This week’s lessons followed on from the last, concluding our induction sessions and continuing to make us more familiar with the two buildings and their facilities.
On Tuesday we c
ompleted an activity with the PAD students, drawing a ‘Production Roadmap’ to outline how we understood the production process to work. I found this a useful activity as it showed me where gaps existed in my knowledge of where the different production and performance disciplines interacted and giving me an opportunity to work in groups with students from the other course for the first time. Later that day we completed a lighting based session where we tried to emulate the lighting effects used in film posters with two t-bars worth of LEDs. Though the activity appeared easy from the outset, after we started the challenges posed by lighting for close up camera shots became apparent and it was interesting to find out through experimentation how a camera deals with light compared to how it appears live in the room – something that should be considered when lighting for film or photography.
As the week progressed we were given more in-depth tours of the performance spaces and venue facilities in the main building, also being coached in the safe use of ladders and tallescopes which I found very informative and useful to know at this early stage. These sessions also taught me about the safety procedures in respect to things like working at height or rigging front of house which means I can now work effectively and safely in those situations should I be required to. As a group, we were also given tours of the Wallace Studios workshops and informed on the safety protocols when working in any of those facilities.
At the end of the week, we joined with the PAD students again to complete the ‘Day to Day’ project. This involved creating an artistic response to a newspaper article of our choosing, with my group selecting to address Elon Musk’s press conference regarding his desire for commercial travel to Mars in the near future. As a group, we started out considering how we could replicate a Martian experience for our audience, though we soon realised that our budget and space would prevent us from realising this idea fully. We finally settled on creating a sensory experience as this would allow us to replicate the experience of travelling to the red planet without having to create a realistic visual experience as the audience would not be able to see what was going on around them. I found this activity enjoyable and useful as it forced me and my group to find interesting ways of working within limitations and to find different ways of realising our ideas when our first options were unfeasible. Looking forward, I feel that this has taught me to look at a situation’s difficulties more closely before jumping in, and has given me ideas for more creative solutions to problems I could face in the creative process. It has also helped develop my communication and collaboration skills by using the specialities of people I had never worked with before to create the best piece of work we could in the time given.
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