home, home on the range

I've been pretty bad at keeping up to date with my blog since moving back to dear old england, sorry Ruth!
It's been a strange transition, moving from freelancer that flits from job to job, location to location, to warehouse monkey with a set pattern of work hours and days. Luckily working on the evening shift means I don't have to drag myself out of bed before the sun rises and cram myself onto a rolling sardine tin, just to repeat the cramming on the way back! Yes, the hours I keep are quite anti-social, but the off-peak trains keep it cheap and I get a seat every time!

It's been nice being back in dear old england, being able to see old friends, spend time with my family and have my favourite ale easily available! I get to come back to the land of my uncles this weekend though, as part of an ongoing adventure with Ignite in Cardiff Students Union and the great tech team that work behind the scenes to get the show moving and (hopefully) running without a hitch.

A bit of trivia for you: the angel that sits on top of Guildford Cathedral sits on top of mobile phone masts from a couple of mobile networks, the angel itself was added when scenes from The Omen were filmed at the cathedral.

Theatre, dahling?

Two weeks of almost solid theatre work and it's over! I've acted in three different capacities on three different plays, but surprisingly I'm not worn out by it all! 

The first production was "The Tentmaker" with Going Public Theatre Company, where I was a one-man technical team, squeezing every last drop of performance potential out of Microsoft Powerpoint to try and make it all appear as professional as possible.

The second was a week-long run of "The little matchstick girl" with Pukka productions where I was lampie. Once we had got past the halfway mark, I had refined all my lighting cues, and the actors managed to remember all their lines and cues, making the whole thing very enjoyable and fluid. On the last day of performance we had a matinee, but none of the windows in the church-cum-theatre were blacked out, which meant scene transitions were visible to everyone in the audience, but they all went off without a hitch!

The third and final production was a play based on the nativity story at temple baptist church. Having a bunch of current and ex-glamorgan technical students, the christmas play is always a very technical effort, with lighting, staging and video all being squeezed into a little space. For this I helped program the lights, made a few of the videos and played in the band during the performance. It was probably the most haphazard and sketchily-prepared of all the productions but from where I was stood it all seemed to go as well as a typical church christmas play goes, with kids not knowing how to hold toy sheep, forgotten lines and some managing to turn off their microphones before going on stage!

To help round off the week, the techs kept the christmas play rig up so we could use it in the evening for the second of our Alchemi events. After giving one of the non-technical helpers a crash course in intelligent lighting for events, I hopped up on stage with the rest of the band and played our little hearts out with modern twists on christmas songs and modern worship songs. There was a talk by Hedd, talking about what our "nightmare before christmas" might be. hopefully there will be some photos coming up soon of the matchstick girl, christmas play and alchemi, ill put them up when they appear.

For now though, here is the title video that was played just before the talk to help people get into the right frame of mind for the challenging talk that followed. (Soundtrack by BRIGHTLIGHTS)

Flashy Flashy

As a technician, and especially a lighting technician, its not often that i get recognition from artists or in the press (aka blogosphere), but the last two weeks I've worked on two events where the feedback has been positive and has made me feel like my contributions have been appreciated.

The other week I worked a drum and bass night in the SU's Great Hall, called Hospitality. Hospitality is generally seen as the little cousin of the larger BEDLAM nights that happen at the union, but this last event was the best yet and hopefully will set the calibre of acts higher for next time.


Alongside the regular local and regional DJs and MCs, I had the privilege of lighting a set by Mr David Rodigan, the reggae equivalent of Tim Westwood. Rodigan (blue t-shirt) played some great tunes, was a fantastic MC and all round good fun.

After a big night of bass and "revelry" it was time for a week of tent-based christian music and worship in the form of IgniteHope 2010. 

IgniteHope is the sequel to the national Hope '08 initiative in which many thousands of young christian people did good deeds in their community to show the love of God through their actions, and Hope Local in 2009, which sought to let the churches have a go at organising their own social action, rather than having it centrally controlled by Ignite.

This years event production was provided by PG Sound and was a grand entry into the world of medium scale outdoor events for the company, only a year after its inception. 

The event was held in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff City Centre, (as far as I know we had no noise complaints!) and the site was used as a mustering point for hundreds of young people for the mornings and evenings, and was open to the public during the day.

Pictures From the event will hopefully arrive soon on the internet, I couldn't tell you where because there were so many people with cameras, but when I find some good photos I'll post them here

Lighting was provided by MJ Lighting, Video by Genero, Sound and crew by PG Sound and Staging from Stage Lighting Services.

Third Day @ The Forum, Kentish Town

Nearly every time i write something it seems to be about something i've done with Ignite, but my life isn't that interesting otherwise!

Ignite put on a gig in The Forum in Kentish Town in London, Third Day were headlining with The Sonflowerz supporting.



