Post 32: Basement taking shape

  I rendered the Dies Irae one more time last night after more corrections and adjustments, and thought I had the final version, but then there is still a split second glitch at the end! It never ends...
  In the last couple of days, I have been putting together the basement of the theatre. I made a mistake sizing the walls, that ended up too long, so I added an extra small room to it, and am now considering bringing a staircase down from the stage...
  I am debating whether it would look better to take the camera down a staircase, or just lower it vertically down though a trap in the floor(which would also save me having to build said staircase...).
   I applied an adjustment layer with curves to darken the mood and increase the contrast, in order to create the illusion of low candlelight without actually using multiple points of light in After Effects, and it sort of works pretty well. So much so that I am going to try the same thing upstairs in the theatre.
   The final camera view is going to be  5760 x 1080 pixels, but to see what I am doing better building the basement, I am working on a 5760 x 5000 canvas, which explains the near square image:

  It is beginning to look pretty good though  and so totally different in mood and look from the pretty blue and gold theatre decor that it will come as a nice counterpoint in the second part of the Offertories.

Post 31: Where am I ?

   Up bright and early as usual, and the computer still has at least an hour to go churning out the rendering of the Agnus Dei, which ends the Program, with its long list of credits going back to Louis XIII...
  Last night while I was doing my 3 required hours of daily reading, I rendered what I hope to be the final corrected version of the Graduate.
  Since that prevents me from using After Effects, but the 16 processors are not quite going full blast,

I can answer some emails, and write the Blog until it finishes.

   I was a little desperate for a while when the computer slowed down to a crawl working on the second part of the Offertories, but I seem to have found the issue, and am back working as normal.

  It is the 15 minutes movement in two parts for which I rebuilt Marie Antoinette's little Theatre at Trianon.

   In the first part, the camera flies around a near empty theatre, from the backstage the balconies and back. I have struggled with the second part, and tried to figure out what to do, I have no inspiration from the music, as it it my least favorite part of the Requiem.

   My first intention was to turn Virtual Lights and Shadows on in after Effects, and recreate the candle lighting of the period. That would have required dozens of points of light, each creating a separate shadow.

 I started doing it, creating a big chandelier,  a ramp of stage lights, and reflector lights hanging behind each set and around the sides of the stage. First, I used images of flames, and created a sequence of a man lighting the big chandelier after it was lowered to the floor. I went as far as creating a movie of a candle flame burning so the the candles would flicker realistically if I offset the movies out of synch. It looked good, but when I got past 3 dozen lights or so, the computer started getting bogged down with all the calculations required as I added more lights and turned more and more shadows on. Also, each candle movie made it slower, and when I tried to make each of the dozens of virtual points of light flicker, it  was becoming so slow O finally realized my ambitions were too high , even for my "Uber Machine"...

   So I am going to have to use the flat even lighting, and use an adjustment layer on top with the Curves, Exposure and Hue/Saturation Effects to "fake" it and modulate the lighting. 

  The first part is still rough, but is basically done, though a lot remains to be adjusted.I considered rebuilding the attic above the stage with all the wooden wench machinery, but that would be another huge job and time is now limited...

  I finally got another idea for the second part of the piece a couple of days ago, and that requires building a full basement under the Stage.

   That is the pit into which the sets are lowered through slots in the floor of the stage:

 

  My two sets of "décors", the trees and the kitchen, are already built and fully workable. All I had to do is add a dirt  floor and four rough brick walls to complete the room. But then I started thinking it would also have been a storage place for old sets and props of all kind, and I started filling it with stuff. I modified one of my paper puppets to make him a stage worker.

   It is beginning to take shape, and I hope the limited number of objects will allow me to do the lighting I had hoped for upstairs:

POST 30: HALLELUIA

The work was still as sluggish on the old machine, so that told me the problem was with the Composition. I finally figured out that a sub Composition was at 25fps, while the rest had been restored to the original 24. Also, the candle flame movies slow things down. 
  Things seem to be back to normal, let's just hope I don't get any more Kernel Panic Shutdowns as I was getting a few days ago, that may have been the cause...
   I am busy building a basement for the theatre under the stage,where the sets are lowered through the floor, that is slowly turning into a darkish storage room with a bunch of props...

Post 29: Damn Computer

   I just bought that Accelsior PCIe super fast card and it works fine for rendering. But for the last two days, it has been painfully sluggish working on the After Effect composition of the Theatre. I can't figure out why. I am watching the processes going on using Activity Monitor and trying to figure out what that QT32 Server is that seems to be eating up so much processor power... The speed tests are good, I built the Directory with Disk Warrior, I repaire Permissions, I cleaned out everything not need to make space on the disk, I cleared the AE cache, nothing seems to help!
  So for the moment, I am back working on my slower old machine...

