Black & White keys

[harvey]

Dick, I'm gonna try real hard to be serious about this, but am already
getting the feeling it's not going to work!

This reminds me of some of the requests I used to get while working the
Hollywierd circuit; ahem, the movie and TV sets in particular. They would
want a gutted, breakaway grand piano, so that an actor (actress in this
case) could fall into it. Next they'd want a 'dummy' piano -- one that
would be used on a live sound stage and have the keys go up and down, but
not make any noise, because the actor (player)... couldn't. Then there was
a famous TV western series that wanted the piano in tune, but deliberately
and consistently out of tune, ie, a saloon sound. One more -- the time I
had to cover an entire piano with mirrored Plexiglas -- and I mean all of
it except for the keys and pedals. I haven't mentioned Liberace yet, and
the custom 'Midnight Blue' color he wanted on a particular piano. We mixed
and made samples until we were "blue in the face" before he was finally happy.

In every instance, the prop departments paid well to have these instruments
custom-tweaked, or in some instances custom-mutilated. If the "gag" was a
success, it was worth the effort and expense. Enter your situation. I'm not
aware of how this was done for Janet's video, but remember that the "gag"
only has to last for the duration of the shoot. Therefore... Krylon
immediately comes to mind.

At least I warned you in advance! 8-}



At 09:37 AM 8/21/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I have a customer who saw a Janet Jackson video and in this video it 
>shown a piano that had white keys that were black and black keys that 
>were white.  My customer would like this on his Young Chang PG 150.  
>Does anyone have any information concerning this unusual request.



Jim Harvey, RPT
harvey@greenwood.net
________________________
Yes, I'm familiar with Brambach... why do you ask?
	-Jim Harvey, 1974