Let the planning commence!!!

My Erin Condren Teacher Planner arrived in yesterday's mail!!!! WOOO!!!!! Decided to do a video for the unboxing so you can see what I selected for my own customized Teacher Planner. 

If YOU are interested in getting an Erin Condren Teacher Planner. I have some coupon codes that will save you $10 - that's about the cost of domestic shipping (that I got and is the cheapest option) + a few more bucks savings. Two of them are general use and one is a teacher coupon code that expires. Please see below for codes...

:: Coupon Codes for $10 off ::

Automated referral code so I can get product credits https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/andreaellwood0211-7505 

Teacher Coupon code, expires midnight PST on 10/15/2014 =>TLP1014TXG9EJWUL 

First Time ordering code, no expiration date =>WELCOME10

[If you want to read the rest of my review that would have been included in my video, click through to get through the break! Thanks!]

A walking tour of the set design for "Little Women"

Yay for the set of "Little Women" being done!!!

Normally I share stills from the set design but thought you all might like to see it a little bit more in real-time with a walking tour of not only the set but also of the performing arts center at high school where I teach. The facility is really amazing and beautiful and I feel blessed every day that I come to work because of the facilities alone. Add my administration and faculty and staff coworkers to that mix and it makes me believe even that much more that I have the best job ever.

Anyway, enough of me bragging on my dream job. On with the tour...



 Sorry this was done in portrait orientation. I took the video with my phone and it didn't even occur to me to rotate the phone in order to have a perspective that would make a little bit more sense. Clearly I should not call myself an artist of motion picture with the job I did with this. Also, in case you were wondering, I edited the video (added transitions and all) with iMovie.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: The only free t-shirt I ever passed over

Quirky thing about me: I LOVE a free t-shirt and I used to have a slight obsession with acquiring them.

Seriously. I don't know what it is about free t-shirts but I just really really like them and I almost don't care where they come from or what they say so long as they aren't offensive. My favorite free t-shirt to date was one I got in college for a face painting gig at one of my friends' jobs at a Tex-mex restaurant. It said something like, "I'd do anything for a burrito," or something equally as silly.

All of this being said, I usually love working on the stage productions at school because that usually means I get a free t-shirt for any of my troubles. To date I have a real collection of almost half a dozen shirts with my favorite being from Godspell from this production that prominently displayed very colorful "painted" Godspell lettering on a black t-shirt. After that I didn't really have a least favorite but now that Hairspray has came and gone? Well... the Hairspray t-shirt is officially my least favorite which kills me seeing as how I kind of designed it myself.

*sigh*

From the beginning I knew the logo I had designed would be a bit of a problem when it came to the t-shirt design. The problem: it had too many colors and would be VERY expensive to screen print. I had high hopes that we would be able to overcome this issue with digital printing over screen printing but my school has a working relationship with local printers/producers of shirts and/or marketing material so we always do our best to honor that relationship whenever possible. For that reason? We couldn't get away with digital printing because our shirt printer doesn't really do it.

The shirt printer told us not to worry because they were going to give us as much color as possible and try and simplify the design to make it a win-win for everyone. As soon as I heard this I was immediately skeptical and asked if I could tweak the design myself to ensure that the most logical tri-color palette would be left for printing. I was assured that the printers had done this before and they had done a decent job of it so I was not given the blessing to do it for them. I let it go.

Then a week or so later the t-shirt came in and to say I was crestfallen of what the final product was? Well... that would be an understatement.

I don't know what it is about the design but I just don't understand why they selected to keep the colors they did instead of what they could have kept. The hairspray can came out OK enough but then the rest of it? I don't know. It just seems like it looks strangely washed out and I don't get why they didn't exchange the white for yellow at least that IS the complement to the purple shirt and also would have worked fine enough in lieu of the yellow. And why the pale pink they selected and not a more a more hot pink instead? I guess I am just fussing over the fact that the printing lacks a real balance of contrast to it.

Now, I realize I am being ridiculous about this whole shirt printing thing because if this is the least of my woes about the show? Well, that's not so bad at all, right? Yeah. I know. That's why I brought this up at the end and also acknowledge that I'm being a bit bratty to even mention it. I didn't want to neglect talking about the shirt printing though since this is a major part of the production. Needless to say, I quietly opted out of the free t-shirt I was offered this year. Such a shame since this is the first year that I had a major stake in the design of it. Oh well.

