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Creating a Sustainable Rep Plot – Mitigating the risk of Early Adoption

2011-06-03T20:20:09Z

Last week I got a chance to meet in person with Justin. He was in NYC and sitting over some Five Guys burgers we talked about what we’d been seeing in the entertainment lighting industry. As we talked about some trends particularly regarding the rapid adoption of LEDs, traded stories about ancient gear we’d both seen walking into theaters around the country. That spurred a conversation into how the industry might change that. That conversation inspired this post.

First, some background – I went to college at Pace University. It was there that I was taught lighting design by the late Chris Thomas. Chris taught me that you can make a lighting design successful with any equipment, having the newest gear doesn’t make the best designer.

He was right of course, but even when I was a student (which wasn’t that long ago) the movement toward sustainability was little more than a whisper. Today if a lighting designer wishes to use less energy, the newest gear is often vital to the pursuit. Using LED technology represents a quantum leap in our ability to conserve energy, while maintaining the quality of design audiences have come to expect.

After I finished my studies, I went on to work as lighting coordinator for the university’s 700-seat theater the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. Like many university theaters, the Schimmel Center struggled to be not only a thriving venue for the performing arts, but also a profit center for the university. As such, it was consistently asked to do more with less, including a distinct lack of updated equipment. At the time, the best we could do was replace the oldest instruments first, usually in four and five instrument batches as supplemental funds became available.

We wanted to be more cutting edge, we wanted to be more sustainable. However, reality was we couldn’t pitch the university on capital level improvements without demonstrating long-term profitabilty. It’s tough enough to argue that having the latest gear will increase revenue over the long term. There was something else holding me back from making the pitch effectively.
I wanted to change out upstage washes and cyc lighting to RGB LED sources. I wanted to add moving light sources to save on man power moving and focusing “specials” for conferences. But there was a problem…what should I recommend? While the moving light market in general is more established, the LED market then, as now was rapidly changing. There were certainly products I favored. Yet, I couldnt guarantee (or even plausibly assert) that the fixtures purchased this year would still be the best available on the market next year. This hesitation made it difficult for me to convince myself, let alone the university, that a major equipment investment would be worth it.

The point of my little story isn’t nostalgia, but rather to demonstrate an opportunity. LED techonlogy today is anaolgous to computer technology in the early 1990s. In the early nineties, the rapid improvment of personal computers made them both thrilling and dangerous. Thrilling because finally, the match of operating system and software improvement combined with the affordable availability of hardware capable of running these new programs held amazing possibilites for companies large and small. But investment was also dangerous. If you bought today, you knew in 6 months your computer would be obsolete. This wasn’t a matter of “keeping up with the joneses” often computers a little as a year old were rendered useless as new software was released requiring ever more powerful hardware. The PC comparison seems to be apt as it came up unprompted in an email I received from the folks at Cree Lighting. Michelle Murray, spokeswoman for Cree had this to say,

…compare this to another semiconductor technology—computer processors. Sure, the next level of processing power is right around the corner—but you can’t keep running a DOS-machine waiting for innovation to stop. The benefits of moving to LED lighting far offset any concerns about immediate obsolescence…

Wes Bailey of 4wall had this to say on the pace of LED innovation and adoption…

We are definitely seeing new LED products at a rapid pace, and more importantly, we are seeing the demand for these products from a rental standpoint increase faster than ever. Previously, when an LED product was launched it took a good deal of time for designers to begin requesting these products…in turn it gave us a larger window of time to investigate them before we started carrying them. In the last two years that has changed quite a bit, now it seems that new LED products are being spec’d on shows as soon as they are released to the public.

It’s hard to compare the market available to a university theater over 5 years ago to the state of LED technology today. But in an important way the situation is the same, the market for new, better lighting instruments is always evolving. How do you know when to jump in? How can we mitigate the risks of adoption?

In the computing industry, a response was developed to this consumer ill. Computer leasing programs became widely adopted across most large corporations as a way to stay current in a rapidly changing computing environment. To this day, most large corporations have some form of renewing lease with their computer vendors. This incentivizes long term investment, without the fear of obsolensence.

What I propose is rental houses create similiar long term lease offerings for clients providing repertory light plots across the country. They add up to little more than a long term rental, with additional service offerings should equipment fail. Like an auto lease, it would be expected to be returned in good working order, ready to turn around to other clients. This would promote a move toward more sustainable lighting by mitigating the risk of an ever-changing market place. It would also ensure a steady stream of income for rental houses.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be challenges. To make this a truly sustainable concept, there would need to be an end-of-life cycle for the lighting gear being returned to the vendors. If it’s all simply scrapped in favor of the newest model then the energy saved on stage doesn’t mitigate the lost embodied energy of the gear. At a minimum the gear would need to be sold at a reduced price elsewhere on the market to extend it’s useful life. The best of all possible scenarios is the gear goes back to the manufacturer where as many of the components as possible could be reclaimed and turned into new gear or otherwise put to good use.
I put this idea to the folks at 4wall and I got a thoughtful response. Again Wes Bailey,

Currently 4Wall does not offer any official leasing options. I will try to explain to you the closest scenario we have to that. We do have a number of venues (especially back east) that we do long term rentals with, and these venues are of course free to trade out rental gear for new items during the rental period, but that of course incurs differentiating costs. Because we do basically offer our entire rental stock for sale on UsedLighting.com, any of these long term rental clients are able to have the gear they currently have priced out for them from a used sales standpoint. When pricing the equipment for the used sale, we definitely take into account how long they have had the gear, and of course we also take into account the age of the gear… While these type of options are not exactly a leasing plan, it does occur frequently that venues who have been renting long term do decide to purchase from us as a used sale. Another thing to keep in mind on this is that some venues (we run into this with churches, schools, and to some extent, casinos) are forced by management into using specific monthly budgets… In these cases this can lead to a venue simply renting gear over and over that they might actually save on by purchasing….this also prevents them from being stuck with older equipment (so maybe not a bad idea after all?).

Have you designed any repertory light plots recently? Do you work for a venue which owns or rents gear? What are you doing to adopt more sustainable solutions? Have you figured out a way to mitigate risk? The comment section awaits….

Creating a Sustainable Rep Plot – Mitigating the risk of Early Adoption is a post from: iSquint.net

Media. Served

2011-04-21T19:09:17Z

Upon my return to the UK, I was somewhat surprised to discover, after chatting with some friends at one of the larger London Rep Houses, that the Media Server is still something that in many corners of Theatre Land is somewhat feared. Having embraced the technology a while ago, they are second nature to me now (although for God’s sake don’t ask me to try and come up with any content!)

My first foray into the world of Media Servers was speccing one of the first Catalyst Systems in the Middle East for a private residence project (and that’s as much info as you get from me regarding the where’s and who’s ) As far as I know, it’s still there and still ticking away, although whether they have updated any of the content is anyone’s guess.

Anyway. It was shortly after specifying this new box of tricks that the first issue came up. The client was insistent on having an Avo Pearl in control of everything, and this was in the early noughties when the Catalyst was still hovering at about 60 Channels of DMX mark, and the Pearl was most definitely not the right console for the job. Still, we soldiered on, and if I recall correctly, the results were indeed pretty cool, and quite busk-able, although there were many, many, many pages of cues to call on from the trusty old Avo desk, and some very long moments of head scratching as I found my way around the new box of tricks.

Things have fortunately moved on a bit since that project, and both the Media Server and the methodology of control have both improved somewhat. I still think that we are a long way off of Media Server Programming nirvana, however I think that we do currently, across a broad range of consoles, have an acceptable programming interface. Things could certainly be improved, but that’s for another day.

So are you one of those people that fear the mystical beast that is the modern DMX controlled Media Server? Well stop it! There really is nothing to be scared of.

As far as I can tell, most peoples worries are born out of a belief that there’s more to it than there really is. A Media Server is just another fixture that we need to get to know. In the same way that when you come across a new Moving Light, you need to get to know the functionality. The same goes for this magic box.

A Media Server simply enables Lighting Consoles to control video in a somewhat more elegant manner than in years gone by. Essentially, with a Media Server, you are calling folders and files on a computer, and manipulating their output to a video surface (LED Screen, Projector, etc.). So lets say that you call folder 1, video number 30. In general, you can have 255 folders containing 255 files, so with DMX therefore, you have a DMX Channel that can choose the folder, based on outputting a value between 0 and 100 (which is of course 0 to 255 in real terms) and then a second channel that can call file 0 to 255 within those folders.