I had my whole morning routine planned down to what socks i was going to put on, but for some reason, which will remain a mystery to even the greatest scientiic minds, i didn't set an alarm on my phone!

Therefore, at half 7, when i was meant to be meeting Dianne at the grape and olive so she could take me to Taffs Well, I got a phone call from tim asking where i was. my reply was "not quite left yet" which actually meant "I've just opened my eyes and now frantically rummaging around for some clothes to put on!"




As I'm part of the infamous techie crew, Gary decided that I should be in charge of the bus's sat nav, so I was sat in the front of the City temple LDV minibus with Anita and Doive! Did you know Anita can drive artics?

The load in and soundcheck were uneventful for everyone apart from gilbert, who had to fight with third day crew for mixer channels and soundchecking time.

Doors opened on time and thousands of people poured into the venue, it was quite a sight from the balcony!


The Sonflowerz played six songs, with Abi Williams drumming, and the bassist alternating between bass and keyboards.

I noticed something strange with both the Sonflowerz and Third Day bass arrangement, which got the signal direct from the bass and bypassed the amps completly!

This seemed a bit strange since third day had a really nice Ampeg valve bass head with two 8x10 cabs, and the sonflowerz had my Trace stack, which had to be taken all the way across the country just to look nice!


















We arrived back in ponty at about 4 in the morning, apparently I was the only one who managed to sleep the whole night!


Here's a question, would you rather sneeze marbles or fart confetti?

Thanks to Meg for that one.

Logos hope and other boats

Yes indeed, the OM ship Logos Hope is in cardiff bay and I, along with a motley crew from ignite, went to visit and put on an event.
I didn't take on a technical role this time, i took photographs instead. Though will was pretty impressed by the versatility of the techies. "i'll just take a photo, then re-wire a microphone, then hop on guitar for a bit"
unfortunately because nearly everything was set up and it was a small venue, the techie run hardly made an appearance.

BEFORE

AFTER

oh, and the bit about the other boats was just loosely referring to gilbert's shiny van he gets to drive to london tomorrow, its a cosy ride in the passenger seat, but they've got everything they need for a pleasant journey.

Hopefully get some photos up soon of third day in concert as well soon!

The storm has passed

It was amazing going into uni today and seeing the faces and moods of everyone who only yesterday were in a mix of panic and sleep deprivation. Everyone was chirpy, cheery and wanting to get the rest of the deadlines out of the way so they could get their lives back to normal!

1/3 of this years marks will be derived from a joing honours group project, whereby Music Tech, Sound Tech and Media Tech all band together in one big techy mass and work in groups to create a product or business.
my group has created a Web-based project that attempts to join together people from all walks of life in the Cardiff music scene. It is this project that we are to present to a panel of 4 lecturers and a few dozen of our classmates on tuesday.

I'm not very optimistic about our groups presentation as the meeting today wasn't as productive as we would have hoped and because of various commitments acorss the group, we aren't able to meet up again until the morning of the presentation (the presentatation is in the morning).
The next few days will be a test of communication and co-operation as each member prepares his or her part, practises it and compiles it inot one stramlined presentation that flows as if i were actaully written as a group effort! Wish me luck.

On a different note, the reason i'm busy all the next few days is because of an event called IgniteHope. I mentioned Ignite in a earlier post, Ignite like to take on projects and events to promote the good works of christians in their community. One way of showing this is to take the Hope '08 initiative and keep it going every year.
The Hope '08 initiative involved christians going out into their communitys and doing various activities including painting fences, running youth clubs, gardening, building, washing and cleaning and cooking; all for people in their community who need help or just want something done. The groups aren't paid to do this, on the contrary the delegates PAY for the privilege of painting a fence or a scout hut for three days.

As part of the IgniteHope event I'll be going round some of the sites in south wales where the projects are taking place and filming them as part of a camera crew. The projects run from Saturday to Monday, culminating in an evening celebration at Cardiff SU.

Hopefully I'll have some photos or footage of the weekend up soon, but for now here's something from a site I came across earlier which may become a favourite of mine!

Having a God time

Ignite is a charity based in South Wales thats part of a parent company called Big Ideas.
Every year Ignite put on an event called Offensive, this year it was held at Woodville Baptist Church (where tuesday's gig was held), with PG Sound providing Sound and Lighting for the event.

It was a great event, with teachings, seminars, and DOUGHNUTS!
you could really tell God was affecting people throughout the whole day, with some of the participants even giving out tracts to staff at the local chippy when they went to get lunch cos the staff asked about their name badges.

it was a long day for all the crew but it was also great fun and we all came home buzzing.






We also tried out gilberts new toy, an Orange Crush Micro, he borrowed a telecaster off a friend and the combination sounded immense!