collisionwork (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
collisionwork) wrote2006-05-05 09:17 am
collisionwork) wrote2006-05-05 09:17 am
Preparations 2
Work to do today, not much thought to put down.
I have to plan things for tomorrow's 12 noon - 5.00 pm rehearsal of That's What We're Here For (an american pageant) for the $ellout Festival. I have a preliminary scene list for the whole thing and a 2nd-gen scene breakdown for part one. Some scenes will be rearranged, I'm sure, but it's a start point. As I'd like part one to run about 45-50 minutes and part two to run 35-40 minutes, I can also make up vague "timings" for each scene, which will be seriously needed for working on the tableaux-scenes, as those could run anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes each, depending on what I throw into them. Since I only have three definite future rehearsals in The Brick itself, I need to work on these big scenes first. It looks like there's 10 or 11 big scenes, so hopefully I can get 3 or 4 blocked and worked out mostly in each of those work-times.
And as I block out part two on paper, I'm not satisfied with how the structure works out. The original idea of building to "The Rapture" and then the three "Airplane to Afterlife" sequences interspersed with song-scenes will stop things dead, I think. The "Airplane" has to be one big scene, with 2 "interludes" built in -- "apron scenes," basically. Part Two is really less formed than part one -- I have the images, but they're not falling together in any order as part one is. I'm sure they will as we work.
So I need to make up an outline to copy and hand to the cast tomorrow. That will be a help, especially in working out which scenes won't have to be rehearsed with the full cast. Doesn't look like I will have much in the way of "sound pieces" ready to work with, but fine, I can deal with just the visual elements at first. And rhythmic elements. Hmmmn. Maybe I should bring my keyboard or drum machine to work as a metronome. That might be REALLY annoying for the actors, but in the end it might help the flow. Think I will.
Good performance of Caveman Robot last night, house was with us, we were on and solid, good back and forth between the performers themselves and us and the audience. Fun time. Hot though -- the warmer weather is beginning to make it less pleasant backstage. Had a strange moment when I took off the gorilla mask after the first big Ape Lincoln scene to find a strange flashing light in my face -- it was Julz the costume designer with a (much-needed) mini-fan that lights up in different colors when it's spinning. Still, an odd disorienting image for just a sec.
Sometime, I should say something about Matthew Barney's amazing Drawing Restraint 9 which I saw on Monday with Boo during her time in NYC (and thanks again, Boo, I wouldn't have bothered going out for it on my own). Well, amazing, but of course I had quibbles. I always have quibbles. I don't know how important my quibbles are in the grand scope of positive reaction to the artwork, so I want to think about the whole thing some more for a while.
Apart from that, thanks to Netflix, I've rewatched John Byrum's Inserts again after a few years and it was oddly both better and worse than I remember (I remembered the whole thing as being just okay, a hair above-average, now some of it seems great and some of it seems lousy), and I also rewatched Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, which I loved before and loved even more now, though I almost feel it would be irresponsible to actually recommend this film to anyone. I'd feel like I was inflicting it rather than suggesting it. It's a deeply unpleasant and brilliant movie, but one that I feel I'll probably come back to once a year or so to be reminded of how far one can and should go sometimes. No matter what anyone says, I can't see this film as simply an exercise in attempting to shock the audience, it's too good for that, as opposed to, say, the horrifyingly bad Baise-Moi, which is one of the worst things I've ever seen -- not just out to only shock and nothing else, but some of the worst damn filmmaking I've ever seen -- two bad things that go worse together. Clumsy, arrogant, and stupid. I could take any one of those three things if other things were of value, but not all three together. I actually watched Baise-Moi last year immediately before watching Irreversible for the first time, and nearly didn't watch the second film, as the first contained a scene from an earlier Noe film, and thanked him in the end credits. Luckily, he's on a much higher plane, as it turned out.
In episodic television on DVD that Berit and I have been watching, we've been enjoying the hysterical and fast-paced stop-motion animated series Robot Chicken and the new Battlestar Galactica series, which is generally working pretty well -- an interesting, post-9/11 science-fiction take on genocide, humanity, militarism, and theocracy, though I'm really worried they're gonna screw it up sooner or later (it could fall apart very easily if they're not careful).
