Week 3 - My Project Ends, Yet The Work Continues

This week I was hoping to complete an ungodly amount of work, between it being hell week for the play, and me wanting to still clean out the basement level rooms, as well as wanting to continue the work I have done on my website, there was no way that I could possibly do it all. If I were to take away one lesson from the week in totality, I would have to say that I have definitely learned the lesson that sometimes there just simply aren't enough hours in the day to do all the work that you wish to. I worked enough hours over just this past week alone, including Sunday, to fill my total quota for Senior Project.

I loved the work that I have done over this past week although at times I though it would literally kill me. I have always loved working in the theater, aiding with the set, sounds, and lighting, and this week was a week focused solely on that. I worked mainly on preparing the set, for the Thursday dress rehearsal and Friday and Saturday for the opening and closing nights, as well as doing to occasional prop work, and constant chore of cleaning up. Then when the night of the plays had finally begun I was working in the booth, listening for sound cues, muting and un-muting actors mics, and adjusting levels and the e.q. for both the actors mics and the pre-recorded sound cues. Both nights, as well as the dress rehearsal, went incredibly well, with minimal mistakes on my part, minus the occasional forgetting to must or un-mute and actor for the first few lines when they enter or exit the stage; however, otherwise it was a complete success on my part, and lets face it the actors did pretty darn good as well.

Overall the week was very hectic, but enjoyable, and although officially senior project has come to an end I will still be dropping by the theater this coming week to finish some small projects that I had already started, and to finish painting my name onto the wall in the theater.

Day 15 - Is It The End?

12 Hours

Today, similarly to yesterday, the majority of my day was spent in the theater. Working from when I returned from Polar Swim until 11 o'clock at night, with a two hour break for lunch, the day had it's full share of time spent in the theater. The day started with me going to the tech office and picking up the new wireless keyboard and mouse that was purchased for the theater computer, then progressed into constant set  work. Again having Phil Nehan to help with the set work, and especially painting, was great and desperately needed. Then after I had completed the painting of the upper-half of the set with Phils help, I started to prepare the theater for sports awards assembly, and two senior speeches, one of which done by Zada and the other by Maggie. After the conclusion of assembly I, along with Sam Johnson, treated Seth to one last Senior Project lunch at Blackwater Diner, to go over the last day of our projects and make sure that we were prepared for the coming week and that we were on task to completing our presentations for Wednesday. Once we had returned to campus I started touching-up the corners of the floor and started to add molding around swinging pictures that had been added to the set. This project continued right up until an hour before the start of the show, at which point I prepared the wireless mic's and said the Techie Prayer  as we, with an over full house, went head first into the opening night of My Fair Lady.

Day 14 - Dress Rehearsal

10 1/2 hours

Today, which was yesterday, I worked all day preparing the set, sound cues, and building for the spring musical My Fail Lady. I started at 10:30 am yesterday and worked until midnight, with a total of three hours of break for lunch and dinner. I began my work in the booth, preparing the spotlight for the three scenes it's used in, and with Phil Nihan's help I managed to complete that task along with various others with relative ease. The remainder of the day was spent working in the theater on the stage, preparing the set for the dress rehearsal that would take place later that night. Overall the day was allot of work, but in the end it was finally nice to see the fruits of our labors come to fruition, with no major catastrophes on set or behind the scenes the day was, in all rights, considered a success. Now I just need to hope that tomorrow, that being sunday, will go off without a hitch.

Day 13 - With a Little-bit of Luck

6 Hours

Quicker than ever the play is coming together, this morning I put up the marquee for the show and worked in the Blackbox storage room, moving and organizing the contents of the small room along with sorting through old filters for ones we can use, and sending a email to Meredith, Proctor's knitting queen, about some suplies that the theater doesn't want. Once I had completed all of this, it came time to work on the play. This evening I worked on the sound for the play, adjusting sound effects, getting the hang of the eight body mic's we will be using, some of wich will be switched mid-pay, and setting the levels and eq for all the wireless mic's. It was a successful, yet very hectic, evening of practice before the final dress rehearsal tomorrow. With the run-throughs just finishing at 10:00, the play will have an expected run time of 2:35, longer than most, but between the complexity of the set changes, as well as having an intermission the timing is within reason. I am looking forward to tomorrows run-through, but am apprehensive about the state of the mic's and their current organization.