So…

We can now chose files and folders, beyond that there would be other channels that can deal with keystone corrections, colour manipulation, rotation around X, Y, and Z axes, and so on. Essentially we have a moving light, with a pretty unlimited quantity of animated Gobos.   Most Media Servers are also able to handle ‘Pixel Mapping’ this is where you may (almost at it’s most basic) have say a grid of 6 x 6 LED Pars. Each of these pars is then treated as a single pixel, and again, we can chose to play out our media across these pars, as an ultra, ultra low resolution video wall.   Right…. Having covered all of that, we can now look at the specifics of what the server and layer channels are.

Again, in its most basic form, the server channel (and in most situations you are only really going to need one of them) handles all of the outputting. IE, what each DMX channel is doing, and so on. In real terms within many consoles under most circumstances, you can patch the server and forget about it. Other than ensuring that it’s ‘dimmer’ value is at 100% whenever you want the ‘Screen’ to be outputting something. You could think of it as a master output layer if you like.

So we have a master output control, and we now want to manipulate our video. We can assume that in most circumstances we will want to be able to transition between a couple of videos. If we were to play all the videos back on one layer, then switching between videos would have to be a snap to be the tidiest that you could make it on one layer. If you were to do a slow fade between say Folder 0 Video 1 and Folder 0 Video 26, then you would be snapping between the intervening 24 videos. Not good.  To alleviate that problem then, we use multiple layers. I generally patch four to six layers regardless of the media server I use and the project I am working on. It’s pretty similar across all of the various flavours of media server. Virtual or otherwise.

Each layer can then have an intensity channel (or if you think about it in terms of Adobe Photoshop layers, then the dimmer could be viewed as an opacity level), and they can also have their own effects applied, as well as playback speeds, media, and so on. The uppermost layer being the top of them all. So layer Four has priority over layer Three, etc. Again, this is pretty standard across most, if not all Media Servers.

To smarten up those transitions then, we can now set up our media to be playing across a couple of layers, and so neatly fade between them. The advantage of using these layers is also that you can use two different sets of media, across two different layers, and merge the two together by playing with their dimmer (opacity) levels to create a nice new bit of media to all intents and purposes.

Having done that, you then have two spare layers to do the same again (if you have patched four layers) and so now you can neatly transition between two different sets of effects over four layers.

So there (in a rather large nutshell) is a quick outline to Media Servers. Hopefully that helps explain things, and that I haven’t confused you further.

Now. Get out there and start using them!

Cheers

Smiffy

Filed under: Media Server Tagged: Lighting, Media Servers, Programming, Video

#USITT2011: Students on Sessions

2011-03-11T03:00:27Z

If you’re going to pay for a conference like USITT, there is no reason not to go to as many sessions as possible. All the students I talked to have spent the last two days running from one session to another, trying to get the most out of their time in Charlotte. I’ve asked a bunch of students to tell me what they think of the sessions so far, and they all seem to have the same idea of the ideal structure. When trying to identify a good session, storytelling is good, but only if its humorous, and having enough information to fill the time slot is crucial. The presenters, much like any college professor, have to be interesting and fun to hold the attention of an audience, no matter how important the information they’re presenting is.

In my opinion, the best sessions are those that are not only engaging, but cater to the interests of multiple disciplines. Lighting for Costumes, Makeup, and the Multi-Ethnic Cast in particular is a session that I wish I could have made, as I have heard from both a lighting designer and makeup designer that it was phenomenal. It apparently had it all, a humorous presenter, enthusiastic audience participation, and information that could be valuable and interesting to everyone, not just the lighting designers it was geared towards.

However, in many respects, there are a lot of sessions missing the mark when aimed towards students. We all attend this conference to learn something new, not take a class that’s offered in our schools, so the level of the information should be accessible to every student who wants to be involved. From everyone I’ve talked to, the split between fantastic and going completely over their head is a close one, and there is about a 50% chance that the session will be worth it. Luckily for us, this isn’t college, and if you don’t get it you don’t have to stick around! Head back out to the floor and wait it out, or pop into the next room, a little extra learning never hurts!

So far USITT has been so much fun, and I can’t wait for tomorrow when I’ll be hitting the floor, chatting with people, and just exploring!

#USITT2011: Students on Sessions is a post from: iSquint.net

The Tech Rehearsal

2010-12-10T20:23:21Z

This week is production week for us at Coast Hills. And it’s quite a production; Gunch! is an (almost) all-original musical-style stage play with an 80+ member cast, 13 person pit band and five performances over the weekend with an expected attendance of 4500+. It’s quite an undertaking. Tonight is opening nigh and we have over 200 lighting cues, 80 audio snapshots (plus several dozen manual cues), aero technics and a Kabuki drop. How do we make it all work? A lot of planning, of course, and a tech rehearsal.

A tech rehearsal is an oft-ignored and underutilized night of rehearsal in most churches. In fact, this is one of the few that I’ve actually gotten to do; most churches I’ve been a part of haven’t valued tech enough to do one, at our own peril. The tech rehearsal is vital to a successful production if said production involves more than about 6 cues. How does a tech rehearsal differ from a regular rehearsal? Read on…

Tech Rehearsal Defined
Most rehearsals are for the band and or actors to learn their parts, blocking, entrances, exits and generally work out the stage craft. Those are necessary and valuable. The tech team often sits in on those and even supports them with tech, and can sometimes make valuable progress in getting cueing and notes worked out.

A tech rehearsal, in contrast, is all about the tech. The tech team is in complete control and can stop the rehearsal at any time. As shows get more complex, requiring the writing of cues for lighting, audio, video and presentation, the rehearsal has to start and stop to give the tech team time to write those cues. Sometimes it takes a few seconds, sometimes it takes a few minutes. In a tech rehearsal, the tech director can call Stop and everyone on the stage is supposed to freeze. The team writes cues, updates lighting positions, works on audio levels or whatever they need to do.

Rather than rushing and scrambling to build a cuelist on the fly, the tech rehearsal gives the tech team the time they need to get a solid draft of the show. Sometimes major changes need to be made (lights may need to be re-hung, videos may need to be re-edited, additional mics or monitors added), and those changes can be noted and worked on at a later time.

Why Most Churches Don’t Do Tech Rehearsals
They’re not fun. Tech rehearsals are long, slow and tedious for everyone except for the half-dozen people in the tech booth. Sometimes, everyone has to hold their position for 5 minutes or more while the tech team works something out. However, the alternative is not getting that worked out and having a disaster come show night.

Tech is undervalued. Many churches will spend weeks or months rehearsing the actors and band, then give the tech team one rehearsal to learn/program/perfect the entire show, then expect it to all come off perfectly on show night (usually the next night). This doesn’t work. As FOH engineer for Gunch!, I have more cues than any single actor on the stage. It takes time to get those written, dialed in and ready to hit perfectly. We need that time to get this right.

Making Tech Rehearsals Successful
For a tech rehearsal to be successful, the tech team must be prepared. The night of the rehearsal is not the time to start counting up how many wireless mics you should have available. Or figure out where the lights should be hung. Ideally, you’ve already gone through the show and roughed in a lot of the programming. Scenes should be written close to what they should be. Audio levels will need to be set, but the entire audio system should be patched and ready to go.

The tech team should have already read through the script (there is a script, right?) and made notes. There needs to be an easy way for the tech team to communicate to the actors and band, as well as the director. The director needs to be completely supportive of the tech rehearsal for it to work. Our director went so far as to say to the entire cast before we started, “Tonight is all about tech. We may have to stand around for 5 minutes to give them time to do their thing. Relax and deal with it. They get to drive the pace tonight, not us.”

If you have the manpower, it’s helpful to have a few extra people in the booth just to take notes. My ATD Isaiah is TD for this show and he frantically scribbled notes throughout the night. Next time, I will appoint someone else to take notes for audio, and I may even find another person or two to help with presentation and lighting. The workload is high for those few hours, having extra hands on deck is helpful.

