My role as the Production Manager of Refract included many responsibilities, such as the scheduling of meetings and rehearsals, overseeing the all departments of the Company and monitoring the budget of the production. As Seabright suggest my role therefore “defin[ed] what is ‘on time’ and ‘in budget’ for the show” (Seabright, 2010, 5). Communication with departments such as props and costumes was therefore fundamental in maintaining a realistic outlook on the budget. I also kept a Budget Balance Sheet to closely monitor the exact amount of money left in the budget.
Due to the large amount of props and costume used in When you see it communication with the full company to make sure the budget was used in the most effective way was essential, many of the props and costumes we used were sourced from inside the Company. The second largest source of props and costume was borrowed from the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, the Venue in which we performed, under the proviso that they were returned on show night under the supervision of our Props Manager and Costume Designer. Lastly, we were lucky enough to have established a relationship with Chapterhouse Theatre Company, an international open-air touring company, who were kind enough to lend us a couple of items that would have been very costly to us.
A particular aspect of my role that I did find challenging was researching the UK copyright legislation and finding who owned the copyright for the images used during our production. Most of the specific images we used had an unknown photographer and no official copyright mark so this meant countless image searches were necessary as not to infringe on anyone’s artistic rights. After detailed research the majority of images we used were believed to be in the ‘public domain’ and therefore free to use without infringing any copyright. The only other image used fell out of copyright due to the artist’s, George Seurat, date of death falling over 70 years ago. Although most these images have an unknown photographer we felt it was important not to claim any rights over them and included this disclaimer in our Show Information and Programme:
“We do not intend to infringe any intellectual, artistic rights or copyrights with the use of projected images in this production. All images used are believed to be in the public domain.”
Works Cited
Seabright, J. (2010) So you want to be a Theatre Producer? Nick Hern Books Limited: London.
Bibliography
Intellectual Property Office. (2014) Copyright Notice: digital images, photographs and the internet. [online] Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305165/c-notice-201401.pdf [Accessed 15 April 2015].
The UK Copyright Service. (2015) Fact sheet P-01. [online] Available from: https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law. [Accessed 15 April 2015].