2010 July | The Journey of Story

Projections for The Planets – A look behind the scenes

July29

As promised in my post on Tuesday, today I’m going to give you a look behind the scenes at the technology that I used to create the projections for The Planets.

This basically breaks down into two sections, creating the media to be projected, and actually running the show.

Creating The Media

On Tuesday I mentioned the DigitalSky 2 software which I used to create the 3-D space visualization sequences. The system is extremely sophisticated, and in fact has its own scripting language. By writing scripts I’m able to “fly” the camera through the 3-D model of the universe. It can also manipulate what objects are visible, and increasing or decreasing their size. In order to create the effect that I was looking for, I often had to increase the size of the planets and moons in view. This is because the distances in space are so gigantic, compared to the size of even the largest planets and moons.

The other major elements in the piece are mostly NASA images. There is a tremendous amount of maturity are available here, which was a great blessing, though as you can imagine, it could complicate the process of selecting material. In general I was looking for a combination of the most spectacular, beautiful and highest resolution images available. Fortunately, many images were available at far above HD resolution. The higher the resolution of the image, the more choices I have in how to use it. With the largest images, I’m able to show a small portion of the image, and then slowly move across it. This is the so-called “Ken Burns effect.” This effect allows me to take a static image, and give it motion.

Projecting The Show

When I set out to do projections for any piece were I’m collaborating as a part of a live performance, one of my primary goals is to not do anything to get in the way of the performers. One of the things that this means, is that I don’t want to create projections as a movie. It would’ve been very easy to create the projections and burn them onto DVD, and then just hit play at the beginning of each movement. The problem with that, is that then the conductor would have to follow the timing of the projections in order to stay synchronized. To my mind, that’s an unacceptable compromise to ask for in most cases.

My answer is a software package called QLab. This amazing Macintosh software allows me to create each “visual event” of the show as a separate cue. By doing that, I’m able to essentially “edit” the projections in real time, during the performance. I read the score as the orchestra performs, and trigger each cue at the appropriate moment in music. This allows the conductor the flexibility to adjust the tempo as it feels right, and I’m still able to keep everything in perfect synchronization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind-the-scenes of The Planets. Do you have questions? Please ask in the comments, I’d be happy to do my very best to answer them for you.

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Talking to Monsters

July28

Fair warning:

This post is going to be a little bit weird–maybe a lot weird–depending on your perspective. I promise, that this really is useful to me, which is why I’m sharing it. Of course, it may, or may not be useful to you. Please take whatever you find useful and leave the rest. The foot of a Monster

One of the things that the amazing, wacky, and wonderful Havi Brooks has been talking about a lot lately on her blog, The Fluent Self is the idea of talking to monsters.

Monsters???

Don’t they just live under the bed? And didn’t we learn that they were real a long, long time ago?

Well, in my world the answers are no, and no.

Here’s the idea:

we all have stuff, particularly, the stuff that comes up when we think about doing things that feel really important, or things that we really really want to do. For instance, I wanted to write this blog post, and I hear this voice in my head which says “you can’t do that, it has nothing to do with any of the things your blog is about, everyone who reads your blog will hate it, if you write it you’ll never be able to have a presence on the Internet again.”

See, to me, that’s a monster talking, in fact, it’s one of my monsters.

The most important thing about monsters

Yes I know, a lot of people would just call this negative self talk, or any number of other things. I don’t know how to negotiate or talk to “negative self talk.” For me though, by calling it, and thinking of it as a monster, I can talk to it and figure out why it’s there, and what it wants.

Here’s the key

Every monster is there for a reason, and that reason is always, every time, without exception, positive. Every monster we have is there for a reason, to help us or protect us in some important way.

Now I know that may sound strange, that our monsters are there to help. It is however, true. You see, monsters are created by our past experiences, when I was a kid I had experiences of being teased and judged negatively. Out of that experience, was born a monster (probably more than one) who are looking out for situations that might cause people to tease or judge or otherwise think negatively of me. They are there to protect me from that bad experience.

But I’m different now, and the world is different now. I’m an adult, not a seven-year-old miserable on the playground. The thing is, often the monsters don’t realize the difference that makes.

Approaching my monsters

Now we get to the reason I really wanted to write this post. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about this lately on blogs, and various other places online. And I feel like there’s something missing from most of these discussions about talking to monsters that I found very useful in myself.

Thanking Your Monsters

When I go to talk to one of my monsters, I make a point to thank them, for what they’re doing for me. I say something like “thank you for being willing to talk to me, I know you’re here for really important reason. I know there’s something critical that you’re doing for me. Would you tell me what that is?”

My experience is, that this approach dramatically softens the situation, as you might imagine that it would in an interaction between two people. I’m recognizing that the monster is there for some important reason. Once I know what that reason is, I can learn about the monster’s worldview, and why he or she acts the way he or she does.

The more I understand that, the easier it is to get this monster to understand my view, and my perspective as an adult. I find, that this often dissolve resistance to change, almost like magic.

If you’d like to read more about this I’d recommend Havi’s Posts:

An example of one of her monster dialogues: Talking To The Book Monster

Also

Monster Watching: Some Notes

and

The Negotiator, the Monster, and the Scribe

Have you ever tried talking to monsters? Would you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. However, please, don’t tell me I’m crazy (I already know that.) Also, please don’t tell me that I need therapy or that this doesn’t work (because for me it’s extremely powerful.) If you want to share an experience, whether it worked for you or not, please do–just don’t tell me that what I do doesn’t work for me. Thanks for being sensitive about this, my monsters appreciate it.