DIVERGENCE IN CONVERGENCE?

The buzz around the industry is the convergence of Lighting and Video – how these two departments are getting closer to each other and going to become one.

I agree that on the technology front they are converging, but on the operating front I think that they are diverging. The more specialised they become, the higher the demand for specialist designers and operators will become.

The need for media servers to be closely integrated with lighting control is an established fact and consoles like the grandMA2, AvoLites and Jands Vista offer full control with preview and the bells and whistles. The LD can now control what media content is used with the lighting – no more yellow backgrounds with purple spots during moodily lit red scenes… we hope. And this is different from the LD and MCD (Media Content Designer) sitting down and talking about the show?

I think we should be clear about exactly where the convergence lies – in the operating, the final execution of the show, not in the design.

As media is used more and becomes easier to generate, the need for overall artistic control of it becomes essential – it is not the role of the operator/programmer to “slot in” whatever clips are available. Media content design is a fully fledged design discipline and requires as much attention and credit as the lighting design, thus the MCD (just invented this and you saw it first here!).

Just like the Lighting Designer and Set Designer have to work together, the Media Content Designer has to become part of this design team.

FOLLOW SPOTTING – ART or NUISANCE JOB?

I don’t know about in your part of the world, but here the show’s follow spotters are usually chosen by looking around and picking anyone that looks like they have nothing to do – previous experience in follow spotting seems to be an automatic disqualifier.

And then people complain about bad pickups, spots doing a ballyhoo trying to find their target and my personal favourite, the half body pickup. No I don’t mean the top half, I mean only the left half is spotted.

We need to pay more attention to that lowly person, the Follow Spotter – bad follow spotting can ruin a show and has done so far too often. Recognise the Follow Spotter as an important part of the lighting team, use trained and experienced spotters and pay them accordingly.

I am always reminded of a story a friend tells about his home theatre in Sheffield, England. The Follow Spotter was not only the oldest person on the staff, he was also the highest paid, taking home more than the General Manager. He went in every afternoon and checked the follow spot, serviced the bits that needed it, changed the gells if they were fading and cleaned the lenses and reflectors and then did the show that night, with perfect pickups, whether he had seen the show before or not. That was his career, Follow Spotting, and he was proud of it and very good at it.

Who thinks of a career as a Follow Spotter? Certainly nobody that I know, there is “no future” and “no pay” – while certainly true at the moment, there is no reason why this cannot change. All it needs is for Lighting Designers to insist on “real” Follow Spotters, recognize them for their contribution to the show and make sure they are well paid – soon we will have a pool of good Follow Spotters to call on.

WITHOUT A SAFETY NET?

Economic necessities have forced managements to shorten setup periods for many productions – artists, equipment, crew and venue hire has all gone up in costs while production budgets have, by and large, been cut. Everyone wants more bang for their buck. 

When last did you do a show where you did not look at the schedule and think, “Oh boy, this is going to be extremely tight”? You still take it on, you need the money.

This is understandable and necessary, but carries some risk.

In nine out of ten productions everything goes according to plan, but there is that one show that Murphy is employed on – if it can go wrong, it will!

Take two recent shows that fell into the one out of ten category. On the one, the set was late, which meant that it could not be lit on schedule and there was a flying accident (fortunately nothing more than wood was hurt). The other one had some artistic differences between the lighting console and the programmers and the extremely tight schedule did not allow for a complete run through of the show with lighting before the audience was seated.

Whoever was to blame for the above two situations and the details are really irrelevant here, the point is that there was no time scheduled for possible problems – the production schedule had no safety net built in. The general rule seems to be “three days of work in two days”, it should be the three days of work in three days with a day “just in case”.

This worries me. 

A lot. 

