Thursday, November 19, 2020
CMU Students Light Up The Stage Remotely
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama: Carnegie Mellon University students now can light on-campus theatrical projects from the comfort of their homes. Implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the upgrades to the university’s Light Lab and John Wells Directing Studio provide students with the tools for a hands-on learning experience no matter where they’re based.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I am always thrilled to hear about new ways that people are overcoming the challenges of Covid and all of the procedures put in place because of it. In terms of acidemia I think that overcoming remote learning challenges is one of the bigger and more important goals in the world right now. Figuring out how to make sure that people who are attending classes from home get the same experience, or as close to the same experience as possible, that their in person classmates are getting. The solution of making a virtual console that controls an in person one is definitely one of the better solutions that I have heard. The fact that it allows students who are remote to work in the same space, and on the same equipment as their in person colleagues is especially important in providing an equitable education to all students. I will be excited to see where this idea will spread to in other areas of both learning and theatre.
Remote lighting is one of the design disciplines that I really thought could be explored with substantial depth. There is so much out there being developed in pre-visualization software and networking systems that could really thrive in this environment. While I very much appreciate the lengths that people have taken to accommodate remote students, I still feel like we could be embracing these challenges rather than treating them as hurdles. For example, one alum Ben Peoples has been developing a cloud-based lighting system, which would be a fantastic opportunity for students to learn more about this emerging technology. Using screen sharing of an EOS system certainly works in the short-term, but there is so much more to be explored! During this pandemic, I've felt as though we are trying to fit square pegs into round holes. We knew what we were comfortable with before, and are trying everything in our power to replicate that comfort zone remotely. It has been okay for the most part, but we shouldn't be running back home to what we know, we should be pushing boundaries further and embracing this technology as a new way to produce theatre. I hope to see more of this remote lighting being developed and implemented, beyond the pandemic.
CMU continues to innovate. The Arts continue to innovate as well. I’ve read countless articles about how directors are doing their work in one city while the production is in another. This project follows those lines. The set up took a lot of work and collaboration from several departments to implement but it has really worked out well for the students who need it. There are challenges to overcome and this is allowing the lighting students to push boundaries into new avenues of technology. I don’t think that it will replace the “in the room” experience, but to be able to work and control systems remotely and in real time is an area that really does need further exploration. It takes us out of our comfort zone and forces us to think outside of the box. We are breaking convention and throwing the rules out of the window with this pandemic and it is giving us the chance to really understand technology and new ways to break what we once thought were fixed limitations. I want to explore this idea further for my own work in the future.
This makes me really excited to see what we’ll be able to do moving forward. If sound consoles were able to be accessed remotely, that would be so cool. It’s probably unlikely though. Hearing “You can’t really teach lighting design if you’re not engaging with the lights themselves” made me laugh, since that’s something the freshmen DP’s have been having a hard time with all semester. I’m really happy for the lighting design students. This really changes their modality of learning. It will be really neat to see the work they are able to produce remotely.
This is definitely one of the cooler solutions I’ve seen, but I wonder how this can be adapted to cover all disciplines in theatre. I don’t think this could work for sound, since you would still be hearing the sound via headphones and not in an actual space, so there’s really no use in making the console accessible remotely. I don’t know what materials VMD has available to project directly into the chosky, but that’s something that we could definitely play with.
It was fun to read an article about what we’re doing this year from an outside perspective, because it shows all the thought that the lighting department put into work this year and the perspective on remote accessibility. I personally haven’t needed to use the remote control setup to work with the board, but it seems to be functioning as well as could be expected, with the biggest issues being that the camera struggles to pick up an accurate image of what the lighting actually looks like, and not any real technological glitches. The major remote thing that I have used this semester in my lighting classes is the new EOS Augment3d software, which allows for previsualization and rendering of cues on a digital version of the room, which we’ve used specifically for some cueing exercises to cut down on the hours spent in the building. I think the Augment3d work was especially helpful because it’s technology I can see myself using even in non-covid times, and learning how to use it here has been great.
I love that the school of drama is pushing through this trying time. To see theatre come back, a little bit, in some capability, is so exciting. Learning, teaching, making, and producing theatre in a remote format, or a 50/50 remote and in-person format, is incredibly difficult. With a major like ours, which requires so much hands on learning, it’s hard to grasp practical knowledge of lighting through a Zoom room.
Seeing some kind of physical output of the lighting design concentration students warms my heart a little bit. It makes me feel like we’re moving in the correct direction back to normalcy and back to making theatre theatre again, not some lame Zoom excuse of one.
This story really gives me some hope for the months to come. I was extremely worried coming into this year in a hybrid model because I was worried that we just wouldn't be able to receive the level of education and skill development that we needed to keep up with the rest of our college experiences and fulfill our career goals. With one semester basically done for those of us in the SoD, I can safely say that a majority of those concerns were baseless. I've found out very quickly that the SoD and CMU as a whole is a community that strives to constantly grow and evolve with the times, and has the resolve and ingenuity to find new and creative ways to tackle its challenges. I can't say that this semester has been 100% seamless in its transition to a hybrid model, but it was much more successful than I ever could have imagined it would be, and I imagine that it will continue the very same innovations shown in the lighting department next semester.
Initially after reading this article, I am glad that this particular initiative worked out for the most part. With zoom, it can be so difficult to get any hands-on experience at all, so even if it is not the best scenario, it is great that students are being engaged in this class in some way. I assume the main drawback is that I imagine lighting is not the easiest to translate digitally, as it probably appears differently over a call than it does in person. I agree with the comment that says, “we should be embracing these challenges rather than treating them as hurdles.” Although this access is a great development, it feels a lot like a temporary fix, until students are able to see their work in person. It would be disappointing to see the innovation and developments for the class end here. It is a great accomplishment, but being as temporary as it is, it should not leave anyone feeling completely satisfied.
When COVID first hit, I was in the midst of my first production assignment. I definitely was not expecting the production I was working on to go virtual at any time, obviously. Trying to adapt and figure out how to create the same beautiful work that was already in the works was a difficult task for everyone. It was definitely weird to say the least but I wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world- I think it really taught everyone a part of the production how to implement the ideology of “the show must go on '' with a global pandemic has the obstacle. I was really lucky to be working with such a great cast and crew that were all optimistic through it all. It was hard to have hope but I don’t think anyone in the room ever doubted anyone. To see the production in person would have been a dream and I wish the performers got that chance, more than anything. But even with everything going on, they still managed to tell a beautiful story, even over zoom.
Post a Comment