Anyway, this pretty much wraps up the whole series of Hairspray's "Behind the Music(al)" for the set design and production this year. There is one more thing I will be mentioning but that's going to come after I spend some time thinking about what will be said since it addresses the initial inspiration  behind why a Christian school (such as mine) did a production like Hairspray to begin with. There is quite a bit to be said about this specifically having nothing to do with visual design and much more to be said about creation, creativity, and how the arts plays into both of those things. I will be getting to this eventually so don't be surprised if you see it pop up a little after I take some time away from doing all of the Hairspray stuff I have been doing.

As far as next year's musical endeavor, there has been some light discussion about doing Westside Story but who knows. One of the major issues with that right off hand is the fact that in order to do the show we will really need to have a strong turn out of males to fill the cast. As things stand? Well, that's a tall order and the ratio of guys to girls is ALWAYS tipped more to the girls in just about every production we do so... yeah. It might easily happen that we can't do Westside Story for that reason alone.

All of this being said, I hope you all have enjoyed this ongoing look I have been able to share with you about how and what goes on with my experiences with set design. For as much as I know I fuss about it, it always is something that I consider to be quite a blessing to be able to do with the work that I do. I mean, it's stressful for sure but I really and genuinely do enjoy the challenges it presents with each and every show and you want to talk about creativity and creation on one of the grandest scales possible? Well, set design certainly IS that more than anything and I am all about going BIG or not going at all usually.

Thanks for humoring me with all of this! There are about 13 or so weeks left for me of instructional weeks until the official end of this school year so I guess it will be mostly back to regularly schedule blogging from here on out.

Behind the Music(als) :: Hairspray :: Asterisks EVERYWHERE!!!

One of the final touches to the Hairspray set was something that (in retrospect) maybe should have/could have been done first. *shrug* Live and learn, I guess.

If it's not ridiculously obvious already, one of the major graphic themes of the whole design of this production has been the use of the asterisk. When the directors/producers initially sat down with me to discuss everything one of the first things that was mentioned as very important was the fact that they really liked and wanted to include the "star" (which was an asterisk) as a unifying element throughout the show. I obliged them because what difference does it make to me, right? As a matter of fact, the fact that they had something decided upon like this actually makes it easier for me because I don't have to come up with a number of options only to present them all to them and then have them be rejected and me have to just keep starting over and over again.

That being said, the venue where we put on our shows is a bit of an open space type of a performance art center where there is no curtain and so this means that while it's idea for choral and instrumental music performances, for dramatic and performance arts? It's pretty much a major issue. The way we always deal with it though is to use gigantic mobile flats as a way to section off the stage so there is a backstage (of sorts) since a curtain can't be closed for scene/set change purposes. These flats are used over and over and OVER again for just about every performance we do and while they work for what they are supposed to do? They are a pain to deal with because painting 15-18 foot flats - like, 10-12 of them - is a pain. I mean really.

For the set design of this production, they were all painted different colors from the (mostly) open and very bright palette picked out for the show initially. But the way they work for this show is they were supposed to stay stationary almost the whole time and serve as a backdrop for the whole show so it's not like they could be painted like Baltimore row homes - THANK GOODNESS!!! - or otherwise. To keep them as generic as possible we just used their flat painting and then put clusters of asterisks in contrasting colors all over them to keep things looking minimal and clean but at the same time intentional.

This was the last thing we did for the show because after all of the other snafus that happened, I just didn't want to deal with asterisks everywhere that seemingly would take me forever to do since it was only myself and one other person who were left to do it AND each cluster took two coats of paint for them to actual look presentable - the bright color palette required multiple coats for full coverage. By Wednesday of last week I had only just started the process of asterisking everything and it become very clear that I would barely be able to make it by Friday's opening night especially considering the fact that during full dress rehearsals I was told I couldn't be on the stage in order to paint. I basically begged for mercy from my colleagues and a select few students who I KNEW could pull off on-the-fly painting of these asterisks - meaning, there would be no sketching of the designs by me or anyone else and just plain straight paintings and GETTING. IT. DONE. - and that's exactly what was able to happen all day Thursday during the school day.

