The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver Opening Ceremonies

I am writing this while watching the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, however I won’t post it until the morning.  It will probably take that long to really put my amazement into words.  I love watching the Winter Olympics no matter what, but this year the opening ceremonies are amazing.  This production is amazingly beautiful and it is technically spectacular.

What really takes the cake here are the projections.  Turning the entire stadium into a projection surface was just beautiful.  From the floor of the stadium to every audience member who was given a white poncho it was a truly all inclusive and all encompassing performance.  The integration of imagery and acting and dance  was incredible.  The special effects that gave three-dimensionality to the 2D elements like the whales were beautiful.

Projected Whales with 3D elements like steam from their blowholes

The use of various fabrics and shapes as projection surfaces was pretty wild.  When was the last time you grew trees in the middle of an indoor stadium?  Not only were they trees but totem poles as well.

Fabric "trees" provide an amazing projection surface.

Of course how can we forget that they kicked the whole thing off with one man rapping the floor with his staff and rings of “electricity” emanated out along the floor.

Kicking off the celebration and the amazing effects!

It really amazes me that, given the state of the world today we are still capable of coming together as friends in competition.  Sure there are some countries that seem to still hold grudges against eachother, but they seem to put most of that aside to come and compete in the Olympics.  It is so great that we can come together as a global community, even if it only for sixteen days.  Good luck to all the athletes.

Citius, Altius, Fortius. – Swifter, Higher, Stronger.

Today is the preview night for our production of “Touch(ed),” a brand new play by Bess Wohl. It is a great show and for anyone in the SLC area I would very much recommend that you come see the show. It is a very moving story about two sisters, one who has been in a psychiatric hospital and the other hoping for her recovery.

I have been pretty happy working on this show and it has been interesting, but it certainly has not been a cakewalk show from my end (lighting). This is the first time that I have worked with lighting designer Phil Monat outside of a large musical. The last three shows we did together were the season openers, so huge productions. This was supposed to be a small one, but I should have known better…

We finally finished hang today, after Phil called me to tell me that he just had to add one more light. One more light? That has been the story of my week. I understand when the director and playwright change the show around and scenes are not played where they used to be or new content is added. I understand adding fixtures for that, but for things that were on the groundplan originally, one would think that you could figure out how everything worked (like shots around legs).

On top of everything I have not been feeling great over the last couple days.  I have had a head cold and just felt generally crappy.  I am sure that contributed a lot to my not being happy about all the extra work that I have had to do on this show.  I am finally starting to feel better, but my nose is still stuffed up and I am really tired.  I think that my general bad humor over the past days has rubbed off and I don’t think that it makes Ruth happy,  but I don’t mean to be so grumpy.  It is just hard to not be grumpy when you are sick and tired (literally).  I have been sucking down DayQuil and Airborne and as much liquids as I can drink.  I just hope that I feel better by the time my parents get to town.  I have to lead services at temple on Saturday morning , so it would be nice to be able to breathe again!

Apparently I am not the only one who is not feeling well today though.  Our two female leads were not in great shape prior to curtain tonight.  We know that at least one of them was puking and the other was feeling nauseous.  So we have the barf buckets out backstage and the understudies waiting in the wings.  It has just been a rather ominous start to the run of this show.  We had issues with the house lights not going out last night during the invited audience performance, and we had issues with worklights being left on tonight.  We just can’t seem to win.

On the upshot, my photos from last night came out great.  Thanks to Nikon for conveniently releasing a new firmware update for my camera that seems to have made it work so much better.  If you are interested in seeing the photos from last night you can find them at http://www.ptcphotocall.com

So, despite everything the show is really amazing and worth coming to see.  I think that now that we are open I will feel a lot better.