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December 27, 2002

Crunch Time

So I had a little personal crisis and decided, at the last minute, to join my family holiday gathering at my sister's place in Austin, Texas. We had a lovely time, hanging out with my insufferably cute niece and nephew. (My brother's Christmas present was the anime-style sketch of me that's now on the top of the main page.)

What does that have to do with The Neutrino Project? Well, between the crisis and the unexpected travel, I now have just a few days to get ready for our final tech/dress rehearsal on Monday. I'm working at Rive Gauche tonight (I take pictures for their galleries) until 4 am, so I'll be sleeping in tomorrow but then the rest of the weekend is going to be spent blanking tapes and double-checking equipment.

We're almost out of postcards, so the half-postcards came in just in time. Half-postcards? Whenever I work at Rive Gauche, I always come home with a stack of flyers that other clubs have stuck in the window of my car. These flyers are seldom a stock 4x6" postcard, but rather are a variety of shapes and sizes. Shaun saw a long bookmark-sized one and said, "I want ones like this for The Neutrino Project!" and then went off to play Vice City for 6 hours while I figured out how to make it happen. (This is generally the way FuzzyCo staff meetings go.) I didn't want to get into custom-size printing costs, so I laid out two 2x6" cards on a 4x6" card and had them printed at Rocket Postcards. Then we had Kinko's chop them in half and, voila, 1000 bookmark-sized flyers for the cost of 500 postcards. I think they're a great hand-out size.

We also got stickers. They just have the name and logo, and they're black-and-white, and I mainly got them for people to stick on their Trapper Keeper or whatever (besides, they're cheap from The Sticker Guy).

Posted by Fuzzy at 01:26 PM

December 20, 2002

Technical Difficulties, redux

Lucia Mauro came out on Wednesday to interview Shaun and I and some of the cast and crew (even just picking a few of each, we ended up with 10 people at the interview -- this show is huge) (OK, I realize that in relation to big Broadway musicals or whatever, our show is tiny. But my main show has two actors and, if we're lucky, someone in the lightbooth.)

A cool thing, for me, in the interview was to hear the cast reply to questions with "Fuzzy says..." or "Fuzzy always tells us...". They were listening! I've been getting a little caught up in some of the technical problems of the show, and a couple of things Phillip said made me go think, "oh yeah, I did say that. I should remember to do that."

Oh, and since I've been caught up in those technical problems, I answered Lucia's first question, about how the rehearsals have been going, with something about how they've been a "series of near-catastrophes, averted at the last minute by collective brilliance". Which is a) not the way to 'sell' the show (headline: "Neutrino Project A Disaster Waiting To Happen") and b) not strictly accurate. Things are going fairly well. Really.

And then once Lucia had her journalistic way with us, Aaron Gang showed up in the middle of rehearsal. By surprise! Or rather, at my request and at exactly the time he said he'd show up. Aaron got some great shots. I'll put some up soonish. But there's no two ways about it, it was an additional distraction in an already scattered rehearsal.

The biggest distraction was (again!) the lack of a TV. We didn't have the projector this week, so we (well, Shaun) wrestled his huge TV out of his bedroom, into the car, and then into the theater. Only to discover that you couldn't switch it to video-input without the remote, which was conveniently located on Shaun's nightstand at home.

So... we've got one more rehearsal before opening. It's a full tech, and I've sworn to the cast that everything will be perfect. No pressure.

Posted by Fuzzy at 03:59 PM

Conference Call

I sat at my desk today at lunch to participate in a phone interview via conference call about The Neutrino Project. And sat. And sat. Shaun called me 10 minutes after the call was supposed to have started to say, "it's over." The reporter had hit him with a barrage of questions and he never had a chance to conference me in. Evidently, after questions aimed at understanding the concept of the show, he was mainly fixated on the word "Neutrino". I realized that I couldn't remember who had invented the word "neutrino". Enrico Fermi did. Which, even though the group Neutrino is from New York, brings the whole thing back around to Chicago very nicely.