My department head (who was the set producer) stepped in and covered two classes and then three other coworkers stepped in and either covered my classes OR flat out excused the four students from class who are probably the most dependable students in the whole school. Amazingly, the flats all got asterisked and by the time the bell rang last Thursday, the set dressing was DONE and I was amazed.

 I would show you a panoramic view of the whole stage but I wasn't able to do that before I left last Thursday because I had to skip out as soon as the bell rang to get my daughter some place for an activity of hers! I will be able to get one up here at some point though so you can see the whole view of the stage.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: The Corny Collins desk

I pretty much had very little labor invested in this piece until the very very end. Just the same? It was a bit of a pill to deal with for the two lovely art students who took it on. The desk was built by the set builders and then it was painted by some parents who basically have spent the entire last month painting everything and then the individual letters were designed and then hand-cut from foam core board by two very dependable art students in order to echo the original design of the Corny Collins desk.

The major issue with this piece is the fact that this piece was discussed as one that wouldn't be used and would be dismantled and rebuilt because it was questionnably too large to use in the show. This means that the girls ended up making the lettering and then it was shared with us that that work might have really been done for nothing.  o_O

In the end, it was decided that there wasn't enough time to scrap the desk and we were actually able to go forth as planned. But amidst all of this? One of the L's got damaged/lost so the lettering couldn't be affixed until that issue was corrected and then when all was said and done and we thought we were ready to put the letters on? It was discovered that we still needed the words 'the' and 'show' to bookend the lettering. *ARGH!!!! IT WAS LIKE A NEVERENDING BATTLE!!!!!*

When I realized the aforementioned I took it to Google Image searches and realized that we could get away with two small signs in black/white and not have to bother with cutting out little letters like the big letters. I got two scrap pieces of foam core board and tried FOUR TIMES to make little signs that said 'the' and 'show' with a sharpie marker but for whatever reason I made them too small or too big or too messy/far from the style of the big letters. Then I just sat there being mad for a little while and thought, "Why in the world don't I just make them in Microsoft word and then paste them to foam core board and call them done?" So I did just that! And within 10 minutes the whole thing was DONE and it actually even looked kind of awesome despite all of the strife involved with the process of it. One of the big lifesavers was the fact that I could just staple the letters as you see them arranged and so there was barely any fuss getting them all on there finally.

Tomorrow I will show you the final touches of the set that only happened because I basically spent a whole work day painting with hand-selected VERY dependable students while several of my colleagues covered my classes (very last minute!) and the whole process ultimately landed me home for a very legitimate sick-day last Friday.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: The classic Baltimore front stoop

If you've never seen/heard of/are familiar with the show Hairspray you might not know that the setting is in Baltimore, Maryland. Ever been there before? It's actually quite a charming place enough place and I don't say that because I lived there for about a decade before I found my way to this phase of my career and life.

Anyway, some things about Baltimore and the 60s (when the show took place) are that in that time frame, living in the city you were likely to live in a row house that was probably in a very bright color combination and your steps had to be "bright white" because it was considered to be somewhat of a status symbol so much that every Sunday (I learned this from a Baltimore native) people would be out scrubbing their steps to ensure they would be as bright and white as possible. /end painfully brief and poorly presented local history lesson

One of the major props that was used in the show was something of a mobile setting piece (I don't know what to call it) where Tracy Turnblad was supposed to perch herself for maybe even a minute and a half - seriously! That's all the time you see it for as labor intensive as it was! #facepalm - and it was supposed to look like the classic Baltimore row home front stoop.

The set builders used a very narrow flat on casters (there would be something on the reverse side that I will show you tomorrow) and then built a small staircase to imitate front door stairs. My job was to make the empty flat look as much like a front door as possible. What would have been easiest and most realistic would have been for us to just acquire a front door and just affix it to the flat (it didn't have to open) but for the minute and a half that it be seen? Well... probably a lot of money would have been spent for not much time for it to be seen. But then, when you equate time to money? Well, I spent HOURS on detailing this flat from the brick effect painting to the faux metal outer door to the awning frame that was built by the set builders to the canvas that I stapled to the frame and then stretched with gesso and then painted and trimmed to imitate a real awning? Well... *phew* I don't know. I almost would have just bought a daggone real door to save myself a little time. *shrug*

Just finished the faux brick work and old metal door that I still feel like I could have done a better job on but whatever. See the awning frame? Still needs to be canvas covered.