Day 12 - W.O.W. What Oodles of Work

7 Hours - More or less, lost count when I couldn't get Loverly un-stuck from my head...

So, today, I worked and worked and worked some more. It all started when I arrived to the Meeting House somewhat under the weather, this was due to the fact that I have been inside for 21 out of 24 hours a day for most of the past two weeks, and my dust allergies are starting to, "Freek Out," one might say. So after some slight coughing fits and a box full of kleenexes emptied, I started work on the, "bookshelf," technically it's not a real bookshelf but no-one else besides us needs to know that. Anyways, the day proceded onward in a similar fashion to the way it had begun, with set work. I painted a bench, worked in the scene shop and prepared the set for the dress rehearsal on Thursday.

Day 11 - Ohh What A Day

7 1/2 Hours

Today, most of the morning was spent preparing the theater for the underclassman awards assembly. some of the tasks associated with this were moving set pieces, hiding the piano, and adding green event lighting. Once I had finished all of this it then came time for assembly, Seth was out today so I had to take care of preparing everything for assembly, luckily today was a relatively simple day. After the awards assembly I spent some time replacing screws on set that were to long, thereby posing a danger on the underside, along with putting away to podium and microphone, and returning the set to the previous arrangement. This afternoon the rest of my time was spent working on the computer in the booth, organizing the files on it, deleting old or unneeded files, and connecting the new monitor to the computer. While organizing I found a great video produced in 2009 that gives a summary of the theater program at Proctor, that I decided would be a wonderful addition to the website. Then later this evening we had a full run-through of the play, scene changes and all it was around 2 hours and 30 minutes, and I worked on sound cues and looked for a shelving unit for the booth. In all it was a very successful day full of work that was unexpected, yet ohh-so needed; however, with any luck tomorrow will be even more successful, as-for I am starting to worry that I didn't realize the vast realm of this project when I first started.

Week Two - What a Week

This week was, in all honesty, one of the most hectic and busy weeks of my Proctor career. The week started off easy enough, with the task of cleaning the backstage looming, I decided to have a change of pace and clean the scene shop. That decision, along with the task of cleaning the under seating storage still ahead, started the ball rolling on a slew of other smaller and just as intense “mini projects” that turned out not to be so mini. I spent the remainder of the week moving from one project to the next, all the while knowing that this coming week would be even busier and more hectic. Fortunately a lot was accomplished this week, the monitor was installed in the booth, the under seating storage area was organized and cleaned out of debris, the scene shop and accompanying tool bench and paint area were cleaned and organized, and the website was improved and worked on.

I, despite what it may sound like, really enjoyed this weeks worth of work. I know just how much of an assistance I am providing to both Micheal and Terry, and that combined with the ability to fully unleash my obsessively compulsive tendencies has turned what would otherwise be a month of gruelling work, into an exiting and thoroughly busy week of help that was so desperately needed.

I have learned in-numerous lessons throughout the week; ranging from the simplicity of, wear a hardhat in under seating storage; to the complexity of,  how to setup the sound of a horse race indoors. It is astounding what I have learned this week; however, it is unfortunate that currently I don't have time to reminisce about the past week, because the next week has already begun and the theater is already alive with the hustle an bustle of the final week of senior project for me and the final week of practice before the show for everyone involved in the musicale.

Day 10 - Music and Monitor

So today for senior project I worked backstage, again. This time my work consisted of setting up two whiteboards so that we could potentially use them to write up to-do lists durring production. I also worked on generally cleaning the backstage area, as for it constantly becomes cluttered from drama tech. Today maintenance also worked in the booth, and finished installing the monitor, now I just need to setup the cables and a cable track to the computer and it will all be working to perfection. This afternoon I also had my second meeting with Seth and Sam at Pizza Chef to go over the progress of our senior projects. And  now I am at Colby Sawyer college preparing for the Proctor ensamble show tonight.

Day 9 - Keys and Things

5 1/2 Hours

Clean Work Bench

So most of today was spent looking for a key that I managed to misplace, once finding said key the rest of the day was spent doing other various cleaning projects. I helped Terry bring over some of the rented costumes for the play in the morning, then worked on organizing the area directly outside of Terry and Michael's office.

After

Before

Later in the afternoon I worked in the under seating storage organizing all of the paintings and various other flat objects into a stack in the front corner, thereby allowing for there to be room for the theater seats when they take them out for the orchestra.

 I also worked this evening on looking for a shelf to purchase for the booth to hold all the various sound equipment, as well as organized the mic and speaker cables into bundles. Than later this evening I volunteered my services to the World History class, and specifically Emi Morrison, for her dance production about social acceptance.

