Sunday, February 22, 2015

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Stagehands Protesting Mistreatment at Live Nation Concert in Atlanta

Digital Music NewsDigital Music News: This Thursday’s performance onstage at the Maroon 5 concert in Atlanta will be great, but backstage it’s a different story. Stagehands work in poor conditions, are paid poverty-level wages, with no benefits – for a job that is often dangerous. On Thursday evening, outside Philips Arena, stagehands and their supporters will hold banners and approach concertgoers with information on this and other “poor performances.”
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Music in the Hill was a way of life until 'progress' silenced venues

TribLIVE: From the window of his Hill District home on Epiphany Street in the early 1950s, 7-year-old Sala Udin would bask in the warm summer breeze as he watched ladies adorned with gloves and hats and smartly dressed men in crisp suits and ties make their way down Fullerton Avenue and into the swanky Loendi Club.

Outside, shiny vehicles parked in tight rows lined the street as trolleys rattled their way down the tracks. As the club's double doors swung open, an irresistible melody would fill the air.
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Ask The Experts: Should I Disclose My Mental Illness In An Interview?

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: The interview process is always fraught with trying to present the best version of yourself in hopes of impressing your potential future employer while still staying true to yourself. That balancing act becomes a lot more complicated when you have a complicated history of mental illness that has negatively impacted your career path.
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I recreated Michael Jordan's 'last shot' in a room made of 10 million LEDs

The Verge: The NBA made some noise during its All-Star festivities this past weekend when it became the first major sport to embrace virtual reality. But across the street from the main event happening at Madison Square Garden, there was an ancillary event that offered fans a whole different type of immersion: a playable life-size half court made of LED screens created by Nike's Jordan brand for its 30th anniversary.

It was an NBA holodeck, and I had to try it.
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Saturday Night Live's Wig Secrets

allure.com: A dead-on impression or an amazing character creation is lost if the actor doesn't look the part. That's why the wigs on Saturday Night Live, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this season, have always gone a long way to making the sketches work. Back in 2012, I talked to head hairstylist Bettie Rogers, who had been with the show for ten years, about how the best looks come together.
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Sunday, February 15, 2015

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Does Commercial Broadway Need a Tax Break?

The Clyde Fitch Report: This is a short post but an important one. On Thurs., Feb. 5, a press release was issued by the Broadway League, which is the national trade organization for Broadway, touting proposed legislation by Sen. Chuck Schumer to incentivize investments in live performance, including Broadway shows.
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Equity Unveils 99-Seat Plan Calling for L.A. Actors’ ‘Minimum Wage’

Backstage: The Actors' Equity Association has put forward a proposal to revamp the 99-Seat Theatre Plan setting the union on what could be a collision course with Los Angeles small theater producers.

Equity wants to create a new agreement that will guarantee actors and stage managers are paid “a salary no less than the legally mandated minimum wage and ensure members are paid for rehearsals as well as performance hours," according to a release. Under the current 99-seat agreement, Equity actors can be paid a stipend of as little as $7 a performance for the first four weeks of a black-box theater run.
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L.A. Theater Producers: Minimum Wage ‘Impossible’

Backstage: Equity’s proposed minimum wage requirement for actors is “financially impossible," according to a group of Los Angeles intimate theater producers.

Members of the Review Committee, created from the settlement of the 1988 Equity Waiver Wars, met Monday at the Matrix Theatre on Melrose. Simon Levy, producing director of the Fountain Theatre, said myriad options were being considered, including legal action.
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How Live Nation exploits low-wage workers to stage its rock concerts

The Washington Post: Thirty-six hours at Bonnaroo, the massive Tennessee music festival, sounds like a great way to spend a June weekend. Unless you’re working backstage without breaks, fighting exhaustion, because one of your colleagues called in sick and there’s nobody else to fill in -- like Katherine Walding did last summer.

“To say that I was potentially a danger to my crew is an understatement,” says Walding, a stagehand with a company called Crew One, which staffs rock concerts and festivals across the South. “That’s what you do if you want to get paid. It’s all you can do.”
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Cirque May Walk Tightrope on Ownership?

www.cirquefascination.com: Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté may be ready to sell control of his company as it reaches a crossroads in its 30-year history.

Laliberté mused publicly in December about selling a 20- to 30-per-cent stake in the Montreal-based entertainment giant. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said he was looking for a partner to help expand the business globally.
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Monday, February 09, 2015

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time:

‘Midnight Rider’ Accident: Hearing Set on Appeal of OSHA Violations

Variety: A federal commission has scheduled a hearing starting on March 31 on the “Midnight Rider” filmmakers’ appeal of almost $75,000 in fines and safety violations proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigated the Feb. 20 train accident that killed camera assistant Sarah Jones and injured eight others on the film’s set last year.
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California takes on the NFL: New bill would force teams to pay cheerleaders minimum wage

Salon.com: A California assemblywoman this week introduced a measure that would force NFL teams to pay cheerleaders minimum wage, overtime and workers compensation. State Rep. Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat from San Diego and former Stanford University cheerleader, introduced the legislation after another cheerleader with the Oakland Raiderettes brought a lawsuit alleging the team violated minimum wage laws.
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Paris Calls a Halt to Outdoor Filming of Some Action Scenes

NYTimes.com: Authorities have imposed new restrictions on filming movies or television shows in the city of Paris nearly a month after shootings that killed 17 people in and around the French capital. Outdoor scenes of actors in police or military uniforms and the use of fake weapons or explosives have been banned, underlining the heightened level of security after the attacks.
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The Privilege of Privilege

HowlRound: If I’d realized earlier how privileged I am, I’d have enjoyed it more.

