LIPA Light Night - Light Show Programming and Playback

Lots of people have asked me how I went about programming the Hope Street light show so I've written this short piece to answer some of the more geeky questions...

I programmed the show on the free Chamsys MagicQ PC software as a cue stack. This version of the software has a basic built-in visualiser which was ideal for this project, meaning that I knew exactly how the show would look before the kit even arrived. Each cue was set to fire from timecode, although in this case I was using the software's internal timecode, rather than using an external input (a free alternative, given that the interface costs about £650!). The internal timecode starts as soon as the cue stack is activated.

I then recorded the timecode stamps onto the cue stack using the 'Record TC' function, meaning that every time I press 'GO' in real time, the cue stack remembers the timecode stamp. There was one slight problem though - there were 347 cues in 3 mins 29 secs so I had no chance of remembering where they all went! My solution was to notate where every cue went using the Sibelius software (being a musician has its perks), so when I went to record the timecode, I simply read the music and pressed GO every time a note was shown. It did take several takes to get it all completely right!

My next conundrum was the playback: how to get the audio track and the cue stack to line up (the problem with not using an external timecode trigger). I decided to figure out the musical tempo of the song and create a click track (similar to what musicians might use to record to, or keep in time when playing live), but in this case the click track only lasted the duration of 1 bar of music before the song begins. The click track would only come through my headphones (not the main PA!) and once I had heard 4 clicks, establishing the tempo, I knew to press GO on the 5th click. The timecode took care of the rest of the show and I could go and watch! 

Here's a video compilation showing the recording of the live show, as well as the pre-visualisation, the cue stack and the click track audio at the beginning:

REACTION: A critic's plea: stop all arts funding now

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11630643/A-critics-plea-stop-all-arts-funding-now.html

This article just makes my skin crawl. It is thoroughly flawed and fundamentally wrong:

Looking at this purely from a producing theatre viewpoint (the article itself completely disregards other areas of arts funding), Douglas McPherson doesn't acknowledge the breadth of Arts Council England (ACE) streams within the theatre industry, instead insinuating that arts funding is only directed at writers, who should be 'supporting themselves with day jobs as waiters or whatever, until they produce a saleable script'. To say 'I can't think of one funded show that was any good' demonstrates a lack of understanding of how theatre is produced or funded, as well as spouting contentious sweeping statements.

Most of our flagship producing theatres in the UK such as the National Theatre or the Royal Opera House, and most of our regional producing houses are heavily funded through ACE, as well as individual theatre and dance companies, site-specific projects, educational services and arts festivals.

The idea that the best art will be commercially viable is just not true. Some of the best work I've ever seen would not have been commercially viable without public funding and would not have received corporate sponsorship because such theatre is a very high-risk investment. But more to the point, the arts are not about making money, they are about enriching our culture.

There is abhorrent snobbery in his attitude towards 'subsidised theatre', as if it is somehow inferior just because of its funding structure. In fact, on the contrary - commercially-funded theatre is often subject to the pressures of influential producers, who have the capacity to stunt artistic development and intuition in the cause of financial gain should they wish to.

The statement 'Well, those living rich on state handouts would panic, wouldn't they?' is dangerously close to the anti-poor, anti-benefits rhetoric that we hear from the right-wing press and political parties. There is much more that I could have said here, but suffice to say this is not the kind of thing we need to hear right now with potentially more arts funding cuts looming, especially from someone who has been reviewing theatre for the past 20 years.