DPI:

What is your role? There can be a lot of overlap among design elements,particularly media and the interaction between set, lighting, and sound designers

Hal Eagar:

What I'm better at than I wish I were is the stage install effects, and control systems. Very hardware and software. And not totally in the heart of the media. I'm not much into linear editing and don't know the newest editing software in and out, and I really like atomic media assets over linked footage. I mean I like having hundreds of short files to play with as apposed to a 60minute video.  At least until the end of rehearsal and development, then when things are set you start to want a nice long video.

Anyway I was saying that to explain how I'm not a video editor, but what I am is a media manipulator.  Effects, timing, and placement.  But on stage, not on the final cut timeline.

I think I'm a decent animator, but with a narrow style set maybe that limits when that is applicable.  And it's very time consuming, so I don't take on that role in the majority of the work I do, but it's some of the most fun work.

DPI:

How many people / roles / time does it take to add media to a live performance work?

Hal Eagar:

A whole lot. Maybe one person can be them all, but it sucks to be that person. It's like shooting a film and building a interactive video installation.
DP, editor, CG, computer specialist, video specialist, rigger, ... I 'd really have to stop abd think for a while.

But I like there to be 2-3 people on the video team at least. With overlap in skills of course but maybe broken down in these areas of expertise and responsibility.
Shooting and editing, install cuing, and stage effects.
And if possible tack on an operator/SM.

DPI:

When do you join the creative process? When would you like to join?

Hal Eagar:

Well I 'say' early. But it depends on the project and my schedule. Certainly well before rehearsal starts. It can be fun to bomb in on day one of rehearsal and just build as they work. In fact I love that, but it probably does not make for the best work, and it's hard on the body to work as long and hard as that demands.

But I do feel you have to start mixing the media into rehearsal really early if not on day one. There is so much volubility to how it will work. You want to know what works and what does not before you spent too much time on it. And you need time to discover the stuff you never expected. If you don't start doing that until tech week. Or even the week or two before that then there may not be time to do anything about it. Also stuff (video images) looks so different on your screen and on stage. I know that but I still get caught by it all the time. It's can be so cool and clear to me on the computer, but then it turns out to be just noise on stage.

One thing I've noticed about puppetry is that because it's hard work, and rehearsal is harder than performance even it's good to build rehearsal periods with breaks, two weeks on two off. It gives you a chance to rest sore muscles and rebuild problem puppets as well. Well that sort of on and off schedule is great for video as well because it can take a lot of hours to build animations or shoot mini films. And the iterative process is also good for discovery and play. For me personally a break of more than a month is to much and I'll loose focus and momentum.
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DPI:

Why use media on stage?

Hal Eagar:

It just seems like an obvious extension to stage spectacle to me, it always has. Now maybe I should be doing something less obvious but I seem to be good at theatre and media which makes it hard to switch gears; besides after 13 years it's finally caught on; so no stopping now. But really it's satisfing because I'm good at improvising and doing things for which there are no maps or standard techniques. If a technique becomes established then someone with more patience will probably learn to do it better and with more finesse than I do it fairly quickly. But I hope I have moved on to figuring out some new problem by then. Also art, particularly where art and technology meet is one of the sweet spots to do that kind of playful work. I would not want to be take risks or allowed to take the kind of chances and experimental approaches if I was writing code for medical devices, or even contact databases. I do engage in that type of more staid as a day job and it can have some enjoyable challenges, but it's not as playful and the results are not so visceral.

So I said nothing about why the audience should be interested yet. Well, the direct visceral results may be enough for some audience, but that's not my thought when working.

Sometimes do I think about wanting to compete with film and TV and video games but to get to caught up with your competitors may get in the way of fresh ideas so I'll leave that to the media experts, and try to approach media in theatre as a novice not an adept. And so the resasond I do is just to discover what can be done.

DPI:

Do you have a defined aesthetic prior to seeing a script? What is your aesthetic?

Hal Eagar:

Spectacle is defiantly my aesthetic, I said that maybe the work I do is not exactly the work I like to go see, but even so it's still about creating a bit more spectacle. That's the magic that makes it worth it to go to the theatre. Which brings me to the next thing I was going to say, which is that my aesthetic is not cinematic. On the one hand I hardly ever go to the movies, so I probably have one of the least developed senses of cinematic vocabulary of anyone in this country, let alone people working in video. But all the same it's not foreign to me it is the new language of images, an we use it everywhere. I think a lot of the urge to bring media on stage is to create a cinematic effect, because we think in that visual language, and maybe because the theatre is trying to compete with film. And though I probably do, do that a lot, it's really not my intent, there is no way for even a huge budget theatre to compete with a multi-million dollar film. So what theatre needs to give you is something else. Seeing someone you know on stage is one thing, which I love, but it's not something "media" can bring you.
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DPI:

What media effects have made you cringe as an audience member?

like fog on stage. Can be good but is dangerously cheesy.

Hal Eagar:

Projecting a picture of the "set", I admit It still sometimes happens in my designs, and actually the "All Wear Bowlers" example I list as a favorite was exactly that, so it's not that it's 100% bad, but it's defiantly a dangerous choice.

Another thing to watch out for is "one big screen", it's not necessarily bad, but it's got a lot of danger to it. There is a high chance of it either being dull, or drawing too much audience focus; or worse both. I like multiple screens, or heck no screens at all, just free floating media.

DPI:

What is your favorite tool(s)?

Hal Eagar:

Well the easy answer is the Computer, or maybe the Nvidia or ATI 3D card. Because maybe my favorite effect is trilinear filtering, (which is an anti-aliasing filter on resized textures. I could blab about that more but it's a bit obscure and uninteresting.

Anyway it's the software that you interact with, so how about I change the question to my favorite software on that "computer"?

Flash, it works the way I think animation ought to, with free running nested time lines.

I really like the nested structures of everything from computer programs, to little drawers, to good play scripts. Anyway programming flash has gotten more complex as they add more and more features, but it's still manages to stay in that sweet spot for me of being easy to just bang out something quick, while letting you get deep and solid and complex when you need to.

Tack a shell like SwfStudio or Zink onto flash and it's a great fast prototype development platform. And that's what theatre is, fast development.

(and hey I think the new flash beta may finally use some of that 3D trilinear scaling)

I still love PERL for the same reasons, easy to hack or get deep and powerful. Though it's way out of style now days, I should be hacking Python instead, but I still prefer PERL.
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