Freefall is currently on tour, we did two dates in the New Plays from Europe festival in Wiesbaden, Germany http://www.newplays.de in June. Freefall will in The Traverse in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Fringe festival. Tour also takes in a bunch of theatres around Ireland as well as the Cervantino Festival in Mexico. Check out The Corn Exchange Theatre company’s website for more info on dates etc.

GAF TV (Galway Arts Festival TV) has a little segment on the video design for Freefall. Have a look here.

16 – 19 JUN 2010 upstairs at Project Arts Centre.

By Dylan Tighe in association with Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group and Irish Traveller Movement.  Set design by Alyson Cummins, Lighting design by Sinead McKenna, music and sound design by Sean Óg, video design by Jack Phelan)

(from Project Arts Centre website…)

Set on a present day halting site The Trailer of Bridget Dinnigan follows matriarch Bridget and her family in the period after her husband’s death. Fiercely protective, Bridget will stop at nothing to ensure that her family’s reputation remains intact. Tensions rise when the eldest daughter announces her engagement and family secrets are revealed, which lead to tragic consequences.

This contemporary adaptation of the Spanish classic The House of Bernarda Alba, by Federico García Lorca, is the result of two years of research and collaboration between theatre-maker/writer Dylan Tighe, Traveller activist Catherine Joyce and eleven women from the Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group.

video tech on this Rough Magic production. Written by Laurent Gaudé, Cast: Olwen Fouéré, directed by Lynne Parker, designed by John Comiskey. Production website.

I’m working on lots of video projections for a new Ian Wilson opera featuring violinist Ioana Petcu Colan, directed by Tom Creed and set/lighting design by Ciaran O Melia.

Project Arts Centre, 4 – 6 March. More soon.

By Michael West in collaboration with the company for the 2009 Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival.

Currently in production. I’m currently playing around with some live camera ideas in rehearsals to see if anything sticks.

More soon.

Freefall on the Theatre Festival website.

The Corn Exchange

I’m designing the hardware and designing/constructing the text display for a large-scale video/lighting public art project currently in production for the 2009 theatre festival. Will put Liberty hall back in the limelight! A lot more on this soon! Check out the project’s website here.

UPDATE: Playhouse launch tonight! (26th August 2009)

Look to Liberty Hall, Dublin from 8.30 pm (West and South faces). Or check out the live webcam feed here

[June 13th - July 4th 2009]

[Company: Corcadorca]
[Director: Pat Kiernan]

[My role: video designer]

From Corcadorca’s website:

medEia, written in 1998 by Oscar van Woensel, is a modern and unconventional retelling of the Greek tragedy of Medea. Delivered by a chorus, the poetic text is interlaced with the lyrics of groups such as The Beatles, Joy Division, Prince and Madonna.

Just finished a large video design for a production of Dood Paard’s meDeia by Cork’s best theatre company Corcadorca. Large video wall made of old TVs with a mix of found footage and animated scenes. More soon.

[Based on a Novella by Stephen King, writen for the stage by Owen O'Neill & Dave Johns]

[Lane Productions]

[Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, Ireland. 19th May - 20th June 2009]

[Directed by Peter Sheridan. Set design, Ferdia Murphy; Lighting, Kevin Treacy; Sound design, Denis Clohessey.]

Production website

I was brought in on this production only a few days before it opened to replace a mechanical butterfly with a projected one, used during the escape scene. The mechanical butterfly was beautifully made by Craig Starkey, had motor, gears/cam and battery within the body. I think the problem was that it was a little unpredictable and repeatability might have been an issue. Another thing was the way it moved – as it flapped it was pulled up into the grid (7m up) by a fine thread – this gave the butterfly a linear-ish path which didn’t seem natural as butterflys movement tend to seem a little chaotic.

After measuring and photgraphing the mechanical butterfly (thanks Des!) I set to work on a 3D model of the butterfly and a texture to match. Thanks to Erin for working on the texture. My idea was to match the mechanical butterfly closely as I hoped to use it in conjunction with the projected one to make the effect more believable.

The biggest issue with projecting the butterfly onto the set was the size of the wall onto which it was to be projected – 7m high by 1.5 m wide! I’ve worked with unusual aspects before but this was a different story. The size of the image meant that the light from the projector would be spread across a larger area and would thus appear less intense, that together with the comparatively tiny portion used by a moving butterfly meant that a pretty powerful projector would be required.

We went with a Barco CLM HD8 – an 8k Lumen 1080p DLP projector. Major thanks to Barry from Avcom for help in not only selecting the right projector but also in building a cradle to allow the projector to by hung on its side.

Full HD was the only option really to mantain some detail in the butterfly on such a large image. Mounting the projector on its side was a must so that the greater horizontal resolution (1920 pixels vs 1080) could be used on the tall vertical set wall. A side mounting cradle was available from Barco but Avcom didn’t have one and as we had no time to get one in, Barry built one from scaff clamps and bars, it wasn’t the ideal solution but was our only option and worked perfectly for the duration of the run.

The Butterfly was built and textured in 3D Studio, animation of flapping and rotating on the spot was also done in 3DS. The butterflys path was animated in AE using a reference photo of the set to map features. Lighting, time remapping, motion blur and colour post were all done in AE.

