OptiMINDS

Hello peoples. Today was a good day – it went quickly – as do all days other than Friday, heh. On Saturday I went into town and spent $180 on birthday presents (a really nice bed linen set that Brandty said was ‘Just right’ when he saw it – yay! I did good hehe) for Brandt’s parents – it was their combined 50th birthday party that night. Mum & I arrived at the party around 4:45pm, and we chatted to a few people there. Mum got on like a house on fire with one of the other [single] men, so that was really awesome!! They’re exchanging numbers hehe. There were sparks, so that was good. It’s always these social events where you meet people. Who knows…
Mum & I left at around 11pm, and drove back to my place. Bash came at around 11:30pm (after he finished work), and all three of us went to bed. I couldn’t get to sleep until around 3am for some reason, which really sucked cause I had to get up at 5:30am the next day to get ready for the OptiMINDS 2005 State Final.
I got ready first, then Christa, then Bash and we left around 6:30am, and got to the University of Queensland at around 7am. We did the first part of our show and put the PowerPoint presentation with the rules up on the big projector screen while all the kids were filtering into the hall. Then as the ‘event’ begun, Bash (my sidekick) went around taking photos of all the groups in their prep rooms. The good thing with Bash was that unlike me, he got all the kids to do some pretty awesome things – like build human pyramids and pull all kinds of weird, wacky and wonderful funny faces for the camera… which was great cause the kids just LOVED the photo slideshow we put together this year.

After photo taking, Bash came back into the hall where I was at around 10:30am and we loaded the first set of photos into PowerPoint for the slideshow. I then got given a UQ DVD to play, realising that I had uninstalled my DVD software a few days ago. Damn. Big damn… the DVD wouldn’t play in my PC. So I asked the UQ Centre AV guy Ray (we remembered each other from last year & he is just fantastic) let me use his PC to download some software onto my laptop so I could play the DVD. I bought some DVD software off the net and loaded it – it worked fine.
I had a chat to Ray (the AV guy who runs the UQ Centre) and I have a job there now as a casual!! how cool is that! Mainly in rigging and setting up shows, but that’s what I want more experience in. I know how to run a medium lighting grid or audio system, but rigging and setup, scaffolding and abseiling from rigs is something that’s new to me… and I want to learn more in this area. I offered my assistance at no cost, of course – but he insisted on paying me. So that’s pretty cool – a casual job at UQ (working for events) for the AV guy for good money & learning at the same time! Sweet!
The OptiMINDS closing ceremony was hrmmm… I’ll be honest – “pretty bad” this year. Not because of the organisers or the event itself, but just the way that the closing ceremony is run – there is no coordination. The show had started, and this guy rocks up with a bass guitar asking if he can plug it in somewhere. I’m like… WTF?? Um, how about no? The show has begun, and no one told me anything about there being a bass guitar! Here I am trying to run this show, which has already begun, I have voice cue’s to listen out for in order to play sound effects for the two actors on stage doing their skit, and now this guy comes and wants to plug in his guitar! LOL. I told him to go talk to the UQ centre AV guy, because UQ use an AMX control system where everything is incredibly “simple” and “dumbed down” (for lecturers, of course) which has no flexibility – so no, I can’t “just plug in” your guitar.

Anyway, then we had 1 minor problem where for some reason my laptop decided it was going to take 15 seconds to play a sound effect for the kids acting on stage (whoops!). Like – if I had the audio a days before I could dump it onto minidisc – something that’s made for rapid response concert playback. Computers just don’t cut it in a live environment.
Anyway, then PowerPoint decided to go out of ‘full screen’ mode for about a second or so. I quickly threw it back into full screen mode, but on an 8m x 8m projection screen, it isn’t hard for the audience to miss that kind of mistake – LOL. See if I had received a little funding, I would have hired a vision switcher so I could mix into a black or something – you know, quickly fade to black between DVD’s, .AVI files and PowerPoint slides or whatever. Oh well.
Then 2 singing acts (both by the same girl) got culled because they started 45 minutes late. No one told me AND even worse – no one actually told the singer! She came over to me asking if she was still on (cause the MC’s skipped over both of her singing slots and kept going with the rest of the show) – I told her I didn’t know (because I too didn’t have a clue what was going on). She was obviously upset. She took her CD’s (backing music) and stormed off. She was really good too – she did a rehearsal with me earlier in the day. Pity she didn’t get to sing… even more of a pity when no one told her she was cut from the show.
That was about it really… there was a rap song which was… interesting (I won’t say good), and about 100 kids tried to run on stage when the MC’s foolishly told members of the audience to “come on stage to dance” (um, silly move okay? Over 2000 kids will not fit on a stage designed to fit and hold about 30 people), and you do not do that – because: 1) Campbell Newman, Lord Mayor of Brisbane + the QLD Education Minister are sitting in the front row, and B) it takes ages to clear the stage & get everyone quiet and seated again.
Then, after the show, some guy (probably a musician?) told me that I had way too much midrange. I was like, um.. not my problem… this is all run through an AMX system and I have no control over anything except volume. Yes, AMX dims the lights, turns on the projector, controls the aircon, turns mics on and off but it doesn’t give me any control over anything else. Again, if I was getting paid for this, I would bring my own EQ and gear to improve the sound, but without some money it’s not worth the risk (my gear is not yet insured for use out of the ‘office’), time, effort and everything else.
But – what can you do. That’s just the way it is. I’m sure to everyone in the audience it seemed pretty good, but to me.. I dunno, I feel kinda embarrassed about having my name attached to it. I dunno – it’s weird, I know… but I just didn’t feel good afterwards.
Like, with the dance concerts I do at the end of each year, when we pull off the shows with no audible or visible stuff-ups (99% of times, we have no stuff-ups), we feel sooo incredibly good about the shows, and we’re always pumped for the next one! When I do my other big end of year concerts with Drew, mum, Wesley, Brandt and the others – it works so well – we are such a professional team and we all run like well oiled machines – especially mum & Brandt who have only been doing it for a few years and are only fairly new to the industry and its technologies. They do amazingly well, and have never ever stuffed up. It’s a really high stress job – as soon as you play the wrong song or blow a fuse in your dimmer and the lights go out during a dance – people notice! But not once have we stuffed up like that.
I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do the OptiMINDS thing next year because it is a really long day, and the ceremony entertainment part always runs so… unprofessionally? Not that I’m blaming anyone – there is no one to blame, because we need someone to coordinate & we don’t have a coordinator… hence the uncoordinated show that results. I just run the show, I can’t coordinate it too. What we really need is like, a stage manager or something. no wait, a production director. But a stage manager will do. As there is little coordination, I personally feel that it makes me look bad because my company is down as the producer of the multimedia presentation. Things get cut, added, changed seconds before it happens and that really stuffs me around – I’m a Virgo; I like plans and sticking to them & it’s a big big no-no to go changing things at the last minute on a live production.

Anyway – that aside, I’m looking forward to the 5 dance concerts I’m doing at the end of the year!
Oh, and remind me to talk about September 11 next time I do a blog (it’s late & I gotta get some sleep) and how I now believe that it wasn’t actually a hijacking. Ever seen the footage of the ‘laser pointer’ beam on the 2nd World Trade Centre seconds before the second plane hit it? Ever seen the hole in the pentagon? A plane didn’t make that… no way, the hole is way to small. And besides, where’s the wreckage of the plane anyway?
More on that next time. Ni night!