I bought my house a little over a year and a month ago now... For the most part I have dealt with the nightmare that the previous owners created... That's not to say I'm done... Far from it really. What I mean is I have removed just about all traces of them... Today I got a little further down that road...
There was a mess on top of some cabinets down in the laundry room... I knew it was there from day one... As I really didn't need that space urgently, and there were far larger issues elsewhere, I ignored it for the most part... Every now and again, I'd want to put something up there, but I'd remember the mess, and put it someplace else... As I've been bored out of my mind of late, I have been cleaning, and unpacking things. (yes, I'm still unpacking things from when I moved here last March...) Today, I managed to get to the mess over the cabinets...
What I find left over from these people never ceases to amaze me... On top of these cabinets were a few things...
4 globe type light bulbs, all dead but in boxes
7 wash machine hoses, all missing their rubber washers
147# of broken glass and mirrors (yes I did actually weigh it)
45 2' lengths of old TV antenna wire
Now you can often get a bit of insight in to who came before you when you clean up a previous tenet's mess... I'm pretty much lost on this one though... These people were freaks...
So I flew home ASAP from the Florida show to get things under control for the next two shows... The first was already in, and a few notes were being done the day I got in to my office... It was relatively simple from our standpoint as it was just a bit of lighting rental and a couple bodies to help out... The next show was mushrooming on us however...
I had been back and forth with the producers regarding this show prior to leaving for Florida, and a bit while I was down there, but as I had to deal with the Florida show, I didn't have the time I needed for this one... As a result, when I got back to NJ, we were sort of already behind... It doesn't help that the end client kept changing things, but that was sort of good since we hadn't started building anything... So we jumped in to the build, and the production company that had hired us sent us a couple carpenters to help out... They took care of all the fabric covering over in my warehouse, and my crew did the build and paint aspects in the shop proper...
It was down to the wire to get everything done, and we even delayed delivering some of the units by a few hours to give the paint extra time to dry, but it was done... So off we went to the city to do the in... Let me say, the in was a bear... Not so much because the set was difficult, but just getting in the door is tough where we were... Sadly as it was Fashion Week in NYC, my usual overhire techs were busy, so we used a different group... They sucked... Bad... Granted I sort of know they would going in since they were available during Fashion, but they were actually worse than expected... We did get in eventually, and the show was quite nice when it was all said and done... Not perfect... Not even up to our usual high standards, but given the short turn around between contract and load-in, it was good... We have talked to our client regarding the lead time, and they agree that we really needed more... Hell they needed more from the end client, and have addressed that with them... Hopefully that will sink in, but who knows... This particular end client seems to be very flighty in their design decisions, and that leads to headaches for everyone...
Whatever... Its done... Its just another war story now for over a beer...
Once we shut the doors on the last truck going south, we had a full day to think about what we might have missed, and how we would load this thing in... Now, we had thought out the process of the in before naturally... We had to after all since the trucks were staggered leaving our shop...
The set was laid out roughly as it was last year, so we decided to run the order of things the same as last year, which while a rough load in, did work... So that meant the first thing to do, before anything else was lay the carpet... Keep that in mind... Lay the carpet first...
Now, since we were working in a location that is very full of itself, they wouldn't allow a truck to be seen in front of their establishment during the hours of 6am - 11pm... That means pretty much all our stuff had to load in over night... So the way we decided to work it was my partner would do the overnight dumping of trucks in to the pre-function area, and I would do the assembly during the day... I went to sleep feeling like I had a handle on the first day...
When I came down in the morning, I noted many things in the pre-function area... What I did not note, was any carpet... None... Not one damn square foot... I would have been able to miss the pile, there were no less than 18 rolls of carpet in question... On questioning the TD, it was found that a decision had been made at 4am or so that there was no more room in pre-function, and so the carpet would stay on the truck... Now, I can't imagine how that particular decision was made, but it was made right?... Here I am with a crew of 16 stagehands, and not more than 1 minute in to my day, my entire load in plan has been destroyed... It has been destroyed by my business partner, who was now blissfully asleep... There was no point in waking him up to yell, as it was too late to do anything about it... So what does one do?... Well one punts...