With regards to lighting, we all hear how it’s often the key to making effects in camera, in CGI and on stage work,  this was no different. I had a bit of a brainwave (aren’t i great!) about using a ‘follow spot’ effect to help give the butterfly some depth when projected on the wall. The actor playing the part of Andy Dufresne (Kevin Anderson) was positioned about 1m in front of the rear wall of his cell, if the butterfly was simply projected directly onto the wall with no thought to lighting or depth, it would look as if the butterfly jumped 1m backwards instantly as well as looking completely fake otherwise.

So by using 3D layers, a spotlight and dropshadow in AE, it appeared that a followspot operator was trying to follow the butterfly as it traveled up the wall, the drop shadow had the effect of making the butterfly appear to be approx 1m from the wall. Realism was improved by having the followspot almost lose the butterfly when it ‘randomly’ changed direction.

The final thing was calibrating the projected image to the set wall, I made a custom grid to make this easier. The projector was positioned on the lx bar of the dress circle and was a bit of a nightmare to get up and running due to the usual cable issues.

Once we rehearsed the transition between mechanical and projected butterfly a few times, we were all set.

Except… because of the extremely short amount of time in which to make this all happen, there was no chance to run the effect in a preview before opening night, which created an immense amount of pressure given that it was a money shot of sorts for the show. AND of course – there was a technical hitch at the half hour call (half hour until the audience are allowed into the auditorium – on OPENING NIGHT). The projector lost signal – after several frantic phone calls and cable checks (on the stage end), Stage manager Brendan pulled the projection for the show, which given how close call was now (15 mins) i was outta luck… BUT (ah ha) given that the projection was used in the second act – I decided that I would leg it up to the dress circle at the interval (not really an acceptable thing to do in such circumstances, but if i didn’t try then the past few days would have been a complete was of time), so that’s what I did – and luckily the audience members who were seated in the front row had gone to the bar – i had a chance to swap out a piece of cable and re-find the signal. Brendan was amazing to allow the projection back in (stressful for him and for the actor who was told of a change in the interval) so major thanks to him for the faith. That’s what I found most exciting about this job – people willing to have faith in your call in a situation that many people would have literally screamed at you to F off. nice.

This post was way longer that i had planned but I got a bit carried away in the end bit. Thanks to Denis for calling me in the first place.

The images below are of the mechanical butterfly and a couple of stills from a test animation – the follow-spot effect and final colouring are not in these shots.

[Written by Dennis Kelly]

[Produced by Hatch Theatre Co.]

[Project Arts Centre, Space Upstairs. 17th April - 9th of May 2009]

[Directed by Annabelle Comyn. Set, Paul O’Mahony; Lighting, Sarah Jane Shiels; Costumes, Catherine Fay; Music & Sound, Philip Stewart; Video Design, Jack Phelan. Cast: Barry Ward, Phil Kingston, Ali White, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Will Irvine, Kate Brennan]

[David conducts an office romance by e-mail. He has love at his fingertips. But a shocking admission unravels his relationship piece by chilling piece.

Jess loves David. She believes happiness can be bought.
David loves Jess. He must work to pay off her debt.
Love and money is killing them.

Dennis Kelly’s Love and Money offers a cautionary tale of consumerism gone mad, putting spiralling debt and its effect on love under the microscope. Funny but heart wrenching, this ingenious drama dares us to enter a dislocated world of bad debts and even worse desires.]

For this Hatch production, I designed a video sequence that helped set the tone and feel of a dialog through email that makes up the first scene of the text. The idea was that David (Barry Ward) would physically type a small amount of what he was writing to Sandrine, the video design would then be abstracted further to give an impression of typed text without each and every word coming up on screen, which would have been distracting.

An interesting part of this design was the fact that the actor was actually in control of the typed text from his keyboard on stage! Well, not entirely. I wanted it to be believable – so that when Barry hit a key, a letter would appear. This is what happened – however, all the text was stylised, pre-rendered text played back letter by letter from a custom max/jitter patch. To take the pressure off Barry having to hit the correct key every time, he could press any key and the next character in the sentence would come up.  At certain points he had to press return to go to a new line. This was to prevent himself from typing too far ahead of what he said aloud.

One of Davids lines was delivered by typed text only – it gave it a distinct and errie impact. The typed text effect was done by having a letter per frame in one movie file, and an unblinking cursor in another movie file. The cursor was overlaid in real-time (using alpha channel) and blinked with jitter. I used TextAnarachy by digital Anarachy for After Effects to reveal the text letter by letter, frame by frame.

I extended the on-stage PS/2 keyboard cable by 20m using good ol CATVe cable and soldered a PS/2 jack on the end. It worked fine over that distance.

Review of Love and Money in the Irish Times (I get a mention!!)

[by George Higgs]

[20 October - 1 November 2008, 11am to 8pm, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland]

[Featuring Sean Carpio, Kate Ellis, Tony Gallagher, Margaret Hannon and Sarah Lincoln]

[Technical Supervisor - Jack Phelan]

The death bed of Lady MacBeth and her unfortunate husband will be on display in Project Arts Centre Cube.

This four post canopy bed has been transformed into a private cinema where one to two people can experience a unique work for music and film chronicling the cruel love and death of the late King and Queen.

Placing a euro coin into the slot, climb into bed to witness one of five scenes in a projection on the screen above, words and music coming from the darkness around and vibrations from the mattress beneath.

Audience members are asked to wait their turn, as the installation can only accommodate two at a time. Single viewers are also most welcome.

Full DVDs of the film will be for sale at reception.

[http://www.georgehiggs.com]