Thursday, August 22, 2013

Shop Improvement

It's summer time, here at UCI. Now that the New Swan Theater is up and running, and our various summer rental groups are mostly done, we have a chance to make a couple improvements.  We are still waiting on the Robert Cohen Theater, to get it's finishing touches, before moving the equipment back in. In the mean time, I've made a slight improvement to the sound shop.

In the S.W.I.F.T. (Sound Workshop for Integrated Fine-arts Technology), we had a corner of the room with little drawers.

They looked like dorm room rejects. Handy, sure. But, ugly, not safe (one is leaning, others were stacked on top of each other, and would almost fall on you when opening the drawer), and not an efficient use of the space.  Using some leftover funds, and a great sale price, we have upgrade to this:

Thirty six bins, of different sizes. Far more efficient use of the space. Bins are more specific. Instead of "Firewire", we now have one bin for "Firewire 400-400", another for "Firewire 400-800", and another for "Firewire 800-800". Makes it much easier to find what you need. And, with the expansion, we also have some EMPTY bins!! Room for growth, as Apple comes up with some new connector to get into their computers, or Meyer has a widget for their speakers, or..or.. Who knows!!??!! Always nice to have room to grow.

While the shop is never perfect, we are always making improvements, in hopes of getting there. When time and budget allows, we make things better.

OK, time for me to get back to work. Need to make proper labels for all those bins.


Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Falling Into Design

I'm in the middle of a small series (two pieces, maybe more) of articles for Stage Directions Magazine. Each one is a profile of a different designer, and the first one is published in the July '13 edition.  You can check it out here.

And, an excerpt, to wet your whistle:

Jane Shaw has a problem. Two problems. Well, challenges, really. Shaw, a sound designer based out of New York City, is designing a new production of N. C. Hunter’s 1951 play A Picture of Autumn for The Mint Theater.  Like most productions, this one has a couple of looming question marks for both the sound designer and the production as a whole.