Day 8 - Mice, Isn't That Nice

5 Hours

Today, with allot of Terry's help, I managed to clean out an astonishing amount of junk from under seating storage. Together we bagged over six large trash bags, along with two rolling chairs, a large basket, and various cloths to be disposed of. Along the way we also found some mouse houses and half eaten fake pears and candles. After spending most of the day working in the dust filled air under the seating, I spent some of the late morning time working again in the scene shop to clean up some of the piles of assorted junk that has managed to infiltrate into the ranks of the tools, paints, and useful wood. Then after cycling practice and dinner, I returned to the theater to organize and test some dead bulbs and work in the booth on sound effects for the play.

Day 7 - Paint, Set, Sound, and Storage

5 1/2 hours

Today, I yet again forgot to take any pictures for your viewing pleasure; however to make up for it I will write a shortish Blog entry, so you don't get bombarded with text. I started the day by working on preparing the sound system for the show, I moved the two large monitors to the grind, creating a false surround sound, then moved one of the small monitors to the orchestra area and the other to under the stairs on stage for sound effects to play through. Once completing that I worked on a set piece of the show, it's a moving doorway, I added bracing and walls to the doorway, then made it so the platform can fully wheel around. Once I became fulfilled in my endeavor to work on the set, I started to work on cleaning the paint area of the backstage, if I had pictures you would be impressed! Completing this task I then went to work, again, on organizing the under seating storage. With Terry's help both today and tomorrow morning the under seating storage is beginning to finally become neat and organized. Now, I just have to make sure that I will have something to do for the rest of Senior Project, that shouldn't be hard!

Day 6 - Start of Something New

5 1/2 Hours

And so began the second week of Senior Project, feeling a little overwhelmed, and very busy I started the day off by picking up the new monitor that my family purchased for the booth. After opening the box and attaching the wall mount, that hopefully Maintenance will be able to attach to the wall, I decided to start cleaning the Scene Shop. I have, throughout my three years at Proctor, cleaned the Scene Shop more times that I care to remember, and this time was no different. The tools always manage to become unorganized, and the worktable always manages to be covered with a variety of screws and sawdust. After spending most of the day working backstage, preparing the Scene Shop for the last two weeks before the show, I decided I would spend an hour or so working in the underseating storage to make a valliant attempt to orgonize and clean the unorganized and dirty. Unfortunately I was so busy today that I didn't have time to take any pictures, so here are some from the weekend when I went to the Pro GRT race at Highlands.

Week One – That was Fast

My first week of senior project has gone extremely well. I started the week off with an introduction to what Terry Stocker and Michael Littman expect of me, as well as what projects they would like me to accomplish while here. Durring the week I learned a lot about the organization and contents of the Wilkins Meeting House and the Norris Family Theater. I also continued to teach myself a lot about website design as I continue to work on the theater arts website. I have truly enjoyed the valued work that I have been doing as for I know just how great of a help it is, not only to both Terry and Michael, but to the Proctor community as a whole. I am extremely happy to be completing all the little projects that no one else has time for, as well as lending my technical abilities to the theater department to help them update their portion of the website, that has been needing significant improvements since its creation. The entire week has been full of surprises, from finding lost or forgotten pieces of equipment to discovering multiple rooms full of chairs and subsequently organizing them. I believe that I have managed to cope and learn from these many surprises while also aiding to alleviate the stress that the theater department has gained over the years from the accumulation of clutter. I look forward to the next two weeks as an opportunity to continue to work towards the completion of my two goals of creating a website and cleaning the theater spaces, as well as the opportunity to work on my third goal of designing the sound for the spring musical and teaching the inner workings of the audio and other technical equipment to students who will run it next year.

Day 5 - Friday = Funday!

5 Hours

Today, in a great fit of cleaning and obsessive rage, I finally finished cramming the remainder of the spare chairs into the two small closets located stage right behind the seating. Once completing this task my mentor, Seth Currier, helped me to break down spare boxes and take all the old technology out of the theater so that it can now burden down the tech department! After completing this, my fellow peer, Sam Johnson who shares Seth as a mentor with me, and I went to Blackwater diner with Seth so that we could discuss the progress of our projects while also enjoying a fine meal. At this time I believe it is appropriate that I share with you just how awesome Seth's car is, It is a Volvo that acts like a lemon, it has a stereo equipped with iPod conector, 3rd generation or older, and is currently missing its passenger side rear view mirror. Not to forget that it is also quite stylish for it's black on black color scheme and included spoiler. Once I had thoroughly admired Seth's vehicle, I continued to work on my project by starting to wade my may through the mass of "stuff" that currently ocupies under-seating storage. That singular area will, in all likelihood  be my undoing in this project. So stay tuned to next weeks Senior Project Performing Arts Blog, as we find out if Jake will clean the under-seating storage, or will the under-seating storage clean Jake of all his sanity? Only time will tell, find out soon, exclusively on Jake's Blog...

