Friday, March 11, 2011
Film Fest Theme...
...this week seems to be dumb "guy" movies - I need a (polite) term equivalent to "Chick Flick." Last night's prize film was The A Team - the new version. Now, any movie with Liam Neeson in it has a few virtues, and this one also had lots of stuff blowing up, plus, as someone pointed out, it will act as a balance to Jane Eyre which comes out next week and will be seen immediately!
Second Thought on Collaboration
Thinking about yesterday's schematic design meeting, I ought to repeat how rare collaboration is. You always want it - you so seldom get it. Why?
Nothing is more fun than kicking ideas around with someone! But not only do the stars have to align... everything else does to. I've noticed that there do seem to be some minimum requirements to make a design session work:
1) Compatible people - and not too many of them: The best collaborative design sessions seem to involve 2-4 people: more than that is a committee. ALL these folks must (for this session) be relaxed, low-ego, bright, trusting, feeling a bit playful, and aimed at the same goal: a good design. (See how easily this can go off-track?) Add in natural personal sympathies and antipathies that affect the flow. It's not that everyone has to be friends - often those fondest can't design together - it's more whether mind-to-mind you "get" what the other is saying. Perhaps that's why relative strangers can find this easier... they can just handle ideas, in an playing-a-game way, without reading under-layers of feeling? People. Complicated.
2) Management: The meeting has to be playtime: rough-n-tumble, giddy maybe, bouncy with ideas... yet everyone has their say and a respectful listening. In the end, Mom or Dad decides what to do.
3) Preparation: Can't do much till everyone has read the script and seen the space. Have a floor plan and research materials. And sketching stuff.
4) Time: Idea-kicking doesn't need to take long - sometimes ten minutes is enough - but it can't feel rushed.
5) A Supportive Atmosphere: Best is a quiet, comfortable room with a nice big, smooth table and food and drink - but just some of all that will work. If folks are focused enough, noise can be okay or even help, as long as you can hear each other easily. If ideas are exciting enough, you can ditch most of the comfort. But you gotta have the table! A clipboard might work, but I bet the ideas would be as cramped as the sketches. A tile-topped table is just a tease - puleeeese!
I'd love comments on this one.
Nothing is more fun than kicking ideas around with someone! But not only do the stars have to align... everything else does to. I've noticed that there do seem to be some minimum requirements to make a design session work:
1) Compatible people - and not too many of them: The best collaborative design sessions seem to involve 2-4 people: more than that is a committee. ALL these folks must (for this session) be relaxed, low-ego, bright, trusting, feeling a bit playful, and aimed at the same goal: a good design. (See how easily this can go off-track?) Add in natural personal sympathies and antipathies that affect the flow. It's not that everyone has to be friends - often those fondest can't design together - it's more whether mind-to-mind you "get" what the other is saying. Perhaps that's why relative strangers can find this easier... they can just handle ideas, in an playing-a-game way, without reading under-layers of feeling? People. Complicated.
2) Management: The meeting has to be playtime: rough-n-tumble, giddy maybe, bouncy with ideas... yet everyone has their say and a respectful listening. In the end, Mom or Dad decides what to do.
3) Preparation: Can't do much till everyone has read the script and seen the space. Have a floor plan and research materials. And sketching stuff.
4) Time: Idea-kicking doesn't need to take long - sometimes ten minutes is enough - but it can't feel rushed.
5) A Supportive Atmosphere: Best is a quiet, comfortable room with a nice big, smooth table and food and drink - but just some of all that will work. If folks are focused enough, noise can be okay or even help, as long as you can hear each other easily. If ideas are exciting enough, you can ditch most of the comfort. But you gotta have the table! A clipboard might work, but I bet the ideas would be as cramped as the sketches. A tile-topped table is just a tease - puleeeese!
I'd love comments on this one.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Schematic Design Meeting
Sometimes with some directors and some shows (every time is different!) and if the table is big enough and the stars align just right, it's possible to really kick ideas around.
Today was lucky: the director and I sketched our way through Marvin's Room. It's a difficult show in that the script is realistic (though moments have a feel of "magic") with multiple, contrasting settings (warm home versus cool medical) and it's being produced in thrust in a intimate, low-ceilinged space, with no wings or ability to fly. Tricky.
