Worth a Look

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

IATSE Reaches Deal on New 3-Year Contract With Studios

Variety: Negotiators for the West Coast members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — Hollywood’s key below-the-line union — have reached a three-year tentative agreement with studios and networks.

Posted by David at 7/27/2018 01:55:00 PM 

Judge Dismisses ‘Shape of Water’ Copyright Suit

Variety: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the “The Shape of Water,” the winner of this year’s Oscar for best picture, borrowed heavily from a 1969 play about a dolphin held captive in a military lab.

Posted by David at 7/26/2018 02:53:00 PM

‘Insatiable’ Accused of Fat Shaming; Petition Calls for Cancellation

Variety: A woman’s petition to cancel Netflix’s upcoming dark comedy series “Insatiable” gathered more than 118,000 signatures on Change.org on Tuesday. Signatories have decried the project as a “tone-deaf” venture that encourages “fat shaming.”

Posted by David at 7/25/2018 12:09:00 PM

AIDS and Los Angeles Theatre

@ This Stage: The AIDS virus was not readily apparent to the Los Angele theater community in the early 1980s. On June 5, 1981, UCLA-based immunologist Dr. Michael Gottlieb published a report put out by the Centers for Disease Control, noting the unusual cases of five men who had contracted a form of pneumonia normally found only in those with severely weakened immune systems.

Posted by David at 7/24/2018 12:36:00 PM

Why I Fought the Sexist Gear Community (And Won)

Pitchfork: Last week, I signed an online petition and inadvertently opened a pandora’s box of misogyny. The protest was raised over a guitar effects preset called the “Pussy Melter,” released by TC Electronic in collaboration with the guitarist Satchel, whose band Steel Panther is often referred to as a hair-metal parody act.

Posted by David at 7/23/2018 12:54:00 PM

About the Money

If you are like me you get a handful of emails every day from political candidates asking for money.  I get emails from the DNCC, from Senators - almost never my Senators, from Congressmen - almost never my Congressmen; I even get emails occasionally from people running in other parties.  I must be on a whole lot of mailing lists.

First things first: I can't afford to give a meaningful amount of money.  Even in this booming economy things have yet to trickle down to my family in such a way that we can spend money this way.  Any dollar that I send to a candidate is one that is being diverted from something my family needs.  I can send a couple of bucks to a couple of folks, but all things being equal even if I wanted to support all of these candidacies I couldn't.  Occasionally I wonder if the fundraisers have some kind of closed loop feedback where they can tell who has already given.  I would assume they do, but my inbox would suggest otherwise.

Second, and this is perhaps a more salient point, I am under the impression you don't need my money.  There was no end of press around Citizen's United.  All that reporting drove home the idea that there was now a virtually unlimited source of funding out there from mega wealthy donors and corporations (and I guess from foreign governments funneling through third parties).

Why are you even asking me for my $50 when there's someone out there to give you 100 or 1000 times that amount and that can now do so legally?  Are the candidates soliciting my money just really bad at identifying high value donors?

I thought what you now needed from me was door knocking.  I thought you needed people to do registration drives.  I thought you needed people to drive voters to the polls on election day.  I thought the issue was no longer money, that it was all about turnout.  I guess I can see how money could drive turnout, but then we're back to what are you going to do with my $50 that you couldn't do with some mega-wealthy donor's $50,000.

Asking for these small donations can't be free either.  Sending an email is fairly cheap I guess, but you have to pay the firm that is sending the email and that can't come cheap.  I guess the ROI on such things must be positive or they would stop, but again wouldn't the resources be better allocated chasing huge donations than thousands of small donations?

I dug deep on the last round and was rewarded with losses across the board, and that view was against the backdrop of what I understand was the highest earning campaign in history.  I just can't get past the idea that it is no longer about the money - and every solicitation I get suggests to me that the candidates I would hope to elect haven't figured that out yet.  That can't be a good thing.

Dear MSNBC

When the election went the way it did I was a little worried about my go to news source.  The day to day of the churn of the current administration is just too good for TV.  I remember thinking that if I were a news director for one of the primetime shows that I would need to make some rules about content to make sure the shows just didn't tip over the edge.