The awning frame is finally covered with canvas I had laying about the art room. Gessoed it with one coat so it stretched a little more nicely and then painted it orange and blue (to keep with the classic bright color palette of the Baltimore row houses) and then I trimmed the edge of the awning to make it seem like it was always supposed to be like that.

And finally it's done! And the finishing touch was faux flowers in some plastic terracotta looking pots that I gorilla glued down to the corners of the steps. Doesn't that make it look more welcoming? I would definitely want to come home to this front door for sure! And the steps got two good coats of fresh white paint to make them look crisp and clean despite the fact that the instagram effect does not show that so well.

There is another side of this flat that looks like an aerial view of Tracy's bed - this opens the show - but it's not as exciting or was as labor intensive as the front door side you see above. I will show you the bed side tomorrow.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: Propping up the show

One major-ish task on my list of tasks to take care of was to make labels for the "fog in a can" props that would stand-in nicely for real spraying hairspray cans. For whatever reason I seriously put off this item for as long as possible despite the fact that it was probably the simplest and (in turn) most gratifying thing of all of the things I was supposed to do.

The finished cans of "Ultra Clutch" labeled and ready for the show!

As you can see, the finished labels look pretty much like the giant can I previously shared. For whatever reason I got it in my head that labeling these cans would be a real pain in the rear so I think that's why I put off doing them for so long. Then it occurred to me - much like most other things I was trying to do and failing miserably at - that I was really overthinking things and pretty much working harder and not smarter. And with that I sat down, gave myself a pep talk and realized that I should just use digital illustrations I already had from the poster design I created and then bend and twist that into what you see above! The power of digital illustration is amazing isn't it? I was able to cut my workflow in half if not even less than that and voila! I had hairspray can labels cohesive to the design work already established for the show and then all I had to do was size them accordingly, peel off the original labeling and then paste them on to look like they had always been like to begin with.

And because I like to share and am all about helping others to NOT reinvent the wheel, if you are in need of Ultra Clutch hairspray can prop labels, here is what I printed off and used in the aforementioned photo. If it works for your needs? Please feel free to use it. Just click on it to enlarge it and then right-click it to save it for you to print off as you like.

This is a jpg version but I have a psd version and if you want it please just ask and I will email it to you!

BTW - if these Hairspray updates/this series is boring you, I'm sorry. *shrug* This is basically what has been ruling my life these days but with the show opening up this past Friday and closing next Saturday, I promise there won't be very much more of this for very much longer. Thanks for your patience and humoring me if this alone is changing your mind about frequenting/reading this blog that otherwise about art education.

Whoops! There went my head...

Did you catch that blog posting yesterday about quick sculpting? The one that had the pictures and then basically no explanation about them? Well... I had queued it up to post  but *heh* didn't finish it entirely and it just posted just like that. #facepalm

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I updated the post with a little bit more information to explain things and you are welcome to revisit it! Also, just wanted to state the obvious which is that with this being the last few days before Hairspray opens, I am pretty much LOSING. MY. MIND!!!!

Seriously. I mean... I don't even want to go into the half of it all - I will recap perhaps next week once the show opens this Saturday - but just trust me and know that I barely know what day OR what time it is lately because I am eating, sleeping, and BREATHING the set design and production or Hairspray. It's always a little crazy just before a stage production opens but this one? Well... it's particularly challenging. *sigh*

Anyway, I am going to go ahead and just give myself a bit of an intermission here on the blog for the remainder of the week so I can focus and devote as much of my spare time to finishing up the major odds and ends of the show so in the meanwhile? Hang tight! I'll see you next week!

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: The REAL star of the show

So here's a little trivia question for you:

What do highways and the musical I am currently working on have in common?

...

...

...

Give up?

OK. I'll tell you. The answer is: a SONOTUBE.