Day 4 - Saving the Earth, One Website at a Time

3 hours

Today, I managed to catch up on some sleep that has been evading me for quite some time. Once I finally decided to wakeup, I started working on the website again. Mainly focusing on the simple design and layout of the site, I started by formatting all the pages so that they would all fit on 13" screens without the need to scroll, then moved to adding a template for the Acting, Production, and Facilities pages. Once the glare from my monitor screen began to give me a headache i decided it would be a good time to head over to the theater and take some pictures of the building and room signs. Here's some of the shots that I managed to get, slightly edited, of course!

Day 3 - Working on the Website

4 1/2 hours

A preview of the site as it currently exists

So, as I'm sure you can tell from todays title, I worked on the website. I started the day by moving three more boxes of spare seats into the upper room, while waiting for Terry to arrive. Then after doing that, Terry and I went to R.P. Johnsons to buy some paint in various colors, as well as ten 10' 2x4's, and some leuon. After returning to the theater and eating breakfast, I showed Terry and Michael what I have designed for the website thus-far. After receiving some comments and direction for the site, I spent the rest of the day continuing to work on it. Tomorrow is Earth Day and Proctor and therefor I won't be able to accomplish any manual labor because the theater will be in use all day; however, I do plan on continuing to work on the website and hopefully move some more boxes up later in the day.

Day 2 - One Chair, Two Chair, Three Chair, Four

5 1/2 Hours

Today I arrived at the theater early to get a head start organizing the storage room across from the Booth entrance, and to start compiling pictures of shows produced since 2008 to put on the new website I'm working on.

Storage room located Booth side

First I did some digging around on digital gallery and found some very interesting images and blueprints from when the meeting house was being built. After finding various building images, as well as images from every production since the Laramie Project, i started to go back to the manual labor.
While cleaning the storage room out, and disposing of such reliques as the slide projector and four spare lights for it, I discovered the the bottom of a seat, then proceeded to ask Terry where it belongs. I found out that it had various counterparts hiding in the under seating storage, which is also on my list to clean before this whole process is over. I set it down, with its company, and proceded to move onward with my cleaning of the upstairs storage closets by opening the one on the oposite side of the theater. In there to my surprise I found even more spare boxes of Irwin Seats. I then, in a mistaken fit of compulsive rage, decided to move all the chairs to one central location, that location being the storage room located behind the seats.

The room loaded full of chair parts,
but the door still closes so all is good.

Can't wait till I get to this!

Under seating storage still with 12 boxes of seat parts

Here is the "kicker," like certain things in life this project appears to be one that just doesn't want to succeed. After moving what must have been at least 500 lbs of replacement furniture I came to the sorry realization that, due to no fault of my own, the small storage room in no way could hold all the seats. And so, feeling defeated I move on, and opened the last storage room located behind the seating. This room across from the elevator held some surprises of it's own, for example, the nine 25', $38.95 each, XLR cables still in original air tight packaging. Thats a total of $350.55 that I just found for Proctor, SCORE! 

Mic cables, all nice and straight.

Then I found what I think was the jackpot of the day, two simple cable hangers that I adapted to hold the wireless mics straight, so they don't stress the wire, and so they stay organized. After clearing out this entire storage room I decided that, come Thursday, I would attempt to fit the remainder of the chair parts, from the under seating storage area, into the storage room that once housed the monitor speakers.

The last room, ready to be filled with
seat parts!

And so that was day 2, tomorrow I hope to take a break from the manual labor and work on the website with Michel and Terry, because I'm only doing an abbreviated project and have a race in the afternoon.

Day 1

5 1/2 hrs

The booth after a good cleaning

Today, at 8:15, I officially started my senior project! The day started with the never ending project of cleaning the Cotton Control Booth, first by throwing out all the old markers, this was then followed by fixing broken stage lights and replacing the house lights that were out. Later in the day, I then worked on organizing the letters for the front marquee. I also talked with Seth Currier about purchasing some new storage shelves for the booth and scene shop. After lunch, I worked on re-programing the light board and adding names to the light subs.

All the lights, finally, working!

Marquee letters, in the process of organizing

And We're Off!

The first meeting is over and my blog is live!