I brought research and a very rough floor plan sketch - started towards realistic - together we moved towards more abstract until I think - among the lunch bowls and fortune cookie wrappers - we may have found a solution.
Good fun! Now I just gotta sketch it pretty - so it makes sense.
Today was lucky: the director and I sketched our way through Marvin's Room. It's a difficult show in that the script is realistic (though moments have a feel of "magic") with multiple, contrasting settings (warm home versus cool medical) and it's being produced in thrust in a intimate, low-ceilinged space, with no wings or ability to fly. Tricky.
I brought research and a very rough floor plan sketch - started towards realistic - together we moved towards more abstract until I think - among the lunch bowls and fortune cookie wrappers - we may have found a solution.
Good fun! Now I just gotta sketch it pretty - so it makes sense.
Blog? Or Exercise?
Well that's a no-brainer! Someone needs to invent a treadmill powered computer - then we'd all be in shape.
Miscellany today: I finally finished The Elephant to Hollywood, Michael Caine's memoir - some pretty funny stuff about the Oscars. Worth reading if you're fascinated by Hollywood. A Film Fest entry so lame I've already forgotten its name, but it had Will Ferrell in it. 'Nuf said. And on the further adventures of my book, Alice Through the Proscenium: the extra copies arrived (a crisply impressive little stack), so now I can distribute them to my faithful test readers and my Mom etc. A few extras for sale!
Miscellaneous set designer duties today too: re-read one script; read two new ones; meet one director and email another; and return the last thing not-used in my last set (boy! was that concrete bench heavy!)
P.S. The film was The Other Guys.
Miscellany today: I finally finished The Elephant to Hollywood, Michael Caine's memoir - some pretty funny stuff about the Oscars. Worth reading if you're fascinated by Hollywood. A Film Fest entry so lame I've already forgotten its name, but it had Will Ferrell in it. 'Nuf said. And on the further adventures of my book, Alice Through the Proscenium: the extra copies arrived (a crisply impressive little stack), so now I can distribute them to my faithful test readers and my Mom etc. A few extras for sale!
Miscellaneous set designer duties today too: re-read one script; read two new ones; meet one director and email another; and return the last thing not-used in my last set (boy! was that concrete bench heavy!)
P.S. The film was The Other Guys.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Business-Inspired Design
We're all used to seeing corporate ads or logos used decoratively. Maybe it started with the first rusty Coca-Cola sign brought indoors from off the barn, or maybe some ancient Roman college student swiped a tavern sign and hung it in his peristyled dorm, but it's pretty common. Businesses can have great graphics. There's one house I know with a classic red Mobile Gas Pegasus that I'd love to have.
But I admit to being startled in the sewing store yesterday when I saw pretty green and yellow fabric labeled "The John Deere Collection!" Sure enough, little teeny tractors.
But I admit to being startled in the sewing store yesterday when I saw pretty green and yellow fabric labeled "The John Deere Collection!" Sure enough, little teeny tractors.
image borrowed from www.archithings.com
What better post to put up on the day I put ads on my site? Ah! Another corporate sell-out!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Ta-Da! My Digital Empire Is Growing
Just opened up a new web home - a Squidoo (what a funny word) lens called 9 Ways to Improve Your Theater Set. Check it out. But don't forget my ol' tried 'n true Website, eh?
Books, Books, Books
After a trip to the library, I'm swimming in new books!
So far I've read or sampled quite a few. (Ever noticed how a book that fascinates at the library or bookstore dwindles to so-so when you read it? A few of those.) Among these tomes are:
The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo. I heard the author interviewed on NPR, so when I saw the book on the "New Arrivals" shelf I grabbed it. The true-life-and-crime story of a detective club of the world's greatest murder investigators and the cold cases they solve. Darkly fascinating - NOT a book to read at lunch or just before bed!
Though I enjoyed (not the right word somehow) the book, the writing... Stories were chopped up to add suspense and make you read another two chapters - which I found maddening - and the prose blushed purple at times, with a weird pulp-ish tone as it described the main characters' lives ... Nevertheless, an absorbing read.
the mesh by Lisa Gansky. A business/social trend book about businesses springing up where users share resources rather than each buying their own, businesses dependent on the internet and social media for their organization - like Netflix, Zipcar, or Kickstarter. Interesting, though I'm not quite sure how this is qualitatively different from the lending libraries Jane Austen patronized in 1800. Talking of tone - this book is written with that plain, flat, 'nilla wafer prose that bores me to tears.
