I was reading the thread about SMing dance and I wanted to illustrate why it's NOT a good idea to use a stopwatch as the basis for calling a show.
I am currently working on a ballet with 60+ kids, ranging in age from 5 to 19, with 4 professional dancers. My crew consists of parent volunteers and trained volunteers who work for the theatre venue. Thus, I never end up with the same crew for more than one performance, and some are more experienced than others. Because the kids are still in school, we don't get full days with them, so none of my rehearsals can be longer than 4 hours. The company can only afford to rent the theatre for a week, which includes 3 performances. Basically we load in & build cues on day 1, do spacing on day 2 (the LD builds more cues in blind), tech act 1 on day 3, tech act 2 on day 4, dress rehearsal on day 5, then performances on days 6 & 7. I get to see 3 rehearsals before we move into the theatre.
In this situation, from what I've read, most people would have called from a stop watch. That's all well and good, EXCEPT on day 2, after spacing, when I was getting the lx cues in my book, I was informed that there would be pitch changes to a few of the tracks. Actually, it turns out that of 21 tracks, only 5 of them are at a normal pitch. If I had planned on calling from a stopwatch, I would have been royally screwed since all the pitch changes mess up the timings of the tracks. I guess I could have gone home and re-timed the show with the pitch changes (not that I have that capability at home) but the pitch changes keep CHANGING.
So, I have no score, can't base my cues on timings, and have to keep a close eye on my inexperienced crew to make sure they're safe. What's a poor SM to do?
I build my own score. It takes A LOT of work, but it's worth it. Basically, I sit down with the music and a bunch of blank music sheets and write in what I call "landmarks" in the music. I have a basic knowledge of music, and can read, but have never played an instrument, so I can't tell the difference between a C and an F sharp. But I can identify a cymbal, or a timpani. Or when horns come in. I mark out clearly identifiable notes and anything else that helps me identify where I am in the music. Then I write in my cues exactly like I would with a real score.
This is not to say that I DON'T use my stopwatch. In this instance, because of the pitch changes, I have to ask my sound op how far we are into the track every once and a while if I get lost, and I still put timings at 15 second intervals in my score. On the plus side, I can keep an eye on my crew. For instance, yesterday, I was about to call the scrim in, but noticed that a crew member was right under it, so I held off, got the crew member to move, then called the scrim. My volunteer fly op wasn't watching the deck, and my parent crew member wasn't totally aware of his surroundings. I was able to avoid potential injury because I was on the deck, listening to the music, and keeping an eye out on everything, and not with my nose in a book or blindly calling cues off my stopwatch.
This also helps when trying to call cues on visuals. Because of the limited amount of time I have in rehearsal, I really can't learn the dance all that well. So I sit down with the choreographer and find out when in the music the visual is supposed to happen. It drastically reduces the learning curve since, even though I'm still calling on a visual, I know when it's coming in the music and can time my stand-bys accordingly.
It's not a perfect system because I don't know how easily it would be for someone else to pick up my book & call the show. But considering I've only had 3 days since I found out about all these pitch changes and I'm ready for the performances today, I'm pretty confident that my "score" is working. If anyone is interested in seeing a scan of a few score pages, I'd be happy to send one.