Author Topic: RUNNING: Deck Cues  (Read 2547 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

mkristinect

  • New to Town
  • **
  • Posts: 29
    • View Profile
  • Affiliations: TPS
  • Current Gig: Freelance
  • Experience: Professional
RUNNING: Deck Cues
« on: May 28, 2015, 06:27 pm »
Mod note: This post was made in response to the Deck Cues thread over in Uploaded Forms. We wanted to give it its own spotlight since there are some questions that merit more substantial discussion. - PSMK

Matthew, I love the format of your run book.  I may borrow....  :) 

Do you all find it valuable to track every actor entrance/exit that way?  And if so do you track every prop entrance/exit the same way?  I am in the middle of my first musical and, fair to say, most complex show to date.  The cast size is middling (small for a musical, large for a play) but there are lots of props, lots of cues, lots of coming and going and I have a backstage crew of one (not counting actors).  I just wonder if it would be more of a help or a hinderance to clutter the chart too much.

Edited to add topic tag- Maribeth
« Last Edit: Jun 02, 2015, 01:16 am by Maribeth »

Maribeth

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1056
  • Gender: Female
    • View Profile
  • Affiliations: AEA
  • Experience: Former SM
Re: Deck Cues
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2015, 01:56 am »
For me, it's helpful to track actor entrances and exits- you can use that tracking to give you information for where/when prop handoffs, costume changes, etc happen, and how long you have for them. It can also be useful when you're running a backstage track to know who/how many actors should be entering. If you know you need 5 soldiers for an entrance and you only have 2 standing by, you know to start looking for them.

Similarly, if you have a notation that the actor needs a spear for their entrance, and they don't have one when they are standing by, you know to grab it for them. If there's a prop "catch" backstage, or a prop that needs to be tracked from SR to SL, that should definitely go on the runlist. (Also, when you're trying to track down a missing prop, knowing when it last came offstage can be really helpful.) I find it's just as easy to track the props as not, so I include them with the entrances and exits.

If you have a complicated show and there's a lot going on in the runlist, you could always include entrance/exit info, and the crew person can highlight the lines of the runsheet that they have an "action" on, like a quickchange. That way the info is there, but they can glance to the highlighted lines for their next action.

I think that having the information there is especially helpful if you have someone subbing in, if your crew person is out sick for instance. The sub might not know when/where entrances happen, but they can refer to the runsheet.



 

riotous