run it up there along the wall and peer around the corner. Easy-peasy.
I guess it would have been much harder back then with tubed electronics and gas powered vehicles.
And last of all, here’s some footage shot from the back of a bald eagle. Nothing to do with BC at all but I thought it was really neat. Beats the heck out of using a drone. We have lots of Bald Eagles here. I may have to see if I can set this up.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bald-eagle-flies-through-stadium-recording-bird-s-eye-view-of-flight-1.2850579
*WC Fields, A Fatal Glass of Beer, 1933. A completely accurate documentary about life in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWW4-oBCzbQ
PIX: 1,2: After the blizzard went through last night it cleared out and we can see the snow building up on the mountains.
3: Marsha put a basket on the coffee table to hold her phone, the mail, the remotes, and such. Guess what…
4:Marsha picked up some solar powered Christmas lights and asked me to “put them up”. Technically the deck is above ground level so they are up. I really don’t do Christmas...
http://www.echoplayers.ca/WebPages/1415Production2.htm
One interesting thing happened on Thursday. After rehearsal Wendy, the Director, asked if any of us were planning on watching the Grey Cup. That’s the CFL championship game. It’s going to be played this Sunday in Vancouver. Essentially it’s our Super Bowl. Anyway she asked us if we had plans to watch the game Sunday as we have a rehearsal that would overlap the start of the game. I mentioned that there were few things I cared less about than the Grey Cup, and everyone else more or less agreed. It turned out that not one of us, not even the two younger actors, Alex and Jeramy, were interested in watching the game. Wendy looked at us for a minute and then exclaimed “I love you people. You’re theatre people. You don’t give a damn about sports.”
That was amusing.
The weather turned weird this week. We started out wet and rainy with heavy clouds and mist. Honestly, this is the time of year when we can go days without seeing daylight. It was dark when I drove in and dark when I left work. Then driving up to Qualicum Beach for rehearsals was quite nasty. (I kept saying “Taint a fit night out for man nor beast”, but nobody got it*.) Things were so bad that the crew from the BBC show Top Gear got stuck in Trail BC for a day or so. We found out because Jeremy Clarkson Tweeted that they couldn’t leave and he was wondering what there was to do in Trail on a Sunday.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jeremy-clarkson-bbc-host-stranded-in-trail-b-c-1.2846812
Among the suggestions were tour the lead smelter and, my personal favourite, they could go to the local grocery store and learn how to butcher a goat. They skipped on that. I am looking forward to next season of Top Gear to see what they were doing here.
Then on Friday it turned cold. Brutal, nasty, bone sucking cold. The kind of cold you people back in Minnesota have seen for a while now. I mean it reached FREEZING. Saturday night we got completely snowed in. When I checked at 1:00am the driveway was buried in over a QUARTER INCH of snow. Admittedly it was gone by 6:00am, and to be absolutely truthful we had no particular reason or inclination to go anywhere at that time. But for five hours driving would have been very treacherous,
or at least a bit squirrelly.
Here is a link to Inuktun’s latest video that we shot a couple weeks ago. This is the video of a robot being deployed by a robot. The idea is the environment is nasty so you can’t have a person carry the little magnetic vehicle in. This shows how our big long distance system can carry and deploy the magnetic crawler to go into small spaces and hard to access corners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_vdcgbDd0&list=UUxPfRO01KCbN1hwlfmp-eZw
It’s OK I guess, but they didn’t end up using some really wonderful shots I got from the little robot. As it approached the wall I pointed the camera toward the wall and it looked like we were landing a spacecraft. Then after inspecting the weld I maneuvered into position and pointed the camera out to watch the big robot approaching. As it latched on I swung the camera down toward the surface so when it pulled the little magnetic crawler off it felt like we were lifting off from the moon. But all of that ended up getting cut. Directors prerogative I guess, but I thought the shots looked cool. It reminds me of something that happened last week. Marsha was watching Hawaii 5-O, the original one from the ’60s. They had a hostage situation and were trying to use mirrors and periscopes to see into the room. I said what they needed was one of our NanoMag vehicles. Run it up there along the wall and peer around the corner. Easy-peasy.
I guess it would have been much harder back then with tubed electronics and gas powered vehicles.
And last of all, here’s some footage shot from the back of a bald eagle. Nothing to do with BC at all but I thought it was really neat. Beats the heck out of using a drone. We have lots of Bald Eagles here. I may have to see if I can set this up.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bald-eagle-flies-through-stadium-recording-bird-s-eye-view-of-flight-1.2850579
*WC Fields, A Fatal Glass of Beer, 1933. A completely accurate documentary about life in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWW4-oBCzbQ
PIX: 1,2: After the blizzard went through last night it cleared out and we can see the snow building up on the mountains.
3: Marsha put a basket on the coffee table to hold her phone, the mail, the remotes, and such. Guess what…
4:Marsha picked up some solar powered Christmas lights and asked me to “put them up”. Technically the deck is above ground level so they are up. I really don’t do Christmas...
Playtime
23/11/14 11:44
The play is coming together. Thursday was a big step for us. A week ago we went off book, that is we were working from memory. On Thursday we were no longer able to call “line” when we forgot what to say. We just had to muddle through. It was also the first time we were running close to the way we will be in performance. We had some lighting changes. The back stage staff was working as if it was a real production and were in communication with the booth. We had partial costume changes. Props were doing their thing. We did all of Act 1, which has four scenes and we went from scene to scene without stopping, just slight “brownout” pauses for props to reset the set and costume changes. Now as luck would have it, the theatre was also having a promotional Open House that night. This was significant because it meant that for the first time we had a few people in the back of the theatre, an actual audience. So how did we do?
