Author Topic: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?  (Read 15616 times)

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Mac Calder

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #15 on: Jul 07, 2008, 01:58 pm »
Okay, I have sort of been against this thread a little from the beginning as I can smell a thread that has the potential to turn into a p!ss!ng contest from a mile away – and as such, I am going to suggest we slightly redirect this thread – so that it is a useful thread, instead of one of those threads with “Well we had a cable short on our coms and had to use tin cans connected to pieces of string to talk to each other” as every second thread.

So this is my “proposal” (and I use the term loosely) – from hence forth could the discussion be aimed further towards “What can we do to prevent 'show stopping' issues relating to the increasingly technical aspect of modern theatre?” - basically a “How to I plan for the worst, even though I hope for the best?” discussion. Draw from personal experience, sure, but try and stay away from “Lighting desk crashed, op got it up within three cues”.


RuthNY

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #16 on: Jul 07, 2008, 06:35 pm »
Based on Mac's re-direction of this thread, I'll pose a further question.  What do you do when a director (also the artistic director of the company) refuses to acknowledge that the technology used in the show may cause a show stop, flatly refusing to set up a "Plan B" with Stage Management, saying that the show should not stop for any reason, and actually forbidding any discussion of "Plan B" with the cast.

Yes, it's happened to me.

Discuss!




So this is my “proposal” (and I use the term loosely) – from hence forth could the discussion be aimed further towards “What can we do to prevent 'show stopping' issues relating to the increasingly technical aspect of modern theatre?” - basically a “How to I plan for the worst, even though I hope for the best?” discussion.

Edit: adjusted quote to correct code - kmc307
« Last Edit: Oct 12, 2008, 03:41 pm by kmc307 »
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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #17 on: Jul 07, 2008, 06:46 pm »
Ruth, I hope he didn't include fires in that!

I'd do the best I could on my own. I'd think of everything possible that could go wrong and find some way to at least get some of the basics covered. I'd also talk to my board ops and see what they think about the possibility of equipment failure and what resources they have to deal with it. I'd also go talk to someone higher up, explain the situation, and ask how far you should follow the director's wish (of keeping the show going) and when they think it becomes unreasonable. If you could get them to have a little chat with the director that wouldn't be amiss either.

So what did you end up doing?

kiwitechgirl

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #18 on: Jul 07, 2008, 09:56 pm »
“What can we do to prevent 'show stopping' issues relating to the increasingly technical aspect of modern theatre?” - basically a “How to I plan for the worst, even though I hope for the best?” discussion.

Wherever possible we run real-time backups.  We do a big musical every summer, and last summer ran backing tracks from Sound Cue System for the first time (previously they have always been run off hard drive systems).  The operator, the MD and myself were all slightly nervous about this, as backing tracks tend to be fairly critical, and SCS is Windows-based...while we use SCS daily, and very rarely have trouble, the stakes were much higher on the musical!  We decided early on that we needed to have a second SCS computer running in case of the primary falling over, and given that it is keyboard-fired, built a trigger switch which was wired into two keyboards so that one press would trigger both computers, meaning they'd be running the backing tracks in parallel. Each computer ran into its own M-Audio box, and then the outputs from those ran through a crash-box so that if the primary computer fell over, the op would hit the crash-box switch and the backup would then go live.  Happily, in 12 weeks (something like 80 shows) we never had to use the backup, but it was a major weight off everybody's shoulders knowing it was there!  In terms of lighting, we have a permanent backup desk in the DMX stream - sometime once the plot is complete, the operator stores the scenes in the backup desk.  It's had to be used only once as far as I know, when the 520 died (and needed a complete rebuild...) but again, it's the peace of mind factor coming into play. 

The whole director-refusing-to-acknowledge-Plan-B thing scares me a little; I don't know that I'd discuss plan B with the cast anyway, but I'd certainly talk it through with my crew and have something in place for myself.  I did have an episode where my leading lady's sister was dying of cancer; the director said to me "if her sister dies we will have to give her compassionate leave, therefore I've asked **** (another actress) to be on standby.  She knows the play because she's been in it before, so just be prepared for that, but keep it quiet."  I said I was happy to know that there was a Plan B in place, but that I'd need to let Wardrobe know just in case, as the two actresses were very, very different sizes and there was no way that the costume would fit the understudy - and it was The Country Wife, so not exactly a play where you could just find a replacement costume in the theatre's stock!  The director was horrified when I said that, saying "no, no, no, you can't mention it to anybody, you needed to know but nobody else does."  I couldn't let that one go - didn't argue any further with the director (because I'd be beating my head against a brick wall) but I took it to the production manager, my direct boss, and left it in his capable hands.  Fortunately the situation didn't arise, because I still am not sure what we would have done...

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #19 on: Jul 08, 2008, 08:03 am »
Ahh, but there was no one "higher up" to go to...


Ruth, I hope he didn't include fires in that!

 I'd also go talk to someone higher up, explain the situation, and ask how far you should follow the director's wish (of keeping the show going) and when they think it becomes unreasonable. If you could get them to have a little chat with the director that wouldn't be amiss either.

So what did you end up doing?