If you don't care to click through the link above to find out what a sonotube is, let me just tell you that it's a gigantic form used in highway, bridge, and building construction to pour giant concrete pillars. Pretty cool, eh? But what in the world could we possibly use something like that for in a musical production, right?

Well, let me clue you in with a picture of the sonotube that we have been using in action...

Does it closely resemble anything to you? How about a giant sort of something that might be a real centerpiece type prop for the production of Hairspray that we are doing. How about a giant HAIRSPRAY CAN?

Ah yes! Now you see it, right? *high five*

I am extraordinarily blessed to work at a school where we have quite a very well developed, established, accomplished, and respected performance art program. There are some families that actually send there kids to my school because of the performance arts even! Because of that, we have talented kids out the wazoo and parents and their families who are very VERY committed to supporting the performance art dreams and aspirations of their kids. The great blessing that comes with that is that we have quite a bit of students whose parents have their own contracting and construction companies and every year there is some family that steps up to help spearhead the building of the incredibly elaborate sets that I am so blessed to be able to adorn and decorate and we are able to use to showcase the performances more incredibly.

This year with Hairspray we knew that one of the big main pieces of the set would be a giant hairspray can that one of the characters would be able to actually climb into and pop out of in the finale. Research was done for pre-production to determine how it would happen that we would have a convincingly real giant hairspray can but ultimately we ended up going the way of the sonotube when the brilliant set engineer and builder parent spearheading things this year suggested it. Add a circular pond liner found at any home improvement super store and a white plastic bucket sans the metal handle? And voila! We've got the most realistic giant hairspray can you could possibly imagine encountering in real life!!! Here it is in the process of being hand painted by yours truly...

As you can see, it opens up french door-style for the purposes of popping out and surprising the audience.

Two students helped me to prime and roller paint everything on the ground and I did everything that required major climbing of the ladder. I also hand lettered and and painted all of the embellishments.

I put the bucket "nozzle" back on top before I left today. It's not securely affixed because decisions are still being made for the purposes of a special effects to help assist in making a BIG finish happen at the end of the show.

I don't remember the original dimensions of the sonotube but I would say that the finished hairspray can from base to nozzle is well over 15 feet tall. It is also on casters that are hidden at the base where there is a recessed floor made of planked plyboard.  The can is mostly finished and the only thing left is for me to finish painting the asterisk pattern all the way around the sides to the back. The goal with the painting of it was to adhere as closely as possible to the can designed for all of the printed materials of the show and I think I managed to do that pretty well. My department head/the director originally thought I would put the wig design on the label but the original Hairspray production uses the Ultra Clutch brand name and so that made more sense to me and when people saw it like that instead of having the wig, everyone was more than pleased.

We keep saying that we don't know what we are going to do with this thing once the show is over because we have no place to store it whatsoever. There is major discussion (that is probably going to happen) about selling it to another theater company once we are done with it but I will tell you something, I secretly wish I had the space at my house to take it home with me. Seriously. I would TOTALLY put it in my house and upholster the inside and make it some weird hideaway in a corner of my house. I have always had a secret obsession with anything that might be unusually small or unreasonably large and this giant hairspray can? Well, it totally fits the bill for something that I would LOVE to call my own for the rest of my days. *sigh* So, despite the fact that it was like the dickens to paint, well... I (now not so) secretly loved every moment of it!!! I mean seriously? Even before it was painted I would look at it and it would just make me chuckle in a totally non-conspicuous way and then I would just feel all smiley and happy inside. And if I had something in my house like that? Well now - if I ever was having a bad day? Surely it would be swiftly quelled with just a glance of the gigantic hairspray can taking up space in my living room and if that wasn't enough I could crawl inside of it and I would probably feel better almost immediately. (How weird do you all think I am now? I don't care. I DON'T EVEN CARE!!!)

*sigh*

So, perhaps you have some serious cash to buy this off of my school's theater department once we are done with it. I'll let you all know when it goes on sale! ;) Just promise me that if you do end up buying it, you take care of this sweet giant baby with all of the TLC you have for the rest of your life.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: Tickets

We've got tickets!!!!! 

 

This is the first year that we have done vertical orientation of the ticket design but with the hairspray can that is easily the core of the overall design of the show, well... it works, don't you think?