Posted by Fuzzy at 02:41 PM

E-flyer 2

Here's another one of Cesar's clever e-flyers. This one's rather heftier (about a meg and a half) but it features a rather scruffy version of me demonstrating the dangers of our logo.

Posted by Fuzzy at 02:24 PM

December 17, 2002

E-flyer

Cesar Jaime made what he calls e-flyers for the show... here's a cool one.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:49 PM

Thanks, Boston

So many thanks... thanks to Will for setting the whole thing up and letting us sleep on his floor, thanks to Asaf and Karen and Hugh for coming up from New York, thanks to Norm and Brian for coming over from ImprovAsylum to play on Sunday night (because everyone knows how much IB and IA hate each other), thanks to Don for putting up the New Yorkers, thanks to Zabeth for taking Shaun to play pool on Sunday night so I could be sick and pack in peace, thanks to the brave few who took our workshop, and a special thanks to every who saw the shows.

Posted by Fuzzy at 01:39 PM

December 14, 2002

Boston Basement

I'm sitting in the basement/green room of ImprovBoston right now, while Karen Herr is leading a discussion on Women in Improv upstairs. We're going to be doing two shows tonight -- not too many years ago Shaun and I were mildly freaked out when we had to do a half-hour Bare show ("Just the two of us? On stage for 30 minutes? Alone?"). Tonight we're going to be doing 3 hours or so, all together. Shaun's taking a nap and I'm goofing around online, that's how non-freaked out we are now.

Tomorrow, Asaf Ronen is leading a jam with Shaun and I, Karen, Boston peeps I'm sure, etc., etc. Should be fun.

Posted by Fuzzy at 03:11 PM

December 13, 2002

Bare in Boston

Shaun and I will be taking Bare to ImprovBoston this weekend. We'll be sitting in with their TheaterSports show on Friday (Dec 13), doing two Bare shows on Saturday (Dec 14), and sitting in with their Jam on Sunday (Dec 15). Some of our New York friends will be coming up and sitting in with the Jam, too.

We did a three-minute preview of our show at WNEP's Gong Show on Saturday. We came in second. Well, we tied for second. To be exact, we tied for second with a duo who spat hot chocolate on each other (there was a little more to their act, but not much). I think that's our new poster tag line: "Bare: voted equally entertaining as two guys spitting hot chocolate on each other".

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:00 AM

December 12, 2002

Technical Difficulties

So first, I brought the wrong cable for the iBook, so all the footage from last week that I had so carefully captured was only visible by everyone crowding around the iBook's tiny screen.

And then the speaker on the video projector proved to be terrible and the scenes were nearly impossible to hear. Fortunately, Lance saved the day. Lance had an idea about trying to integrate music into the scenes and so had brought a minidisc player and some battery-powered speakers to rehearsal. We were able to hook his speakers up to the headphone jack of each camera to hear our scenes as well as watch them.

Most of the scenes last night were pretty mellow. Except for Dan and Phillip in the shower scene. That was some hot, hot, pretending-we're-naked-by-casting-shadows-behind-a-curtain-with-Lance-making-the-shower-sound-with-his-mouth action.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:35 AM

December 11, 2002

Dogtags

Why did Shaun give everyone in The Neutrino Project dogtags? It's simple. Sandy was doing the wigs and makeup for a show called Cooking With Elvis and when they needed an understudy for the part of the Elvis impersonator, Sandy mentioned that Shaun was playing Elvis in the Steve Martin play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. So Shaun became the understudy in that show, and Dale, the director, gave everyone in that cast and crew "What Would Elvis Do" dogtags (which makes sense as Elvis was in the Army and all). Shaun loved his so much he wanted to give the Neutrino Project cast something similar, so he had custom dogtags made in England(!).

I was initially skeptical ("What do dogtags have to do with improvised video?") but as I wear mine around a good number of people ask "what's on your dogtag" and then I get to plug the show. And I looooove plugging this show.

Posted by Fuzzy at 09:53 AM

Pictures from Rehearsal

I captured a few stills from the video from last week's Neutrino Project rehearsal. We're rehearsing at The Playground now, for a change of scenery, so all the locations are in that neighborhood.

