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Monday, October 20th, 2008

Daily Archive

The best laid plans

Posted by Office-Bob on 20 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: The Church of Pyro, FX

I found out today that a gig scheduled for November 1 has fallen through. While it would have been interesting (a broadcast-to-China benefit for earthquake relief), when you take a few things into account it’s just as well that there’s not going to be any pyro:

  • When we had the first meeting with the production team a couple of weeks ago they didn’t have the stage design completed, which made it impossible to start planning the pyro as we didn’t know how much room we’d have to work with (important for safety, and also important for getting your show permit approved; fire departments don’t like it when you wait until late in the game to file for a permit and, like Bruce Banner, it’s not a good idea to make them angry).
  • At the same meeting it became clear that they wanted more (and specialized) lighting equipment than the original quote they were given; when something like that happens it usually means that the money for extra gear has to be taken from somewhere else in the budget.
  • We were only going to have one day for load-in and setup instead of the 2 or 3 we’d have preferred - this meant that we’d likely not have anything like waterfall effects or snow/bubble machines because we wouldn’t have time to install them in the rigging, and we’d have had very little time to assemble stage boxes because, lest we forget, the day before November 1 is October 31, which is Halloween, which is when a number of us are busy setting up and putting on shows of our own.
  • So to sum up the pluses and minuses:

    Unknown stage design - MINUS

    Lack of load-in/setup time - MINUS

    Trying to do prep right before Halloween when I already have a show to build and shoot - MINUS

    Not having to deal with the hassle of driving downtown and maneuvering around the venue - PLUS

    Not having to deal with potentially neurotic TV directors and producers - PLUS

    Not stressing about having two back-to-back shows - PLUS

    On the whole, I think it balances out.

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