The tickets are color coded not only because it looks really cool like that but more to help differentiate between the different showings. We haven't done color coded tickets before this year but it has worked out so well to do it like this that it easily might become a standard thing for every show from here on out.

This past long holiday weekend I spent the majority of my time at school working on the set so I will be sharing pictures of those adventures soon enough. We still have a week and a half until opening night and thankfully we are pretty well on schedule with everything. 

Something you can't see about the tickets are that each are hand numbered to correspond with assigned seats in our performance arts center at our school - it is actually used as much by other organizations as much as it is by us - and the tickets are printed on nice heavy-weight paper with a semi-gloss finish so they serve as mementos for the show just as much as they serve as functionality to provide access to the specific shows!

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: Promo posters

The promo posters has turned out pretty well, don't you think?

So I previously shared with you all what the general graphic design would be for the annual musical production would look like at least in its working stages and I am happy to report that it was approved - not only by the directors and producers of the production - but also by the governing organization of musicals (who provide us with the materials for the musical) themselves! One of my colleagues who also does graphic design and handles a major amount of the performance arts goings-about here took the core design that I was able to pull together and the above is the official poster for the production! Hurrah!!! One more thing down!!!

The graduated color and the pink and white writing work well for it I think and the general design (colors, layout, etc.) is also going to inform both the ticket design - this year is the first one we are doing a vertical design for the ticket - as well as the roadside banner that will be staked out at the school's entrance gates.

I will try and share the ticket designs when I finally get to see them as well as the roadside banner and then also the tweaked t-shirt design when it is finally printed and shipped in next week sometime. Until then? I am working over this coming long weekend on the actual set of the production. There is a TON to be painted, detailed, and still constructed yet. An art teacher's work is just never done! (Good thing I love my job so much and I would do all of this anyway. *wink*)

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray

Sorry I missed you all yesterday! I had a sick day because I had to go to a sort urgent doctor's appointment but thankfully I checked out OK so here I am! And today I bring you the design process and (mostly) finished graphic that we will be using for the Hairspray production...

If you didn't know, part of my job is teaching digital design and art as much as it is teaching traditional studio design and art. I teach two semester classes of this - one focusing on Photoshop and the other focusing on Illustrator - and because of my know-how for both design platforms, I have become a bit of an in-house (read: and too many times to count last minute) graphic designer for things at times. *sigh* I have a love-hate relationship with this sort of thing for all of the most obvious reasons.

For the purposes of Hairspray, there was never a plan for me to do the design work and the goal was to have a very talented senior graphic design student do it. Then all of the craziness of January happened and all of the best laid plans that were made (to have it be student created) went out the proverbial window. Thankfully, there was just enough time for me to be able to do it and I had enough information from the student in addition to a rough digital draft of what she had planned to do that I still feel like it would be fair enough to call this a collaborative effort.

Now before I go looking like some rockstar graphic designer, please know that the design work of this was not entirely my own! As I said before, the original student designer had a specific idea in mind to have a hairspray can as a central part of the design. The asterisks were something that were specifically requested by the faculty director and producer of the show so that they could be a graphic element that was seen throughout the set designs. The classic wig and "cut-out"-style lettering are supposed to be an obvious nod back to the original design of Hairspray. In terms of the actual elements I used, I did not originate all of them myself. The hairspray can was actually a generic vector file that was editable and I bought it for about $5. I mean, I suppose I could have made it but when I was in the midst of figuring out how I would do it, I stumbled upon the vector image and figured why not just save myself what would have been a few hours of work and buy it. I mean if time is money, my time that would have been hours long is certainly worth a measly five bucks that would allow me to call it DONE. And so? That's what I did. Why reinvent the wheel right?

In terms of the color palette, I tried my best to adhere as much as possible to the color palette that we picked for the show (seen previously in a posting last week) and I also tried to pick colors that would work together to make each other pop. Case in point: the background of the logo is purple (it's supposed to be representative of the official t-shirt that the design will be printed on) and the spray represented by the triangle is yellow.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this piece and it has gone over well for the most part. I did do some slight tweaks to it - so what you see up there on the right is not final - but I will show you the final design once it gets back from the t-shirt printers as well as showing you how the design was also put on promo posters, the roadside banner, and the tickets and front cover of our "playbill" once all of everything is printed and delivered in a few weeks.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray

Hello! Welcome to February and welcome to the season of my life that is always the Spring musical.

