I'm starting teching on tuesday

[Stu]

Wouldn't you rather have those profiles than a single cheap mover?

 

When you really need them, they will complement your generic rig.

If all I had budget wise was enough to rent, say, 4 movers, I just wouldn't bother - unless the director had specifically asked for them. I'd much rather put that £400 to better use by hiring some Source Fours and the like and doing gobo washes that way - and also means I can use the breakups and colours I want to use :blink:

 

And to be honest, I normally find I would rather spec Wash fixtures over Profile fixtures for the kind of stuff I do - I find having a variety of colours and washes to your disposal much more useful than 4 blobs of dots breakup :huh:

 

Stu

[gareth]

Rule 1.  If you don't know what your doing, ask someone.

Rule 2.  If you mess up, put your hand in the air and admit to it.

Two very good rules, which many of the young people entering the business these days would do well to keep at the front of their minds.

 

I'm sure that anyone who's working as a chief LX, master carp, production LX or whatever, and who has people working with them who are still 'learning their trade' (I wonder who that sounds like? :blink: ), would much prefer to be asked "Could you just show me how to do this?" or be told "Sorry, I think I might have buggered that up, could you check it?" instead of not being told anything and discovering a complete b*lls-up a couple of minutes before the half when it's too late to do anything about it. The most important thing you need to know is knowing what you don't know .... if you see what I mean!

[dfinn]

Thanks for that, cant wait to start

[Brian]

Thanks for that, cant wait to start

To all the other excellent advice I would add...'Enjoy it'.

[P. Funk]

yeah I know what you're saying here, but in my defense:

 

a) we have very limited dimmer channels, all of which will be used

b) cost is an issue - I was going to use a followspot, but due to lack of good followspot ops, and that most of the followspot cues were going to be in a fixed position, I looked into moving heads. now it turns out that I have a friend who could hire me this equipment, and as we needed to hire the desk anyway, he offered two moving heads for about £75 extra on top of the desk for 2 weeks. one decent followspot would have cost £150 for 2 weeks, as I would only have been able to hire commercially.

c) I like playing with new toys

d) we have a chronic lack of profiles at school - we have 2 quartets, a minim P, and 2 working p23s. we also have 2 minuette Ps but they give NO light.

 

as for limited resources, I have no problem 'learning' with limited resources. the play im going to tech thru in 8 minutes time (just up the road) uses a 12 channel analog system, strand MUX control, and 4 codas, 6 223s, and 2 23s. theres also a suitcase full of strand cinemoid lying around, which they used to use regularly until I came and showed them that real filter is £3 a sheet.

 

well.. at our school, communication doesnt exist. noone knows whos meant to be 'in charge' of stage tech, so we can do whatever I want and get away with it.

 

having said that, I do try and get most things checked by the tech dept. they are always fine :blink:

[robloxley]

we also have 2 minuette Ps but they give NO light

Solutions involve cleaning the lenses and reflector. Also if they've got the front-silvered glass reflectors, the silvering dies and flakes off after a while, so they may need replacing.

[Brian]

we also have 2 minuette Ps but they give NO light

Solutions involve cleaning the lenses and reflector. Also if they've got the front-silvered glass reflectors, the silvering dies and flakes off after a while, so they may need replacing.

Also make sure they've got the right lamp fitted. It's possible to fit lamps with the filament the wrong height above the base.

[Brian]

as for limited resources, I have no problem 'learning' with limited resources.

Just before Xmas I stepped in at the very last minute to light a small panto. Most of my available time was spent installing a few permanent scaff bars so I actually had somewhere to hang something. (previously, a length of 4 by 2 tied to a few brackets on the ceiling was employed!).

 

With zero budget, zero power and zero time I ended up lighting it using just 4 channels out of one of my 6-way dimmer packs, 8 lanterns and a follow spot (which I operated as well). I wouldnt' claim it was brilliant but it was rather fun to get back to my roots.