Interesting question! I think that the anonymous camera operators are stand-ins for the paparazzi and for social media followers and hangers-on more generally. They are running around the stage in a huge buzz of activity all the time, so they are definitely a presence, although they can't really compete with the on-screen action. It is a technical marvel.
Hmm. Yeah, I get the point of paparazzi/social followers/social media addiction/attention, etc. But... It just seems bizarre to me not to have them in all black. I am still haunted by a blunder in high school where I was a stage hand in a group of people moving stuff between scenes. After we all cleared the stage, I told our technical director that whoever moved the lamp hadn't plugged it in like they were supposed to. He told me to go back out there and fix it. I did, but as 700 of my high school classmates and their parents looked on, I searched in the dark for the outlet. In futility. As everyone watched. I never found it and just gave up. I must have been on the stage alone for only a minute but it seemed like an eternity. After I fled the stage in failure, the lights came up and the actress sauntered in and the first thing she did was reach for the lamp. WHICH DID NOT GO ON. Huge laughter from the audience. I never heard the end of that incident in high school. Especially from my older brother. So, yeah, it seems bizarre that the stage hands are no highlighted. But maybe that's just me!
(3) The last thing the Sarah Snook show reminded me of is the multiple roles played by Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove (3 diff roles) or Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets (7!). One image of the Sarah Snook show featured half a dozen characters played by her. There is one shot in Kind Hearts of all seven characters played by Alec Guinness - achieved by masking different sections of the camera lens and re-winding and re-shooting the footage -Alec changing costumes between shots. The camera had to be locked in place - moving it an inch would break the illusion and the director of photography even slept next to the camera to make sure no one moved it! That was cutting edge technology in 1949.
Fascinating article, Claire. Several thoughts: (1) I'm always interested in the intersection between art and new technology that makes it possible. F'rinstance, surf guitar music couldn't exist before the early sixties because the special Fender amps (to get that "wet" sound/delay and distortion pedals/guitars didn't exit. Sarah Snook wouldn't have been able to do this play a decade or two before. Yes, cameras could be hooked up to projectors, but there would be a slight delay. Or distracting difference in video quality between pre-shot and live images. It's certainly a technical masterpiece. (2) In the show, the camerafolk are in black but their hands are uncovered, as are their faces. No gloves, no masks. So disembodied hands and faces in the dark. It's an interesting choice. In high school I did stage crew (designing sets, never onstage) - and I remembered being mortified during a play when a disembodied hand appeared from behind a scrim to pull scenery offstage. Theatre by its nature is artifice - as opposed to movies, where a lot of CGI is done to remove "the man behind the curtain" - f'rinstance, in Mad Max:Fury Road most of the CGI was to remove the insane amounts of safety gear/rigging/vehicles used in production. It's an interesting choice to highlight the camerafolk in this way. Was it to emphasize the way that we are all constantly surrounded by cameras these days? To celebrate un-celebrating behind-the-scenes people? To emphasize how this is a one-person show but it's not really? Or something else?
Interesting question! I think that the anonymous camera operators are stand-ins for the paparazzi and for social media followers and hangers-on more generally. They are running around the stage in a huge buzz of activity all the time, so they are definitely a presence, although they can't really compete with the on-screen action. It is a technical marvel.
Hmm. Yeah, I get the point of paparazzi/social followers/social media addiction/attention, etc. But... It just seems bizarre to me not to have them in all black. I am still haunted by a blunder in high school where I was a stage hand in a group of people moving stuff between scenes. After we all cleared the stage, I told our technical director that whoever moved the lamp hadn't plugged it in like they were supposed to. He told me to go back out there and fix it. I did, but as 700 of my high school classmates and their parents looked on, I searched in the dark for the outlet. In futility. As everyone watched. I never found it and just gave up. I must have been on the stage alone for only a minute but it seemed like an eternity. After I fled the stage in failure, the lights came up and the actress sauntered in and the first thing she did was reach for the lamp. WHICH DID NOT GO ON. Huge laughter from the audience. I never heard the end of that incident in high school. Especially from my older brother. So, yeah, it seems bizarre that the stage hands are no highlighted. But maybe that's just me!
(3) The last thing the Sarah Snook show reminded me of is the multiple roles played by Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove (3 diff roles) or Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets (7!). One image of the Sarah Snook show featured half a dozen characters played by her. There is one shot in Kind Hearts of all seven characters played by Alec Guinness - achieved by masking different sections of the camera lens and re-winding and re-shooting the footage -Alec changing costumes between shots. The camera had to be locked in place - moving it an inch would break the illusion and the director of photography even slept next to the camera to make sure no one moved it! That was cutting edge technology in 1949.
Fascinating article, Claire. Several thoughts: (1) I'm always interested in the intersection between art and new technology that makes it possible. F'rinstance, surf guitar music couldn't exist before the early sixties because the special Fender amps (to get that "wet" sound/delay and distortion pedals/guitars didn't exit. Sarah Snook wouldn't have been able to do this play a decade or two before. Yes, cameras could be hooked up to projectors, but there would be a slight delay. Or distracting difference in video quality between pre-shot and live images. It's certainly a technical masterpiece. (2) In the show, the camerafolk are in black but their hands are uncovered, as are their faces. No gloves, no masks. So disembodied hands and faces in the dark. It's an interesting choice. In high school I did stage crew (designing sets, never onstage) - and I remembered being mortified during a play when a disembodied hand appeared from behind a scrim to pull scenery offstage. Theatre by its nature is artifice - as opposed to movies, where a lot of CGI is done to remove "the man behind the curtain" - f'rinstance, in Mad Max:Fury Road most of the CGI was to remove the insane amounts of safety gear/rigging/vehicles used in production. It's an interesting choice to highlight the camerafolk in this way. Was it to emphasize the way that we are all constantly surrounded by cameras these days? To celebrate un-celebrating behind-the-scenes people? To emphasize how this is a one-person show but it's not really? Or something else?