Word

The word for today is “GAFFER”.

A gaffer in the motion picture industry is the head of the electrical department. They are responsible for the execution of the lighting plan for a production.  An experienced gaffer can coordinate the entire job of lighting, including designing the lighting plan. The job is both technical and creative.

The name derives from the early days of film when they were shot mostly in natural light. Filming stages had canvas roofs and the natural light was controlled and directed by moving large tent cloths, to let in more or less light, using long poles called gaffs.  In 16th Century English, the term “gaffer” denoted a man who was the head of any organized group of labourers.  So the gaffer is the person in charge of men with long poles.  Not quite.

Given knowledge of the time of day and conditions to be portrayed the gaffer will manage all the resources needed, from electrical generators, lights, cable, and rigging to manpower. Gaffers are responsible for knowing how to gel the lights or windows (cover with coloured plastic sheeting) to achieve a variety of effects, such as bringing the dawn as night passes into day. They can re-create the flicker of light as a subway car goes through the station, or the motion of light inside an airplane banking across the sky.

Sometimes the gaffer is titled in the credits as Chief Lighting Technician.

The gaffer works with the director of photography (DP) or, in television, the Lighting Director (LD). The DP/LD is responsible for the overall lighting design, but they may give a little or a lot of latitude to the gaffer on these matters, depending on their working relationship. The gaffer also works closely with the key grip, who is in charge of some of the equipment related to the lighting.  And the gaffer will usually have an assistant called a best boy. Other members of the lighting crew are called ‘electricians’ though some may have no electrician knowledge or training and may do things like set up stands or move cables.

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Hi

Well, I’m back. The move went really well. What took so long is we bought it this time, not another apartment or duplex. A real genuine house, 3 bedroom, 2 bath. An office for each of us. Not a desk in the livingroom or half the spare room. I never minded sharing the work space, but I’m a bit messy and she didn’t always appreciate the clutter.

So I’m looking forward to getting back on schedule and having something to say.

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Distraction

Ah, how life can be a distraction. We are moving, again, but this is very good. It’s only that I’ve spent a month getting it together. And though the truck comes tomorrow it’ll be a bit longer before it’s really over.

Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

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Boilerplate

Boilerplate – heavy piece of sheet iron, later steel, used in steam boiler construction.
Boilerplate – generic text in a contract or policy, any text the same from document to document.

How words get associated facsinates me. How does a piece of sheet metal equal generic text? I didn’t know.

So to find out we go to the late 1800s newspaper business and a company called Western Newspaper Union. Their idea was to make available national and international news that a small local paper would find hard, expensive, or impossible to gather. Thus the birth of syndicated news. Western would gather and typeset the national and international stories and distribute to their subscribers the plates to fit the local printing press. Then the local would print their papers with the syndicated news from these plates and the local news and advertising from their own plates. All the subscribers to Western got the same plates, therefore the papers printed the same text.

See where we’re going here?

A local paper set their copy into a soft alloy plate. Western plates had to be shipped all over so their plates were harder and heavier to withstand shipping. Ergo the slang ‘boilerplate’ came to mean the heavier Western plates and so by extension to mean the identical text printed from those plates

Though typesetting and printing is all computerized today the terminology remains.

In the future I’ll look at filmmaking terms and stagecraft terms.

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Inspire me

There was an interesting comment thread going on at another blog (be advised Hazel may be a tad wild for sensitive tastes) I thought I’d expand on.

The subject of an artists inspiration. To avoid the ‘art’ ‘artist’ definition discussions I’m using the phrase “working artist”. This is MY DEFINITION and means someone trying to live (get paid, provide necessities) through the production of art. See earlier post for  a definition of art.

I am inspired by living and my observation is other artists are also. It could be how the flowers smelled in Monet’s garden, for Degas the turn of the dancers leg, Wayne Thiebaud seems to see art in icing. What ever it is it’s in the life of the artist.

My friend Sondra Olson I think is inspired by the dark. By the way she is showing again, reception 7 March, 2009 at:

Winters Participation Gallery Center for the Arts
18 Main Street Winters, CA 95694 530-795-0608 wintersarts@gmail.com

But what inspires us is secondary to the drive to create. If one is not driven and willing to work, hard, all the inspiration in the world won’t paint that canvas or etch that plate. And that is the line; that is where the art comes into play. Work, doing, is what makes art. All the inspiration in the world and $1.85 will get you a cup of coffee (if you don’t drink coffee $2.00 will get you a Starbucks).

Off to my arting.

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I mean ART

A friend and I were talking about art recently and how it is or is not defined. Thought I could expand on a comment I posted elsewhere (about 12 down).

How do we define ART? You could ask an artist, you could ask an expert, you could ask a critic. Good, now you have five different definitions; yours, one from the artist, one from the expert, and two from the critic.

Over the years, and I have a few, I learned one that really works, for me, try it. ART is communication. It is a specific communication and it intends to communicate. Although one could communicate with only one’s self, ie. ‘art for art sake’, and that can be a valid art, it has a small audience. Most people driven to work in the field want to communicate with others.

As a side note it is a drive, it consumes you and restores you at the same time. James Benning (filmmaker) said, “You never clock out as an artist. You can’t quit the job either. It’s somewhat obsessive.” David Larwill (Australian painter) says, “Do it because you can’t do anything else. Once you’ve decided, don’t do anything else, …’”.

So therefore ART has to have a message. Something it is trying to say, something the artist wants to get across. Be aware however that if you explicitly state that message it moves away from art. It then becomes an advertisement, or illustration, or manual.

Because ART must elicit a contribution from the viewer/listener/etc. The music makes you move, tap your foot, dance. It makes you see an image in your mind eye or makes you feel some emotion. Likewise the poem, the book, the painting/drawing/graphic, or the movie. You experience it, it effects you. That is the communication of the artist.

And how good is the ART? How well that message comes across, now THAT is the quality of the piece. It has got to SAY something to the recipient or it is just “noise”. L. Ron Hubbard said, “Art is the quality of communication.”

That is what I mean when I say ART.

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