The other night there was wall to wall, hour after hour coverage over what one particular witness - if he becomes a witness - might say.  That's not news.  I understand that it was potentially a big story, although maybe it isn't.  But even if it is, it hasn't happened yet.  At best this is speculation.  The people you have on commentating are really just making things up.  I can make things up myself.  Four hours of primetime to hype what someone might say is bad curating.

Even if he had actually formally said something that action would have happened under seal and we still would have had an army of pundits speculating on what they thought had happened and what, if they were right, it might actually mean.

And that was replaced with exclusive coverage of whether or not the special counsel and the President's son had seen each other in the airport.  That's not really news either.

There's lots of other things happening in the world.  There are people at war.  There are places we can't drink the water.  I am 100% that the time on the shows could be filled without dedicating it all to the circus.  Would it be asking too much to see something else on the news?  Whether I mean to be or not I am already voting a little with my feet.  The time I spend with this source is dropping and the editorial decisions are the reason.

MSNBC has a full primetime slate.  How about designating one show from each night and saying they won't cover the day's churn?  What if all the shows could cover anything in the top half of the hour but had to dedicate the bottom half of the hour to something else?  Maybe no single show should ever book the same guest on consecutive days.

We'd all do better if we could separate the news from the noise.

Applying to College Workshop

10 Resume Tips:

1. Proofread/Spellcheck
2. One side of one page
3. Reverse chronological order
4. Nothing smaller than 8pt type
5. Do not include things you don’t want to discuss
6. Three (3) references
7. Avoid large blocks of text
8. Consider the context
9. Avoid repetitive lists
10. Proofread/Spellcheck

10 Portfolio Tips:

1. The presentation is as important as the content
2. Practice with your items/know what is coming next
3. Be prepared for the interviewer to take it away from you
4. Proofread/Spellcheck
5. Be clear what is your work
6. Don’t include things you don’t want/intend to be seen
7. Think quality over quantity
8. Show the arc of a project
9. Show your thought/problem solving process
10. Try to demonstrate breadth & depth

10 Interview Tips:

1. Make a positive impression - dress the part, make eye contact, introduce yourself
2. Speak Up
3. Go through what you’re going to say ahead of time
4. Know your class rank, GPA, & test scores
5. Work with your portfolio items so you’ll know what’s coming next and are able to show items effectively 
6. Be conversant about the school
7. Be ready for questions about your process
8. Be ready for questions about your goals
9. Have questions of your own
10. Don't talk down other people, talk yourself up

Green

We talk a lot at work these days about greening the theatre.  Usually it doesn't take too long for that conversation to come around to the amount of possible waste inherent in the fabrication of scenery.  The scene shop seems to be where everyone thinks the biggest changes can be made toward a greener process.

This last year I went to a USITT session on this topic.  There were three TDs presenting their strategies for making their shops more environmentally responsible.  I was excited to hear what they had to say because this is an issue I have been wondering about myself.  Each of the presenters gave one substantive idea.  This is what they said:

1. Find ways of integrating stock.
2. Don't put anything in the dumpster.
3. Build less scenery.

Sometimes I wonder if I am in the same business as other people.  I thought that in this case because there are design considerations here that would be a tough sell to the artists I work with.

Integrating stock means getting a director and set designer to buy in to a scenic solution that fits that stock.  Even before that it requires a scene design that uses elements that are stock-like.  It isn't enough that the sizes and shapes be stock compatible, the design needs to need things that could come from stock.  That isn't a given.

Building scenery with the strategy that you will try to recover everything changes fabrication methods in ways that can change the engineering performance of the assemblies as well as create work for other departments.

Just doing less... again we're talking about a buy in from directing and design.

I don't mean to just be shouting "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE" but there does need to be a recognition that the buy in to make these kinds of decisions goes beyond the TD's office.  There's enough challenge realizing a design when the constraints are budget and physics.  Layering in an environmental constraint adds a level of complexity that would require a mission level commitment from the organization.  Something that would let you explain at a production meeting that you will not be executing as designed because that choice doesn't comply with the environmental mission.

