I seem to have a talent for getting other people’s jobs. I started a new job a few months ago – for a country artist who’s name will be familiar to people who listen to country music – as a substitute lighting designer. In passing, I was asked (not by anyone who had any authority) to “go in and run the show, respect what was already programmed, and have fun”. This is not an ideal situation, but as an LD who has to occasionally sub shows, I understand the sentiment. You don’t want people screwing up what you’ve got programmed. When I got to the gig, however, I discovered two things:
1) The LD who was having me sub didn’t already have a show. In fact, he didn’t even know how to use the console.
2) He said repeatedly that he didn’t care what changes I made to his show.
…well…in that case…
It didn’t help that I (probably arrogantly) thought I could do a better job than the guy I was subbing for. (I really struggle with this aspect of myself. If I’m arrogant, then I guess I’m arrogant – I thought this guy’s programming was extremely lame. To be fair, he would have had a much easier time if he had known how to use the console, and had wanted to do more than the minimum amount possible.) So while he was there for the first few days of rehearsal, we “co-programmed / designed” the show to be used. It looked, as I have mentioned, lame. When one has huge uptempo guitar-driven rock songs, or any songs for that matter, one usually wishes to utilize the lights available to one in the most visually pleasing manner possible. Match the tempo, match the mood, match the feel of the music being created by the skilled hands onstage. Make the audience feel it. The guy I was subbing for did none of this. He seemed to care naught for the complexities of the rhythms he was creating lights for, he wanted simplicity in the running of the show for simplicity’s sake. This does not sit well with me. To me – and please excuse the extreme-film-school-glasses-pretentiousness of this statement – lighting is a form of art. Not for its own sake, don’t get me wrong – but there is an art to making light that perfectly compliments what’s happening on stage. It shouldn’t be the focus, it should enhance and direct the attention of the eye to places where things are happening on stage. It should define, separate, color, move in time to the music.
Am I perfect at this? Certainly not, and I never will be. Perfection in lighting isn’t really something attainable (by me anyway, the lighting of Andi Watson does a nice job), it’s the process of making the show the best it can be bit by bit. See something I don’t like one night, change it. Experiment and play. Have fun. This LD did none of those things. He was interested in churning out a show as fast as possible, as easy to run as possible, with very little movement and simple, generic effects.
And so of course, I did what anyone else would have done and reprogrammed the entire show from scratch as soon as he was gone.
My only real measure of success with an endeavor like that is the approval of my co-workers and the artist, both of whom had only good things to say about what they saw, and so I felt justified in taking the words of the guy I was subbing for perhaps a little further than he had originally intended. Artistic integrity? Not having to cringe every night as I mixed red and green light in a song about Texas? Supreme arrogance? Probably all of those. Though I think perhaps what the people on my new gig like most isn’t my lights, but rather that they perceive me to be easier to work with than the old guy, and so a week into the gig Production Manager pulled me aside to tell me that they’d like me to stay, thank you for being the person who knew how to set up and run the video and media server, would you like the job?
Story of my professional life.
So I said yes, of course – this artist pays about three times more per day than BDW pays, and they also pay half on days off. Plus per diem. With that kind of money, I can buy…shiny things. Expensive shiny things. For a cute girl in my life.1
edit: This was a rant about haze that I wrote while angry. I have to learn not to do that. Anyway, situation is good and my response was totally out of proportion to the issue. Chalk it up to being out here for a week and a half.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks
1. This knowledge will not surprise her.