Last night, our dress rehearsal was 95% of an actual performance; in large part to the long tech rehearsal two nights earlier. Tonight at opening night, I think we’ll nail it as we only have a few things to tweak. I hope this will provide inspiration and encouragement for your church to consider doing a real tech rehearsal for you upcoming productions.

Lighting Engineer, or Lighting Crew Member, or Lighting Electrician

2010-11-27T14:08:34Z

Check out this video – the Institute of Physics put this video out, which chronicles the day of a music festival being loaded in and executed. The video is a UK music festival – the Ashfield Music Festival.

Thanks, IOP!

Frontlight as a sculptural element

2010-11-29T15:07:02Z

I hear a lot of lighting designers say things like “frontlight is boring” and the more I think about it the less I find myself agreeing with this statement. Sure the typical, straight in front light at a 45 or even 30 degree angle is not the most dynamic. It does provide the useful function of clearly, cleanly, and evenly lighting faces.

A lot of the boredom comes, I think, from a certain resignation. Because “frontlight is boring” no effort is made to find an approach to frontlight that is sculptural. Frontlight can be quite interesting when the time and care is taken to treat it as a sculptural aesthetic element rather than a grudging necessity one hangs and focuses for bows.

This problem is largely an American problem. I say this because the American school of design, which traces itself in one way or another back to Stanley McCandless, treats a 45 degree angle as the base for all lighting. Sidelights, backlights (when possible), and frontlights all start from an assumption of 45 degrees up from the stage. While the “McCandless Method” has gone out of fashion along with its multi-colored diagonal frontlights, there are some ideas contained therein which might prove useful when applied within a contemporary aesthetic environment.

McCandless’ “Method” was born in an era of limited power, control, and instrumentation. These are not concerns we have as much today, but it forced him into a rigorous line of thinking which may be useful to return to. He developed his method as a means of providing the maximum variety and sculptural qualities to performers under extremely limited situations.

The somewhat blunt color approach to his use of diagonal frontlight may not hold up under contemporary aesthetic analysis, but the underlying intent is worth looking at. That intent being a well sculptured figure on stage. His specific solution may not apply, but we can all resonate with wanting to create a sculptural figure on stage. Using diagonal frontlight, though with consistent color, thus creating texture and variation through differing intensity levels, would be a more contemporary approach.

This is a sort of archeology of lighting aesthetics. It returns us to a foundational moment from which we may then build back up into the present to address our current aesthetic concerns. Simply modifying McCandless only goes so far. If our goal is creating a sculptural figure, we must base our decisions and analysis of lighting angles upon that premise.

Diagonal frontlight is far from the only means of creating a sculptural figure. In many circumstance it is also far from the ideal visual aesthetic. At a practical level, it doubles the required instrumentation needed. This can eat up valuable gear in limited situations and, of course, doubles the focus time for FOH positions. Then there is the matter of it lighting up a much more broad stage area than frontlight which comes straight in. Diagonals illuminate almost twice as much stage area as straight in frontlight, yet still only light about the same area at face level.

Footlights are a popular, though slowly going out of fashion, approach to finding a sculptural solution to frontlight. More so than diagonals, footlights light up a very broad area and are thus not right when maintianing a contained space is another requirement of the design. While beautiful under the right circumstances, the look is so emotionally specific that it can rarely be employed for general use.

An approach that is quite common in Europe, but surprisingly rare in the US, is steep angled frontlight. Pushing the lights up, past the 45 degree mark, to 70, or even 80 degrees, can turn this once boring lighting angle into a dramatically powerful storytelling device. What you lose from using so steep an angle is illumination of eye sockets and underneath any hats with brims. But what you gain is a tremendously powerful and evocative look.

Steep frontlight like this can easily be used on its own without being boring. It is very sculptural. It can also be readily used in conjunction with sidelight to get under hats and into eye sockets, or as fill to eliminate the harsh dark line caused by the exclusive use of sidelighting. Another wonderful benefit of steep frontlight like this is the very limited stage real estate taken up by the light. It is possible to isolate a performer distinctly and discretely while leaving as much stage space as possible unlit.

There are plenty of times where a flat angle is desired in one’s frontlight. Musical comedy and farce often want the bright faces and crisp eyes made possible by a flatter angle of frontlight. Perhaps the show is exploring themes of boredom and what is desired is blank, plain, lighting. In such cases a very flat frontlight may be just the right choice.

The larger question we are exploring is, “are you making a choice?” Is your lighting palette based upon an exploration of the dramatic needs of the piece in question or is it a formula? Thinking through these questions and really exploring the frontlight needs of the specific show will help to make the finished product not just good, but great.

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Greatest Stage on Earth: “Rule #1″

2010-07-08T10:01:44Z

What is Lighting Rule #1? Always light the talent. It doesn’t matter how flashy your show is if the talent is in the dark. What is Lighting Rule #2? Rule #1 applies to your show too.

Whether you’re lighting a corporate meeting, a rock concert or a church pulpit; your client has to be visible. This is especially important in the HOW market and the interaction it creates with the congregation (the audience).

The preacher at most house’s of worship (HOW) has the goal of connecting on a personal (and to some degree emotional) level with the congregation. To facilitate this, he must be properly lit. The goal is to create an imposing, but not frightening, image that will help him to inspire his audience. The best way I have found to accomplish this is to fall back on the McCandless Method.

The McCandless Method stated simply is to light your subject from opposing angles with a warm color and a cool color. This magnifies the natural shapes of the face and increases the depth that the eye sees. In its most basic form, it can be accomplished with two leko’s: One gelled Lux 302 and one Lux 53 (my defaults, you can pick any warm and any cool). The more color you add, the more dramatic the look will be. If all you have is PAR can’s you can still get it done, just buy narrow lamps next time around.

The addition of a dark blue or purple back light can also drastically increase the presence of the talent on stage. It will fill in the shadows and give tone where there was none. It’s one of the first tricks you learn in theatre. In the best of all worlds, use the same method to cover the entire stage. It’s the same design 80 to 90% of professional theatre’s use every day.

OK. So what’s Rule #1? Always light the talent! Remember this and the rest of the gig will be a breeze. Mess it up, and it doesn’t matter if you have the best light show in the world, you’ve missed the target.

Coming next time: How to use color to set an emotional tone.

Greatest Stage on Earth: “Rule #1″ is a post from: iSquint.net

Love Languages for Techies

2010-06-15T12:05:12Z

This post was originally published last week over at the Church Production Magazine blog. After some traffic analysis, I decided to post it here as well in case you missed it.

If you’ve been around the church for any length of time, you have no doubt heard about Love Languages. Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book about these five ways we express love for each other back in the ‘80s I think. In case you are unfamiliar, the love languages are; Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. The idea is that we all have a primary love language by which we most effectively receive love. For example, a husband may receive love when he is given a gift; his wife may receive love through spending quality time with her husband.

The love language concept is very useful for people who are married or in a serious dating relationship. It’s also helpful to know how others around feel loved. Say you need to butter up a co-worker whose love language is acts of service. Do something for her that she normally does and she will feel love. As we all know however, techies are a different breed. We are not wired the same as regular humans, which causes most non-techies on a church staff to stay away, not really knowing how to relate to us. Being different, we have our own set of love languages. If you interact with techies on a regular basis, it would behoove you to learn these languages and figure out which one your techie responds to most favorably. With apologies to Dr. Chapman, here we go.

Words of Affirmation
This doesn’t look different, but the implications are far greater. Most techies only hear words of dis-affirmation; “The mic’s not working,” “The camera is out of focus,” “It’s too loud,” “The light is in my eyes,” “It’s too soft…” the list goes on. The quickest way to a techie’s heart is to tell them they’ve done something well. This is good advice for anyone, but it’s important to know that techies are used to dealing with a barrage of complaints on a regular basis. Thus, any time anyone has anything to say to them, they are typically on the defensive from the start. In fact, I know some techs who never hear anything from leadership except criticism. I suggest saying a few positive things here and there; it makes it a lot easier to hear criticism when it’s appropriate.

Be On Time
This looks similar to Quality time, but it’s quite different. Most techies I know are First In, Last Out (or as we say in the trade—FILO). At our church, my tech team arrives at noon on Saturday, and doesn’t leave until everyone else is gone. On Sunday morning we’re the first in again at 7:30, and are still coiling cables long after everyone else has a table at Chilli’s. We show up early because we want to make sure everything is set up and ready to go when the band arrives making sound check and rehearsal as quick and productive as possible. Want to exasperate a techie who’s already been there since 7:30? Show up late, then take your time getting your station set up, then act impatient during the soundcheck process. It’s no fun to sit around for 30 minutes with nothing to do while waiting for the band to show up, especially if we’re blamed for sound check running long (and we usually are). Be in place and ready to go when you’re supposed to be and your techie will feel very loved.

Decent Swag
Similar to receiving gifts, we like it when gear manufacturers show up with good swag, plain and simple. In the last few years, with the economy suffering, the quality of swag has gone downhill. This does not show love. If we’re going to spend a whole day on a show floor, walking around looking at gear and eating sub-standard convention center food, we want to at least take home some decent stuff. EV gave me a sweet little Leatherman mini multi-tool over Christmas. I felt loved. Yamaha gave me a really nice fleece coat. I felt loved. A pen with your company logo on it? Not so much. Unless it’s a Pilot G-2 .5 mm black. Then maybe. But I can get those at Staples. And it’s easy. So probably not.

Acts of Load-In and Load-Out
We techies do a lot of work. We move Steeldeck, road cases, cables, lights, speakers, mics, drum kits, guitar amps and so on. The guys and gals who work in a portable church setting are deserving of special recognition. The Bible tells us that many hands make for light work, and the same is true for what we do. If you see two guys pushing a bunch of cases in, ask if you can help. Please ask, because sometimes we have a system and your help doesn’t, well, help. Most times though, and extra set of hands of two can really make our lives easier. It’s also important to note that techies are not technically janitors, though that’s not apparent in our day to day lives. Almost every week we pick up bottles of water (most of them opened with .25 ounces missing–the classic one-swig per bottle), sandwich wrappers, broken drum sticks and various other detritus left behind by the musicians. If you want to share some love with your tech team, pick up your own trash.

Food

That's love in a dish right there.

Specifically, bacon. Forget touch, we like to eat. As I said, we work really hard, and we do so for long hours. Having a steady stream of food makes the tech booth a happy place to be. I know of one non-techie church leader who used to regularly bring the tech team treats, lunch, donuts, coffee, whatever (Jan, you’re a hero to all techies everywhere!). Do you think her tech team was happy and would do just about anything? You bet! Here at Coast, we have a great group of volunteers who bring breakfast every Sunday morning. A big steaming plate of bacon sure takes the edge of a 7:30 AM call time. We also have people bring in lunch and dinner during really big production seasons like Christmas and Easter. I can work 12 hours a day a lot easier when lunch and dinner show up at regular intervals.

So there you go. A few quick thoughts on how to show love to your local tech crew. A well-loved and appreciated tech crew will move mountains for you; learning their love languages is an investment worth making.

Making a living – Making a life

2010-05-14T13:05:44Z

I had lunch recently with a friend of mine who is a lighting designer. He is probably one of the most talented designers I have come across, a powerful unique voice, meticulous, insightful dramaturgical understanding, and one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He is currently transitioning out of live entertainment and considering going the route of architectural lighting design, or possibly something else entirely. His reasons? In order to have enough time to enjoy his life, he can’t make a living. In order to make a living, he doesn’t have time to enjoy his life.

This can be a dilemma many people face but it is exacerbated in the fields of theater, opera, and dance. LORT, the bargaining organization for regional theaters, has the official position that they do not owe designers a living wage. The theaters, which are ostensibly in the business of making art, do not feel responsible for paying the artists they employ enough money to live reasonable lives. Leaving aside the issue that the upper management and staff of these organizations do typically make a good living wage, this idea is flawed to its very core. The artists, the people who actually make the art, are not expected to be able to live off the work. Something is wrong here.

The result of this brilliant financial strategy on the part of regional theaters is that not only will they save thousands of dollars each year (yes only thousands, and intended sarcastically) but they will drive talented people out of the industry. This friend of mine is no small potatoes. He is highly respected within the New York theater community, has won awards, gets flown around the world to light shows, and yet finds the economics so troubling that he can not both live well and do the work he loves. He is not alone.

Many people I know, some very talented designers, work in fields not of their choosing because the economics of the field they love are so terrible. The issue does not limit itself to designers. One of the best master electricians I have ever had the pleasure of working with left non-profit theater to go work in a more corporate setting because the administration would not consider giving him a raise. In most situations, a worker who delivered under budget and ahead of schedule, all while pleasing the clients he interfaced with would be rewarded. But then, he worked on the wrong side of the building. Art, it seems, is not valued by arts organizations. Yet the top paid administrators made easily five times his salary. And the theater community lost one of the best electricians I have known.

There comes a point when the question arises, is this worth it? Is it worth working 80+ hour weeks for months on end only to end up with barely enough money to cover rent and bills? There is a bit of mental psychology that must be done when working like this. There is a rule I once learned the hard way by breaking it myself. I fast realized if I wanted to keep going I could never do it again. Do not translate into an hourly wage. Typically the results, in our fee for hire work, are far below minimum wage. The show I calculated out for ended up somewhere around thirty cents an hour. And this is at a professional level.

At the Broadway level, the minimum rate for a lighting assistant comes out to just under twenty dollars per hour. Not terrible, but you are working 14 hour days for weeks at a time, so you can have no life while this is going on. At the low end of the scale people have no compunction asking someone with years of experience, an advanced degree, awards, and so on if they would give up two weeks of their life for a fee of a few hundred dollars. It doesn’t hurt to ask, but then if you accept, demands are made on your time that are beyond the pale of reason.

Making a living in the theater is possible. Making a life, not so much. The number of designers who wake up at 50 suddenly realizing they forgot to get married and have kids, or who send their kids off to college knowing less about them than about their assistants, or miss a major wedding anniversary for a technical rehearsal, is far far too much.

We are presented with a bit of a catch-22. The organizations which hire us have stated explicitly that they will not take care of us. It then becomes incumbent upon us to take care of ourselves. But if we do that, and allow ourselves to have a life, we are not working enough to support that life. Something has got to give. Too often, that means talent goes elsewhere.

Perhaps there was a time when the economics of it all were not so unfavorable. But looking around now at the state of the business it appears that the solution does not reside in the non-profit theater world.

The End of My Rope

2010-04-12T12:23:47Z

Ever have one of those weekends where everything seemed to come together reasonably well, but you left feeling totally spent? And if that weekend comes after a particularly busy time of ministry, it can put you in a hard place. That was my weekend. A little insight into my personality; I am a recovering perfectionist with insecurity issues and achievement as one of my top five strengths. I do whatever it takes to get the job done, regardless of the cost to me and my well-being. I’m a technologist and a problem solver, and because of that, much of my time is spent solving other people’s problems with technology. In short, if you’re reading this blog, we’re probably very much alike, you and I.

This weekend was to be a simpler weekend for me. I’ve been short-staffed by 3-4 people every weekend for well over a month. Last weekend was Good Friday and Easter, which meant an 80 week leading up to a weekend of 7 services in 3 days. But this weekend, I wasn’t scheduled to do anything. Well, except hang some signs for the new set. Should have been easy. Except it wasn’t. The signs took a lot longer, we had issues with the lift, I needed to fix the projector alignment, ProPresenter was giving us some issues, I discovered a broken encoder on the 5D, the lighting board was acting up, and we lost half our house lights.

On top of that, our regular FOH contractor was back, having been gone for a month. At least three times over the weekend, I heard someone say to him, “Man, it’s good to have you back! We missed your ears up there.” Each person meant it as a compliment to our contractor. But what I heard was, “Man it’s good to have you back. It SUCKED with Mike up there.” Last week, I heard similar critisism about our Good Friday program (and from someone who’s opinion I really shouldn’t even care about). Like I said, insecurity issues.

At the end of Sunday, everyone else had left and I had to clear off our 10-high stack of Steeldeck, a set of stairs and the pulpit off the baptistry so facilities could clean it for next weekend. I was pretty shot.

I got home and really wanted to relax. Then my daughter tried to print some homework. The printer started acting up and I had to fix it. It didn’t go well. Not well at all. I pretty much failed Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 6 about fathers not exasperating their children.

I had to spend some time and take stock of my current state of being. I’ve realized that I’ve done it again. I cranked myself up to an unsustainable pace. Any of those issues this weekend ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered me. However, I’m so exhausted, mentally and emotionally from working too hard for too long without a break that I have nothing left to deal with that stuff. My emotional gas tank is empty.

Now, why am I writing all this? Is it because I’m looking for pity, encouragement or validation? Not really; though encouragement and validation is always nice. The real reason I’m being this transparent and vulnerable is because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s been here. If you’re a tech guy in a church, chances are you’ve been exactly where I am right now. You may even be here right now. And if not, you haven’t been doing this long enough. One thing that’s become clear as our little community of TDs has come together around blogs, Twitter, the CTDRT and CTAN is that we all have days (or weeks, or months) like this. I hit this point about a year ago (and vowed I’d never let it happen again) and felt like I was a failure as a TD, as a church staffer for getting this burned out. And yet, when I realize that others have been in this place as well, it helps me understand that I’m not the only one. My hope is that by putting this out in the open, at least one person may read this and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m not the only one! I’m not crazy or a failure!”

But the real question is, how do we get out of this? The answer may vary, but for me, I need a vacation. Not a quasi vacation where I come in late or work from home, but a real, don’t think about work, answer e-mail, send out notifications or make phone calls vacation. That’s hard to do, and it takes at least 5-6 consecutive days off for me to actually recharge.

And that’s what I’m going to do. I have commitments for the next two weeks, but 14 days from today, I will be starting a 6-day vacation. That’s going to mean hiring extra contractors to cover stuff at work, and I don’t care. I need the time off. During that time, I’m going to completely fast from e-mail. I’m turning off my accounts on my iPhone and quitting Mail on my laptop, lest I be tempted to “just check my work account to see what’s going on.” I’m changing my voicemail and putting auto-responders on.

I also need to come up with a long-term plan to take more regular vacations. Most tech guys I know never take all their allotted vacation every year. I’ve worked for nearly nine months now, and taken two days off. That’s not healthy. I also realized I have to come up with a better system so I can take the week after Christmas and Easter off, and I mean really off. As in, “all my other duties are covered by someone else” off.

It’s likely that I’ll not get this right all the time, but I really need to do a much better job about not letting myself get to this place. And the harsh reality is, I did this to myself. Yes, I have a lot of responsibility at church, and what I do is important. However, I have the freedom and blessing from my boss and church leadership to take care of myself. And if I failed at anything, it’s that. I didn’t take care of myself. And when I don’t take care of myself, my family suffers. And that’s just not acceptable.

I hope this has been helpful for someone out there. If even one person relates to this and has the courage to make a change, I’m thankful. You’re not alone. And one of the best things we can do is lean on each other. Now, do what I’m doing and get back to your day off.

Sure it's great, but the problem with technology (Part 3)

2010-03-06T00:12:00Z

MY ISSUES WITH TECHNOLOGY

The saga continues, as we all knew it would. So what's my beef with technology? Why have I even bothered write this? I write this because I think technology has become a bit a crutch, in many facets of design. Be it the advance work, or the actual work in the design, the more technology I see, typically, the less thought it seems there is in a show. However, there is such a drive to put technology into shows and flaunt it (ALA Broadway) that it can be hard to fight that urge. I have even heard people go as far as to say a particular show cannot be done with out scrollers, or moving lights and the like, which then bears the questions how did the brilliant designs of Tharon Musser and others happen prior to all the technology we have now?

Here are some things I've actually encountered in my life either directly or heard of later from others.

1) Morpheus CMY faders were brought in for a show I was an electrician for. Great, no issues with that. Then the designer called and asked that the entire rosco book be stored on the board as focus groups so they could pick colors "faster" in tech. My fiancee who was in this show had to stand frozen in a pose while they picked colors for an hour during tech for just one scene.

2) After the first 10 out of 12 for a musical, a production manager told me that the lighting designer for the show, after a rough notes session, told the group that they could not do the show without color scrollers. They had never asked until then

3) A designer for a show I worked on insisted on moving lights for a show. While doing the going through the show file I found that each of the 4 fixtures turned on once andcould have easily been made static specials.

The person in example 1, no advance thought. I saw this show, and the color in those Morpheus faders were definitely intended to try and drive the show, however, no prior thought went into what these faders would, how they would function, etc. The content was not originally thought out. It's the same but opposite problem with example 2. When we start blaming our inability to light a show well because of lack of technology, we are 1) Hurting our potential fot getting work in this house in the future and 2) Showing our lack of foresight to either a. ask before we get to tech or b. have solved the problem without. Plenty of designs came out before we had arsenals of scrollers, moving lights and other bells and whistles that were ground breaking. You can do it without technology too.

2 also touches on another issue. I have also heard of designers who will kick and scream that they can't do a show without X or without Y. Sometimes we need to learn how to sacrafice and be creative to solve a problem, especially in economic times as these. Example, demanding needing LED strips and then only using 6 colors over the course of the show.

Finally 3 brings about a special issue. On the one hand, why rent 4 moving lights when you aren't going to use them in more than 1 way. On the other, when your director is crazy, sometimes you need to have this tool in your back pocket. While the end result may not have shown foresight, the intention, to easily and quickly appease a director in time of crisis, shows a different kind of foresight that sometimes makes life easier.

While I know that maybe those examples are not the norm, it seems to be trending that way. It's unfortunate but I feel like less and less thought, especially advance thought, is going into the design of the worlds we are creating. We are here to tell a story through light, every single thing we do, the color, the placement, the sharpness, even the shutter cut of a light are there to tell that story. When we let these elements get away from us, when our grasp of these things slips from our fingers on any show, the design has less of an impact, and therefore we haven't done our job.

So what was the point of all this: Content, content, content. Really challenge yourself to think about every angle of light, every shade, and every scene in depth for your next show. Know the show backwards. Know why you are doing everything on a show. The best designs I've seen come from those who think this way. Then, when you need to solve a problem, or enhance your story, turn to technology. It can only make your designs stronger to start thinking without technology and then adding when you need it. Justify it in terms of the story. When you can do that, and integrate the technology in ways that go unnoticed, watch the designs soar.

Like I said in my first blog on this issue, think of it ala the movie industry. When CGI first was introduced think about how crazy movie makers went with it. And we KNEW they were using it. Now the lines are blurred. We can't tell where reality ends, and the computers begin. When we can achieve this on the stage, when we start using technology seamlessly, that it is when true magic happens, and that requires thought, not dependency.

Why additive color mixing matters

2010-03-01T18:27:00Z

I guess that is a mighty 'heady' title for a blog post from a guy who has been silent on this Light Minds blog for months. Well... I am breaking my silence. Fact is, I have been busy, but now I feel motivated to write, and hopefully that will continue! You can encourage me by offering your comments please!!

Why does additive color mixing matter? I'm talking about LEDs here. We entered the LED market about one year ago and I've spent the last year really thinking about how and why LEDs matter and where they are useful. I can't tell you I've reached a state of enlightenment (pardon the pun) but I have learned a lot along the way.

We have a new white paper posted in our shiny new Support area on etcconnect.com. The paper is about color mixing and how and why the multicolor system we use in our Selador Series LED fixtures matters. Additive color-mixing is in play here. Most of us who have designed lighting intuitively understand what additive mixing is. Those of us who have used watercolors get it, too. We add multiple colors together to get a new color.

Working in pigments, we normally think of this as red-yellow-blue. In lighting, we know that red-green-blue are the primary colors of light and we understand how to combine them from a theoretical point of view. But we also know it more intuitively. Led by intuition, we know that we can cool the lighting look down by adding blue. So, we work with the colors we have selected or the color changing devices we have, and we paint and layer. Contrast this with the fact that most of the color we are adding has been produced via subtraction, namely gels or CMY systems. Putting gel in a fixture invokes subtraction, and it feels quite normal.

While Cyan-Magenta-Yellow color mixing systems are subtractive mixing systems, they feel strange because they are 'active' systems. You have a cyan color (blue and green) coming out of the fixture - you add magenta and you get... well, what exactly do you get? Blue? That's intuitive! The magenta you are "adding" is actually a filter that is subtracting the green. In more recent years, we started controlling color using hue-saturation-intensity controls -- like color pickers -- adding a new skill to our design arsenal. We let the console -- and its knowledge of the color mixing systems -- do the adding and subtracting. So, my point is that we have many ways to manipulate color, some of them more intuitive than others, each with a set of strengths and weaknesses.

