Technology, Technology Everywhere!

Even though I am officially on spring break from grad school, I do still have to teach all day, and then right after school I have musical rehearsal. I am directing and producing Chateaugay Central School's spring musical, The Wizard of Oz, and I am starting to get super excited. The reason that I thought I would blog about this is because the technology that is needed to run this show is really insane. A few weeks ago, I was saying to myself, "Why did you pick this show? It is a nightmare!" But now I feel confident and satisfied with the show that we will presenting to the public (By the way, the show is next weekend, March 27th, 28th, and 29th). So I thought I would share the technology that is being used for this show.

First things first, this show is a true classic. One thing that we really wanted to do well was Dorothy's dream sequence. When the twister hits her home, Dorothy hits her head and falls, and she "sees" people and animals flying by her window because they have been swept up in the twister. We originally planned to use green screen technology to make this happen: film the kids in front of a green screen, and then fill in the background with rolling clouds. That didn't work out so well. What we actually did was project a rolling clouds video on the big screen in the auditorium, and then filmed the kids in front of the video. It looks really, really great! The hard part was that I had to edit about 18 minutes of video footage into 2 minutes. I used a great editing program, Final Cut Express, in order to create the final video. If you would like to see our finished product, click here.

The next big technology obstacle was creating a talking floating head for the Wizard of Oz character. If you haven't seen the movie (c'mon, everyone has!), you may a little lost. But anyway, what we decided to do was actually cast a student to play the "projected head" of the Wizard of Oz. We have a projecter hooked up in a lighting room above the auditorium. Our projected Oz stands in the room and says his line into a camera that we have hooked up to the projector. We put a cool video effect on the camera so his projected looks kind of spooky. We have a wireless microphone with a voice effect on it, and tada! we have our Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately, I don't have a video of that, but trust me, it's pretty neat.

The last use of technology could be considered less sophisticated than the previous two, but it's the one that I am the most excited about. Of course, everyone knows that the wicked witch has to melt in the end of the show. I am very lucky that my dad and his friend actually like building things for my musicals because they spend days building a rediculously cool trap door for our witch. Since we can't saw through our stage floor, they build a platform, and then cut a trap door out of the platform. Now, here's the cool part. By using a simple system of pullies, all our stage crew has to do is hold a rope, and let our witch melt slowly into the platform. I know it's not as exciting as computers and projectors and video editing, but it is technology in its own right. I think it's going to look incredible up on the stage.

I wanted to share all of this information because I really think that technology is such an important thing in our lives. I do use technology in my classroom quite often, but I also like to use technology in my extra-curricular activities as well. I have a lot of experience with sound boards and light boards and wireless microphones and monitors and amps and all kinds of interesting things. The only reason I know all of this because I got involved in the musical. It just amazes me what technology can do. The fact that I all I did was film my students in front of the big screen, and now I have this really interesting and cool video to present to the public. I think it's really going to blow people away. I think technology can help us do things that would be otherwise be a real challenge, and technology can really empower us and make us feel like we can do the impossible. Ultimately, I think it's essential that we become familiar with as much technology as possible so that we can become comfortable and confident with technology. Then we can pass along those positive feelings about technology to our students.