Messages

16

Introductions / Re: British DSM checking in!

« on: Feb 16, 2016, 07:46 am »

Not quite, the ASM & SM do a lot of props that are found or easy makes such as paper props. The DSM pretty much stays in rehearsals, makes the book & calls the show. They also make a whole lot of paperwork likes scene change plots & props tracking so the SM & ASM can be ahead of the game when tech starts.

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Stage Management: Other / Re: Opera tips

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 05:42 pm »

Ah right that makes a lot of sense! I was thinking you were using it to help with blocking or something. I will definitely be stealing this

18

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: CALLING: calling cues

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 03:50 pm »

Judging by the OPs username, they are from the right-hand side of the pond, and over here, I've always heard DSMs say LX (ell-ex) for lighting cues. I sometimes say LX34, and sometimes LXQ34, kind of depends on what's going on at the time.

Stuff that's flown is always a Fly cue - Rail isn't a term I've heard used here in that context.

Sound, Spot (I did hear a very oldschool DSM call Limes), AV, FX, Pyro, Stage/Deck/Truck, references to a specific scenic piece or effect, as long as it's agreed in advance and you know what call is being used.

Yup, this is how I do it (English). One theatre I often work in has two sets of flies - counterweights on SL and hemps on SR, so then I call 'CW#' or 'Hemps#' in or out (# being the bar number).

I prefer to use QLights in conjunction with calling, rather than relying on one or the other. That means that if anything goes wrong with either system we've got it covered.

For some departments, especially hemps as they need a second to prepare physically I actually elongate the Q by saying "and the hemps......Go". I also do this if I'm still adjusting the standbys and I do one a bit too early.

19

Employment / Re: Budgeting with Irregular Income

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 02:27 pm »

This is one of my favourite subjects and I have many spreadsheets dedicated to it!

I decided to sort my money situation out after being rubbish at it for years, so the 'pay yourself a wage' method was useless to me as I had no cushion & when I first started budgeting properly I still needed to use all the money I made every month.

I made a spreadsheet with the following columns:

Date   Company   Show   Payment  Category   Amount   Running Total

Most of them are self explanatory, the payment column is for everything, outgoings and income, the category column is to help me mine the data to find spending/income patterns. I fill it in religiously with everything I spend or earn (I give myself allowances for food/discretionary spending and travel costs so it doesn't get too nitty gritty). This way I can plan months in advance, see exactly how much I need to pay all my bills and make sure everything gets paid on time. One of the things I was terrible at was taking care of all my financial responsibilities as soon as I got paid from a job, and leaving myself nothing to buy food and petrol with.

The running total column means I can see exactly how much I should have in my account on any given day, when you don't have the same income every month it's a godsend to be able to see if something's gone wrong.

It's got a bit more complicated since then, I added columns to help me pay off my overdraft and to help me analyse it all a bit more, but the basic concept is still there. I also got fancy with some conditional formatting, and pivot tables, oh my god do I love me some pivot tables!

Basically it's changed my life! I have 6 weeks of no work between panto finishing and my next contract, and I have money saved to cover everything, it's the first time in my life I've not had to borrow between jobs.

20

Employment / Re: The importance of on line presence

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 02:08 pm »

I just searched mine and the 3rd link down the page was a link to my CV which is published on stagejobspro.com. It includes my phone number and work email, I don't get any spam whatsoever to that address, the spam folder is completely empty, but it's clearly visible without clicking through. Maybe this is the best way to go.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: RUNNING: Keeping yourself busy on slow shows

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 01:31 pm »

I don't know how many of your are familiar with the memory palace concept, but I sometimes use time between cues to review things I'm trying to remember. You can keep you eyes on the stage & it doesn't take up so much concentration that you can't be alert to things happening that shouldn't be.

22

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROMPT BOOK: Your Prompt Book - Left or Right?

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 12:56 pm »

Interesting! I'd very much be interested in seeing an example of that layout!

Here are a couple of pages for a show I did last summer. It was the rehearsal copy (hence me getting to take it home) so it's quite messy - please don't judge me!

https://goo.gl/photos/eAB9YdWF7pTSP1zZ7

https://goo.gl/photos/XCBJeQ4FW8jKkxA79

(I've had to take the image tags out because the pictures won't show up - I've tried 3 different hosting sites!)

It's hard to see because the cues are pretty crammed in, but I do a standby (underlined) and then a continuous vertical line joining all the cues up until all the cues in that standby are called, that helps me to remember to keep quiet on cans. The arrow at the bottom means there are cues coming up right over the page. To the left of each cue I either draw a line to the word it happens on, or write a description of the visual cue; to the right I write what happens in the cue so I can tell if it's not happening as it should.

Since doing this one I've actually changed it up a bit, I've added the word 'GO' next to the go's which makes things a bit clearer. I also normally write courtesy calls inline with the other cues, but this show basically had 2 cast members who stood on stage the entire time so no calls & not much blocking!

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Stage Management: Other / Re: Opera tips

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 08:35 am »

Hiya, are there any UK stage managers lurking on this thread? I trained at a university which specialises in Opera, but have never heard of WWW paperwork at all. Is that just an American thing or have I just been in a cupboard all this time? I normally do scene breakdowns which say who's on when and have some costume & props details on, but nothing like as comprehensive as the ones people have uploaded as samples.

Also, we call our techs the Sitzprobe, stage and piano, and stage and orchestra.

Edit: Also, curious about people talking about putting 30s timings in. Do you just write the time by the dots? I was never taught to do this & I'm not sure why it would be useful if you can read music well. Does anyone care to elaborate on the uses of having the timings written in? Has anyone got any photos of examples? I can't picture it.

24

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROMPT BOOK: Your Prompt Book - Left or Right?

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 05:52 am »

It's late in the thread but I thought I'd weigh in with a British perspective. We don't write our Qs in the margin over here, we generally have the text on the left (although some people swap it around this is the way I do it), then the right hand page is divided in to 2 or 3 columns with blocking in one, cues in the other and sometimes timings in the 3rd column, it really depends on the DSM how they work the columns.

If anyone's interested I can dig out an old copy & post some pages. I learnt traditional West End style so my book is fairly representative of most British DSMs.

25

Introductions / British DSM checking in!

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 04:10 am »

Hi Everyone,

I'm  a stage manager from England, mostly specialising in DSMing. It seems to be mostly American SMs here so if anyone wants a rundown on British designations drop me a PM!

I mostly work on  drama with a smattering of musicals & some new writing thrown in. I also do a bunch of corporate charity balls & outdoor events & suchlike, as well as a yearly panto.

The guidance for intro threads tell me to tell you a story so I'll just leave this here.... this year on panto one of my dwarfs broke his leg 10 minutes in to Act I (in the dressing room, not on stage luckily!) so I had a 6' dwarf for 3 performances. I have seriously not laughed so much during a show for a long time, especially when Snow White changed her lines to say.

"And I must know your names. You must be Brainy, you are Moody, you are Goopy, and you must be Understudy!"

I came here looking for some opinion on prompt books and have so far discovered that US prompt copies are very different from the UK kind. I will definitely be stealing a lot of your ideas!

Thanks everyone, and see you around