Saturday, December 01, 2012
Stagebitz and Opera Australia
Prop Agenda: Stagebitz is an online project management software which first began beta-testing back in 2010. It’s designed to streamline all the tasks you handle when propping a show (or when working on scenery, costumes, etc.). They have recently secured a hefty investment that will allow the development of the software to really take off over the next few years; they will be at USITT this year where you can play around with the software and ask them any questions you wish.
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4 comments:
Looked through the features of StageBitz and it looks promising. I especially like the ability to dump budget numbers into excel or generate expense reports directly from the software. Though it looks like the Beta testing has been mostly props centered there's promise to use this software on other departments where you can break down a project into tasks and material expense like sets and costumes. I did notice it seemed to lack, or at least it did not feature, a labor tracking application which is essential to project managing. If they add that, I'd try it out on a project.
This article/video is interesting to me for a reason besides the use of the StageBitz technology. I have always had the utmost respect at the skill that props masters have in thier craft. They have to be crafts men and carpenters and seamsters. I have had the opportunity to work with Jon Ward over the past few years and to see the solutions he comes up with for non-standard issues that arise is a real amazing thing. I found this article interesting to see how the job of the props master is scaled up significantly for operatic companies. The puppets being created are truly works of art (likewise with the works created at CMU) that are utilized to aide in the telling of a story. The interesting thing about props is that it has the capacity to spaan into every department and effecting how each department tells a story. It truly has the opportunity to drive the story along.
First, when I was watching this I did not know what Opera company was behind it. It was like what place can do carbon fiber and other things like this. Then I finally realized that it was the opera company that works out of the Sydney opera house. I am amazed the things that they are doing in house and not out souring. But I guess that if you are the big icon for your country you can do anything in house and should have the skills to do any of this in house. Also it is interesting that it appears that the props shop is in the same room as the scene shop and they are able to make up a lot of the lager props with the set which I am very certain helps them a lot.
Wow! The puppets look great! The goose looked very similar to the War Horse puppets. I wonder if they used the same technology in War Horse when it came to the neck of the Goose. The connected plates looked very similar to the neck of Joey. It was also interesting to see the differences in materials used for the puppets. War Horse used cane for the structure of the puppet, while the Opera company used "aluminium" and carbon fiber. I was a little surprised at these choices, because the paintings on the puppets looked very inuit and totem-pole like. I feel cane would compliment this painting style, but it will be interesting to see the completed production photos.
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