Light Plot Deconstructed by Gregg Hillmar

This is not supposed to be a theatre blog. It's a tango blog, at least in theory. That's how I started it. I'm a theatre designer and technician, though, and while you might be able to take the tech out of the theatre, you certainly cannot take the theatre out of the tech. And so this review of Gregg Hillmar's Light Plot Deconstructed is going to go right here on my home turf!

I pretty much fell over myself with excitement when I was asked to help review Light Plot Deconstructed. I'll admit to being a bit starstruck--after all, the word Vectorworks is surely in the list of most-used terms by lighting designers, right after ellipsoidal, power, paperwork update, and large coffee, please.

I've taken two classes in Vectorworks at my university. One was taught by a scenic designer, and the other by a technical director. I've known all along that there were easier and better ways to do what I was doing in Spotlight, but hadn't the opportunity to learn from a LD who knew the program inside and out. Gregg Hillmar is that kind of lighting designer.

He approaches computer drafting in a manner modeled closely after the techniques of hand-drafting, which is comfortable and helpful for those of us who learned drafting the old-school way. His writing style is casual and conversational, a very one-professional-to-another feel.

Light Plot Deconstructed does assume that you've got a grasp on the basics, so this is not a good resource for someone brand-spanking-new to lighting design or Vectorworks. That's a good thing--for a lighting designer with some experience with the program, there's no leafing through chapter upon chapter of explanations of the line tool vs. the rectangle tool, and so on. Ultimately the book is a collection of pro tips, the tricks and shortcuts that can take a drafting experience from laborious to smooth and quick. The explanations of uses and sources for general Vectorworks tools are clear and concise; the information on more complex Spotlight-specific tools are frankly a blessing for the self-taught Spotlight user.

My only quibbles: one could wish for a higher resolution for the graphics, and an index would be an excellent addition. The spiral binding means that folded back, the book takes up little space on a crowded work table, and the small size and light weight of the volume means it fits nicely into the pocket on a laptop computer case--which is exactly where my copy is going to live.

Light Plot Deconstructed is already in its second edition, which deals with the changes involved in Vectorworks2010. I'm working in Vectorworks2008, so I've got the first edition. (Plus, first editions are worth more when they become antiques, right?)

This is Vectorworks' home page.

You can buy the book here.

You can read other reviews of the book here.

You can follow the author on Twitter here.

You can follow Vectorworks on Twitter too!

And the next book I'll review is here!

A message

To theatre and production companies:

Conventional wisdom in our field says, take every job. You never know who you'll meet, who might lead to the next great job. This field is all about who you know.

Also: I have spent eight years in university studying my art and craft. I have worked professionally in this field for ten years. I'm nobody in particular, a small fish in the theatre world, but I know what I'm doing.

I work several jobs at a time. This week, I've done: electrical work for a venue that makes me seriously happy every time I work there, because the equipment and staff are that good; concerts for a music society who are more than a little ivory-tower but are willing to pay for someone they can put their trust in; a little PR work for a band who have never paid me a penny in cash but provide for me in every other way imaginable; a show for a small company who don't pay much but are made up of brilliant, competent, noteworthy theatre people; and a strike for a tiny theatre company with high ideals and frankly pathetic equipment, which made my blood pressure rise for weeks running, for pennies.

You know what?

Those first four have me convinced that I deserve better than the last one. Really. I am too old for that!

I'm tired of selling myself short. If you want an intelligent, educated designer who is also a competent technician, perfectly willing to do the heavy lifting, and just happens to be fun to be around...

You're going to have to make it worth her while.

It doesn't have to be money. I'm a theatre artist. I didn't come here for the money. But if there's no money, then there needs to be potential for future opportunities. And if there isn't real potential, then there's got to be something about your company that inspires me to love you.

Love, future, or money. There's got to be at least one of those.

Tick tick tick

Sheet 2, front elevation, back wall.

Three weeks from today I will be putting the finishing touches on my master's thesis presentation.

Don't know if I'll post anything coherent between now and then.

Please excuse me now, I'm going to go scream.

Intimacy II

I've just been tattooed...again...the mountain-and-river scene on my right arm now extends onto my shoulderblade. It's not done yet--the outline is there, and the sky is blue. I'll go back in January for the rest.

Tango is the most intimate of dances, but this is the one other experience that comes close to that strange intimacy.

The shop is small, a few rooms in an old converted house. Red and white checkered floor tile, a fish tank in a corner with orange and white goldfish. The walls and ceiling are covered with art--photos of tattoos done in the shop, drawings and paintings, prints of old-time circus tattooed people. And photos of his kids and dogs. The kids are there, in fact, twelve and sixteen, doing homework at the counter. Two big photo albums on that counter, one for each of the artists in the shop, examples of their work to show off to potential customers. I know there are photos of my arm in one of them. The smell is pine and lemon cleaners, ink, sometimes a waft of incense from the back room. Jason is a big fellow, handsome, black t-shirt with the shop's logo (a lotus flower pierced with arrows, his own work), baseball cap, square glasses, arms covered with brightly colored ink.

Today, half an hour standing as still as I could while he sketched the scene onto my skin, freehand. His left arm on my left shoulder, bracing himself and steadying me. His breath across my skin, hands gentle, his body heat just behind me, not touching. Then the gun, the needles. Pain, yes, lots of that. More today than some times--the shoulder joint is sensitive. But also, his hands, gloved, gently smoothing cool wet soap over the burning skin, so gently wiping away excess ink. Every few minutes, a pause as he picks up more ink from the tiny cups where he mixes the colors to match perfectly what he gave me nearly two years ago, tapping his foot on the pedal that makes the tattoo machine buzz, in time with the music playing over the speakers hidden in the corners. He leans back, scrutinizing his work. Then back to the tattooing. Two hours of this, lying on my belly on the table as his mind, eyes, hands, tools, are focused on a few square inches of my shoulder. Sometimes we talk; more often I close my eyes and entrust my skin to him.

Sometimes...

...there's just nothing to say.

Fort Hood.

Exposure

I'm sitting in the house during a dress rehearsal of Large Animal Games. And I'm struck, once again, by just how much I love actors. It's a joke among techs, a joke so old and fundamental that we don't even have to say it, that actors are the bane of our existence. We could do such a great show if the actors wouldn't get in the way. But it isn't true for me. I adore them.

I'm sitting in the house, right now as I type, watching them rehearse. These actors are intelligent, hard-working, funny people. They are laughing, crying, stripping off clothes, kissing. And me, sitting in the house, I am looking at them as objects. I am watching their skin tone under the colored light, watching the shadows they cast, watching the lines of their bodies, counting the seconds it takes for the light to change. Scrutinizing. Calculating.

And they let me.

Been/Going

Here's where I've been.

And here's where I'm about to be: