Theatre Manager Won't Let Me Move Ion

Hey CB,

We recently bought and Ion and the TM at my high school won't let me move the ion. I am designing and programming for a show. It is very hard to design from in the booth because we are under the balcony and can not see the fixtures on the grid or above the stage. I asked him if I was able to move the Ion into the house and he said no. I told him that I would do it all my self and pull it all out and put it all back. I designed and programmed from inside our booth before and it was painful. What should I do. In his defence we have 2 external monitors, DMX, Power, USB, Keyboard, Mouse, Midi, etc. Should I continue to ask him, I was planning on having it in there for 2 days only.

-Thomas
 
Chinese finger trap. Harder you fight it, harder it'll fight you. You may find it easiest to have somebody else program while you call key commands to them over intercom from the audience.
 
Along with the intercom, throw a 100' piece of Cat5 out the booth window, run EOS-offline in mirror-mode on a laptop in the audience, and you can see that the operator is typing what you tell him/her.

Next step is to purchase the Dongle? Nomad? Puck?, and then you don't need the operator. But you lose an excellent opportunity to train someone.
 
Defiantly ask why you can't move it. If he says no, he has a reason, and it can be a great learning opportunity.
 
Speaking as a HS theatre manager, there's any number of reasons why I say no to the numerous questions I'm asked daily from my student techs. If I say no, I usually mean it and have a good reason, but can be swayed if you have a better one. If you get a "maybe" or an "ask me later", don't press. If I get pressed when I'm in "maybe"-land, it quickly turns into "no".

Did he give a reason why he won't let you? I don't mean this as a dig, but are you clumsy? I have a few clumsy kids I wouldn't let move $7000 worth of gear. It's not anything personal, but I also don't want to explain to my boss that I need a new console because Johnny dropped the other one down the spiral staircase.
 
Take every opportunity you have to pick the brains of teachers and mentors. That way when you get out into the pro world you don't get "I don't Know, your the lighting guy..." when you ask a critical question.

I would approach it as no means no, but follow up with "I was wondering if you could explain your reasoning so that I can learn from it"
 
While there are definite advantages to designing/programming a show from the house at a tech table setup including:
• being able to communicate directly with the director, other designers, stage manager, mentors
• not having to travel as far to fix issues
• ability to design from the "best seats in the house"
• ability to see the same perspective as the director
There are also plenty of great reasons to design from the booth. Also It seems superfluous to need to see the actual lighting fixtures. You should be more concerned, as a designer, with how the light plays on the actors and the stage than what the fixtures look like. For most of the shows that we do, you can't see most of the fixtures from any point in the house. in fact, we do that on purpose because seeing fixtures is often ugly and distracting, and it is why the theatre gods invented borders and legs.

As long as your booth has a clear view of the acting space and all of the scenery, you should be able to create and effective design even if you can't see the actual fixtures. Frankly, I prefer being elevated in the back of the house so that my view of the stage allows me to see the stage floor to see how the light plays on the floor, especially if working with moving lights.

Feel free to present my list of why working from the house is a good way to work, but also consider what I said about working from your booth.
 
I would say no too. Its to much of a risk to move everything. I would suggest what Derek said and drop a cat5 cable and an intercom line and get someone to mash the buttons for ya. If you call the commands clearly and say where the buttons are even an untrained person with any computer knowledge will pick it up pretty quick. A crach cousre of the board in 5 mins and you should be good.
 
I agree with a lot of what has been said above. If you can find a separate programmer, that would be great - it's more in line with what you'd find in professional theatre, and it would allow you to connect more with what's happening on stage. It's too easy as a designer-programmer to get caught up with what's happening on the console and lose sight of the bigger picture. This way, you could just focus on the art of it all and not have to switch back and forth between "left brain/right brain color-by-number".
 
I disagree with the concept of trying to program by a spotter out in the house. Very slow and easy for mistakes to be made. Whilst as Les pointed out it is similar in a way to the way that you would work in professional theatre, it relies on you having enough trained and competent techs to employ both an LD and a programmer, this may not be suited to your needs. My feeling is that it will be useful more than once in the theatre to be able to have the desk in the house, and therefore my intent would be to see whether you can find a solution to make moving the console out into the house a manageable task with low or no risk to the console. Certainly the most obvious reason for your theatre manager to say no is just concern about damage or overly heavy wear on the console due to constantly being moved in and out of the room. He may also have concerns about things like unauthorised access whilst you're taking lunch, things like that. Before calling the shots over comms, I'd try to find a solution that makes him happy to have it moved.