Edit: adjusted quote to correct code - kmc307
« Last Edit: Oct 12, 2008, 03:42 pm by kmc307 »
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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #20 on: Jul 09, 2008, 10:05 am »
Okay, I have sort of been against this thread a little from the beginning as I can smell a thread that has the potential to turn into a p!ss!ng contest from a mile away – and as such, I am going to suggest we slightly redirect this thread – so that it is a useful thread, instead of one of those threads with “Well we had a cable short on our coms and had to use tin cans connected to pieces of string to talk to each other” as every second thread.

So this is my “proposal” (and I use the term loosely) – from hence forth could the discussion be aimed further towards “What can we do to prevent 'show stopping' issues relating to the increasingly technical aspect of modern theatre?” - basically a “How to I plan for the worst, even though I hope for the best?” discussion. Draw from personal experience, sure, but try and stay away from “Lighting desk crashed, op got it up within three cues”.


Your proposal was what I was trying to get at... I guess I didn't word it the right way.  Thanks for clearing it up.  I'm always afraid of "what happens when this fails" and it always seems like I'm the only one that notices these potential fail points.  On top of that nobody has explained to me what should be done in these situations.  I was hoping to get some first person knowledge on how to plan for disasters before they happen so that if I happen to be in that situation, I'll have a bit of an idea as to how to deal with it.  Also I was thinking it would be a good source of help for anyone else if they came across a situation someone else had dealt with.
« Last Edit: Jul 09, 2008, 10:19 am by Trinity »

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #21 on: Jul 09, 2008, 12:41 pm »
sorry, Mac - I think some of us thought this thread was indeed to be now-humerous then-horror stories.

Twice when the light board crashed, I took house and works to full, we ran around and fixed while the play continued, and when things reestablished we rebooted the board and jumped to the appropriate cue - fairly obvious stuff, except when one of the blackouts turned out to be someone fussing with the wrong set of fuses in a two-theater house, and his blackout was an easy fix once we realized the idiot had been flipping fuses trying to find the prob in HIS adjoining theater. (The fuse box was clearly marked for each theatre specifically to avoid such an issue mid-performance.)

Once, I stayed after the show and traced every single wire and found the short that was causing the board to flicker and fry out sporadically. We called a proper theater electrician-type and had that cable replaced.


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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #22 on: Aug 23, 2008, 10:19 am »
The last show I SMed that had the most trouble was the dance production. LCD Projection constantly failed or went to blue screen without warning and was particular about the type of files and order they must be played in to work. That same show had sound issues and level checks had to be redone every night because it would change constantly. Plus the speakers in the house would only work every other night on average so we had to troubleshoot constantly. And some of the choreographers I dealt with did not understand that I do not have divine control over technology and when they rent new systems to work with our old equipment no matter how many tests we do before the audience comes will not guarantee a perfect show.

you can minimize your projection issues with some basic precautions
always set blueback to off.
send your signal through a digital scan converter or folsom screen pro, that way you can always switch to a backup source or a black screen/logo while projection resets.

format issues are specific to the playback software/hardware and not the projector, some playback programs work better with quicktime, some work better with wmv or straight AVI files, but thats an issue for your programmers and ops to hash out, show video can be a real trick if you don't know 100% how video works in the computer world

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #23 on: Aug 23, 2008, 12:06 pm »
I SMed an opera (Madame Butterfly) presented @ a community college auditorium (the opera group rented the theatre).  In the middle of
Act I, the light board failed.  Stage lights began to flicker--the intervals were a little too long and I didn't want the stage plunged into darkness.  I turned to the lightboard op in the booth and said calmly,"give me work lights."  "Huh?" she replied.  "Worklights, NOW", I said and we finished Act I in work lights.

Jakebert

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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #24 on: Oct 12, 2008, 03:31 pm »
Some things you can predict. But there is one thing that will help you catch most problems before opening night: rehearsals. The more tech rehearsals you have, the more you test equipment, the more likely you are to catch problems and fix them before they ruin the show.
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Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?
« Reply #25 on: Oct 13, 2008, 12:05 pm »
This past weekend, QLab quit on me in the middle of a musical number.  And it handles EVERYTHING.  Music, lights (with remote midi cuing) and two projection screens one of which is vital to the show.  This had never happened before!
I got a pop-up window: QLab had encountered an unexpected error, would you lieke to re-try?  YES, I'd like to RETRY!  But when it came back up, the interface looked and acted strange, and the video cues wouldn't run on the remote screens, only my desktop.  By this point, our lone keyboardist (we're running mainly tracks) started pounding out an approximation of the number, the guys sang their hearts out, and I advanced the lights manually while restarting the mac.  I had everything back up and running by the end of the number.
New plans formed from this little hiccup in the marvels of modern technology:

1) There is now a spare mic backstage and a cuelist/emergency script for my stage crew guy to announce what should be on the screen as "Audio Interface Mode."
2) A new Qlab list that consists of show tracks only.  I should be able to get it up and running in about 15 seconds, and the music will play in that strange, malfunctioning mode, even if the video is fubared.  Then I can restart the mac during the next scene, and hopefully be back on track.

No one knows what caused this or if it will happen again, which is causing me a great deal of anxiety, but I've planned for possible recurrences as best I can.
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