Helping hand

Yesterday we assisted with the technical production of a concert at the Frederick Lowe Theater at NYU, which hits tonight at 8pm. The evening is a mishmash of dance, narration, and music in tribute to Dinu Ghezzu's 70th birthday, I learned when I arrived. I was originally supposed to be out of town at a dance residency on this Sunday, but thankfully we got home much earlier than anticipated and I could head down to NYU to be helpful.

Tonight I'm on camera duty.

Here are some pictures from last night's tech.

The Video

Watch the video, courtesy of Victor's phone, here:

http://vimeo.com/31219915

Password: nyu

Enjoy!

Last Tuesday

I can't believe that Tuesday's in-class collaborative performances are done. The preparations were so involved (hat tip, Michelle, who made sure everything was coordinated seamlessly) that the 6 minute piece I presented seemed like no time at all.

So, "The Grandparents Project" took flight! I did a lot of work to make sure that my dancers knew what what to expect, so getting started was pretty much a breeze minus the few inevitable hold ups that came with being the first on the program and the first to test the Skype connection. My classmates were really good sports, and shared thoughtful anecdotes about their grandparents for myself and the dancers to include in the improvisation. The video I edited worked well, I think. And, most gratifying of all, I got some nice positive feedback. Score!

Alissa's boyfriend came and blessedly filmed it for us, so I will share that video here soon. In the meantime, here are some photos that I captured on Tuesday.

The Project is Unveiled: Tuesday!

On Tuesday in class I'll share the first experimental version of "The Grandparents Project." I'm excited, but recognize that there's a ton to be done until then. Especially because I volunteered to help a classmate out with managing the performance (basically producer, stage manager, talent wrangler, etc.). I knew that I'd be unable to volunteer for (read: wholly unhelpful with) audio or visual tasks, but wanted to challenge myself to take lead.

Here's what I have to do before Tuesday:

1. Pick up video from midtown, where I dropped it off as VHS to be converted to DVD.

2. Edit video on my computer into a clip to be played/projected during the performance.

3. Write up movement improvisation score to be shared with my collaborators.

4. Make sure all of my dancers know what to do, where to go, when, and how (and for those who are local, how they will gain entry to the building).

5. Prepare writing materials for the audience.

6. Consolidate all of my classmates' material needs, space requirements, and tech specs into a Google Doc so that we can establish a setup, program order, and more.

There's probably other stuff too, but this is what I'm thinking about this moment. Let's do it!

Mapping the Space

Here's a map I've sketched of the performance space for October 25th's showing of "The Grandparents Project."

Click here for a link to the project album with a larger version of this image.

What I'll Need for the Grandparents Project

A brainstorm, to be followed tomorrow by a diagram:

- 2 projectors (one for the video content, the other to project my dancer from Israel into the performance space)

- A laptop (for Skyping with Leia, my collaborator)

- a DVD player or laptop to play the video content

- 2 cameras for shots of the dancing from multiple angles to be fed to my collaborator (and preserved for later)

- Small slips of paper and pens for collecting stories/anecdotes

I don't know if audio will be at all important. The DVD will produce sound on it's own, but I don't foresee that it will need mixing.

The Grandparents Project

On October 25th we've been tasked with presenting some sort of performance that involves collaborators in another location. This set the gears in motion for an idea I'm pretty excited to create. I'm titling it The Grandparents Project.

Allow me to explain:

There is a really old VHS video of my grandfather that was taped before he passed. It was filmed when I was 2 years old, so I'm actually in the video, but I have no recollection of the event. In the video he plays a bunch of old Russian/Yiddish/Jewish folk songs on guitar, tells stories from Russia before he escaped, and recounts his time on the Lower East Side of New York working at my great-grandfather's kosher bakery and hanging out with folks at the Henry Street Settlement (including Alwin Nikolais, I discovered!).

I'd like to create a movement improvisation score, invite some dancer friends, and create a short group improvisation in front of a projection of this video (possibly edited in some way). I'm interested in ideas of memory and recollection because I've been thinking about:

• my grandfather's memories that he recounts in the video
• my lack of memory of the actual filming of the video
• realizing, years later, that my grandfather was probably in the early stages of Alzheimers at this point
• the way ancestry/family shape our personal identities/narratives

And there's audience participation:

The movement improvisation score created for the dancers will include dancer-enacted short stories collected from audience members/classmates - short anecdotes from their own relationship with a grandparent.

Oh, and a collaborator abroad:

Dancer Leia Weil has agreed to participate in the improvisation from Tel Aviv. She will be Skyped into the performance and will interact with a story sent to her during the performance via Skype chat.

Multimedia in the Classroom

Speaking of multimedia in the classroom, my awesome cousin Emerie Whitman-Allen was interviewed today on WYSO public radio about the way she uses media (radio, in particular) as a middle school instructor.

Emie on Public Radio: Multimedia in the Classroom by ericafrankel

Look at her go!

A Whole New World: Audio

Tuesday's class marked my first exposure to (or even more accurately: consideration of) audio. Professor Beyer asked us to raise our hands if we had no experience with audio. My hand went up along with only a couple of other brave souls - the class, it seems, is predominately musicians and/or Music Tech students.

A dynamic microphone was passed to me in a bag. What do you see?, he asked. What kind of cord plugs into this? I waited for a classmate to volunteer the answer, and one did. This mic uses an XLR cord. Then the mixers came out.

Meet the audio mixer. This isn't even half of it.

We briskly moved through the "basics" - where inputs and outputs live, what the heck those fancy dials do, and we learned about something called the 'master mix.' What I took away from all of the demonstration was that there are a lot of things you can accomplish with a mixer, and a lot of different places to direct the sound. One can send a unique mix to someone's headphones on stage and a different mix to the audience. This can be useful if an instrumentalist wants to hear what everyone else is doing, and hear less of their own sound.

There are also several stereo hookups in the classroom. One can direct sound to the speakers in the floorboards versus the speakers in the credenza on the side of the room or to a third location. A fancy touchpad allows one to easily make these selections.

Michelle and Garvin speak to each other over microphones and we play with the mixer controls until we can hear them speak to each other. We learn about feedback, and about wireless microphones like the one Professor Beyer is wearing. We are impressed upon to set all controls to neutral before we even approach creating an audio setup - this is the only way we'll be able to effectively troubleshoot if problems arise.

After lots of experimenting and poking around I, embarrassed, bleat "What does 'EQ' mean?" My audiophile classmates must think I'm crazy.

Before next week's class we are asked to envision possible audiovisual setups for our performance in class on October 25th. We'll be using multiple computers, projectors, audio and visual mixers. The professors suggest that we take a look at JackTrip and UltraVideo (anyone able to find this one?). There is also a software on computers on the Steinhardt building's 8th floor, whose name I didn't quite catch.