I just returned home from 2 action-packed weeks at the beautiful John F. Kennedy Center working on two productions for Washington National Opera, Don Giovanni and Samson and Delilah. Erhard Rom designed a masterful contemporary festival set, which Robert Wierzel lit and I projected imagery on.
With very limited tech time, my team and I worked to create two vastly different productions which both were staged on the festival set, with various scenic elements added for each production. My team consisted of myself, creating and designing the video content, Sean “Thick Neck” McNally, who programmed and co-created the system design, and April “Google Photos?” King who was our media server tech and the other co-creator of the system.
This post is devoted to bragging on April and Sean. Those of you who are familiar with media servers (the computers we cue projections on, and how imagery is emitted through projectors, etc) know that Watchout is a wonderful server, but if you have a lot of surfaces, you pick D3 (ok, I realize it is called Disguise now). But thanks to Sean “Fitz” McNally - he has masterfully turned WO into a nimble multi-surface media server. Using a mind boggling amount of virtual displays and auxiliary timelines - he and April were able to converge our quad stacked Panasonic projectors onto multiple scenic planes. Using the NDI input, we were also able to create pixel perfect masks through Photoshop - allowing us to even project the thinnest peach line.
I realize most audience members have no idea about the amount of work it takes to create a production. Nor do they realize the number of people it takes to put on a “flawless” show. While I get the credit (and often the criticism!) - I literally could not have done these shows without Sean McNally and April King. Thank you guys! This Bud’s for you!