Even if that mission level commitment was there I wonder about the efficacy of these solutions.  I mean, I guess building less is unimpeachable, but the others have domino problems.

Integrating stock and using recovered materials are solutions that come with a need for storage space, additional labor, and additional transportation.  I wonder if the environmental cost of operating a storage facility cancels out the benefit of having the stock.   How does year round heat and light compare with a palette of plywood?  When I look at the issue that question comes to me fairly quickly, but I haven't seen any discussion about the costs - dollar and environmental - of additional infrastructure as part of the process.

The accounting would seem to be more complicated than we've made it to date.

I also can't help but wonder how changes in materials choices in the scene shop would compare with non-production initiatives that could be undertaken by an organization.  What about turning down the heat or the air 5 degrees?  How about a subscription series where all the patrons agree not to drive?  It's not to say that a company couldn't do both, but it would be nice to know what order of magnitude different kinds of solutions exist on.

There's a research project to do here, something that looks at the concept in a wider context.  There needs to be a real qualification of the level of commitment that would be needed for an organization to truly embrace this mission: something that speaks to the dollar issues - primary and secondary - and to the potential artistic issues.  A study that examines all the ways a company could try to make a difference and identifying the relative weight of the ideas.

It's easy to say "stop buying all that plywood" and it is a worthwhile idea.  We need to know what it really costs.

Ellipses...

I'm almost out of soda...  The stories around the detention of the undocumented just get darker and darker.  We should be better than this...  My mechanical keyboard is great, but it is also behind dozens of additional typos every day.  Or maybe I shouldn't blame the tool...  The new phone transcribes voicemail.  That's cool.  I hate listening to voicemail...  We have a medical outfit here advertising same day appointments.  I'd venture nobody that worked on that campaign ever tried to get an appointment...  Borrowing money from countries that are the target of tariffs in order to subsidize domestic industry hurt by those tariffs is the definition of biting your nose to spite your face...  Trying to go no brace/no vitamin I today.  The jury is still out...  I am trying to decide were I not watching the news how would I think things were going.  I'm pretty sure I would feel better.  Not sure that would be positive...  Always nice to see old students.  If you're around you should poke your head in...  Things are on the move in the shop.  New scrap rack position after more than a decade...  Pretty sure I can get across what is important about AutoCAD in less than three hours now.  That's probably them improving the program rather than my honing my message.  Although I guess it could be both...  I want to see MI:Fallout in IMAX.  That'll require some planning...  Just finished Company Town.  I think it got less interesting the more I read, but it was still a worthwhile read...  Yesterday I ran an errand that turned out to be confirming I didn't have to run an errand...  They keep saying the the President has a high approval percentage among Republicans, I wonder if there are still as many Republicans as there were a year ago...  I slogged through Shada.  Still haven't found the time to finish Sense8...

I Don't Want Another Streaming Service

Don't get me wrong, I am anxiously awaiting the total demise of cable TV.  That bill is one of the biggest sources of the sand in my gears.  I want to be a cord cutter.  But I am beginning to fear that at the end of the day I will wind up paying more for streaming than I do for cable.  The benefit of cord cutting is supposed to be a financial savings, not just a change in form factor.

I'm also a fan of streaming.  We were Netflix subscribers when it was a DVD by mail service and we were early adopters getting the streaming service on a TV using a WII.  We really make good use of Netflix.  Hours and hours of West Wing and hours and hours of DS9.  We watch a lot of Netflix original programs.  I do sometimes wonder why some things that I think should be on service aren't.  I'd love to watch the Speed Racer I watched growing up.  It's more likely they'll reboot it at this point than pick it up.

Ultraman, Space Giants, Superfriends, Doctor Who, Dave Allen...  Lots of titles that could be on Netflix that aren't.

