Opera pics are posted!

Now I feel like a douche... finally found one pic of the wedding party on Act I of Pagliacci/Carmina Burana. I'm happy to have one. (another show tonight... viva la Opera!)

and, here's a pic from the Green room of the Wedding Party.

T:BA:10 DVD are done!

Woohoo! I'm finally done with the T:BA:10 DVDs! It was a lot of fun shooting, editing and creating the DVDs.

I did have some technical setbacks:

1) after reusing the same iDVD project, I found that only the DVD menu would play.. the movie was not triggered when you hit play. Oops!

2) The last video I made was the Nature Theatre of OK video and it kept failing at almost the end of the multiplexing routine, about 1 1/2 hrs into the rendering.. dammit... I finally just recreated the project from scratch and it worked.. whew!

3) In a few more DVDs, I realized when I put the disc in the player and it said "My Great DVD" that I'd forgot to rename the project.

4) the raw footage took up tons of disk space so at one point my computer said "the boot disk is almost full". I had to move some stuff off.

5) I think the scariest part of this project was the fact that I was shooting to a SD memory card, not a tape.. therefore, after each shoot I had to backup the SD card in order to reuse. No tapes to fall back on in worst case scenario. 

Anyway, all's well that ends well. Here are a couple pics of the finished project. I even did CD jewel case covers and insert. I'm stoked to hand these off to Patrick today!

In other news:
I attended Daryl Freedman's recital last night at PAM's Whitsell Auditorium. What a great performance! the space is beautiful but I've only seen films there. Rob's piano accompaniment was superb... both Daryl and Rob really showed the emotion of the pieces on their faces and body language. The reception afterwards was yummy: desserts and wine/beer. They had Stella! ("Stella" in Streetcar Named Desire style). I even got to wear some of the dessert.. I was standing near the door to the kitchen and a woman came out with fresh tray of custard treats with raspberry jam... a couple fell off the tray and I had custard and jelly down the back of my legs.. oh well. it was just jeans, easy to wash.

I found out last night that I'm playing one of the Chefs in Hansel & Gretel which starts rehearsal in a couple + weeks.

... and so it ends! TBA'10!

After an exhausting 11 days, the T:BA:10 festival is over. :(

I'm definitely feeling the post-festival let-down... Don't get me wrong.. I'm looking forward to some quiet evenings (in between opera stuff) but I'm already missing the activity and interaction with so many people, seeing old friends, making new ones.

Strangely I'm also feeling it about the opera even though we haven't even opened yet, but just knowing how quickly time flies once things get underway with performances. I still have the rush of a the audience to look forward to.

... and so it begins! TBA'10!

TBA'10

My coworker loaned me his HD camera. Holy crap that thing takes nice footage. I'm even more excited to submit my footage to PICA. I did some test shots at lunch one day and edited the footage in iMovie. I exported a lo-res version and a hi-res version; wow, the hi-res one is beautiful. The file is over 5xs larger but the quality is undeniable. With tons of available space on a DVD the hi-res version shouldn't be a problem to preserve the amazing high quality footage. The only downside is that everything records to a SD card (16 GB). That's about 1.5 hrs of the next best video quality/resolution to full HD. Some of my events are 2 hrs long so I'm going to have to scale back the quality because a 32 GB SD card runs between $150 and $300. For a volunteer gig? Fuck that. So I'll have to be be "creative" to offload the SD card to an external hard drive and zero out between shoots. <--- Technical nerd details :)

My first "gig" is Saturday at the Whitsell Auditorium (Portland Art Museum) with Charles Atlas/Merce.

Costume fitting for Pagliacci

Yay! I went for my costume fitting today for Pagliacci. I super excited about being in this show. So far it's been a lot of fun and great to hear the full chorus. I was initially thinking I'd be in a tuxedo but I look pretty dapper in the suit and bowler hat.

hmm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_of_Man_(Magritte)

In Act I, when the wedding party comes on-stage we're greeted by the townspeople with hugs and kisses and pose for a group photo of the wedding party. Then we exit with the townspeople/chorus.

In Act II, my new "father-in-law" and I get in an argument and my best man steps in to defend me. My "wife" intervenes as well -- just as we have a "freeze" (tableau) moment in the show. When the "action" resumes, my father-in-law and I hug and everyone is happy.. It's fun to "create" a scene.. Mr. Mattaliano is giving everyone a lot of leeway to make up their own story.

There's a shocking, surprise ending but I won't give it away here. You'll just have to see it!