My instinct would be to encase the desk in a case which includes some wiring so that you can reduce wear on the console ports. Things like DMX (Cat5 in your case?) and power can go to a patch panel if you're feeling posh, or just onto a short loom if not. You could make a semi-flight case if your tech dept has decent woodworking facilities, plywood and screws and some battens for reenforcement; with a space behind the console for this small loom / patch panel (perhaps hinged?), some handle cutouts for easy handling, and perhaps a bit of foam lining around the console itself to protect it if knocked / bumped in transit. You could also see about incorporating a sliding drawer for mouse and keyboard. Having your external monitors in some sort of case with handles and patching leads would also be nice, so it can also be easily be moved in and out of the control booth with minimal plugging and unplugging.

If this is something you could produce yourself in the workshops at school, and make a good job of, he might re-consider. Certainly having a mobile programming desk is not uncommon in theatre, a lot of programmers just don't like being locked behind the glass all day in a silent room, it's just a bit uncomfortable. It's also easier to call the focus with your guys on stage if you're out there, rather than relying on comms.
 
I also would not allow one of my students to do this. My reasons would include in no particular order:

The house is not a safe place for the ION to live, even for just two days.
I don't trust a student to actually follow through, and this will end up causing me more work.
If something stops working and I can't figure it out in time I have to pay a tech to come out.
I don't like letting students do things the easy way :)
It is more of a convenience than a necessity.

As has been said before, this is a great opportunity to get someone new familiar with the board. I cue almost all of my shows over headset by telling the board op what to do. If you aren't working with too many movers or LEDs, then this is a simple process with an ION. Plus this way you get to have an assistant! Also, I love Derek's idea of the laptop in the house to monitor their keystrokes. That might be your best compromise.
 
Other no thoughts may include the fact that other people can have access to a theater house versus a locked booth. Depending on where your theater is or attached to of course. If you set up the ION in the house for two days it could very well not be there when you return the net day, or someone could come into the theater dark, trip on the cable, and either get injured or injure the equipment. Your best bet is to work with what you've got and be thankful you have the oportunity to program lights at all. :)
 
Hi All,

I have talked to my TM and he said that I couldn't. He did not give me a reason. We already use up both the ethernet ports so if there is another way that would be great, one is for the dimmer node conversion and the other is for a wifi connection for the irfr. I am going to move one of the monitors and make a magic sheet, which will copy the face plate just in case. I even asked if I could pull it out and than put it back that night and he said no. To mirror whats happening do I just have to plug the ethernet cord into my mac and run the offline software? or is there any additional setup i must do? we do have comms set up at our tech table.

Thanks for replying,
Thomas
 
How many universes are you running? A solution might be to load MagicQ on a Laptop, get a dongle and throw a loop of DMX out of the booth window.
 
We already use up both the ethernet ports so if there is another way that would be great, one is for the dimmer node conversion and the other is for a wifi connection for the irfr.

A simple network switch will allow you to connect multiple pieces of gear together -- you'll likely want to put the switch in the port that the dimmer node uses (which is probably the 10.101.x.x network) to have a quicker setup, and then connect your cable to FOH and the node into the switch. Network switches are very inexpensive these days. The Netgear FS105 is a favorite of mine - currently on Amazon for around $20. These kinds of switches don't have any configuration and are literally just plug and play.
 
To expand on what @HansH said.

If you already have a wifi router set up for the iRFR you don't need to make any additions to your network. You should be able to connect a computer to the wifi (you may have to assign a static IP address depending on how the network is configured) and run the offline software. The key to this is that you have to have the same version of the offline software as the version of the software the console is running. So, if you were to go and download the latest version of the Nomad software (the Eos Family OLE), you would be getting version 2.2.1, so your console needs to be running 2.2.1. I would imagine that if your console is not up to date, you can still get the older versions of the OLE from ETC, but I would recommend updating your console anyway. The new version of the software is nice, and had great features for use on a computer.
 
I also would not allow one of my students to do this. My reasons would include in no particular order:

The house is not a safe place for the ION to live, even for just two days.
I don't trust a student to actually follow through, and this will end up causing me more work.
If something stops working and I can't figure it out in time I have to pay a tech to come out.
I don't like letting students do things the easy way :)
It is more of a convenience than a necessity.

As has been said before, this is a great opportunity to get someone new familiar with the board. I cue almost all of my shows over headset by telling the board op what to do. If you aren't working with too many movers or LEDs, then this is a simple process with an ION. Plus this way you get to have an assistant! Also, I love Derek's idea of the laptop in the house to monitor their keystrokes. That might be your best compromise.


Totally agree. On a side note we call our rolling video node Wall-e it was built with 2 CRT screens and a etcNet 2 video node that we could jack into both our studio network and our main stage at my previous job.
 

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