As I have previously shared, things have been very busy for me and this is due in large part to the fact that at this time of year I am in the throes of musical production work. Before I came to my current teaching position I had limited experience in this realm but even in that I enjoyed it very much. I really love most any of the fine arts and though I can't act or sing in front of an audience worth a darn and I much MUCH prefer to always be behind the scenes and/or the cameras, I still enjoy being a part of the arts that is dramatic and performance arts if I can help it. Thankfully, the Lord God knows this well of me and He has placed me in a position where I can fully experience it and really have the time of my life.

As things go in the time that I have been in my teaching job, I serve (basically) as the creative and visual artistic director/coordinator/consultant for most every stage production that my school does. My department head is actual a drama and theater teacher by training and she and I have developed a wonderful working relationship together in order to bring some of the awesome performance art productions to fruition.

At this point I have a very significant amount of experience helping in production with a pretty large amount of shows that my school has done where I have either helped to solely or collaboratively originate set designs, props, and sometimes even conceptualizing the actual direction (visually) of how a performance art piece will take and be presented/"packaged" - so exciting to be in this part of the production especially since basically I sometimes get to help decide how it will all be packaged!!! My experience so far includes the following stage productions:

• Godspell
• Diary of Anne Frank
• Sound of Music
• The Crucible
• A handful of choral/band performances and student life events (like prom) that regularly occur every year and require design work for programs/printed materials

 Anyway, this year the Spring musical is HAIRSPRAY!!!! And as we say with nearly ever production that we do? This one is going to be bigger than everything we have ever done before.

Now, usually, I will present some portion (at least) of the set design and general production work of any of the performance art pieces I have had a stake in but this time? I figured I should do a bit of a blog series documenting how and what I do with all of this. I (of course) have no preconceived idea of how long it will go - meaning I have no clue how many installments there will be OR what the general schedule for posting them will be so it will seem very scattered at times - but there definitely WILL be an end date once the show premieres on March 1st. (Cannot believe it's less than a month away!!!)

Anyway, I am affectionately calling this series "Behind the Music(al)" as a play on that ol' documentary series on (the now defunct?) channel VH-1 called "Behind the music." And for today's behind the scenes look? I bring you the color picking process that I have been enduring!!!

For me, the color picking process is almost always the most fun stage of the pre-production and creative process.

Color picking is a HUGE deal for every show we do because my director, producer, and set building cohorts insist that I am better at doing this than any of them AND little to nothing can really happen unless we have the right colors to begin with. And so? One of the keys to kickstarting any production is me getting the colors picked.

The way it usually works is this:

1. Have multiple conversations with director/producer(s) about what they are envisioning OR collaborate with them to establish a "vision" for what/how it should all look - especially if we (collectively) do not agree with the general ways that it has already been done by other either because we don't like it or just plain want to do something different.
2. I will draft up and/or study all sorts of documentation - including pre-fab plans and images from my director that she bought the rights to use for us to even do the show to begin with, doing Google image searches of what other schools/performance companies have already done - and then from there I will usually always know the general palette that should end up being selected.
3. I will physically go to local "super stores" of home improvement like Lowe's and/or Home Depot as well as looking at the prices and color palette offerings of theater set design/supplies companies like Roscoe brand theater paints. This allows me to collect prices (for budgeting purposes) and then also physically collect color swatches that can be given to the director, producer, set builders, and costuming crew so that everything is cohesive visually with color.
4. All of the individuals above either approve or disapprove of what I have picked and it's either back to step one of the color picking  process or on with the rest of production!

It is a rare thing that I ever have to go back to step one from step four unless it's an issue of the directors/producers/set/costume folks decide (separate from me) that the vision we originally had will not work and the idea needs to be totally reworked. And if/when this sort of thing happens? Well, it's usually not during a time when the work I have done with color picking has even happened yet.

Anyway, I will be sharing other stuff (than this) with you all but just wanted to get some new content up here finally and also give you a peek at what is ahead and to come! It's good to be back and I will see you next week. *high five*