Post 28: Pretty much all the Work Remaining is on the Offertorium

    Six of the Sequences are now pretty much finished, except for a few minor glitches here and there. I will be rendering all night.
   The remaining one is, of course, the longest (15n) and the most complex, with the full 3D "Théatre de la Reine".The first half is well advanced, but I and having a bit of a hard time with the second half, in part because I don't like this section of the Requiem much. The voices seen too hight, shrill, and get on my nerves...
   Also, I am realizing the computer has about reached its limits, and is getting slower, so I won't be able to turn on lights as I was planning to do to get some mood lighting rather than the flat even lighting I used in the Gallery Walk for the Pie Jesus.
   At some stage, I had been toying with the idea of building the attic of the theatre with the rafters and all the drum winches and ropes, as well as the Basement where the sets go down. I had decided it would be too much, and was going to use low candlelight for the second part of the Offertories.
   Since I cannot turn on the candlelights, I  reviewed my options, and decided that since the sets already go down into the basement, I might just as well add a floor and four walls and make it another room to take the camera(and the Spectator) into the bowels of this charming little theatre...

Post 27: More of the Same...

    I do hope the ticket marketing department considers filling the unsold seats (if any) with young people that would not otherwise get a chance to see the show, either because they wouldn’t know about it, or because they couldn’t afford the regular tickets.

   I actually wish we could have a special additional afternoon performance of the Requiem, and bus in a concert hall full of school children. Food for thought...

  Classical music IS an acquired taste, and one has to be exposed to it early. I am afraid we are losing the younger generations to smart phone entertainment on demand, and I am glad we now have in Carlos a conductor who is keenly aware of the importance of getting involved with schools, having himself grown up in the justly famous El Systema of Venezuela. 

  I strongly believe that having images supplementing the music of the Requiem would really appeal to youngsters, and THIS IS OUR CHANCE, our ONLY chance actually, at least until another crazy artist devotes him or herself to doing this kind of thing again. Because, let’s be realistic, the ASO can’t afford paying somebody to do it: this show is really worth over $50,000…

  I sincerely hope everyone enjoys this show, and would like as many people as possible to see it, because it may not happen again for a while. I am getting old, and this was a huge drain on my energy and time for a whole year. I probably wouldn’t have it in me to do it again, if I was ever asked...

  

Post 26: Trying to get as many people as possible to see the Requiem

   I noticed that in the Season Program, the Concert was listed as BEETHOVEN FIFTH SYMPHONY. Granted, it is much better know than the Requiem and the ASO probably believe that it IS what sells tickets. But there is really nothing new there, I have heard it a thousand times. It’s a great standard piece of music, a mainstay of the Repertoire, and I am sure Carlos will give us a fabulous performance of it. 

   But I feel the Requiem with Projection really IS the Special Event of the Night, the Creative Thing that has not been done before, and might have deserved a little more visible billing. And the season program only reaches the people on the ASO mailing list anyway. Are we not trying this “stunt" to pull in a new younger audience, to modernize the image of the ASO?

   One thing we talked about Sunday night after I mentioned the above to my friends after testing the show on them was: "What can we do to let more people know about the show?". Each one will definitely post on Facebook and tell their friends, but what more?

   How can we let as many people as possible  know that something new, exciting, unique, and hopefully wonderful is going to happen on April 15 and 16. Only two nights and it will be gone forever. 

  We need to reach out to the community at large, especially the “OUTSIDERS” that don't attend ASO Concerts, especially the younger crowd of Millenniums, the Music Video generation, the compulsive multitasks, the rock concert goers, that I believe will be more drawn to the Symphony by an AUDIO VISUAL performance like the Requiem than by the Fifth. We should even reach out to the school children who are the future audience.

   If the show is not sold out, is there any way to fill the rest of the house with young people from local universities and schools. Fifty to Eighty Bucks a seat is way too steep for a lot of these young people anyway. 

  The Fifth will draw the older conservative crowd and the Season ticket holders for sure. No surprise there, it’s a sure bet. But could we not try to promote the part of the concert that is truly innovative to a different younger crowd, the one that does NOT have season tickets, does NOT go to the ASO web site, does NOT follow it on Facebook yet, may never have been to an ASO concert before, may NOT have ever heard of the ASO, and possibly even think Beethoven is boring and classical music is for a bunch of elitist old folks…?

   I am not knocking Beethoven here, the 5th is great music, it was revolutionary in it’s time, but that was 200 years ago! I actually grew up on that music 50-60 years ago, I know it very well, but frankly, I have heard it so many times already that to me, the Requiem IS the exciting part of the evening. It is rarely performed, it is beautiful, historical, meaningful, and as far as I know has never been done before with a full length hour long dedicated projection. And I am not saying that out of ego or of pride, nor because it is my work and I spent a thousand hours working on it. I would be just as excited about it if somebody else was in my shoes, and would not miss it for the world. 

   There are conservatie people out there that will come primarily to hear the Fifth, and will hear AND SEE the Requiem as an add on, that they may or may Not like. But then I believe there are also A LOT of people out there that don’t give a hoot about the Fifth, but might come ESPECIALLY to see the Special Presentation of Cherubuni’s Requiem with VISUALS, because it is new, modern, hip, cool, inovative, exciting, different, and a World Premiere, in Birmingham, Alabama of all places...

   Please don’t mind my rant. I always speak my mind, no matter what, and sometimes get a little carried away. You have to understand I have invested myself heavily creatively and emotionally in this show, having spent over 1000 hours and a whole year of my life to produce it .