On Wednesday of last week, I got a call for a last minute gig on Saturday called, "1000 Cats". It was going to be a simple day, bring up some lights on stage, key and fill the actor portraying 1000 cats, and call it a day. But by Thursday afternoon, it was turning into more than just a one look wonder.
The LD sent me a 15 minute song and three page document detailing each lighting cue that the performer and director wanted. 3 pages is a lot of cues. And we had about 3 hours to program it all in.
They were doing this shoot on the cheap. They were stuffing it all into one 10 hour workday, from set up to shoot to strike, all in 10 hours. Which means, once the lights were up, I was programming until they started blocking and camera testing, and even then I was programming up until they started shooting.
And then they ran it at least 25 times. Because it was on they cheap, they had two cameras and 150 hired extra's as audience. They set up the cameras in one position, run the scene three times and shoot it, then reposition the cameras and run it again, three more times and shoot it. And so went the afternoon, a constant repeat of "1000 Cats, 1000 stories, 9000 lives." The nice thing, is that I couldn't change lighting cues between takes for continuity sake. I pointed out to Nicole a few nights back a major continuity mistake on American Idol. In once scene there was one gobo rotating on the floor and when they cut to the next scene, it was a completely different gobo. We'll have none of that for 1000 cats.
Here's so it sticks in your head, here's a one minute sample of the 15 minute opus. Hopefully enough to stick the lyric in your head too...
And that's just one minute...
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