Now that privilege is being challenged, and is no longer unconscious, or taken for granted.

Dang.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to slather myself in liberal guilt and whine about it. That’s a waste of time. The energy required to wallow in guilt is energy that is better spent unpacking my privilege, acknowledging the damage it has done to me and to others, and doing what I can to use it positively or help to dismantle it.
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Making Talent: 4 Lessons from the Front Lines Of Digital Education

Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce: At times, I hear secrets. Recently I met a prominent business leader, a person who manages multi-million dollar global client relationships at an established company. He admitted that he "walks into work naked every single day." In other words, his skills have not evolved to meet the digital-specific demands of his job. It’s likely that his supervisor and colleagues are unaware of the extent of his skill deficiency. His lack of digital expertise, coupled with an inability to admit what he doesn’t know, costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost opportunities annually.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015

Let's Play Two

It was two weeks, here are some bonus articles...

Shane Smith: TV and Film Production Costs Don’t Make Sense in the Digital Era

Variety: I think the biggest issue for legacy media — both TV and film — is that it just costs too much money to develop a TV series or movie. And most of them don’t work. Then the one that works has to pay for the rest.

If you look at film, distribution is pre-bought. If you’ve paid for the distribution, you say, “I have to make sure it’s a film that gets enough butts in the seats.” I think that’s the problem: It becomes prohibitively expensive, and you can’t develop films for a smaller amount of money.
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PAC: Technical director died in fall, OSHA investigating

Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports: Officials have confirmed a 54-year-old man working at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center died after a hydraulic lift toppled over Wednesday afternoon.

David Swain, Technical Director for the Performing Arts Center, was found unresponsive on the stage next to the basket of a toppled lift around 4:22 p.m., according to North Charleston police. There were no witnesses that saw the lift fall, officers say.
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Drama Behind Reality TV Cameras Puts Producers on the Line

www.aflcio.org: Inhumanly long hours, cruelty, frayed nerves. And that’s just behind the cameras at reality shows. “It’s scary and nerve-wracking,” said Sevita Qarshi, a producer walking the line Thursday outside the Realscreen conference at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C.>
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4 out of 5 musicals failed their investors

New York Post: Pronounce the word artist, to conjure up the image of a solitary genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the numinous. “He’s an artist,” we’ll say in tones of reverence about an actor or musician or director. “A true artist,” we’ll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer or photographer, meaning someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane. Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word.
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How Broadway Is Losing Its 'Middle Ground'

NPR: Broadway is New York's biggest tourist attraction and brought in $1.3 billion in ticket sales last season. But it's also a high-stakes gamble for producers, since only 1 in 4 Broadway shows turns a profit. This month, two of the fall's most highly anticipated musicals, a revival of Side Show and The Last Ship, with songs by Sting, have thrown in the towel — closing, having lost almost their entire investments.
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Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from the last two weeks of the Greenpage that might be worth your time...

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur - The Atlantic: Pronounce the word artist, to conjure up the image of a solitary genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the numinous. “He’s an artist,” we’ll say in tones of reverence about an actor or musician or director. “A true artist,” we’ll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer or photographer, meaning someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane. Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word.
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Midnight Rider: New ‘Safety for Sarah’ PSA Debuts at Sundance

Variety: The parents of Sarah Jones, the camera assistant killed a year ago on the “Midnight Rider” set, have launched a new effort to push for safety on sets.

Richard and Elizabeth Jones unveiled a new public service announcement Monday at the Sundance Film Festival and spoke at a panel on film set safety.
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How to Not Give a Shit: Making Art While Female

gawker.com: "I feel very strongly about that: an alternative to the idea of women being a certain way." Janet Weiss, the drummer for Sleater-Kinney, was sitting on a leather green swivel chair three feet in front of me as she responded to a question from Broad City's Ilana Glazer about feminism. "The quiet, demure, soft-spoken sort of stereotype. The three of us get on stage and we really try to break that down and give people who feel differently than that a place to go and a place to express themselves."
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Eve Ensler Responds to Concerns Over the Vagina Monologues‘ Inclusivity

The Mary Sue: Last week women’s college Mount Holyoke was the subject of intense scrutiny over a campus theater group’s decision to effectively “retire” the Vagina Monologues in favor of creating an original and more inclusive play in a similar style. An email from a Project Theatre representative to the rest of the student body addressed concerns over the landmark text’s portrayal of race, gender, and class, explaining that the play offers a problematic and “extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman.” So what does Eve Ensler think?
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Why hasn’t anyone written an opera about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement?

The Well-Tempered Ear: Today is a federal holiday in the US: Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And The Ear has just one question: Why hasn’t anyone yet composed an opera about MLK?
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