Let's see... after we got back from Canada we had about 4 days off. The day we came back we worked on some more things in the shop. On the 10th we met at the shop around 9:30pm and left for E. Lansing, Michigan. We were at the Breslin Event Center which was on the Michigan State campus. Quite a few of the shows we've done have been on college campuses.
This was the first show with our new screen. Our original screen had a seam running across the surface, so they ordered a whole new screen that was a different material and frame. I joked with Steve that we finally got our video stuff figured out and running smooth, and they had to thow something else at us to slow us down again. The frame of the old screen collaped and fit into two cases that were probably no more than 5-6 feet long. Only the top and bottom pieces of this new frame come apart. It's a 19x25ft screen, so the side pieces are about 19ft, so the wood shop had to build a case that's 20ft long. Tim, our video department manager, came up for that show so he was there to help us out. It's a pain because there are a lot of steps and there's a certain order in which it goes together, but after this stretch of a few shows we're getting better at it. I'm usually the one in charge of it while Brandon is working with the projectors.
From there we went to Moline, Illinois, then Cedear Falls, Iowa. That was an interesting day. First of all it was at a college campus again in their indoor sports dome. We didn't have the normal stage hands who do stuff like this everyday, we had students. We were supposed to have 14, but only 7 showed up. Also, we couldn't hang our truss structure since the ceiling was a dome. There was a truss roof-like structure over the stage, so that's how we hung the screen. We didn't hang any lights, either. Spotlights were the only light on the stage. Here are some pictures:
We stacked the projectors on scaffolding back by the camera.
We put them on a forklift one at a time to get them up there.
You can also see in the picture our new camera riser system. It's the projector boxes flipped on their sides. The back one has a wood board on a hinge that swings up and over to make a platform for Timmy (the camera operator). That's what we call a "Quinn-o-vation." One of the many things Steve Quinn designed.
The house set up some drape running from the side of the stage to the wall and during the show it all fell down. I thought it was pretty funny. It was right beside video control, and all of a sudden I hear a noise, so I turned around and saw a bunch of people rushing over. They tried to catch it, but it was like a domino effect and it all fell to the ground. Marnell told them to just leave it down because it would have been even more distracting if they tried to put it all back up. Brandon said it felt like the Wizard of Oz since our control area was exposed to the crowd :P
The next morning we had an 8am call instead of the usual 10 because we had a show to do at 3. There was also another show at 8pm that day. It was in Bloomington, Illinois, and I guess the 8pm show sold out pretty quick, so that's why they added the earlier show. The next day we were in Lexington, Kentucky for a 5pm show. We had another 8am load in, and we got there at about 10 after. We were all pretty tired that day. I got a little nap in before the first show, and that helped.
It was a long week. 6 shows in a row with 2 in one day. I think that's about the most we've done.
There are a lot of nice things about this tour, but there's definitely a lot of hard work that goes into it. You have to work fast but work well at the same time. Sometimes we get good stagehands who know exactly what you're asking them to do, and sometimes it can be like working with little kids.
We have 25 shows under our belts now, and many more to go!
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