Updates: April 2012

1. Sound Production for Tour in Norway

City of Ålesund

Photo: Terje Rakke

Week 13 was spent on the road doing sound for a band from a local Folkehøgskole, which is a particular type of school much found in Scandinavia. The school was Rødde Folkehøgskole, which was fun for me cause they used to collaborate with the Folkehøgskole I went to myself many years ago.

The tour went through the inland South of Trondheim and eventually to the town of Oppdal. After Oppdal the tour bus drove on towards the coast to the cities of Molde, Ålesund and some of their surrounding areas. After Ålesund we had an over-night journey in the bus, crossing fjords with ferries and driving through the deep mountain valleys of the coast. A few days later I was back at Rødde Folkehøgskole to do sound for their final show at their own school. What a show! Playing for the home-audience was definitely something special and all we had been working at for a week came together as perfectly as it possibly could.

The band played a mixture of 60’s covers from the likes of the Beatles, modern blues-rock and their own original compositions. No doubt there were some songwriters in the pack to look out for as well!

Thanks very much to the iMusic tour crew for letting me travel around with you for a week of fun! If you want a glimpse behind the scenes, here’s days: 1, 2 (my favourite), 3 and 4.

2. High School Show

Like announced in a previous post March saw another Creative High School Project at the Christian Senior High-school in Trondheim. This time the topic was ‘Justice.’ For one week a great team of almost 160 students took part in making two final shows around the topic of justice. In particular, we narrowed in at the problem of human trafficking and the growing number of slaves around the world in our own days.

The student-group was split into dancers, actors, singers, band, designers, scenography, video-producers and more. An editorial team kept the wires hot in social media to promote the show and presented the whole group with an overview of what the other groups were doing on a day-to-day basis.

The show was received incredibly well by audience, school staff and parents and we got a real sense that the quality of this production was touching new heights. Leading the production was great fun thanks to a very dedicated group of students and a strong team of professional instructors from the creative industries!

For more on the Christmas show, click on this link!

3. And…

Much time has also been spent on writing research proposals and the outlines of a possible television series. More to come!

Creative High-school Project, December 2011

Right before Christmas each year, the Christian Senior High-school in Trondheim sets all of its freshers in motion for a grand scale production. Some 150 students work together during an intensive week to produce a final show comprising of dancers, actors, singers, band and film-clips. All the elements of the show are fully integrated through the storyline of the project. In addition to those who are on stage there are also a number of ‘behind the scenes groups.’ These included a cooking group who provided treats for the whole project; a ‘good deeds’ group who did community work and collected a lot of clothes to be sent to a charity in Eastern Europe; a costume and scenography group that worked with the actors, dancers and the stage; a stage design and stage attire group who worked with musicians, singers and with the stage design; a photography group who prepared an exhibition in one of the halls, plus provided visual content for the screens during the show; and finally, the editorial group who documented the whole project through films that were shown during the morning meetings, an official blog and through a number of different social media.

The tag line for the project was ‘real image.’ At the morning meetings all students were gathered, and through those meetings we aimed to establish both a Biblical view and a practical life approach, and to marry them together. We put a particular focus on this at the first morning meeting to set the pace for the rest of the week. At the first meeting, all the group-leaders came up on stage and talked about their personal relation to image and self-worth. To bring in further angles to the topic we also used a number of video presentations. And since it’s a creative project in Norway we showed a few ski-movies, base-jumping films and music videos just for fun and to loosen up everyone’s shoulders a bit.

With 11 production-groups in motion and a team of professional creatives leading them, I was hired to coordinate the project and lead all groups towards the same final goal. A lot of admin and meetings, but I also got to sneak off to hold a master-class in sound-engineering and lead some of the stage-building work.

A week is a short time for a production this size, but the students and leaders really put in the effort and the final production was something to be proud of for everyone! The feedback from the regular staff was very positive and it was said to have been one of the best projects to date.

The show was on the same day as the School’s final Christmas celebration and the day was ended with a big meal for all the students at the in-house sport’s hall, before they went off to a Christmas service in church. A great punctuation mark to the semester before the holidays!

You can read the official blog by the editorial group with pictures and film here.