So here is some update on Stanley- Last fall Jim gave me a little tutorial on Pro tools, and I have worked with it in my studio, so I can now record new tracks for Stanley as needed.  I used it to have Stanley sing Happy Birthday for a friend.  Stanley rode on his bike through a restaurant to the table and sang the song..Unfortunately I was hoping that it would also allow me to record Stanley's movements separately, but that is not possible as is.

I recently have been concentrating on making him more independent. I bought an FM transmitter, so that I could control Stanley from a distance with the ipod.  But FM transmission does not keep the signal from the L/R channels completely separate, and the loud servo motor control track sound bleeds over Stanley's voice.  So I decided to split the signal at the Ipod.  I had a broken set of wireless headphones- I gutted it and repackaged the receiver into a small box. I made a custom Y-cable that feeds out of the ipod and splits the signal to the FM transmitter (voice), and the wireless transmitter (servo control).  SO now Stanley could be across the room with a radio in his belly and I could play Ipod tracks without touching him.  

 
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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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We are in the process of assembling points of view from as many digital performance practitioners as we can. We thought it only fair that DPI's Director, Hal Eagar, be the first answer the questions he drafted.

The questions:
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