We are relying on technology more and more to put on our shows and while this is mostly a good thing, it is a very bad thing when it fails us – the higher the technology, the bigger the failure (like the other “F” word…). The upside is that the higher the technology, the easier it is to fix, provided there is time to do so. And the issue here is really time – enough time to do the work and enough time to save the show when Murphy is on the crew payroll…

I don’t have a solution, only a warning to those that control the money – build in a safety net, allow for delays in delivery and those “Acts of God” - they will happen when least expected and wanted. Spend the extra money as insurance, hoping you will never need it, but then you don’t have to regret not having it when that brown stuff hits the fan. 

Seriously, is one day’s extra cost really worth more than your show?

DIMMERS IN THEATRES

I have become very hesitant to predict anything in respect of lighting technology – it is just moving way too fast for anyone to predict, we can only make educated guesses.

We knew five years ago that LED is the way to go, but could we then have predicted the LED based spots launched at Prolight+Sound by Robe and ETC? Best guesses back then was that they were at least ten years away. Ooops.

So I am going to stay on safe ground here, dimmers, and their future in theatres.

I predict that we may see one, or at most, two more large scale dimmer replacements in South Africa like we just saw at ArtsCape and The Playhouse Company. The next ones will have far lower dimmer counts as LED based luminaires become more prevalent.

This is going to be driven from two sides – advances in lighting technology and the necessity of saving power.

Already we are seeing more and more moving heads in theatres, requiring hot power and DMX signal – no dimmers required. With LEDs becoming more powerful and seeing widespread use, even in House Light installations, dimmers will be required even less.

The cost of electricity is forcing managements to cut on power consumption and where are they looking now? The operational budget and the obvious place to cut cost is on the lighting bill. This causes a bit of a conundrum – shows are getting bigger in respect of lighting, but we need to cut costs. How can we provide more light for less power cost? Simple, LEDs.

Dimmer manufacturers like ADB and ETC seem to agree with me, they are now making modules that can act like dimmers when required, but become true “non-dims” when only hot power is required. This is the way to go – any outlet can be either a dimmer or hot power, you choose.

Dimmers have come a long way from their salt water origins, but we have to start saying goodbye to them. 

We have to convince managements that they must invest the future electricity cost savings in new technology lights now!

There are rebate programmes for households going to solar geysers, what about a rebate programme for theatres converting to LED?

Who has contacts at ESKOM?

DID I GET IT WRONG?

During the course of last year I predicted that we will not see much further development of digital mixing consoles, but rather a consolidation of product ranges and a concentration on smaller format consoles.

Well, Prolight+Sound, Frankfurt, ended this past weekend and there was a fair bit of movement on the digital mixing console front. 

DiGiCo launched the SD5, positioned just under their flagship SD7, Cadac showed their new flagship digital console, the CDC-Eight, Midas had their Generation-II software for their consoles on show and Yamaha released their CL series consoles.

Mmmm, three new large format consoles, seems like I got this one wrong…

How far wrong was I? Cadac was certainly due for the CDC-8 as they didn’t really have a contender in the market and was/is getting hammered by DiGiCo in their traditional domain – musical theatre. So this can be seen as a consolidation and it must not be forgotten that they also launched the CDC-4, a small format console.

Yamaha, once dominant in the large format digital console market had also lost ground, a lot of ground, and people were starting to wonder if they were ever going to re-enter this market, or just concentrate on the smaller formats. The CL5 is the flagship of the range and has 72 mono and 8 stereo inputs, 24 mixes and 8 matrices, which doesn’t really put it in the same league as the other flagships. I would describe it as a medium format console.

DiGiCo nicely filled the gap between the SD10 and SD7 consoles with the SD5 which replaces the stalwart D5, again a consolidation of products.

Midas also went the consolidation route with the release of the Generation-II software with a host of new features for all their digital consoles.

So, in the end I did not get this altogether wrong and in these fast moving technological times, not too bad, I’d say.

AND AS FOR AUDIENCES...

I remember an occasion in 1981 when a stage manager couldn't get the opening night audience into the venue...his show report that night read "Show started late due to audiencial apathy."