Off to Busyland. Back Sunday.
I have to plan things for tomorrow's 12 noon - 5.00 pm rehearsal of That's What We're Here For (an american pageant) for the $ellout Festival. I have a preliminary scene list for the whole thing and a 2nd-gen scene breakdown for part one. Some scenes will be rearranged, I'm sure, but it's a start point. As I'd like part one to run about 45-50 minutes and part two to run 35-40 minutes, I can also make up vague "timings" for each scene, which will be seriously needed for working on the tableaux-scenes, as those could run anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes each, depending on what I throw into them. Since I only have three definite future rehearsals in The Brick itself, I need to work on these big scenes first. It looks like there's 10 or 11 big scenes, so hopefully I can get 3 or 4 blocked and worked out mostly in each of those work-times.
And as I block out part two on paper, I'm not satisfied with how the structure works out. The original idea of building to "The Rapture" and then the three "Airplane to Afterlife" sequences interspersed with song-scenes will stop things dead, I think. The "Airplane" has to be one big scene, with 2 "interludes" built in -- "apron scenes," basically. Part Two is really less formed than part one -- I have the images, but they're not falling together in any order as part one is. I'm sure they will as we work.
So I need to make up an outline to copy and hand to the cast tomorrow. That will be a help, especially in working out which scenes won't have to be rehearsed with the full cast. Doesn't look like I will have much in the way of "sound pieces" ready to work with, but fine, I can deal with just the visual elements at first. And rhythmic elements. Hmmmn. Maybe I should bring my keyboard or drum machine to work as a metronome. That might be REALLY annoying for the actors, but in the end it might help the flow. Think I will.
Good performance of Caveman Robot last night, house was with us, we were on and solid, good back and forth between the performers themselves and us and the audience. Fun time. Hot though -- the warmer weather is beginning to make it less pleasant backstage. Had a strange moment when I took off the gorilla mask after the first big Ape Lincoln scene to find a strange flashing light in my face -- it was Julz the costume designer with a (much-needed) mini-fan that lights up in different colors when it's spinning. Still, an odd disorienting image for just a sec.
Sometime, I should say something about Matthew Barney's amazing Drawing Restraint 9 which I saw on Monday with Boo during her time in NYC (and thanks again, Boo, I wouldn't have bothered going out for it on my own). Well, amazing, but of course I had quibbles. I always have quibbles. I don't know how important my quibbles are in the grand scope of positive reaction to the artwork, so I want to think about the whole thing some more for a while.
Apart from that, thanks to Netflix, I've rewatched John Byrum's Inserts again after a few years and it was oddly both better and worse than I remember (I remembered the whole thing as being just okay, a hair above-average, now some of it seems great and some of it seems lousy), and I also rewatched Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, which I loved before and loved even more now, though I almost feel it would be irresponsible to actually recommend this film to anyone. I'd feel like I was inflicting it rather than suggesting it. It's a deeply unpleasant and brilliant movie, but one that I feel I'll probably come back to once a year or so to be reminded of how far one can and should go sometimes. No matter what anyone says, I can't see this film as simply an exercise in attempting to shock the audience, it's too good for that, as opposed to, say, the horrifyingly bad Baise-Moi, which is one of the worst things I've ever seen -- not just out to only shock and nothing else, but some of the worst damn filmmaking I've ever seen -- two bad things that go worse together. Clumsy, arrogant, and stupid. I could take any one of those three things if other things were of value, but not all three together. I actually watched Baise-Moi last year immediately before watching Irreversible for the first time, and nearly didn't watch the second film, as the first contained a scene from an earlier Noe film, and thanked him in the end credits. Luckily, he's on a much higher plane, as it turned out.
In episodic television on DVD that Berit and I have been watching, we've been enjoying the hysterical and fast-paced stop-motion animated series Robot Chicken and the new Battlestar Galactica series, which is generally working pretty well -- an interesting, post-9/11 science-fiction take on genocide, humanity, militarism, and theocracy, though I'm really worried they're gonna screw it up sooner or later (it could fall apart very easily if they're not careful).
Off to Busyland. Back Sunday.
no subject
I know I have some too because we always do as artists...
but I, too , am still processing.