USITT Day One

I can hear the dull roar of the opening night reception from my room as I type this and as much as I’d love to continue to mingle, I am already about to drop from sheer exhaustion. Today has been an incredibly good day, albeit long. I’ve been up for almost 23 hours.

USITT started today. Ellen, Ben and I boarded a train at 4 am in hopes of making our 6:30 flight to Phoenix, which we did without any complications (but including the usual travel stress). We have a surprising amount of down time at the conference and between the 5 of us the Rutgers booth should be well manned without any one person taking on more of the burden than the rest. As an added bonus, we discovered that a portion of our food may be covered by the school as well.

After arriving, checking into a hotel and eating breakfast as if a famine were about to fall, we poked our heads into the conference center. For some reason or another, I was the one chosen as the exhibitor for the school…the others were registered as students. The added bonus to being an exhibitor is that I can stick my head into the expo at will during the set up…an all access backstage pass if you will.

The size of our theatre world continues to amaze me. While the number of new faces is overwhelming I have managed to run into Tony, a fellow UWSP alumni, and Joanna from APT. The halls are crowded with hesitant or cocky undergrads, reminiscent faculty and a handful of grad students. In a way I feel slightly out of place and it is a bit disconcerting that the focus of the conference seems mostly academic, but a few worthwhile seminars are on the schedule. Plus the Expo, new products, networking and people watching is always worth it.

This afternoon I attended a workshop by makeup artist Michael Meyer about gelatin prosthetics. He is incredibly well spoken and the workshop was more encompassing than I originally thought it would be. My previous experience with gelatin in makeup design had been limited to FX blood, blisters and other assorted small applications. Michael demonstrated the creation of an entire mold from sculpting through application of the gelatin prosthetic in addition to covering all of the benefits and quirks of gelatin. The obvious reason being cost and ease of use over latex. However, it is extremely malleable under heat which he demonstrated in his finale…as a prototype for an independent film; Michael covered a silicone and foam arm aperture with a gelatin skin sleeve. Fitted in the aperture were a few tubes…like veins…that skimmed below the gelatin sleeve. When boiling gelatin blood was injected through the tube, the heat caused the sleeve to melt as if it was dissolving from the inside. The effect was incredibly gruesome and very very effective. The timing of this seminar couldn’t be better with my gore fx lecture approaching after break. The demo was right up my alley.

Add to the day the beauty of Phoenix itself and the gorgeous weather and I have absolutely nothing to complain about.