Summary of the week: With just over a month until the first show, our team worked on nailing down some of the crucial details of our installation (props, narrative, pedestals, etc.) and making a plan for everything left to be done. We had several meetings this week including with our faculty, our point of contact Eliot, and alumna Christine Barnes. Finally, we also did some testing in the Purnell Lobby with the lighting, clouds, umbrellas, and UV lights.

Faculty Meeting

We kicked off our first week back from break going over what we did during Fall Break and how we plan to move forward for this week. Our plan was:

• Meet Christine Barnes, who was visiting for a few days.
• Go to Purnell on Wednesday to speak with Sayantee Sahoo and C. Todd Brown regarding lighting for the lobby.
• Angie and Aldora are working with Eliot and Sebastian regarding which props they would be interested in having as part of our installation. 
• Aldora is going to look for backup props if we need to purchase them soon as well as researching pedestal alternatives.
• Charlie is working in Unity to develop the sound system that will control the directional and house speakers. 
• Jiaxin will continue working on the clouds.
• Lauren will be taking accurate measurements for the electrical wire in the Purnell lobby on Wednesday.

We also received our faculty consultants this week, Scott Stevens and Chris Klug, so we will plan to reach out to them to get their feedback soon.

Now with our plan, we went back to work!

Meetings with Christine Barnes

Christine Barnes visited our project office to talk through our project. She helped us formulate a more clear and concise version of the spiel to describe our project as well as giving us advice on how to describe the project to others. 

Afterwards, she asked us a few questions regarding how to attract guests to the pedestals. Christine gave us some suggestions about attracting guests as well as making the pedestals ourselves to fit the budget constraints of our project. As a previous prop master, she recommended cardboard to us since it’s light and easy to install. All we would need to do is weigh it down so it would not accidentally fall over or get knocked over by guests. This method would be cheaper and easier than carrying heavy real pedestals. She gave a few solutions to working with the seam that is caused while working with cardboard, such as using paper mache or using a banner with lines at the top edge. She liked the idea of using paper mache especially so we could give each pedestal a “tree bark” texture. We will plan to make the rest of our pedestals using cardboard and testing with the look of the paper mache.

Christine also gave us initial advice for installation and hanging up the umbrellas. She suggested the following setup:

In this set up, we have two loops on the umbrella hanging onto one string and a secondary set of two loops and string as a backup and extra safety measure. We appreciated her idea and we will keep it in mind moving forward.

After Christine visited our project office, we went to watch her presentation in the RPIS on networking with alumni. 

We really appreciated Christine’s pep talk and advice with our team. We felt that it was very encouraging and helpful and we appreciate her time! She also helped Aldora with the paper mache after the meeting.

Wednesday Team Meeting 

On Wednesday, Angie held a team meeting to discuss what tasks needed to be done before Playtest Day next Saturday and for the installation date. 

Here is what still needs to be completed:

• Charlie: Charlie has to work on the script, which is about 75% complete. The script will be a combination of lines from King Lear as well as original lines created in the same theme as Lear. He will plan to finish it by Friday and collaborate with Eliot to make sure it’s ready to be recorded. He also will work on programming for the sound system, which will take much longer. He is shooting to be finished by the Friday before Playtest Day.
• Aldora: Once the props that Aldora collected are approved, they will be purchased. She also will be building four more cardboard pedestals and coating them in paper mache. She will try to finish building the four pedestals by the end of the weekend and then coat them in paper mache throughout the following week. She also needs to write and draw on the pedestals, but this will be done after the pedestals are completed and the images/words are approved by Charlie and Eliot. 
• Lauren: Lauren will measure the distances in the lobby to accurately calculate how much electrical wire we will need for the speakers and other technology. She also is creating a map of these distances so the team can more easily visualize them. She will be mounting the speakers to the housing and then installing the speakers inside the umbrellas. Once the current CMU School of Drama string installation is done, we will be able to go into the space and she will be in charge of installing the umbrellas in the lobby. She will also be researching if it is possible to use the RaspberryPi Pico to dim the UV lights.
• Jiaxin: Jiaxin will continue to make the ten clouds. They are still falling apart slightly, so she will have to experiment with different materials to see how she can get them to stay together. She will also be helping Aldora build the pedestals and draw on them.
• Angie: Angie will be taking over the sound effects and sound editing. Besides her tasks as producer such as reaching out to the School of Drama and the team’s faculty advisors, she will be working with the audio that plays over the directional speakers and the house speakers.

Meeting with Eliot

We met with Eliot Herron after our team meeting. We wanted to discuss with her the props that Aldora found, when we would be able to schedule with the actors, questions on the lines she sent from King Lear, getting into the program for the show, and what to do with the glass display case in the middle of the lobby. She approved the props Aldora found, so we put in the purchase order right after the meeting. We decided on the following props. These props will match the colors of the umbrellas and the actor outfits as well as tie in to a quote or element of the play:

Goneril: Purple crown

“I am Lear!”

Regan: Red snowglobe

“There can be snow if I say so.”

Cordelia: Blue claw machine with candy

“There are fine candy-spun things sweetening my dreams.”

Edgar: Orange toy drum kit with microphone

Edmund: Yellow big bird plush

Big Bird

Eliot also said that she would contact the recording booth manager in CFA since she has his email and will schedule us a time in the booths to work with the actors from the show. Eliot and Charlie will be working together soon to finalize the script for the actors to record so that it’s ready for next week. She was also interested in creating a poster for the installation that would explain how it was a collaboration between the ETC and the School of Drama, so we sent her the graphics materials and text that we created for our poster.

Lighting Control Panel

We went to the Purnell lobby this week to learn how to use the lighting control panel for the lobby! We met with Sayantee Sahoo, the Production Manager, and C. Todd Brown, a lighting professor at the school. They showed us the lighting booth in the Chosky and how to work the lighting panel. We made an appointment with Sayantee after Daylight Savings on November 6 so that we could set the lighting in more proper conditions to our final installation. 

Purnell Lobby: Measuring Distances and Testing Clouds, Umbrellas, and UV Lights

After meeting with Sayantee and Todd, we measured the distances in the Purnell lobby. Lauren used this information to find the total lengths of wire that we would need for the electrical components of the installation (directional speakers and LED sound reactive clouds). Lauren also made a wiring diagram of the Purnell Lobby to plan where all of the wires would route around the lobby.

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Lauren making the electrical wiring diagram

While we were at the Purnell Lobby, we also did some tests with the clouds and the umbrellas. We hung them over the side of the Purnell balconies (weaving through the string installation and around the current dramaturgy installation) and looked from below to check that these materials would work and looked good, the right size, etc.

The umbrellas looked great! The clouds looked nice, but the size was a bit small so we will keep this in mind and hope to create either more clouds or larger clouds to help create a more convincing storm effect.

We also did some tests with the UV light.

The UV light was able to illuminate a page from the second floor balcony even with some light coming in through the windows! Therefore, we feel positively moving forward with our plan of mounting our UV lights on the second floor balconies.