Enter LEDs. Colored LED systems use additive color in the fixture. This is a slightly new concept. Instead of using a powerful light source generating "white" light, then subtracting the colors we don't need, we begin with nothing and add only the colors we do need. From the designer's perspective, not much changes, right? I mean, you want yellow, you bring up red and start adding green. This is vastly more energy efficient, as long as the fixture can reach the color you are seeking at the brightness you want.

RGB is great in theory, but most designers who have worked with these "16 million color additive mixing LEDs" will testify that it is not that easy and your results may vary. I first learned about the difficulty of doing RGB color-mixing in college. I dutifully hung a cyc wash with scoops gelled in Rosco diffusion RGB. Then I began to explore the 16 million or so colors I should have had available. I found that it was very hard to get the color I wanted, at the intensity I wanted it. I felt as though I was working in more of a 16 color mode rather than 16 million color mode. Many of us probably learned over time that hanging a four-color wash improved our results. Then we discovered that if you wanted a particular color and had the luxury, hang that color!

We were figuring out imperially that "more color = better light." That is the very principle that the company that ETC acquired last year, Selador, brought to their LED fixtures. ETC Selador series fixtures start with seven different LED colors. Sounds good, huh? It does until you start from zero and now want to build the best-looking golden straw color you can. You can start with amber, add some green maybe, not too much. Should a little cyan play in? And doesn't that color actually have a touch of red? Well, you could try it. Actually, you could sit all day and try things like a kid with an endless supply of paint, water and paper.

When we combined ETC and the Selador concept, ETC simplified things a bit. We profiled these fixtures in our Eos, Ion, Element and Congo consoles and made them respond to our gel libraries. The fact is that LEDs are not perfect and can vary significantly from bin to bin and fixture to fixture (we are working on that problem, too!). But you can start with a language you know. Call up your Selador fixtures in a Roscolux 80 and you will get close.

Now I come back to the subject of this very blog post: additive color mixing. When you see what your ETC console and your Selador fixture present as Roscolux 80, pick up your brush and personalize it. We give you seven colors of toning to play with. Add a touch more cyan or red, save it as a color palette and use it again. In this model, additive color works intuitively. The designer gets to play. So... have fun!

That’s Not Right, Tear It All Out

2010-02-19T13:00:29Z

I was watching one of my favorite home-improvement shows the other night; Holmes on Homes. If you’ve not seen it, check it out. Mike Holmes is a contractor who gets called in by homeowners in trouble. Typically, they have hired a contractor to do a job and it’s either botched or abandoned. The homeowners are out of money and often their house is uninhabitable. Mike’s job–Make it Right. And he does. He often goes above and beyond the call of duty to put the house back in shape. In the end, the homeowner gets another chance. And their house is put together the right way.

Mike is one of my heroes; partially because I too have seen so much shoddy work in houses, but mainly because I often find myself in similar situations. So often, I find myself in churches where things are done so wrong and I hear one of Mike’s favorite refrains, “That’s not how we do things, tear it all out.”

Disclaimer: Now let me stop here and point out that I’m not necessarily blaming previous tech guys or volunteers at the churches I’ve been to. Often times, things are done poorly because money is tight. We all know the A/V budget is one of the first things to get cut. Other times, the problems are due to volunteers just doing the best they know how. Sometimes they get in over their heads and just try to make it work. Some churches are ripped off by lousy install contractors. I get that. So please don’t take offense if I point out something you did on the cheap because budget was tight. I know you didn’t mean it. Unless of course you did know better, had the resources and did it wrong anyway–then you’re on my list. End Disclaimer.

If you don’t do it right the first time, you’ll do it over and over.
A lot of churches run out of money at the end of a build. When they do, it’s the A/V budget that is cut. That means the right wire doesn’t get pulled where it’s supposed to. Conduits are left out. Acoustic treatment or building details are omitted. I know it’s tempting to skimp on the PA when you have to buy children’s furniture. But think about this; it’s a whole lot easier to buy chairs and desks in six months than it is to put in another PA once the building’s done.

It’s a running joke (and a bad one in my opinion) that most churches are on their third PA. That means they paid for the wrong one twice, which means the right one cost them nearly 3 times what it should have. Thought you were saving money? Think again. How much of that money spent on the wrong PA could have been use productively for ministry?

At the very least, make sure you properly install wire and conduits where you need them. A lot of churches seem to think the guy with a cool home theater is qualified to install your PA.

He’s not.

Really.

He’s not.

Hire the right people and do it right.

Or you will do it again.

I promise.

Whatever you do, do it right.
I’ve seen so many bubble gum and duct tape solutions in my career that it really makes me sick. Cables tie-wrapped to the outside of an empty conduit. Wires run through un-bushed knockouts. Electrical panels overloaded and unbalanced. Cat-5 cables that were too short so they were joined by a coupler instead of re-pulled.This stuff is wrong. We can’t say, “Oh, it’s just church, don’t worry about it.” Instead we should say, “It’s church–we have an obligation to do this the right way.”

A perfect example is the lighting system at Coast Hills. Our current (and highly qualified) electrician looked at it and said, “There’s no point trying to fix the old system. It would take 2 guys a week just to figure it out. And in the end, we’d still say it all has to go. We’ll just start fresh and tear the old stuff out.” I have to tell you, I like this guy. He’s going to do it right. The sad thing is, we’re going to tear out thousands of feet of cable because it wasn’t done right. And we’re not talking preference here. We’re talking code violations a mile long and simple bad practices. And why? Because money was tight and it got skimped. Do I blame those responsible? In some ways, how can I–they didn’t know any better (except the electricians…). But we can learn from their mistakes.

Educate Yourself
When you hire contractors to do an install, first check them out. How many churches have they done? Go see their work. Make sure they get permits and be there for the inspections. I hate to say it, but don’t trust them. Check their work. Ask questions. Read up on codes and best practices and make sure they are followed. If you see sub-standard work being done, insist it’s taken out and done correctly. Don’t pay people that deliver sub-standard work. A good contractor will appreciate this level of attention to their trade. A bad one will want to leave before you fire them.

This is not a game. We are spending dollars–often a lot of them–that were given sacrificially by families to advance the work of the Kingdom. Every time we have to pay for something twice because it was done wrong the first time, we erode the trust people place in the Church. It is incumbent on you, the tech director to make sure the work is done right, and done once. Otherwise, someone like me will following in your footsteps and taking it all down and doing it again.

What We Can Learn From The Opening Ceremony Fail

2010-02-15T13:00:12Z

Last Friday night, with 66,000 people watching live and another few hundred million watching on TV, Canada presented us with a creative and well produced opening ceremonies. The environmental projection was quite stunning, and just as the producer hoped, the event felt much more intimate than many such events in the past. While it may have dragged a bit at a few points, overall, it was very enjoyable to watch. At least until the critical moment toward which the entire night had been building. The moment that everyone wants to see; the moment that officially kicks off the games—the lighting of the Olympic torch.

If you have been living in media isolation for the last 3 days, you may not have heard that the cauldron was to be a four-legged device that appeared to be carved from ice. Each leg rose from the floor and joined in the center with the main cauldron. Except only three of the legs rose from the floor; the other apparently a victim of a mechanical malfunction. Now, I’m not here to rag on the production team for the mishap. However, the way it was handled can be a source of learning for us.

Play the Cards You’re Dealt
I’m quite sure everyone involved in the production was expecting all four legs to rise from the floor. All four legs, however, didn’t. At that moment, someone had about 20 seconds to make a critical decision (perhaps even less). They chose to try to diagnose and solve the problem. For about 3-4 minutes. While Bob Costas rambled on an on about the failure.

I would suggest that a better course of action would have been for the producer to get on the com and tell everyone, “We’re going with 3 legs, light the torch!” Then send someone down to the basement to make sure the 4th leg wasn’t going to suddenly appear. Had they chose that route, no one would have been the wiser—at least in the moment. Sure, afterwards people would have put it together and figured it out. But in that magical moment, the torch would have been lit to thunderous applause.

