Stage Magazine

[BlueShift]

This a very interesting thread and its something I have been directly and indirectly involved in for a while now.

 

Im currently on a year out, I graduated high school early last year and will start a MEng at Imperial in October.

 

Im a committed Christian and although my interest in event production (im a noiseboy at heart but I do dabble in lighting and vision as well as some more general production stuff) spawned much earlier, much of my exposure in it started through my church and not my school.

 

During my time at high school I worked on around a dozen productions, at various levels doing everything from being a stage hand to production managing shows for 1000 people. Although, through this I got a lot of hands on time with lower and mid-range equipment, I didnt recieve any real training in the fundamentals aside from what I went on to learn in IB Higher Physics and IB Higher Math. This was one thing I was continually frustrated about.

 

However, I was lucky in that while I lived in australia, and here in the UK I was involved in large charismatic churches which put an emphasis on production and so had a much wider range of equipment, but more to the point, the two churches in question were both involved in running, or ran, large events and festivals which meant I worked closely with highly skilled professionals in various capacities for a few years. Here in the UK, working at one particular prominent Christian festival has allowed me to gain countless hours of fundamental training with companies and individuals well known here on the blue room. This is where I really began to learn the groundwork, which then grew to support the hands on knowledge gained by working on productions.

I had used an Avo Pearl, Pana MX70 and A&H ML5000 and was confident in their operation before I had learnt the complexities of different video transmission signals, proper gain structure and impedance calculations, and the workings of the DMX protocol! But it didnt take long for me to build up the ground work.

 

2 years later, I now work with a well-known church and festival here in the UK helping organise and run many services, conferences and events. Looking back on the last few years though, while it will be a while before I clock up the years of experience of some people here on the BR, it was definately the church environment where I was introduced to the people and organisations who could really give me good, fundamental, practical training in the various areas of event production. This, I can confidently say, has given me far more experience and knowledge (as well as hands-on work hours) that I ever could have got from school alone.

 

But its interesting that the UK education system doesnt put more emphasis on this - now I realise that I have been somewhat unusually lucky in having access to the people to train me, and more importantly, people who believe in me enough to 'cut me loose' and really let me grow by having positions of real responsibility, but my school could have done more if it wanted to and I was always disappointed that it didnt.

 

It is, however, always important to see where you fit in the grand heirachy and where your strengths and weaknesses lie. As Bobbsy and paulears have said, this is often lost on many young people today.

 

So in conclusion, I can say that I dont just have experience with a PM5D, but I have knowledge of gain structure, and that I understand the difference between single and three phase power systems. But although school provided the means for me to put this knowledge to good use, they never did a good job of teaching me it....

 

And the most important thing of all is that whatever I may know now, the key to becoming a better engineer is being well aware of what I dont know, seeking out those who do know, and learning from them.

 

thats my very long winded £0.0235 (inc. VAT)

 

:)