Posted by Fuzzy at 09:35 AM

December 10, 2002

The Fork in the Thing

"The Fork in the Thing" is what the cast nicknamed my looped animation of a fork approaching (and retreating from) an outlet that we used between scenes in the preview run. We need something between the scenes because Greg, in the booth, finds out when the scene ends the same time the audience does. The animation covers the time between Greg (and the audience) seeing that the scene has ended and Greg being able to get the next tape playing.

When I mentioned the animation in this journal before the preview, an enterprising soul sent me some delightful animations using elements he downloaded from the FuzzyCo website. Unfortunately, I hadn't really laid out the design requirements for the animation, so the ones he sent me were completely unsuitable for use in the show. So... in case any other enterprising souls out there are thinking of submitting Neutrino Project inter-scene animations (and, more realistically, as a design spec for myself as I work on redoing the animation with our new logo) here's the specs:

Posted by Fuzzy at 06:26 PM

December 09, 2002

Don't forget to bring a TV

"Don't forget to bring a TV." That's my #1 note to myself as a director of this show. We switched rehearsal locations this week and my plans to have a TV at this new location fell through at the last minute on Wednesday. So... "How'd everybody feel about that?" was the best I could do for notes. It was OK on one level, though, because I was losing my voice and really was terribly ill. I had to sit down at one point because my chest muscles hurt from coughing. I think I did an OK job of keeping a brave face on for the cast, though, and not wasting time feeling sick. (A Mick-ism is "You can be tired, just don't act tired.")

We got through two full shows, too. I had the runners practice running the tapes back to the theater, but to save wear and tear on tapes I had the camera guys use the same tape for all their scenes. I hope the runners didn't feel too dopey running around the neighborhood with imaginary tapes. With one exception, we were right on with our timing for the both shows, which was good for the first time we've run the whole complicated structure since September.

We'll definitely have a TV this week. I swear.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:30 PM

The Cough Syrup Makes Me Dizzy

This is one of those annoying "I got sick and stopped posting but I'll post soon" posts. I got sick and stopped posting but I'll post soon.

I think, in fact, there's some sort of cosmic rule that as soon as you post a message to a journal promising to make more or better posts, circumstances will force you to stop posting altogether.

I'll make myself a little list of things to talk about as a sort of thinking out loud:

Posted by Fuzzy at 01:44 PM

December 04, 2002

Fast Forward Film Festival

The Fast Forward Film Festival (formerly the 5x8 Festival) now has a website. The FFFF gives 30 teams 21 hours to make a 3 minute movie. Wusses. They get to use editing and everything. We make a 45 minute movie in an hour. Woo-oo!

(In "but seriously folks" mode, I've seen some beautiful work at the FFFF. Some 3 minute pieces of mess, too, but some wonderful, wonderful stuff.)

Posted by Fuzzy at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2002

The Cold

I realized something viscerally tonight that previously had been a theoretical concern -- it's really cold out. I had my gloves off for 3 minutes tonight taking a picture with a still camera and my fingers were hurting from the cold. I can only imagine what it's going to be like trying to shoot video in weather like this. And the actors all muffled in layers of clothing, and condensation on lens when we come in from the cold, and what else I haven't even thought of?

Of course, we don't shoot everything outside, but because of the tight timing, we do end up shooting a lot on the way to and from other locations. I guess we'll find out how bad it is tomorrow night.

Posted by Fuzzy at 07:27 PM

So Lame

I had a conversation at the bar after class last night with Dave and Sean and Mick (and Drew and the air-drumming madness of Mike Davenport). Mick, of course, started the whole journal-of-a-production thingy with his Directing Second City Mainstage journal back in 1996. The consensus of the table was that online journals are lame city.

After I crawled out from under the table, I resolved to make The Neutrino Project journal the bestest journal-of-a-production in the whole wide world. Of course, I haven't actually done anything for the show since last night, so I don't have anything new to offer. But after tomorrow night, watch out, kiddo.

Posted by Fuzzy at 05:01 PM