My Funny Bone Still Hurts

Last weekend (March 9th, 10th and 11th) was the Gibson County Theatre Company’s production of The Foreigner.  As a member of the board, even though I wasn’t acting or a member of the production team, the show’s director (and our fearless leader) Fred, kept me busy.  I did (almost) all the artwork and marketing for The Foreigner.  Our last Marketing Director left the board, so that she could focus on some other projects and no one wanted to job. That means it fell to Fred, as our President – and there was no way he could direct the show, be board president and do marketing, so I was happy to help with everything.  I just hope I didn’t screw it up too badly.

Kayci, my best friend since like 3rd grade, was in charge of the House (tickets, concessions, etc) – so she asked me to handle our season ticket area during show nights. I know! What was she thinking?  It was a great gig.  It gave me something to do before the shows and during intermission, but allowed me to watch all 3 shows through with the audience.

But my favorite job was the photography.  I’ve got a fancy camera, so I got to take all of the promotional and archival photos for the show.  Basically that means that I went and set through dress rehearsals all last week, I spent a night setting in one place about center stage taking photos of the show from a single location, and another night running around, standing on chairs, and sliding across the floor taking lots of fun promotional shots.

It’s super fun, and I love doing it… sometimes I just think I need more sleep.  I have no idea how the cast and crew manage their jobs and rehearsals every night for 2 months.  I think I’d have died of exhaustion after the first couple weeks.

I think all the work everyone put in was well worth it.  Our production of The Foreigner broke all sorts of records for the theatre company.  It was our first show to sell out 2 nights.  We’ve sold out on Friday nights before, but this was our first sell out on both Friday and Saturday night.  On top of that, the production also brought in our largest Sunday crowd ever.  But then, why wouldn’t it?  The show was just fantastic.  It’s easily the most impressive show I’ve seen the company do, since I joined the board in 2010.

What’s it about?

The Foreigner is about a couple of British “blokes” who are visiting a rural fishing lodge in Georgia.  One of them, “Froggy” LeSeuer, is a British demolition expert who occasionally runs training sessions at a nearby army base. Visiting Betty’s fishing lodge is something that “Froggy” does every year, but this year he’s brought along a friend, a pathologically shy young man named Charlie who is overcome with fear at the thought of making conversation with strangers.  To try to calm Charlie down, “Froggy” tells him that he will come up with a way that no one will speak to Charlie the whole time he’s there – without making Charlie appear rude, of course.

What brilliant plan comes to “Froggy?”  His friend is a foreigner, who speaks no English.  Charlie doesn’t want to go along with the plan, but before he can tell anyone the truth, he accidentally overhears more than he should—the evil plans of a sinister, two-faced minister and his redneck associate; the fact that the minister’s fiancee, Catherine, is pregnant; and many other damaging revelations made with the thought that Charlie doesn’t understand a word being said.

The fact that Charlie really does understand, keeps the funny going all the way to the end, when the bad guy gets defeated and everyone goes away happy- well, the good guys anyway.

What to do now?

Now that the show is over, I’m working on going through all the photos and short video clips I took.  I’ve got over 3,000 photos and a half a dozen videos to go through.  Do you want to help?

First thing’s first – get rid of photos that are out of focus (blurry).  Even with auto focus, I do occasionally end up with blurry photos, mostly because I like to manually focus my short video clips, and I sometimes forget to reset the auto focus when I’m done.  You’d think I would notice, and I usually do, but when I’m shooting in high speed continuous (that’s 7+ photos a second), it’s pretty easy to get several blurry photos before it’s corrected.

After I’m done getting rid of all the blurry photos, I’ll need to go back through the photos and determine best shots.  One of the perks of shooting in high speed continuous is that I have a lot of options … but it also means that I have a lot more work.

Once I’ve got the best shots picked out, it’s time for some basic editing.  I don’t like to do much in the way of color correcting because the stage lights often give the set and characters a completely different look from real life, and I want to keep that.  I’ll probably do a little color adjusting where necessary, but mostly I just want to crop my photos effectively.  And I might have to do a few fun little artsy things as well.

Do you take lots of photos?  What do you do with them when you’re done?  Do you upload them to your computer and forget about them?  Take an get them printed by the stack? Publish them to the web?  What cameras/lenses and software do you use?  Do you use different products for shooting different subjects?  I’d love to know.