Bugsy Malone Lighting

Bugsy Malone was my 6th and final production as head of OSC's lighting department. I started last year doing lighting for the gala concert. It has taken perseverance and commitment to the craft of lighting to get to the point where I could do a two hour show with the skill and competence that I was able to manage for this production. When I started last year I was a single person at the lighting board doing minimal lighting changes that coincided neatly with scene changes. Bugsy Malone features more than 50 changes both major and minor and I was responsible for 2 spot operators and a special effects operator. Split scenes were something new that I had never tired before. In Bugsy there are scenes where Fat Sam is talking on the phone on one side of the stage and other characters come and go from the other side, this meant that I had to adjust my lighting changes both to match the flow of the scene and to make clear the separation between places. I think I succeeded in several instances but had I been designed the set as well as lighting and if I knew what I know now I think i could have made the changes even smoother. I hope to be able to take the skills I learned during Bugsy and improve the lighting I will do in theater during college.

(Final Bow, my lighting design for the cabaret songs. Photo by OSC)

It was a new challenge for me to have to coordinate both lights and cues with other people. I ended up going through the play multiple times with both of my spot operators to ensure that we all knew ever cue.  We had to work collaboratively in oder to make the changes smooth because while they operated where the spot lights were only I could actually turn them on and off. This required absolute coordination so that i never turned light on when they were not focused and so that they never moved the lights erratically while I had them on. The same goes for Virath who was the operator of the strobe in the show. There were multiple moments where I had to turn the lights off just as he turned the strobe on so we had to coordinate cues. My timing still could have used some work but since this was the first time I had ever undertaken the kind of coordination that this required I am quite pleased with the result.

(The Dandy Dan Gang Scene, with the sunlight color of Light I designed evident. Photo by OSC)

Harder than the coordination between operators was the coordination between the director and me. In the past I have played a role closer to junior lighting designer where I took broad instructions such as "many colors during this scene" and then translated them into actual cues and lighting guides. Whereas during this production my role was closer to that of a technical director. I was given very specific things to do and I had to figure out how to do them without limited lighting equipment. I realized during this production that I like technical direction a lot, I frankly really enjoyed do the sort of more practical work, but that I have two many strong opinions on design decisions to ever do this sort of thing long term. 

Attached is a Sample of the Lighting Cue Documentation from Bugsy Malone 

Page	Cue	Action
0	ALK’s Signal	fHouse Lights Down
1	Bugsy Malone is being played	Night Lights up, with moon and stars, Right spot on Roxy
2	Bugsy: ‘Had been well and truly scrambled’ Undertakers Enter	Moon and stars off RS on Roxy, LS undertakers as they enter when LF reaches Roxy RS on Busy
2	Bugsy: “My names Bugsy, Bugsy Malone.”	LS on Singers + RS on Bugsy, Night Off + Lower Wash on
3	End of Song	RS on Bugsy and Fizzy, Left Spot Off
3	Blousy Enters	LF on following Blousy
4	Bugsy: Liveliest Join in Town	Speak Easy + Effects Lights, Both Spots on Dancers
5	Song Ends	Effect Lights Stop
6	Fat Sam: Knuckle dis means trouble.	Black out on stage, LS on paper boy
6	Paper Boy: Read all about it	RS, On radio announcer
7	Radio Announcer: Nice Spot for a….	Speak Easy Lights come on
8	Gang: Nothing Boss. AAAAAH!	Blackout, Front + Stair Lights come on. LS follows Blousy, RS follows
9	Blousey: No Starving.	Restaurant lighting comes on
10	Bugsy: we can’t go on meeting like this.	Spots on, black out on other lights. RS on first foreign reporter
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	LS on, on window for second reporter
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	Right reporter light on
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	Left reporter light on
11	When all reporters stop talking	Blackout,  Dandy Dan’s Sunlight on
12	Doodle: Boss give me a break! Boss!	DDS down, duller speakeasy up
13	Fizzy: Night Miss Tallulah	RS on Fizzy
14	End of song and curtains close	Front + Stair on, RS on De Veldt in audience, LS on acts
15	ODV: Don’t give up your day job.	RS on Bugsy and Blousey
51	Bugsy: Shhs there’s a truck pulling up	Down and out lights up
52	Bugsy: Listen.	Lower house on
53	Smolsky: we know you’re in there	Center Stair light on
55	O’Dreary: Somewhere else, Captain. Smolsky Bashes O’Dreay with his hat	Black out on Down and Outs, DDS up
56	Dandy Dan: To kind, too kind. Now for fat Sam’s grand Slam.	DDS down, Speakeasy lights up
56	Bugsy: Razamataz, Hit the ivories!	Effects up

Personal Essays

In the last few weeks I have been starting to do some personal essay writing and journalism in an attempt to undertake a new writing challenge. I am learning how to put into words my opinions and thoughts particularly as they relate to writing its self and the literary community.

Last week I published an review of a short story and next week I will be posting a longer essay about Hamlet and about what makes a good adaptation or interpretation of it. I am hoping that through these blog posts I can consider my impact on the world

You can read the first post: A Response to "The Museum and the Music Box" here.

