2009 Show
Last Year's show - Sat. Oct. 31 and Sun. Nov. 1 from 6 to 9pm
This show was based on the 2008 show, but with a bunch more action! A parrot, an Oracle Skull, and skeleton pirates dominated the landscape, or rather, seascape.
And we have the entire show online! It's in two parts, here's part 1:
And here's part 2:
See a motion control clip (with another sound bite) and the full "Behind The Scenes" feature on the Build page.
2007 Show
In 2007 we started the first night an hour late (due to technical difficulties) and the show ran 30 minutes, which was TOO LONG. On the second night we tightened it up by cutting two of the clips.
We had three skeletons for the original Skeleton Theatre concept.
On your left as you looked at the stage we had Boney Danza. In the middle, Gory Spelling, and on your right, Dead McMahon.
In 2007 the center Skull on the proscenium arch - Peter Graves - talked and sang. In 2006 his lower jaw wasn't completed in time for the show.
The Comedy and Tragedy masks the first year were only painted. In 2007, they were 3-d models that could sing. Two other skulls that sang were named Click and Clack. They were mounted on the Torms, small walls at the front sides of the stage.
The 2007 show running order of clips was:
"Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast
Lord of the Rings
Monsters, Inc.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Someday My Prince Will Come" from Snow White
Toy Story
The Matrix
Alladin
The Empire Strikes Back
Fight Club
Finding Nemo
Casablanca
"Bohemian Rhapsody"
Curtain Call
Cut from the second night's show were "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" from Guys and Dolls and the gravedigger scene from Hamlet. That's showbiz.
Here's the "Aladdin" clip:
And here's the "Toy Story" clip:
2006 Show
The 2006 show went really well, considering that we were still programming arm motion 2 hours into the run on the first night. Out of a 3 hour show.
The show was pretty evenly divided between child fare and adult fare. The running order was:
2 clips from Harry Potter (the first one)
"I am 16 Going on 17" from The Sound of Music
2 clips from Shrek (the first one)
Pride and Prejudice
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
Apocalypse Now (the "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" scene)
A Bug's Life
"Go Tell it on The Mountain", our big finish.
Here's the "Pride and Prejudice" clip:
And here's "I am 16 Going on 17":
(audio has some dropouts, sorry about that)
If you have a request of a particular clip you'd like to see, send me an e-mail.
The show was run by 2 PC's:
1 for all motion control
1 for all lighting instrument control
And they controlled...
16 channels of dimming for lights
2 moving lights
3 color scrollers
fog machines
bubble machines
5 talking skulls to complement and interact with the three onstage skeletons
Gear Shout-Outs
Wouldn't be possible without VSA - Visual Show Automation. It runs all of the animation and can send out DMX to control lights. We used it in 2006 for everything, but in 2007 we had too many channels to fit within its maximum of 64. But man is it a good value for the money and we'll be using it as the centerpiece brain again in 2008.
DMXControl lighting program. FREE-WARE! It even has a 3d virtual stage that you can virtually hang your lights on and see what your cues are going to look like. This saved us since we couldn't afford to be spending a week outside writing our light cues. Once all of the cues were written, VSA triggered DMXControl to take the cues at the appropriate moment.
Microsoft Visual Basic and Pic Microprocessors. My cousin David got out of school a few years ago and immediately went to work programming for Amazon, and now programs for Google. In his not-copious spare time he comes over here and programs for Skeleton Theatre.
Visual Basic (a programming language) is used with a Microchip Pic for the mini-skeleton arm motion programmer. It was an improvement in 2007, allowing me to program all arm movements (3 servos per arm) for a given skeleton in one pass. In 2006 I had to program all of the servos separately, which is why the skeletons looked a bit spastic in their movements. The mini-skeleton I move around to capture arm motion is much more organic and the movements in 2007 reflected that. Thanks to some programming languages and some programming chops from David.