Has anything changed since then? Yes, audience manners got worse. It seemingly have become the norm not to turn up when you have complimentary tickets, who cares, you didn't pay for the tickets. Well, the cast and crew who were expecting a full house cares when they realize that their audience didn't care enough to pitch. You may think that two less people won't make a difference, but in a 100 seater house if 20 of you think that way, everybody notices! If you were lucky enough to get complimentary tickets and at the last minute can't make it, phone the theatre and tell them, there may be people waiting for cancellations. This is called common courtesy and it is not common enough!


Then there is the habit of answering cell phones calls during the performance and walking out while taking the call and then demanding to be let back in. Talk about disrespect for cast, crew and fellow audience members!


Just a bit of advice to theatre newbies, the foyer staff did not make the rules, just like the police did not make the laws - they are merely enforcing them and there is no point at shouting them. You are in the wrong and no amount of bluster is going to change that fact.


A few theatre etiquette rules that may have been forgotten:

1. The time on your ticket is the time the show will start, it is not an indication of when you should leave home or order another drink. Be in your seat by then.
2. Unless it is a dinner theatre, you can usually not take any drinks into the auditorium. It is not the bar or foyer staff's fault that you ordered two drinks too many to get into yourself before the show starts. Hint: Most theatre's bar staff will happily keep your drink for you until interval, just ask nicely.
3. You may notice seat numbers on your tickets, that is where you are supposed to sit. No, you may not just pick any empty seat because it looks nicer. Some people actually book specific seats because they know the theatre and prefer to sit there. If you want those seats, book earlier.
4. When you get a drink from the bar, which is part of going to a show, get your drink, pay for it and move away. Do not stand and drink it there, there are other people who would also like something liquid.
5. If you really hate the show, by all means show your feelings by not clapping and leaving at interval. Do not get up  in the middle of the show and storm out muttering your feelings. This may come as a surprise, but tastes differ, the rest of the audience may actually like the show - Don't spoil it for them because you don't.

Good manners will get you far, even in a theatre!

THE THEATRE TECHNICIAN

THE THEATRE TECHNICIAN


I had a very long conversation on Friday night which highlighted what I think is one of the underlying problems within our theatre industry: The status of the technician.


It seems as if there is a feeling amongst young theatre technicians that they are the most important part of any production, that without them, there can be no production.


I have news for them, bad news. Think about it for a second, what do audiences go and see? Performances. By definition, that means they are going to see performers. Guess what? Performers are the most important part of any performance.


Take away the sets, lighting, sound, props, costumes, make-up, etc, and what do we have left? The performers performing - exactly what the audience came to see.


Now let's take the performers out of the equation. What is left? Lovely lighting on sets, well planned sound effects, props with no one to handle them, a pile of costumes...you get my drift? It will be completely pointless unless done as a self indulgent exercise, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be called a performance.


Now, don't misunderstand me, I am not for one second saying that we do not need the technicians. I started my professional life as a technician and I hope to die a techie. I never wanted to be a performer, still don't, I have always only wanted to be a techie!


Maybe I was just lucky, but I learnt very early on that as a technician, I will always only play a supporting role, but I can play a role in any production. I know that as a technician, I can contribute to a very good production and maybe help it become an excellent one.


Today's young technicians complain that they don't get respect from the performers. Bad news, again. Nobody "gets" respect, you have to earn it. An arrogant attitude and a superior feeling does not earn respect.


Where does this attitude come from? I suspect that it largely comes from the educational system wherein our technicians are supposed to learn their craft. They no longer work on productions from the first rehearsal through to closing night - too often they arrive at the theatre a week before opening with no preparation (often without scripts). How can we expect them to become a part of the production when they don't even know who is in the cast?


Theatre is the ultimate in collaboration and in my experience, the most successful productions are collaborations between all aspects, performers and technicians.


I seriously advocate a return to the tried and tested system that still works in professional theaters - the technicians must become part of the collaborate effort from the start.