COMUN

COMUN wrapped up last week. It has been a really hard seven months since our journey started and I learned a lot about what it means to be a leader and what it means to balance idealism and realism in that time. I am a paradox of a person and am both intensely practical and intensely idealistic.

Organizing COMUN required that I work collaboratively with others for a long period of time in order to plan and pull off such a large conference. I went into the program with noble ideas about inspiring the chairs under my direction to do amazing things and in really distributing work evenly between people. However, I had not taken in to account the stress and challenges of organizing a project this big. There were definitely moments when I could have communicated with people better about work load and about what i needed them to do. I stepped up to the pate I the last few weeks and started fielding more questions from faculty advisors and communicating with people that needed it. But though I demonstrated an ability to communicate articulately I feel like I have an improved awareness for my areas for growth in my communication ability at least on an interpersonal level.

In a public speaking I excelled, this is a strength that I am more aware of now than i was before the conference. I wrote and gave my speech at the opening ceremony about my hopes for a future world and about how I hoped the COMUN Delegates would be prepared to face such a world. It was a hard task balancing the small scale, that weekend, and the long term issues of global importance that I wanted to address. I think I managed it well be framing the diplomacy work the conference was simulating inside the larger idea of calling for international and cultural compromise. I got excellent feedback from those who were watching my speech. Mr. DeSilva in particular made a point to say the he thought my choice of words was good for the occasion. The text of this speech is attached to the end of this post.

We did manage to pull of a really wonderful conference. It called for a lot of demonstrated dedication to pull it off.  For this first time this year we had two day long topic during conference which took a lot more preparation that the year before when I also served as a chair, but the feedback we got on this decision was good and it definitely reduced the stress on the deligates if not on the chairs. We also had for the first time this year a simulation of both the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Economic and Social Council.

Interfacing with people as a mediator and as a decision maker was a new challenge for me. Though I was in a similar role in the organization last year I wasn't at the one actually making the calls. This year if there was an interpersonal problem I was the one who mediated. I was the one who made decisions about how we were going to handle things. I of course had help, as a secritariate we made decisions together, but it was a role that was knew to me. It really made me consider the implications of what I was doing, ethical or otherwise. I had to consider how the decisions I made were going to impact deligates and how a decision that benefitted one kid might disadvantage another. I hope I made the right decisions but I also do not have the benefit of a removed perspective to evaluate these decisions.

All in All, I a so happy I undertook the challenge of running a conference. I had so much fun over the course of the seven moths we worked towards last weekend. I made a lot of knew friends and I hope I impacted the lives of some of my peers and younger students. I tried very hard to speak words to them whenever I was asked that were both honest, "sometimes other people win" or  "sometimes you have to compromise", and idealistic and hopeful.

The text of my Opening Ceremony Speech: 

          There is a phrase with which I am intimately familiar, one with which I think that many of you, adults and students alike, are also well acquainted, that is “Someday soon.” The wording may vary, perhaps your phrasing of choice is “eventually”, or “In a few years”, or “when I grow up”, but the sentiment is the same: it is not yet my time.

I disagree, but I do not blame you for saying this. I thought it as I wrote this speech and I am sure I will think it again before the day is out. It is a comfort to remind ourselves that we are still young, that there is still time to make decisions, that our lives are not set in stone, that things can and will get better for all of us. I disagree, but I would not advise you to forget the future. I disagree that it is not yet your time, not yet our time, because I believe that there is no firm line between now and then.

Isaac Asimov once said that Today’s Science fiction is tomorrow’s Science fact. However, I prefer to think of it in this way: today’s idealism is tomorrow’s reality. The things that we dream up today, perhaps in this very conference can be our reality, for we construct our own times. The words we speak and the hopes that we carry do not exist only in the here and now. Instead, they spill over the rim of today and pour into tomorrow as bright as we can make them.

This year’s Colombo Model United Nations Conference is all about the interplay between the present and the future. Our committees will strive not only to produce solutions to the issues our world faces today, but also to ensure that these solutions are not just guttering candles in the dark but are instead bright and enduring. My fellow executive committee members and I hope that the questions we ask and the discussions we facilitate over the course of the next few days can produce meaningful answers to the question of what our tomorrow might look like.

Our theme this year, Sustainable governance, is not just about going green, though that is a not insignificant part of it. Sustainable governance is about ensuring the security of regions and giving stability to the displaced. It is about creating global economic partnerships and about curtailing the infringement of human rights. It is about preventing war, healing from conflicts, and learning to decolonize ourselves successfully.

Sustainable governance is about having it be easy to open your mouth and say “we will deal with this someday soon” or “We can address this in a few years” and instead making the choice to say “Now is the time to address these difficult issues, now is the time compromise, now is the time to learn”

With that in mind I implore you not to let your personal ideals nor the ideals of the country, cooperation, or organization that you represent be waylaid by fear or by ambition. I hope to see in your committees the foundation of a tomorrow that we can all dream of, that we can all no matter our differences be secure in. Let us be reassured this weekend that our time, be it now or tomorrow, will be a good one.

Evidence and photos available here: http://content.educationtimes.lk/print-edition-1/7236-22-years-of-comun-by-osc and http://www.osc.lk/comun/