The Water Street Project Week 1: Setup and Initial Preparation
Disclaimer: I know setup and initial preparation sounds boring, but I also worked on some really fun projects!
A lot of my work this week has been emailing companies and buildings about where my performance will be and what equipment I will use. First, I contacted three different lighting rental companies and asked for quotes for renting LED lights. Most of these companies are located in southern NJ or outside of NYC where they do the majority of their business.
Here’s what I’ve determined that I’ll need to rent:
6 LED lights (I’d prefer Elation 200 Par LEDs)
A lighting board that I can write pre-set lighting cues to and has USB functionality, like this one:
Ideally, I’d like to have this equipment 3 days to 1 week before the showcase to troubleshoot and work with the actual equipment I’ll be using.
Next, I spoke with different professors and campus staff about where I could host this performance. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling conflict with my first choice, and so I am heavily considering rental options for other locations on-campus. I may try and book an earlier date at my first-choice location, and film the event ahead of time to have a demo to present at the final showcase.
Onto the more fun projects!
One exciting thing that I did this week was scout different places in proximity to my band where we could shoot music videos. Our first choice would be to film right inside our own practice studio. We have made a huge renovation over this past summer to our practice space (new floors, absorbers, diffusers, repainting the walls, opening up the ceiling, and a very heavy antique door).
Oh, and we also made a small isolation booth, too. (Two more heavy glass sliding doors for windows)
This studio space is ready-to-go for recording. And since we own the space, there would be no cost or time constraints to record in it.
Another location nearby is Footbridge Park. This place has a large, open field with a river nearby. It’s very scenic and close to hiking trails for other camera shots.
Here is White Lake, over in Hardwick, NJ. There are other hiking trails around the lake that we could use for some other good nature shots.
Finally, Main Street of Blairstown is a 30-second walk from Water Street’s studio. Many of the buildings on this street have an older, historic feel to them (some of the scenes from Friday the 13th were filmed here), and the street isn’t particularly overcrowded; we could probably film right in the middle of the street.
Lastly, my band and I have finally finished creating our second music release after a year of recording, mixing and mastering! We are planning to release a six-song EP titled Dear You in spring or summer of 2018. This past week, we finished our revisions for mixing and now have the final, mastered tracks.
Next week, I would like to have some specific rental quotes from companies and narrow my choice down to a single company, if I choose to rent equipment. I would like to also talk with Professor Ault about spaces within our building that would allow for me to hang lights and set up a PA system for my band. I will also determine if I could instead plan my performance for an earlier date in the Student Center of TCNJ.
As far as content, I would like to have a couple updated prototypes of the final project: These could be rough sketches for social media posts, 1–2 web pages, and/or some photos for our website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
