Friday, September 21, 2007

Instructables

Instructables .com is an interesting site that I see good potential in for stagecraft. Its a web 2.0 type site - sort of like you tube meets DIY. For example this link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/100%25-Homemade-Lathe/
shows a step by step guide on how to build a homemade lathe. While this article has photos, others have video.

A couple of reactions:
1 - its in some ways part of my hope of what I can do here (like the LED star post or the pneumatic caster posts), but I like the idea that multiple people post to it.
2 - it reminds me a user friendly version of the tech expo, tech briefs or the USITT resource that is online. Or the high school theatre tech page also has some of these ideas going for it.
3- TD's, and theatre people in general have a tendency to not document process or product very much. Sure, people try to take down info / pictures for their portfolio, but step by step processes aren't detailed. On one hand, people feel like the information is too common to make it necessary, or too much of a one time only type of thing. I think either way is useful - common tasks help new people in the industry, and one time projects can sometimes be applied to other tasks in the future to build on the previous knowledge, or could be referenced in future productions (some shows have very specific technical challenges for instance).

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