PLASA 2012 PREDICTIONS

With PLASA now only thirteen days away, it is time to seriously think about what it is going to deliver.

My predictions for the show, apart from all the talk that is going to be devoted to the Olympic Games:

MIXING CONSOLES: Nothing new in the large and medium formats, possibly some new software and more effects. On the smaller scale we will see some development with digital consoles catering specifically to small bands, clubs and houses of worship.

LOUDSPEAKERS: New models, but nothing that is going excite anybody, except fans of the product. Maybe some more steerable speakers.

MICROPHONES: New radio microphones to accommodate the new frequency ranges with more control features. Otherwise some new models, but nothing is going knock anyone’s socks off.

LIGHTING CONTROL: New software with more integration of media software. I don’t expect fireworks here either.

LUMINAIRES: More LEDs, specifically in Profiles, Fresnels, PCs. Overall the focus is going to be on energy efficient sources with LEDs starting to come of age. Going to be some really interesting products to see.

EFFECTS: Bigger and better, but again nothing really new.

MEDIA SERVERS: This is going to be interesting, I reckon more features, easier user interfaces and it is going to continue the trend of integrating with lighting control.

RIGGING: More and better motor control and new shapes in trussing, but the old standards will still be the mainstream.

DIGITAL SIGNAGE: This seems to be a hot topic and I foresee a lot new here with some more crossover between the traditional projection manufacturers to include digital signage – a lot more suppliers on the bandwagon.

LED DISPLAYS: Also going to be worth looking out for – better resolution, smaller pitches and a lot more flexible, both in form and size.

EDUCATION: There is going to be a lot of talk about education in our industry and I foresee some interesting international alliances being formed to standardise training and certification.

We’ll see in two weeks if I got it right, I will report on my accuracy after the show. If you do not want to wait till then, remember I will be Tweeting from the show floor on new and exciting developments, follow me on @Philip_Kruger (you will only get PLASA news, I’m not going give a minute by minute account of my coffee breaks or what beer I’m having).

HEROES or THE ART OF STAYING POSITIVE

With Olympic fever going around and everybody having something to say about it, I thought, why should I be different? No fear, this is not going to be about the opening ceremony or anything remotely connected to my usual subjects – this is much more personal.

The whole world is currently enamoured by Oscar Pistorius and rightly so - he fought for his dream and overcame tremendous odds to be in that semi-final. In my book, he gets the Gold for Spirit and Determination. A worthy role model and someone to think about every time something doesn’t quite go your way.

I have a personal hero, you won’t have heard of her, you probably haven’t noticed her occasional appearance on my facebook page. She lives in Pietermaritzburg, lost the use of her legs in a motorcycle accident at the age of sixteen and she lives her life.

Never have I heard a negative comment from her, the world doesn’t owe her anything, she goes out and gets it for herself.

Every time I feel that life is getting on top of me, you know, those days when you just feel like you are fighting to stay in the same place, but it keeps sliding away under you? When you wonder if it is worth carrying on…why not just give up and let someone else worry about it…

When it gets to that point, I stop and think of that girl in ‘Maritzburg in her wheel chair and I compare my life to hers – shyte, what am I complaining about? I am not living half as much as she is and I am complaining? She is the least disabled person it has been my fortune to know and in her own unique way has taught me that disabilities are purely mental – you are as disabled as you want to be and like Oscar, she has chosen not to be disabled.

Like them, I choose not to be disabled by my own or anyone else’s negativity, I will live my life. Guess what? Somehow, life is suddenly better; the sun is just that little brighter and without fail, there is good news in my Inbox. 

That is my secret to remaining positive and the old cliché of ‘count your blessings’ really works for me. I suggest you do the same before you complain about your life.

Jene’, thank you, you have no idea how much you have meant to me over the past twelve years and you certainly share that Gold medal with Oscar!

HOW TO START A RUMOUR AND WHY

It would seem that the entertainment industry as a whole thrives on rumours and gossip. We all so love to hear how so-and-so screwed up and that such-and-such is in financial trouble.

So why not start a rumour of your own? It is the easiest way to deflect attention from yourself and your own woes and the best of all, it is entirely safe. Nobody is going to check the facts or bother to trace the source of the rumour.

The point of a rumour is to be able to say, “Did you hear that Joe Soap couldn’t pay for the kit he bought? Don’t quote me on this, but I heard it from someone who knows.”  Even if you have nothing against poor Joe Soap, it is a great conversation starter, the other person is bound to say, “Yes, I heard it too and also that Joe’s company is on the verge of bankruptcy…” and off the conversation goes… with each participant trying to top the other. It shows that you are in the know, a person to be reckoned with.

The best time to start a rumour is when you’ve just lost out to a competitor, you can then anonymously accuse them of financial irregularities and sit back and watch the fun, knowing full-well that whistle blowers are a protected species. Anyway, who is going to check?