But Netflix isn't the only game in town, and not the only stream currently in our lives.  We were also early Prime adopters.  And the more expensive Prime becomes the more I really want to love their video streaming service.  With a couple of exceptions I really don't.  Given a choice between Netflix of Prime I will almost certainly boot up Netflix.  That is almost certainly about the interface.  The Prime interface, at least on the Roku, pales in comparison to their competition.  I guess maybe it makes them feel like there are more titles, but the decision to list shows separately by season is really confusing.  Mixing Prime streams I've already paid for with titles they have but I will have to buy in confusing.  I am 99% certain I'm not going to see a title I need to pay for and then decide to buy it rather than watch something I have already paid for.  Mixing both of those with premium streams for HBO and Showtime is even more confusing.  One of the things that bugs me about cable is that it shows you channels you don't have in exactly the same way as things you do have.  Prime has emulated that same annoying practice.  If they cleaned up their interface they might get me to drop Netflix.

We've got streams for all the cable channels.  HBO, PBS, MSNBC, FX, TNT, TBS - all the networks, they all have Roku apps with streaming.  They vary in their utility but have one thing in common: they all make you authenticate with an existing cable subscription.  You can't cord cut, you have to have cable to stream.  Why does it seem so likely that will be the endgame?  Pay for it even if you don't really use it, it will just flip from being cable with supplemental streaming to streaming with supplemental cable, with the cost actually going up.  It'll be just like the landline I have to pay for even though I don't want it because somehow my price goes up if I drop the service.

Have you priced naked internet?  The biggest single requirement for true cord cutting?  When cable companies are the internet providers that isn't going to be a bargain.

We've already looked off Hulu - no Handmaid's Tale for us.  We also haven't existed in an iTunes video ecosystem.  That's probably about being a Roku home rather than an Apple TV home.  I haven't looked too hard at YouTube TV or Sling - and I've been a Sling hardware customer for years.

FWIW I also have, you know, antennas on a couple of our sets.  There are a dozen watchable channels there as long as you don't mind losing the DVR and guide functionality.

This week I saw two announcements that had me perk up only to wind up seeing dollar signs.  First was that DC was going to start up their Young Justice cartoon they abandoned three years ago.  This was a regular watch for me and seeing it was coming back was exciting.  Seeing it is coming back exclusively on the DC streaming service, a service that will be $7.99/month was less exciting.  There was also an announcement that there is going to be another season of Clone Wars.  That was another cartoon I used to watch pretty faithfully.  I would love to get another season.  But that show will air exclusively on the yet to be solidified Disney streaming service - no price yet, but any reason to think it won't be another $7.99/month?

I already made the decision to forgo the new Start Trek series exclusively available exclusively on the CBS streaming platform.

The writing is on the wall isn't it?  So you drop cable but keep internet - and they will need to provide more speed and bandwidth because you'll need multiple concurrent streams.  Which will mean that price will inevitably go up.  Then you'll need something from the YouTube or Sling world to pick up a bunch of channels and then Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, DC, CBS, HBO...  I mean you don't need everything, but I have to believe in the end it will be more money.

Hey Amazon, want to disrupt cable bigtime?  Let me authenticate channel apps through Prime.  And clean up your interface.

I Delete a Lot of Posts

I was four graphs into a post today and then I did a ctrl-A delete.  Happens to me a lot these days.  I'll post something on Facebook and then delete it.  I'll post something on Twitter and then delete it.  We've become so polarized that I don't want the exposure anymore.

And then I deleted everything I had to say about that.  Here's a picture of my cat:

He just had his spring haircut (finally) and he has no political opinions at all.

Worth a Look

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

Statement from Americans for the Arts in Response to Rejection of Amendment to Cut Funding to NEA, NEH

Stage Directions: Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch offered this statement in response to this afternoon’s House of Representatives vote rejecting an amendment to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15 percent

Posted by David at 7/19/2018 03:33:00 PM

House to Consider Proposal to Cut NEA Funding By 15%

Variety: The House of Representatives may vote on Wednesday on an effort to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15%.

