After meeting Mai, we started with the dress rehearsal and went with the idea of the skirt around her and the cap will give her both human and otherworldly look. It was an idea suggested by Mai that there should be a switch in the form, it shouldn’t be just human or just otherworldly creature, it should be a mix. When we first tried witht the white full body suite, it wasn’t displaying the message as I would like, later when she kept half of her hair doen and combined it with skirt rather than the body suite, personally I started to feel more connected to the context. It was a bit difficult to be decisive witht the costume but we found the right one by the end of our rehearsals.
We ended up using the bolder and larger size font video after we changed the setup. The new set up was just black cloth covered board with the projector on the table, we did try different approaches to avoid the table (moulding paper, tape), but the angle was challenging. The advantage was the safety of the performer, but it did make the words illegible for the video. It became an element for the live performance than for all. This was one of the events when I felt I was not able to use all my Theatre designer skills to best of my ability. Hopefully next time I will be prepared for these last minute errors while concentrating on something completely different.
The set up of the camera was completed with each GoPro on table and right side of the stage floor. The main camera was set up in the middle of the audience to avoid their head as much as possible and it was handled by Lucas during the performance. For recording the audio, we directly recorded everything from the mixed, we also used Lucas Tascam redorder as a backup. It was placed on a tripod right in front of the camera.
We did couple of rehersals for 20-35 mins, which was useful in understanding her movement. I made few errors during the trials, but it was necessary to be completely free of stage fright during the actual performance. Later during the final performance when right connection went off, I didn’t panic as much as I would have.
The final checking and fixing the beginning tone was set by 4:45-5 PM and all my setup and out puts were working as it was supposed to and no further changes were made. Guests started to arrive by 6PM and began with me starting with a single wave from one channel at 6:30. It was going well for the first 4 mins then my right out put got cut, throughout the performance. I tried checking for any issues with the possible movement. The moment it could have been effected was when I was doing panning after I introduced all the channel, once all of us were in sync and will start towards the build-up. This did not affect the textural sound made by the instrument since the contact mic was connected directly to the main mixer.
Once the performance was done and the audience left, all of us cleared the venue and took all the equipmwnt backto the office before signing off the paper work.