Hollywood: a Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry. I'm kinda flipping through this for the Hollywwood writer stories. I'm not a big McMurtry fan. Even Lonesome Dove, which I came to love, took me 300 pages to get into.
The Elephant to Hollywood, by Michael Caine. Working through this one. A nice lively tone - I bet he'd be fun at a dinner party, though a bit thick with the name-dropping.
In between all this I've read a few scripts (so-so, one interesting) and reread The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey. It's worth hunting down! A hilarious take on the writing of a novel. One novelist I admire says she reads it after finishing each book and I see why - a perfect tonic for the artist in that frazzled-yet-elated stage when you've just finished a project. I recommend this book highly.
So far I've read or sampled quite a few. (Ever noticed how a book that fascinates at the library or bookstore dwindles to so-so when you read it? A few of those.) Among these tomes are:
The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo. I heard the author interviewed on NPR, so when I saw the book on the "New Arrivals" shelf I grabbed it. The true-life-and-crime story of a detective club of the world's greatest murder investigators and the cold cases they solve. Darkly fascinating - NOT a book to read at lunch or just before bed!
Though I enjoyed (not the right word somehow) the book, the writing... Stories were chopped up to add suspense and make you read another two chapters - which I found maddening - and the prose blushed purple at times, with a weird pulp-ish tone as it described the main characters' lives ... Nevertheless, an absorbing read.
the mesh by Lisa Gansky. A business/social trend book about businesses springing up where users share resources rather than each buying their own, businesses dependent on the internet and social media for their organization - like Netflix, Zipcar, or Kickstarter. Interesting, though I'm not quite sure how this is qualitatively different from the lending libraries Jane Austen patronized in 1800. Talking of tone - this book is written with that plain, flat, 'nilla wafer prose that bores me to tears.
Hollywood: a Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry. I'm kinda flipping through this for the Hollywwood writer stories. I'm not a big McMurtry fan. Even Lonesome Dove, which I came to love, took me 300 pages to get into.
The Elephant to Hollywood, by Michael Caine. Working through this one. A nice lively tone - I bet he'd be fun at a dinner party, though a bit thick with the name-dropping.
In between all this I've read a few scripts (so-so, one interesting) and reread The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey. It's worth hunting down! A hilarious take on the writing of a novel. One novelist I admire says she reads it after finishing each book and I see why - a perfect tonic for the artist in that frazzled-yet-elated stage when you've just finished a project. I recommend this book highly.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Critics
This blog will not talk too much about critics, but I was amused to see that one who wrote a good review for Boeing Boeing liked my custom-built sofa because it was suggestive (in every sense) of a particular masculine body part...
This illustrates where art critics both can come in handy and be misleading: because that idea never occurred to me. (That I hadn't thought of it and the critic did says lots about both of us, I suspect.) Once it's pointed out I can sorta see it. Given the play, it's wonderfully appropriate. Being alerted to this fact - if it is one - might add to understanding and enjoying the play - which is part of a critic's job. So...
A. Is this critic just reading into this work aspects of that critic's worldview?
B. Is the critic seeing something my unconscious mind put there? Consciously, I just remember calculating that a sofa was needed there of about that size and shape, sketching variations, making a requested change, then feeling that the final shape was "right."
C. Don't over-think this!
Or
D. All of the above.
I gotta go with D.
This illustrates where art critics both can come in handy and be misleading: because that idea never occurred to me. (That I hadn't thought of it and the critic did says lots about both of us, I suspect.) Once it's pointed out I can sorta see it. Given the play, it's wonderfully appropriate. Being alerted to this fact - if it is one - might add to understanding and enjoying the play - which is part of a critic's job. So...
A. Is this critic just reading into this work aspects of that critic's worldview?
B. Is the critic seeing something my unconscious mind put there? Consciously, I just remember calculating that a sofa was needed there of about that size and shape, sketching variations, making a requested change, then feeling that the final shape was "right."
C. Don't over-think this!
Or
D. All of the above.
I gotta go with D.
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