Posted by David at 7/18/2018 12:10:00 PM

Mandalay Bay owner sues victims of Las Vegas mass shooting, claims it has “no liability of any kind”

Salon.com: The corporate owners of Mandalay Bay and the Route 91 Harvest festival venue have filed federal lawsuits against the victims of last year's mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas, claiming that MGM Resorts International has zero liability in the deadly Oct. 1 incident.

Posted by David at 7/18/2018 12:10:00 PM

Men Outnumber Female Critics 2-1, Affecting Visibility, Study Finds

Variety: Male film critics outnumbered female critics two to one, an imbalance San Diego State University researcher Martha Lauzen argues can negatively affect the exposure and evaluation of female-led features.

Posted by David at 7/17/2018 09:42:00 PM

For theater community, finding ways to reflect societal diversity onstage is more urgent than ever

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Theater is often at its best and most powerful when it says to those who feel overlooked, misunderstood or invisible: You are seen.

Of course, theater doesn’t always manage to do that — either for audiences or for artists. For a form that can be so welcoming to fresh viewpoints and voices, it also has a traditionalist streak that in some quarters can serve to perpetuate (even unconsciously) dated ideas and attitudes.

Posted by David at 7/16/2018 09:40:00 AM

Thermostat

Sometimes I wonder why the temperature control in our lives isn't better.  For years I've wondered about the hot water in the shower.  It doesn't make sense to me why we can't set a temperature so that you turn on the tap and then nothing comes out until the water is at the temperature you want.  This seems to be well inside the capabilities of our technology.  Mostly it just seems like this doesn't happen because it doesn't happen.

But it could happen, yes?  If it did happen it would seem like many houses would waste a lot less water.  Right now you turn on the tap and then the cold water in the line has to run out the faucet and down the drain until you gauge the warmth - by touching the water - and then you get in the shower.  Alternately I imagine that sometimes people crank up the temp to try to make this happen faster and then wind up getting scalded when they check the temp on their hand.  That's an unfortunate result.

To fix this there would need to be a doubled set of pipes.  You'd need a return from behind the tap that ran back to the hot water heater.  Then there would need to be a thermostatic sensor and a diverter valve right at the tap.  The temp would be set on the sensor and until the water reached the desired temp the water would flow through the diverter and back to the tank.  Once the proper temperature is reached the valve opens and the water comes out the tap, with the first drop being the temp you are looking for.  The system could also have an envelope such that if the temperature got too high the valve would swap again and the overtemp water would recirculate to the tank.

So obviously there's more dollars here in the initial installation.  There's an extra sensor and a valve, and there's an extra run of tubing for every length of hot water tubing.  That's like a 50%+ increase in initial outlay.  With the price of water being where it is right now that is probably a fairly long ROI before you get to a break even.  But you get the convenience, and you waste less water.  It seems like something worth offering as an option anyway.  I don't think I have ever been in a home that works this way.

Lately I've been wondering the same kind of thing about my HVAC system.  The sensor package and the air sources don't seem to be the most efficient here either.  Often, because of the way our house is built we wind up running the air conditioning even though the outside temperature is lower than the inside.  Why does the system have to create cold air when there is available cold air outside?

Couldn't a system be built with inside and outside theremostats?  Something that combines traditional air conditioning with exhaust fans and exterior air inputs.  So if the desired temp inside is below the actual temp inside and it is also below the outside temp the traditional air conditioning runs.  If the desired temp inside is lower than the actual temp inside but it is higher than the outside air, then instead of running the traditional system the unit would draw in outside air and exhaust the warmer air from inside.

This seems like it ought to be less electricity.  You don't have to run the exterior chiller unit in some of the cases.  There is probably a humidity benefit from running the air conditioning that you wouldn't get just using exhaust fans.  The existing system would have a way to dry the air that the other wouldn't.  And there are probably extra mechanical dampers to facilitate bringing in outside air that would be vulnerable to maintenance problems, that's a downside.  But again, this seems to be well inside the capability of our technology - and in this case, doesn't feel a whole lot more expensive at the installation stage - and yet I can't recall ever being in a home that had such technology available.

It would seem like there are environmental reasons to develop both of these systems.  I wonder why it hasn't happened.