First thing up were the walls that sat off to the side of the carpeted area... I'm now working on two runs of flats, that mirror each other, around 56' apart, and once assembled they will be a bitch to move... But that's what we're doing and I hope to heaven that we'll be able to connect the ends with the parts that sit on the carpet as soon as I can get some carpet... The walls went up fairly well actually. We managed to convince the management that we had to run a truck around the front of the building for 10 minutes to pull two rolls of carpet in, and that went down reasonably well... After a number of long hours we did in fact connect the two side walls at center, and found we were only off by 5/16"... The back wall went in... It went in badly... It wanted nothing to do with standing up, and was constantly trying to tear itself apart and collapse... This was not good... Granted I knew that this would be the case, but the people above me refused over and over to give me any space behind the wall for some structure... Eventually we sorted it out by the third day of load in, but it was a close, and fairly ugly thing...They ended up giving me the space I wanted before, and in a particularly nasty way... Wouldn't it be nice if they listened once in a while?...
We had problems with just about every aspect of the set due to the rush before the load in... The mouldings didn't work as nicely as they should have, and required some late night cutting... The custom spandex projection screens came in too small from the manufacturer, so they all had to be stapled rather than just velcroed... The custom sewn sheer material for over the control booth windows came in too big, so they had to be cut and stapled rather than just velcroed...
The one and only aspect of this show that went exactly as planned was the railing... Perhaps it was because I had spent the better part of a month in the engineering of the damn things... Perhaps it was because I knew going it in would take unending hours to deal with... Perhaps it was because I started ignoring the 4 micro-managers above me and just focused everyone on the rails... Whatever it was, we did the railing in 7 hours... I had estimated 8... Had the people above me left me alone completely, I probably could have swung it in 6, but we still beat my mark, and that was cause for celebration in my book, since it had become a show about a railing... I also knew that once we got that in, the focus of the micro-managers would turn from me, and refocus on the sound department... I had the mental image of the red burning eye of Sauron from the Lord Of The Rings movies, swinging from me, to sound, and it was a weight that I was happy to be relieved of...
The rest of the in was relatively painless... Annoying to be sure, but not so bad really if we weren't so dead tired... The reality of the producers having spent an outrageous amount of money on the railing/sound system and it never really having a snowball's chance in hell of working in the short amount of time allotted took all the pressure off us for the remainder of the time... Granted I felt bad for the squeaks a bit, but hell, better them than us...
After 3 days of hell, I flew home to work on the other shows that we were trying to deal with concurrently... One was coming out the day I flew in, so I did that strike, and then jumped right in to the build of the next show the following day... I ceased to really care about Florida as we were way behind on the New York show, and the client was adding more stuff... I was actually supposed to fly back to Florida for the strike, but the reality of it was I simply couldn't afford the time, and since I had pulled most of the puppet strings putting the show in down there alone, my partner would certainly be able to strike it solo...
More on the other two shows next time...
So, where was I now?.. Ah yes, I was swamped with work, and I had finally just fixed my truck... Allow me to sum up the time between then, and now...
Imagine if you will, working 15 - 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for over a month straight, and overall, the month before that we ran around 12 hours a day, 7 days, with a couple holidays thrown in... You might imagine that to be somewhat tiring, and you would in fact be correct!.. Naturally it should never have come to that extreme, but somehow it always seems to go like that for some reason... The reason you ask?.. Well let me note a few of the highlights...
Over half the set, better than 40, 14' tall flats warped irretrievably over one night, and we had to rebuild them. This is an entire post of its own regarding materials....
Over half the moulding for the set was built incorrectly by one particular idiot I hired, and shall never hire again...
All of the upholstery had to be carefully ripped off and the base boards cut down, and then reupholstered due to a miscommunication someplace...
All of the custom tables we had made had to be reinforced after we got them in and stained when we learned that the shop had only glued the legs on as a result of one leg falling completely off.
All the speaker grills had to be re-cut for the tables as we failed to think about the material curving a bit, so they were re-cut, and stiff-back bends put on them.
The fabric coverings on the giant cubby units became an issue when we couldn't get the correct fabric in time, the alternate material was an absolute nightmare to work with, and the supplier was geologically slow. (and that's being generous...)
One of my carpenters was getting sicker by the day, and was committed elsewhere at night... He toughed it out to the end, but nobody has heard from him since then, and he isn't returning calls... We're all getting worried way beyond an employer... Two more days and we're going hunting for him, which will be tough since nobody knows where he actually lives...
We got kicked out of the paint space we had arranged for, which complicated things to say the least... We eventually found another space, but it was right down to the wire...
The client changed the finish treatment after everything was stained, so we had to re-do everything that was done...
Now, that was all before we put the scenery on the 3 trucks... I'll get in to what went on down there in another post that will cure insomnia... The kicker on all this was, once we were swimming with sharks regarding this show, we got contacted by the Brits we did a show for in the fall, and they had 2 shows during the time we were in Florida with this huge beast... Somehow, we managed it all... That however is another post...