“Ok ready, curtain. CURTAIN! Whose got the curtain?”
“Who click on the curtain again. I already clicked on it. Now its opening an closing. Then i have to open it again. This is all messed up”
“Hey I wasn’t ready. Who told you to open the curtain?”
Wow. Talk about having been there and heard that. Catfights and blame-laying.
Ruined performances.
I also felt sorry for new troupes who aren’t aware that with certain minimally configured curtains, anyone can touch their curtain and operate it, ruining a performance either accidentally or intentionally.
So after a lot of back-stage drama over the years, I came up with the Artiste Smart Curtain.
A curtain is meant to hide the stage crews preparation of successive scenes so that it is a surprise and that there is cohesion in the presentation of the ‘parts’, actors, sets, costumes, starting cues, etc. It also serves as punctuation signalling the beginning and ending and is a separator of show segments like a paragraph.
1 – There are currently two styles: Flat and Split.
2 – There are 4 actions: Sideways, Fade, Raise(move), and Scrunch.
3 – They are mod You can apply your own textures.
4 – They are mod so you can adjust them to your stage size
5 – Their fade times are adjustable.
6 – The open/close time is adjustable
7 – The raise time and raise height is adjustable
8 – You can disable touch.
9 – Six ways to operate a curtain:
a) by touch
b) via Performance HUD(autofx)
c) via Director
d) via curtain-Panel
e) via Curtain Relay
f) via Stage HUD
10) Only person logged into Director can operate the curtain
11) Current operator must be in same group as director and added to a nc access list.
12) Tipjar is automatically logged into and out of upon Director login.
13) Owners and Managers can ‘force logout’ on a crashed and frozen avatar.
14) Raised curtain has a bottom-lip view-able only to stage for easy touch access to lower. (Thank you, Wiz).
15) Scrunch has adjutable no. of steps
16) Sideways has adjustable min width.
17) You get an in-progress notice and a completion notice when it has completed its operation. You also get a warning when it is double-clicked before completion. Double clicks ARE NOT cached. The 2nd click is DISCARDED.
18) The Smart Curtains come with both Producer and Performer Series. The backstage stuff comes only with the Producer series.
19) The Performer series does contain 2 Directors so performers can practice without needing to intrude on a venues resources.
Lat “Yummy” Lovenkraft