If you happen to be on the wrong end of a rumour, the last thing you should do is deny it – nobody is going to believe you, so why bother? Start your very own counter-rumour, after all, attack is the best form of defence, isn’t it?

The sad fact is that the above really happens and the maligned has very little recourse. Yes, you could hire a very expensive attorney, go to court and have your name officially cleared. You can write letters to everyone you know stating the facts. You can put ads in the trade press.

The problem is, the brown stuff tends to stick and it is way easier for people to say “…where there’s smoke…” than to actually get off their butts and find out for themselves.

Please, our industry is small, next time you hear a rumour, pick up the phone and find out the facts before spreading the lies. And please tell the person where you heard it – give them a chance to prepare a defence.

INTEROPERABILITY IN AUDIO

Lighting has managed to do it since 1992 – pick your flavour of lighting control console, get the dimmers from another manufacturer and you know that they will talk to each other. It is called DMX - it works.

When is sound going to get their act together? I love the features on Console A, but hate their pre-amps, I want B’s stage rack and I want them to talk to each other. How difficult is that?

Is it really a technology thing, or are audio manufacturers scared of the competition? Do they really have to lock us into their product range to maintain market share?

Why can’t I specify A’s console at Front of House, B’s at Monitors and use C’s pre-amps? Let’s not even mention hooking in a Broadcast console…

I, and I suspect many others, don’t really care which protocol you settle on, MADI, AES-50, Dante or whatever, just decide and let us choose our equipment based on our needs, not on what you, as manufacturer, decides is best.

I only ask that you choose wisely, not like the SpeakOn, the only connector that does not have a male and female inline…really, what were you thinking?

HOW TO SUCCEED AS A THEATRE TECHNICIAN

There are a few rules you should learn if you want to become a successful theatre technician. 

Rule #1:

This is the most important rule - Remember, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT! Nothing that goes wrong around you is ever your fault, it is always someone else's fault. 

Rule #2:

Once you have identified the guilty party (obviously not yourself), shout at them. Shout loudly and keep on shouting, making sure that the guilty one cannot get a word in. If they can't say anything, they can't prove you wrong (See Rule #3).

Rule #3:

You are never wrong. No matter what, you are right and everyone around you is wrong.

If you adhere to these three basic rules, you will gain the respect of all around you and succeed as a theatre technician. You will have a long and prosperous career and will be rewarded with many friends and lots of money.

All of the above are wrong.

We all make mistakes - own up to yours, apologise and move on, making sure that you never make the same one again. Honesty, in the theatre, as everywhere else, remains the best policy.

Remember the little boy who cried wolf? Keep on blaming those around you and shouting at them, you will be seen the same way. The day that it really is not your fault, nobody is going to believe you.

THE EASY ANSWER

As a consultant I have to advise clients on their options in respect of equipment purchases and they rely on me to recommend the right solution.

This, in itself, can seem easy – after all, during the initial needs assessment and request for quotations/bids, it should have become fairly clear what the client wants.

Let’s face it, between the top end products in the professional sound and lighting industry, there is not that much too choose – they all do pretty much the same and cost about the same. So where is the problem?

Before I get attacked for saying they are the same, I know that one console sounds “warmer,” the next line array sounds better on vocals and the red is not quite the same shade on all moving lights, but look at the specifications on paper… not that much difference. Nowadays the orders are signed by the finance people and they chew hard on esoteric terms like “warmer”, “brittle” and so forth – they want the facts, on paper. If you want the more expensive solution, you are going to have to justify it – the more expensive, the more difficult the justification.

Again, you ask, so what is the problem? Let the clients have what they want.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. We are talking about capital expenditure, a lot of money and the gear is expected to last a long time and deliver for years to come. 

Herein lies the rub - support, service and experience in the industry.

Our industry consists of many different parts, each with its own unique set of demands – Theatre, Live Concerts, Corporate Events, Conferences, etc. The same console is not going to work as well for Theatre as it does for Live Concerts and the supplier is not necessarily going to understand every aspect of your part of the industry, or what constitutes and emergency for you.

Increasingly I find that clients are asking details about the support and service that is going to be provided and what experience the supplier has in the industry, and which segment.

The equipment we use today is complex and getting into the nitty gritty of operating takes a lot of training and experience and when supporting it, you have to understand the questions and what the operator is trying to achieve. “That is an interesting question, I’ll get back to you tomorrow” just does not cut it when it is thirty minutes before the performance and the operator has a problem – a lot of unprintable words will be used… The right answer is “Ah, I get it, you want all the parcans to come on at the same time. Here is what you do, delay the slow one by…”

You get my drift by now, I hope, the crucial aspect has become good, experienced support. If you have no idea how far that goes towards making your product the logical choice, I suggest you find out – fast.

It is not just about price and what you like, it is also about who you are buying from and their pedigree.

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?