First off no one on Broadway and no one in large professional theaters uses subs. Furthermore larger community theater and good university programs don't use subs either. Anywhere that has good equipment and has a real
lighting designer uses cues. The reason? A large part of the design is the timing of how those cues work. Designers are not board operators. They create a look record it and then a board monkey presses go every night so that the designer's concept never changes. There are also all kinds of things you can do with
split fade times, auto follows, and effects that you just can't do from subs on most boards (not true with some of the newer boards).
So why should you use cues instead of subs:
-Every night looks the same. You set the light levels in tech and your director never has to complain that you didn't get enough light in a scene or that a
blackout was too fast or slow.
-It teaches you something about how the board actually works. There is a ton of
power inside a light board that the vast majority of high school programs never even scratches the surface of. Learning how to program the board is a great educational opportunity your teach is passing up to help you prepare for college and beyond.
Why does you teacher not want you to use cues?
My guess is she doesn't understand how the board works herself. She's afraid you are going to get in over your head and mess up something and she won't know how to fix it. So it's easier to tell you to just run it from subs because that's what
level she is comfortable with. Don't argue with her about it and be careful not to make her feel insignificant in her knowledge. Instead reason with her that you have a very powerful light board capable of so much more than subs and you want to learn how to program like professional lighting designers do. Appeal to her sense of allowing you the opportunity to learn. Also tell her that you've found a forum on the internet filled with
Express experts... including several from the factory who will support you if you have problems.
As for your strategy of recording. This is what I teach my students. Start by programing areas and colors. For example:
down stage blue,
down stage pink, upstage blue, upstage pink
etc... break them up in as many different ways and color groups as is logical for your space and the show. Make a chart with:
submaster#,
Circuit #'s, Description. Now you have a well organized box of colors to paint with. Instead of just using a
preset you can grab three subs and quickly mix just the right look for an area and then record it. If you have lots of submasters available then add a few subs with upstage
wash,
downstage wash etc... however leave these washes at about 60-70% so that you can fine tune the color balance by adding in a little more pink from another sub. Once you have a
cue recorded you can open it up and record it as another
cue. So instead of recreating "the apartment at night" from
cue 7 again as cues 13 and 18. Just fire up
cue 7 and then record it as
cue 13 and 18 (sort of like using Save As in Word to make copies of the same file)
With your
Express 48/96 you have a LOT of submasters available to work with. You also have arguably the best
console ever built to learn to program with. MANY of us around here are very experienced
Express users and can help you if you get stuck.
Good luck.