Video Montage

Slightly higher quality Quicktime version available here.

update

Quick update on what’s been happening with me lately:

• I’ve been editing the Hamlet video in my spare time.  I have a rough cut of the whole play, with four cameras on two different nights.  Now I’m trying to cut a short montage to post on my website — it’s going well but it will be a while because of all the other stuff going on in my life.  Such as:
• I’ve just been hired to be the stage director on The Crucible’s Fire Ballet version of the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet.  I’m collaborating with an amazing group of people, including a choreographer from the San Francisco Ballet, a bboy troupe as the Montagues (the top breakdancer on the west coast is playing Mercutio), a wushu martial arts troupe as the Capulets, fire dancers, a troupe of aerialists, a whirling dervish with a flaming kilt as the Prince, a metalsmith pouring molten bronze wedding rings as Friar Lawrence, swordsmiths making propane-powered flaming swords for the Mercutio/Tybalt fight, and on and on and on.  Tonight the bboys met the wushu troupe for the first time; they had an impromptu dance-off and taught each other how to headspin and wield swords.
• My job as the Education Director at the Marin Shakespeare Company is going well.
• I’m going to be a father sometime in the next few days.

So things are exciting and wonderful and crazy.

another video clip

Here’s another video clip from the show — Hamlet with Yorick’s skull.

new photos

The photo call photos finally arrived today. I’ve posted a bunch of them to my flickr page. Here’s a sample:

Video: Act II, Scene 2

This is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s first scene with Hamlet. In this production, this was their first entrance; the earlier scene with the King and Queen was cut.

My goal here was to set up a strong relationship between Hamlet and his old friends — see this post on my analysis of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and this post about directing this scene.

A bit about the technical aspects of the video below.

This is cut together from two different performances. I shot one with my shitty camera, sitting close to the center front part of the audience. I borrowed two cameras from actors in the show to shoot another performance with a total of three cameras — the nice camera (thanks, Crystal!) was house left, another was at the back of the main audience area, and my crappy camera was house right and gave me almost unusable footage (you can see a few shots that I had to rebalance the contrast in Final Cut to use at all). There was heavy wind the night we had three cameras, which plays havoc with the sound. And theatre on video always seems to magically sap the chemistry and vitality that makes live theatre work.

Still, I think I’m fairly happy with how this turned out, all things considered. This was one of my favorite scenes in performance: I love what the actors do with the language, and I’m happy with the rhythm and staging choices we made. Hopefully some of that comes across in the video.

rehearsal photos

A bunch of photos from Monday night’s partial-dress rehearsal are up on flickr.

We should have good quality full-costume press photos after tomorrow night.

last run before tech

Tonight was the last run-thru before tech week — which doesn’t start until a week from Monday, because Comedy of Errors opens in a week. In other words, we had a run tonight, then we don’t get the whole cast for ten days, then we open three days after that. It’s a little scary. In some ways, though, it’s the same drill as always: the show has to be there before tech begins.

And the show is there. I was talking to the actress playing Ophelia at the bar after rehearsal tonight (always the best place for casual notes), and she said she felt off in the run. I told her that the good news is that now she’s at a point where even when she feels off, she’s still hitting her marks and the story is getting told. That’s the best you can ask for before tech — anything better than that is gravy.

Here are some photos from the park. So beautiful.