Summit 09 Day 1

Day 1 was pretty fun, but also really hectic and exhausting ...

It actually all started last night when after working from 5-4 I had to come in to Summit to work on some stuff for one of the concerts that is utilizing a powerpoint & sound effects.

So of course, I walked into a nightmare: The projector wasn't working (I tried two laptops), the lightboard wasn't working, etc., etc. Did my best, didn't get it fixed.

So this morning I go to radio shack to get a DVI to VGA Adaptor ... they of course don't have it, meaning I have to waste time/money & go to the Apple store, who did have it (considering they're probably the only company whose laptops have this problem!). So then I get to Summit & help w/ check-in a little bit & then Brandon comes over to help me out w/ the theater & discovers basically what I discovered. We called Mike Loundsberry - the only faculty member who actually knows how this stuff works & the two of us spent the next hour or two working to get it solved ... only to finally discover that a router wasn't working. (which is an example of really poor setup, b/c the board should have just had a DMX cable running to the Dimmers & that would be that). We had even tried rebooting the Dimmers at one point ... even he thinks that place & setup is a complete mess!

So prior to this, I had been working on the projector w/ Brandon interrupting the poor (and very amazing) pianist who was practicing there & I did manage to get the key from him for the projector screen & finally got someone over from media services & we discovered that the input & output on the device that routes the projector wasn't correct & that was fixed finally.

In between all that, I was showing people to their rooms & managed to miss my rehearsal (oi), but it all worked out cool in the end ...

After all that however, I then had to design a light cue for general concert use & managed to figure out how to use the submasters (after discovering that all my previous cues were as good as useless, because people wrote over them!). So now I have a general cue (that may still need some minor modification due to heat) & groups of lights related to the map, which works great for me!

Of course, then I show up before the concert & realize that with 2 pianos there is some *serious* glare off of the lid pointed towards the audience ... I got 2 of the lights off, but one I just could not find with an audience there ... turned out ok though & I found it afterwards (when I could turn all the lights off).

All in all, it was incredibly long ... I met a few people including Jenny Wu, who was surprisingly 30 & is a PhD in biology & I now have Jeong-Bo doing lights w/ me ... hopefully Andy actually is coming back ... wish I could have met more folks, but the lights sucked up all my time ... I'm sure I'll meet them throughout the week.

I think that's it for the day 1 adventures ... tomorrow I'll actually get to practice!

I now have to trigger sound effects (aka perform) on a faculty piece tomorrow & get 1 rehearsal to do this in (can we say nerve-racking??) ... can't wait till that's over ... though very interested to hear the whole thing ... let's see what day 2 has in store ...