Vasantha Saparamadu - BMR 2008

Now onto some serious memories. BMR won't be complete if we don't talk about Simon. I'll first talk about bad things he did - because there was only one, as far as I was aware. I have already mentioned this incident to some of you. During rehearsals, for items that needed a CD-start cue in the middle, Simon asked me to start the CD by pressing SPACE on his laptop. Everything went well. During the show, I reminded Simon about the CD cue for 'muwanpelessa' item when the previous item finished. I also told him that when the MC says a particular phrase ('.....welawa 8.30 yi'), the CD has to be started. The MC said the phrase, I tried to press the SPACE on Simon's laptop. He brushed me aside and shouted, "Don't touch my computer, ever!". I just said, "Sorry" (No point in arguing with him at that time) and moved away, and there was a long pause there for the item, and eventually he started the CD.

Lesson learnt: As a result of this new practice of playing CDs from the hard disk, we no longer have control over when to start CDs. And items suffer. Perhaps, next time, we should take our own laptop to play CDs (like the visuals laptop. CD laptop has to be a dedicated one, and cannot share the visuals laptop) - so that the SCF sound guy can regain the control to play the CDs when he needs to play, without being at the mercy of Simon.

And, if we can, we should get rid of that pause when the BMR DVD is made.

Now, bad things we did to Simon. Well, where do I start?

1) The video man WHOM WE PAY.  Sadly, I mentioned this at our very first meeting too. In my past experience, one thing that causes great annoyance to Simon is the VERY late arrival of the video man, causing great disruption to Simon's work. And that's exactly what happened this time too. Simon, Ananda and I were just about to try synchronising a late-arrived CD with a DVD that had a glitch in its sound. (To Simon's credit, he was willing to try it, though he had the right to say that he didn't want any new CDs at the last moment). And this had to be disrupted because videoman just arrived (hours late) and he needed Simon. That was only the start. Right throughout the afternoon, Simon was interrupted many times by the videoman's wrong connector, faulty cable, faulty camera, running cables along the floor without properly securing them, no power lead etc, etc, etc. Even when we called the lunch break, videoman wanted more attention from Simon. Pissing off Simon this way has very bad consequences for the rest of the day.

Because of the late arrival and all the issues, we didn't even get a single chance to test live projection during the rehearsals.

Lesson: This is not a one-off occurrence.  We need to tackle this issue seriously. If a person we pay can't come on time, then we need to get someone who can. Contrast this with the true professionalism shown by all unpaid volunteers.

2) Lunch break. Although we called a lunch break, we didn't give Simon a lunch/toilet break at all, because he had to set up sounds for the band at that time. We shouldn't have scheduled it for that time. He ended up eating something kept under the sound desk while working. (I hope he didn't have a toilet break under the sound desk as well). Once or twice, at my real work, I had to go to a remote site to work with different vendors coming in at different times, and I ended up not having any break for 8 hours. In the end, I was real close to punching someone's nose in. So, I fully understand any great anger in Simon at that point in time (remember, this is still before the start of the show), and to his credit, he didn't behave violently!

Lesson: We have to schedule a real lunch break for Hills centre staff, so that they are free to leave the work.

3) Stupid fire act. In my opinion, this is when Simon exercised greatest restraint. Honestly, if I were Simon, I would have called a halt to proceedings at once. He had every right to stop the show, and as he had said, it was an illegal act. Full credit to Simon for the way he handled the situation.

Lesson: We have to do something to educate our artists as to what they can/can't do. Perhaps, we should get them to sign a document making them financially responsible for any deliberate OHS violations etc..


All in all, I think we need to lift our game before we can point the finger at Simon.

Regards,
Vasantha

P.S. I have put all my silly 'group photos' in one place http://nvsaparam.googlepages.com/scfgroupphotos
       Maybe in 10 years' time (Hopefully, by then, I would be able to just come in the queue, sit down and watch BMR!) I'll look back at them with fond memories.