|
Roast
Turkey (continued)
Page 5 of 7
|
Warm
and Dry. I am getting used to this.
A
free day. To minimise knee damage, I took a bus (500,000 lire about
30pence) for the six miles down to Kizalay, one of Ankaras main shopping
district. The most amusing part of the journey was when the bus driver
ordered standing passengers to crouch down when he saw a parked police
car. There is a law about the number of standing passengers permitted; it
was just so funny seeing some ten people of all ages crouching in unison
and then standing up again a minute later. |
 |
This is a suburban corner shop in Ankaras southern
district. |
| In
the afternoon I spent some time putting the Izmir studio on the computer
using Corel Draw. I was later to e-mail it to Mert only to find that he
didn’t have the necessary software to read it! (He has since got it) It
will be interesting to see if this encourages the guys there to change the
way they do things. There didn’t seem to be a corporate interest in
going down the computer lighting design just yet. |
| That
evening, the restaurant was absolutely packed. Orhan came over and had a
chat, and we discussed his American trip. His English is infinitely better
than my Turkish but it was still a fairly stilted conversation. Later,
lots of people danced on the small dance floor, and my thought was that if
the happiness from the people there tonight was distilled and sold at £5
a bottle, Turkeys economic crisis would be solved at a stroke. |
| Sunday April 22nd
Wet. Ah well. |
 |
Here's a pic of me with the guys who work
mostly at Irkut. |
| To
the big studio in Irkut. Another set was being constructed for a music
programme. I met the lighting men and I asked them what they planned to
do. There wasn’t a consensus, and I was told that they wanted me to show
them what I would do. I took a deep breath and once again explained that I
would never normally be in this position of having to light a large set
without the normal (to us) process of planning and preparation. I felt
that it would be more useful to watch them and advise on lighting
‘tweaks’ and hints where appropriate. |
Mehmet, Ahmet, me, Halil, Sami,??,Ebru,?? |
Rigging overhead lamps |
 |
| The
set had a series of arches so I suggested under lighting them in a
different colour whilst always remembering to use as few colours as
possible. To the designer, I suggested avoiding using shiny materials and
bare neon tubes which seemed to be very much in vogue. |
 |
Halil took the arches on for himself. |
| Sami
was impressive in his setting of lamps and barn doors. He still needs to
pay attention to angle of key lights.
Halil took my
suggestion of under lighting the arches to heart and was gesticulating and
arguing his case for floor lamps with the ‘Special Effects lighting’
men. |
 |
Sami taking great care with his lamp setting. |
| Today’s
surprise was that someone at TRT had ordered and given them some new gobos
for the Martin 1200’s, but they didn’t like them and, having tried
them, were in the process of taking them out. I explained how an L.D. in
Europe would choose appropriate gobos and order them for a particular
programme or series. Their smiles and body language told me that they
clearly understood and appreciated the logic, ‘but Mr Mike, this is TRT!’ |
 |
Putting back the gobos that they preferred. |
| Ebru
met me for a meal afterwards in a very smart restaurant near to the
American (V large) Embassy. This was not a meal for the cholesterol
watcher; a plate covered in thin slices of succulent meat was then deluged
in hot molten butter. ‘Kucuk’ (little or small) I offered to the
waiter as he poured. With a smile he obliged giving me a teaspoonful less
than the quarter pound or so that he had put on my companions meal. |
 |
Ebru getting a little one to one tuition in Irkut's
lighting gallery. |
|
|
Very nice, but not too healthy if you have a cholesterol
problem! |
|
Monday April 23rd
Bright
and sunny, but very windy. This
was a public holiday in Turkey: Children's Day, an institution initiated
by Ataturk to celebrate the fact that Turkey was a young country and that
children were the future of the country. |
 |
Enormous flags draped over the front of TRT to celebrate
Children's day. |
| I
went for a walk, down to the lake and took a left turn for a change.
Clouds started gathering and looking distinctly stormy. After a couple of
hours I was back on a tarmac road and heading up a long hill by some old
brick works. Big drops of rain started to fall from a very black sky.
There was nowhere to shelter, so I admitted defeat and hailed a lone 'tacsi'
that brought me back to TRT to dry out. |
 |
Seen on my walk
Brickworks for sale. |
 |
| Tuesday April 24th
I was
devastated to hear from Tarik that there had been three earthquakes
centred on Ankara the previous day, all around 2.3 on the Richter scale.
My devastation was at not being aware of any of them! |
|
