Marscon...
...starts tonight!
Last night's Dr. Horrible dress rehearsal was a rather harrowing adventure; everything that could go wrong did. Murphy's Law. I don't know who this Murphy guy is, but after last night, I kinda want him dead!
First, there was the problem of getting people there. One of my actors had thought the rehearsal was at 7 until less than an hour before we were supposed to meet... and he lives an hour away. Another got stuck in really bad traffic. I had to stop and buy some tape that we needed for rehearsal -- along with some stuff for my other Marscon costume -- so I was late myself. We were short one girl because of casting problems, so Trevor has to briefly play a girl, and Tom was convinced to stand in for the "gay groupie."
So we finally got to the hotel, and we discovered we had no projector at all and also couldn't get the projector screen to work. Butch had forgotten to bring the table we needed to borrow, so we had to call his wife and ask her to bring it in the van when she came. She hadn't even gotten to her house yet, so she was nowhere near ready to bring it. But she promised she would when she came.
Meanwhile, we waited forever for someone to even come address the issue of the projector/screen. Butch had talked to someone, and they *finally* came in to look at it. But most of the group of workers did not speak English. Fantastic. So first they looked at the crappy stand alone screen we had and ended up taking it away. Then they tried to get the one in the wall to work, but the power to it wasn't working. It took about four or five of them working on it to even get it pulled down about a third of the way. And then it wouldn't budge. Crap.
So they finally set up this freaking huge stand-alone screen, which we decided would work, even though it left us with little room to maneuver. Around the same time, I think, the projector arrived. We thought we were finally in business.
Note the keyword "thought" in the above sentence.
As it turns out, no matter where we plugged the projector, we couldn't get it to turn on. There was some sort of bigger electrical problem than we originally thought. The lights were working in the room, but none of the other electricity was. So someone eventually went and fooled with it, maybe twidled with the breaker or something. Whatever. FINALLY it was working. And so was the screen. So the guys came back and put that screen down and took away the other.
We got the projector set up and... the speakers weren't working right. So after fiddling around with it a bit, Butch was still less than satisfied that ALL the speakers were not working, but we were fine with it because one of the speakers was loud enough to blast out everyone's eardrums if we so desired.
So now we're just missing a table. Or so you thought.
At this point, we have the problem of the movie not wanting to go back to the beginning after all our testing of the volumn. We had no remote, and turning the machine off and on was not working. It took several minutes of screwing around with it to make it work.
Then the table gets there and we gte it set up. It is now about the time that I had expected to be FINISHED, and we haven't even started the run-through. We were going to try and do two run-throughs back-to-back, but I declared that it was late enough that one was all we had time for.
But we had to wait on our audience. Yes, that's right. Wait on our audience. The women working the con suite Friday night wanted to watch the dress rehearsal on Thursday so they could not have to miss it entirely. So we had to wait on them. To speed things up, I had the ENTIRE CAST helping to move all the stuff that these women needed to move before watching the show.
We finally finished that, got everything set up, and were just waiting to hit start.... But still no audience. I went out and asked if they were coming, and one of them said, "I think we're going to go get food." I wanted to kill them all. We could have started a good 20 minutes earlier, then, I thought.
So I sighed and went to start it. Bob Snare had to leave a little before this point, despite having waited for a good 30 minutes to watch the show.
We started the film, and guess what happened about 5 or 10 minutes in when I looked over at the audience.... Yep. That's right. They were all sitting there, watching the show. WTF? And then Butch came in carrying some Wendy's cups.
Anyway, they got to see the show, we got to practice with a small audience, and we figured out the huge problems last night, which hopefully means things will be under control for tonight.
I hope.
*crosses fingers*
Wish us luck! (And remember "Break a leg" is the customary way to do that; we don't need any more bad luck like last night!)
Last night's Dr. Horrible dress rehearsal was a rather harrowing adventure; everything that could go wrong did. Murphy's Law. I don't know who this Murphy guy is, but after last night, I kinda want him dead!
First, there was the problem of getting people there. One of my actors had thought the rehearsal was at 7 until less than an hour before we were supposed to meet... and he lives an hour away. Another got stuck in really bad traffic. I had to stop and buy some tape that we needed for rehearsal -- along with some stuff for my other Marscon costume -- so I was late myself. We were short one girl because of casting problems, so Trevor has to briefly play a girl, and Tom was convinced to stand in for the "gay groupie."
So we finally got to the hotel, and we discovered we had no projector at all and also couldn't get the projector screen to work. Butch had forgotten to bring the table we needed to borrow, so we had to call his wife and ask her to bring it in the van when she came. She hadn't even gotten to her house yet, so she was nowhere near ready to bring it. But she promised she would when she came.
Meanwhile, we waited forever for someone to even come address the issue of the projector/screen. Butch had talked to someone, and they *finally* came in to look at it. But most of the group of workers did not speak English. Fantastic. So first they looked at the crappy stand alone screen we had and ended up taking it away. Then they tried to get the one in the wall to work, but the power to it wasn't working. It took about four or five of them working on it to even get it pulled down about a third of the way. And then it wouldn't budge. Crap.
So they finally set up this freaking huge stand-alone screen, which we decided would work, even though it left us with little room to maneuver. Around the same time, I think, the projector arrived. We thought we were finally in business.
Note the keyword "thought" in the above sentence.
As it turns out, no matter where we plugged the projector, we couldn't get it to turn on. There was some sort of bigger electrical problem than we originally thought. The lights were working in the room, but none of the other electricity was. So someone eventually went and fooled with it, maybe twidled with the breaker or something. Whatever. FINALLY it was working. And so was the screen. So the guys came back and put that screen down and took away the other.
We got the projector set up and... the speakers weren't working right. So after fiddling around with it a bit, Butch was still less than satisfied that ALL the speakers were not working, but we were fine with it because one of the speakers was loud enough to blast out everyone's eardrums if we so desired.
So now we're just missing a table. Or so you thought.
At this point, we have the problem of the movie not wanting to go back to the beginning after all our testing of the volumn. We had no remote, and turning the machine off and on was not working. It took several minutes of screwing around with it to make it work.
Then the table gets there and we gte it set up. It is now about the time that I had expected to be FINISHED, and we haven't even started the run-through. We were going to try and do two run-throughs back-to-back, but I declared that it was late enough that one was all we had time for.
But we had to wait on our audience. Yes, that's right. Wait on our audience. The women working the con suite Friday night wanted to watch the dress rehearsal on Thursday so they could not have to miss it entirely. So we had to wait on them. To speed things up, I had the ENTIRE CAST helping to move all the stuff that these women needed to move before watching the show.
We finally finished that, got everything set up, and were just waiting to hit start.... But still no audience. I went out and asked if they were coming, and one of them said, "I think we're going to go get food." I wanted to kill them all. We could have started a good 20 minutes earlier, then, I thought.
So I sighed and went to start it. Bob Snare had to leave a little before this point, despite having waited for a good 30 minutes to watch the show.
We started the film, and guess what happened about 5 or 10 minutes in when I looked over at the audience.... Yep. That's right. They were all sitting there, watching the show. WTF? And then Butch came in carrying some Wendy's cups.
Anyway, they got to see the show, we got to practice with a small audience, and we figured out the huge problems last night, which hopefully means things will be under control for tonight.
I hope.
*crosses fingers*
Wish us luck! (And remember "Break a leg" is the customary way to do that; we don't need any more bad luck like last night!)