We totally sucked.
With all the changes at once we were quite nervous. We missed lines, we forgot where we were, back stage people missed some queues. It was really rough, but we struggled through the whole of Act 1. However there was some good news. We stopped for a breather to get over our nervous freak out. Then we took another run at Act 1 and that time we nailed it. Wendy, the Director, said that not only were we close to word perfect, she said that for the first time she saw the characters on stage rather than a bunch of actors reciting lines. I think we just needed to get all the first time nerves out of our system at once.
Speaking of production, this week we shot some more promotional videos at work. They’re being edited this weekend but for now here’s a link to the one we did a couple of weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Kg-M4MnlM
I drove the robot and made script suggestions. We had someone from the front office, outfitted in hard hat and safety vest, playing “an average construction worker”. It was a perfect fit for her too. She looks so natural and comfortable in the role.
Those of you south of the border will celebrate Thanksgiving this week. As you know we had ours back in October. Only now, some six weeks later, we’re finally not feeling full any more. This is the advantage of having Thanksgiving in October. When Black Friday comes around this week it’ll be us Canadians who are fastest to the sales. We won’t be slowed down by Thursdays turkey, pie and Tryptophan.
And we have other things to be thankful for too. For example, you probably remember Mike getting his boat stolen a few weeks back? Now Mike is well known in fishing circles around here. He’s always been willing to help others, or give advice to newcomers, or pitch in when somebody needs help with something. It was this network of fishing friends, along with the RCMP, that got the boat back. Well, this week Mike ran into someone he’d helped a few years ago who handed him a $100 gift certificate to Cabella’s, “Because I know you got your boat back but you lost a bunch of other stuff too”. Karma works.
Marsha has been volunteering with a second grade class in a local school. Ostensibly she’s there to teach reading but she helps with other stuff too. This month the class is doing a unit on Geology and Marsha has been bringing in various rocks and minerals from our collection. Quartz, and jade, and malachite, and agates, and thunder-eggs, and so fourth. This week she asked the kids what their favourite one was. Several of them immediately said, “Malachite, because it smells the best.” Uh…, what? Rocks mostly smell the same, like rocks. For some reason though the kids had convinced themselves that the green one smelled different from the brown or red ones. Kids are odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachite
PIX: After the Thanksgiving party last month, Barbara gave us half of the chocolate cake to take home. I wrapped it in a couple of layers of aluminum foil and stuck it in the freezer. This week when I went to retrieve the cake it was still right where I’d put it. Nobody had tampered with the package or tried to abscond with Barb's wonderful chocolate cake. Camouflage, it’s not just for hunting any more.
We totally sucked.
With all the changes at once we were quite nervous. We missed lines, we forgot where we were, back stage people missed some queues. It was really rough, but we struggled through the whole of Act 1. However there was some good news. We stopped for a breather to get over our nervous freak out. Then we took another run at Act 1 and that time we nailed it. Wendy, the Director, said that not only were we close to word perfect, she said that for the first time she saw the characters on stage rather than a bunch of actors reciting lines. I think we just needed to get all the first time nerves out of our system at once.
Speaking of production, this week we shot some more promotional videos at work. They’re being edited this weekend but for now here’s a link to the one we did a couple of weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Kg-M4MnlM
I drove the robot and made script suggestions. We had someone from the front office, outfitted in hard hat and safety vest, playing “an average construction worker”. It was a perfect fit for her too. She looks so natural and comfortable in the role.
Those of you south of the border will celebrate Thanksgiving this week. As you know we had ours back in October. Only now, some six weeks later, we’re finally not feeling full any more. This is the advantage of having Thanksgiving in October. When Black Friday comes around this week it’ll be us Canadians who are fastest to the sales. We won’t be slowed down by Thursdays turkey, pie and Tryptophan.
And we have other things to be thankful for too. For example, you probably remember Mike getting his boat stolen a few weeks back? Now Mike is well known in fishing circles around here. He’s always been willing to help others, or give advice to newcomers, or pitch in when somebody needs help with something. It was this network of fishing friends, along with the RCMP, that got the boat back. Well, this week Mike ran into someone he’d helped a few years ago who handed him a $100 gift certificate to Cabella’s, “Because I know you got your boat back but you lost a bunch of other stuff too”. Karma works.
Marsha has been volunteering with a second grade class in a local school. Ostensibly she’s there to teach reading but she helps with other stuff too. This month the class is doing a unit on Geology and Marsha has been bringing in various rocks and minerals from our collection. Quartz, and jade, and malachite, and agates, and thunder-eggs, and so fourth. This week she asked the kids what their favourite one was. Several of them immediately said, “Malachite, because it smells the best.” Uh…, what? Rocks mostly smell the same, like rocks. For some reason though the kids had convinced themselves that the green one smelled different from the brown or red ones. Kids are odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachite
PIX: After the Thanksgiving party last month, Barbara gave us half of the chocolate cake to take home. I wrapped it in a couple of layers of aluminum foil and stuck it in the freezer. This week when I went to retrieve the cake it was still right where I’d put it. Nobody had tampered with the package or tried to abscond with Barb's wonderful chocolate cake. Camouflage, it’s not just for hunting any more.