The same can happen in church settings. When something major goes wrong, if it’s not immediately apparent to the audience, change plans and go on. Quickly. Remember, the audience doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen; if you skip an element because something didn’t work, no one is the wiser and the mood is not broken.

Granted, sometimes this doesn’t work—such as when something falls, an element starts then stops or the like. But on a failure to launch, it’s better to quickly skip it and move on. And if everyone involved in the production is not on com, it’s a good idea to prep people in advance to that effect; if something happens, we may move on—be prepared.

Mums the Word
After a minute or two the look on Wayne Gretzgy’s face made it pretty apparent that something was wrong. However, Bob Costas going on and on about it for 3 minutes sealed the deal. Perhaps the worst thing someone on the platform can do during a failure like that is make a big deal of it. “Well, I guess we were going to watch a video, but it looks like the tech team is having some trouble. Why don’t you all turn around and stare at them while they try to figure it out.” Ever get that?

When I was in college, our department produced a massive multi-media extravaganza each year. We asked producers from all over the world to send us their best multi-image shows (shows produced with slide projectors, lots of them, as in 9-27). We presented them to the campus as a sampling of the best creative live media of the year. In my senior year, I was the tech director. I was responsible for figuring out how to present 12 different shows, of different configurations programmed on three different systems.

Rehearsal went well, we had a bunch of changeovers, including rerouting data tracks to different dissolve units. Everyone was on their game. When it came to the performance, we hit a snag. We switched from an AVL show to another show (the name escapes me now—I’ve banished it from my mind) and while the MC introduced the show, we tested the data link. My projection tech called up that we had no data. No data meant no show.

With one ear in the com and one on the MC, we troubleshot the problem. As I heard the MC wrapping up, I clicked over to his IFB, told him we were having an issue and he needed to stretch. Without missing a beat, he launched right into a story about how the next show was created. Once we identified and fixed the problem, I told him to move on. He wrapped up the story and we went right into the show. The audience never knew anything was wrong.

He completely had our back; instead of pointing out a problem, he covered it up gracefully. And no one was the wiser.

Stuff Happens
To me, this is the big lesson; even with years to plan, weeks to rehearse, the ability to hire the best technical talent and a $30-40 million budget, something still went wrong. I would argue that what we do in church each week is significantly harder. We get one week, sometimes 30-40 dollars, and we do it with volunteers. So yeah, stuff is going to go wrong.

And when it does, how we respond is infinitely more important than what happened. I know of churches whose post-service de-brief becomes a shouting match of blame-fixing. I know of techs whose jobs are threatened every time a lighting cue is missed. I know of volunteers who live in fear that any mistake, no matter how small and unnoticeable, will be publicly brought to light and harshly criticized. This is wrong.

If we can’t give ourselves and our people a break when something goes wrong, we should probably find another line of work. This is not to say we shouldn’t learn from mistakes; we should and try to prevent them in the future. But always remember to handle them with grace. Don’t discount 65 minutes that went perfectly because 1 minute didn’t. Really, you’re not that important. I say that to whoever thinks all this technical stuff should flow perfectly all the time.

What we do in the technical world is hard. It’s amazing it works at all. Don’t let one mistake distract from the dozens or hundreds of other things that went well.

ESTA Releases Two Control Protocol Draft Standards for Review

2010-02-11T16:49:13Z

At the end of January, ESTA announced the release of two Control Protocol Draft Standards for Public Review. As with any draft standards put out for public review from ESTA. People that have interest or knowledge of the specific standards are highly encouraged to read and comment on the drafts before they are no longer available for public review.

Here are the two Control Protocols up for review:

BSR E1.30-1-20xx, EPI 23. Device Identification Subdevice

This document is part of BSR E1.30, Application level equipment interoperability for control of commonly encountered entertainment technology devices using ANSI E1.17. It specifies a templated device for device identification as typically used for remote hardware and software devices.

BSR E1.20 – 201x, Entertainment Technology — Remote Device Management over USITT DMX512

The existing E1.20 – 2006, Entertainment Technology–Remote Device Management over USITT DMX512, is being revised to correct errors in the published document and to add a new message enhance functionality. ANSI E1.20 is an extension to USITT DMX512 and ANSI E1.11 that allows for bi-directional communication on the primary data link for lighting control.

Both of these standards will be up for public review and commenting till March 30, 2010. You can download the documents and review forms for the ESTA Technical Standards Program website at www.esta.org/tsp.

ESTA Releases Two Control Protocol Draft Standards for Review is a post from: iSquint.net

Color Theory Basics – Saturation and Chroma

2010-01-08T13:05:51Z

Continuing our discussion of Color Theory we move on from Hue to Saturation and Chroma. These are two closely related but distinct properties of color. Learning these distinctions and understanding them implicitly is what will give us a deep and sophisticated understanding of the uses of color.

In order to discuss these ideas we must first take a quick look at color media for lighting. The three major brands of color filters are Lee, Rosco, and Gam. Each of them produce similar but importantly distinct ranges of colors. Regardless of the particulars of the color media they all operate in a similar manner.

Clear incandescent light emits a range of colors in the visible spectrum. In fact, it is that range which makes us perceive it as White light. A color filter is precisely that, a filter which eliminates all excess wavelengths to allow only those wavelengths desired by the designer to get through. A filter like Lee 201, for example, pulls out many of the wavelengths along the Red and Amber end of the color spectrum to give a clean 5700° K color. We will get more in depth on Color Temperature and lighting design in a later post. But for now it is useful to know that L201 is a pale Daylight color.

If Hue is what we would commonly call the color, then Saturation and Chroma deal with different aspects of brightness. Saturation is how much of a given Hue might be found while Chroma deals with where that Hue falls in a spectrum from Gray to full Chroma. Let’s look at Saturation first.

Saturation is how much of a given Hue is in the filter. Low saturation is closer to White light and colors in that range are called Tints. High saturation has a lot of one particular Hue, are very chromatic, and we call colors in that range Shades.

Tints tend to allow a lot of light to pass through. It can be tempting to forgo heavily saturated colors, particularly deep and rich Congo Blues, because they allow so little light through (1-4% typically) that one might easily choose a lighter saturation for greater transmission. It is important to not be afraid here. Bold color choices demand a degree of risk. Even though there is such a small amount of light actually getting through the filter, the effect can be quite strong. If you need the saturated color, use it.

Since we looked at very saturated and chromatic colors in our exploration of Hue I thought it would be nice to look at some Tints this week. On the left you will see the Rosco CTB filters. You can see the colors ranging from nearly White to a nice middle Blue.

You will also note that while the Hue of these colors is a Blue, they tend to fall closer to Gray than a purely chromatic color. Thus we see here an example of variance by Chroma.

Below we have a low saturation Red, commonly referred to as Pink. What is interesting in this image is the spectral analysis of the filters. The black curve in each image shows us how much of each color in the visible spectrum is contained in the filter. You will note that while the warm end of the color spectrum, from the end of Yellow through Red, remains the same we see a marked shift in the middle Blues through Green and into Yellow. This allows us to see not only how much color is filtered out but also how each filter relates to the other one.

On the right hand side of the picture we see the manufacturer’s name and number for the filter. Then below that is the Transmission. This tells us how much light passes through the filter. The lower the Saturation, the higher the Transmission.

Because all color is relative, nothing is objectively a Tint or a Shade. Comparing G108 and G105 we see that 105 is a Shade of 108. Yet compared with a solid Red like G250 we see that G105 is also a Tint.

We will go much more in depth on the relativity of Tints and Shades when we cover Missing Color Syndrome in the next part of this series. For now, let’s move on to some practical applications.

Returning to our example of the Woman-in-a-Red-Dress we can immediately see an application for color of differing saturation, yet utilizing the same Hue. Our woman enters and the lights change. We turn on a Frontlight special in G250 but immediately notice that while the dress looks fantastic, our Woman has turned rather garish. Loving the dress, but hating how our actor looks, we decide to turn on our G108 Crosslight. The effect now is of a deep red dress with rich and brilliant shadows sculpted by a pale Pink Tint. Because of the G108, our actor’s skin looks beautiful and healthy. We have just achieved a happy costume designer, a happy actor, and a happy director. All with some simple color tricks.

Beware: death by Tints.

While the proper use of tints, as we see above, can be a real life saver, they can also cause us unbelievable headache. I have seen plenty of Yellow and Pink costumes ruined by a “why bother blue” that had just too much Green in it. Colors, and by extension actors, can disappear in what appears to be white light all because of a tint we did not pay enough attention to. Healthy actors can look sick because that Amber front light we fell in love with in the studio has just a hint of Green.

Knowledge of Saturation is a useful tool in the designer’s tool kit. Without such information, our Woman-in-a-Red-Dress would be left looking like some freakish alien, instead of a stunning ingenue. Using Shades to fill in shadows and Tints to highlight can be a great way to sculpt a figure with color.

We need not use the exact same Hue either. G250 which falls pretty solidly in the Red camp could easily be paired with sympathetic colors in tints. Instead of the Magenta and Amber I proposed in the post on Hue, one could use Tints like R53 (a Lavender) and R302 (a pale Rosy Amber).

A solid understanding of Saturation and Chroma will allow you to really start mastering the use of color. If you missed my post on Hue I would encourage you to go back and read it through. In later posts I will be exploring Missing Color Syndrome, Dominant and Recessive Colors, Color Correction, Gray, The Effect of Lamp Type, and Additive vs. Subtractive Color Mixing.

I hope you found this useful. Please take any new ideas and start experimenting. We will continue to build on these concepts throughout this series. Stay tuned.

Was this useful to you? Please let me know what you thought in comments. Or leave any questions you may have and I (or other commenters) would be happy to answer.

Icewolf’s Guide to Photography for Theatre

2010-01-06T18:55:32Z

I gotta thank charlesDcharles on Twitter for sending this my way – if you read Icewolf’s blog, then you’ve already seen this, but it’s worthy of another mention!

Icewolf has posted a pretty excellent and comprehensive guide to shooting for theatre – from camera basics to composition basics, to light meters and image processing in post. It’s an excellent article, you should definitely check it out!

Really, that’s it for this post. Go get a coffee now, that’s what I’m gonna do.

by Jim On Light | Licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License

Icewolf’s Guide to Photography for Theatre

Inside the Design Idea – The Sisters Rosensweig

2009-12-25T13:05:55Z

I wrote last week about a few projects I am working on that have embraced an aesthetic of minimalism in their productions due to budgetary issues. But how do these ideas arise? More importantly how do they develop into a final product? I have written generically about my design process but I thought it might be fun to explore a single project more in depth to see how these ideas make it to the stage.

I was approached by Aaron Davidman, Artistic Director of The Jewish Theater – San Francisco, to light his production of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig for their 2010 season. I had never read or seen the play so my first read for this production was my first time ever through the play. I had no preconceived notions of what it was about or how it “should” look. So I sat down with the text and began to read the play fresh.

Upon that first read I was struck with how important time is to the play. It takes place over a 36 hour period and all the action occurs in the same location. It is almost Greek in its unity of time, place, and action. As a lighting designer time of day is a central concern when working through the text. While location is important it is not central in the same way that time is. Even when the work is highly abstracted there needs to be some unity of expressing a changing time of day. Because time plays such a central role in the storytelling of Sisters Rosensweig I became instantly curious about how to provide that.

The script calls for a rather elaborate setting inside a well furnished apartment. While the action takes place in this well furnished apartment what is more central to the dramatic storytelling is that everything happens in the same room. I proposed to Aaron that we consider setting the play on a rather minimal set and utilize lighting conventions borrowed from the dance world to approach the piece. He readily welcomed the idea and we set out with our scenic designer to craft this world.

I find that audiences respond quite favorably to naturalistic plays happening on abstracted settings. When abstracted in the right way, such that the core storytelling elements are highlighted, the abstraction makes the reality of the characters resonate strongly. One trouble that can arise in naturalistic settings is that the characters get lost amidst the scenery. While it is a perfect approach for film, strict naturalism can impede an audience’s ability to process natural dialog. Abstract minimalism takes the benefits of abstraction even further and gives the audience a clear focus on the actors. After all the audience pays to see actors not well executed scenery, beautiful costumes, or fancy lighting.

As we developed our setting for Sisters Rosensweig we were very careful to create a space and develop ideas that will always keep our focus on the performer. A white rectangle set against a black floor to bound our room filled with a few simple furniture pieces, a staircase, and a chandelier all backed by a large and expansive sky. The sky, truly a white cyc, will be variously lit to show the passage of day into night and back into day. The performers will be clearly and cleanly lit and set against this shifting sky.

Through a clear focus on the performance we will create a visual space which can ebb and flow along with the emotional moment of the play. Each of the seven scenes take place at a slightly different time of day. In order to show these transformations the cyc will be lit variously from the top and bottom in a range of colors from morning pastels, to cool gray midday clouds, to nothing late at night. A shifting sun will illuminate the cyc variously from the sides as well as low and center on the horizon for an evening sunset.

While the sky will be changing behind us, the performers will be lit in cool shades of gray. Keeping the light on the actors in a tight color range of 3400° K – 5700° K will provide a clean and crisp look appropriate for both the sharp witted comedy as well as the darker moments of the piece. This color palette also evokes the cool light of London wherein the play is set.

Here is a breakdown of the lighting systems:

Two color Backlight in L201 (for daylight) and CLR (for the chandelier)
High Crosslight in L202
Head Hi Crosslight in CLR
Diagonal Frontlight in R3216
Scenery specials in L202
Cyc Top in L281, L161, and L119 as well as GAP508 templates in L201
Cyc Bottom in R53, L161, and R68
Cyc Sides in L025, R68, L201, and L193
The center sunset is a fresnel in L176 and the morning sunrise templates are GAP228 in color L101

All the actor lighting is done with frosted Source-4 Lekos. This will allow me to make shutter cuts to the white performance space and keep as clean a look as possible on the stage. The CYC is lit with various FarCycs, Mini-Strips, Fresnels, and PARs.

As of this writing the lighting paperwork is all finished and sent off to the master electrician and production manager. I have seen an early run through of the piece and have some basic cueing ideas although that will get fleshed out in later meetings with the director. We load in the lighting and scenery at the end of December, focus the lights, and then walk away for a few days over the New Year. When we come back in January we will begin lighting rehearsals.

Doing a post like this which goes into the specifics of a design for a show is new for me (I typically stick to theory). How was it for you as a reader? Would you like to see more of this?

Drop me a line in comments and let me know what you think.

Do Your LED's suffer from Droop?

2009-10-14T21:42:00Z

From this month's Architectural Lighting Mag to see the original click HERE

LEDs Tackle the Technical Issue of Droop

Source: ARCHITECTURAL LIGHTING Magazine
Publication date: October 1, 2009

By Elizabeth Donoff

Although solid-state lighting has made significant headway in the lighting industry and fixture marketplace, there is still a sufficient amount of technical performance data that is unknown and untested when it comes to this new technology. An article in the August 2009 issue of IEEE Spectrum, a publication from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, calls attention to a problem specific to LEDs known as “droop.”

Droop is a phenomenon experienced by blue (nitrate) LEDs—the LEDs that are used to produce white light. As the diode's power level reaches an output sufficient for general lighting applications, the efficiency of the LED declines significantly. To maintain this amount of light output, you have to continue to feed the LED more and more power. In effect, this cancels out any potential energy savings this much-touted nonfilament light source might provide, and highlights the fact that LEDs perform best at low power. This puts a very different spin on the information that lighting manufacturers have been promoting as they race to announce and outdo one another with higher lumen-per-watt totals.

No one knows for sure why LEDs experience this technical anomaly, and scientists and engineers are hard at work to solve the puzzle. Some researchers attribute it to the electron structure of the diode, but there is no general consensus. One thing is for sure: now that this technical truth has been revealed it adds yet another hurdle for solid-state lighting to overcome as it tries to prove itself as a lighting technology with long-term potential.

The Santa Fe Opera Electricians Make My Day

2009-09-03T19:23:09Z

The Santa Fe Opera Electricians show you how they focus lights for the 2009. You just really have to watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2SKhRPq6gk

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Inside the Design Idea – The Sisters Rosensweig

Do Your LED's suffer from Droop?

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