My biggest fear in life is a school or church having an audio or lighting problem and then throwing money at it until it goes away. I guarantee you can walk into any elementary school in this country and find some disused closet somewhere in the school that will have a collection that will most likely include a number of
portable 2-way speakers, a couple of stands, and at least one 24
channel Mackie amidst an assorted amount of wireless microphones from either Nady, Samson, or Pyle.
I've thought about trying my
hand in the consulting side of things, but getting started with it is daunting. I don't have a clue how to
build connections with vendors, so more often than not I find myself helping out friends of friends and untangling the mess they find themselves in. A lot of the time I find they can solve most (if not all) of their problems utilizing the gear they currently have and arranging it in a way that most suits their needs while maintaining the needs of the space. For elementary schools, that almost certainly means a super basic
system with a mic and computer input for their primary usage and then designing a
portable, but more complicated
system for their special events (musicals, concerts,
etc). In reality those spaces are used almost daily for assemblies and crowd management, but maybe 4-10 times a year for anything that would require multiple mics.
My biggest complaints in cleaning up these messes usually stem from someone thinking that locking down a
system will make it work forever. Either putting up plexi over
mixer controls, writing on the board with
sharpie to indicate levels or something along those lines. The other side is the vendor/contractor that usually spec the wrong gear or way over-complicate things. That's where you end up with users who can't spend the time to understand how to use your gear, and you end up with a closet of stuff that no one knows how to use.
I absolutely love utilizing existing hardware in a way that makes it work for the site as opposed to buying all new stuff just for the sake of buying new stuff. New stuff is great. You
throw enough money into lighting a
stage and anything you put on it will look good, but the art comes from taking what you've got and using it in creative ways. That's where learning happens too. I think once I get too old for this gig I might try my
hand at finding a niche in cleaning up these kinda messes.
The biggest problem I
face in being a HS TD is that
you sometimes have to stand on the table and yell to get people to realize you exist and occasionally know what you're talking about. Case in
point, we're in the throes of a new install of a
system that will unify classroom audio, video and school-wide intercom. The
system is neat, but they didn't do an effective
site-survey to see what equipment already exists in each room or how the teachers currently use it, and the installer crew has no dialog with the end-users. The result is a
system that doesn't work as well as what was there. Basic things like to
play back a DVD the audio runs through this integrated amp that is
POE enabled and networked. But there's no physical volume control. It's a fixed-gain amp that is attenuated via a software interface
that we don't have access to. My good turns have lately been setting up teachers with their new gear. It's stuff like this that makes me
wonder what they're thinking upstairs, but I know they put this together and spent a lot of time working on it with the hopes that it would improve the quality of instruction and whatnot. At the same time it's hard not to get frustrated at them for not thinking of the end-user or the long-term maintenance of a very complicated
system of devices.
@StradivariusBone Chapter Two; Why would you want convenient access to your
fly floor???
A brand spanking new
PAC was to be built in a nearby city.
Many of the citizens had been urging the city for a
venue better than the local secondary schools.
- The dance studio owners wanted HUGE wings on both sides so they could corral forty or fifty 5 year olds prior to herding them up and heading them out onto the
stage for their applauding parents to
snap photos and shoot videos before they're lassoed and encouraged to exit SL while the next group 6 year olds are being corralled on SR.
- The
amateur musical groups wanted a 60' prosc' with at least 60' wings on both sides and at least six large dressing rooms to accommodate: Adult females, adult males, pre adult females, pre adult males and a couple more for chorus members, a few smaller dressing rooms for "Stars" would be nice too. They also wanted 50 or 60 single
purchase counter-weighted
line sets with the
system pipes clearing 75' with a full
grid with 6'
clear above the
grid for the convenient installation of spot lines.
A
trap room under the entire
stage was mandatory along with an
orchestra pit, with hydraulically adjusted depth and a removable
cover /
stage extension.
- The city's world famous marching band wanted multiple loading docks and huge off
stage spaces to accommodate members of their three ages of marching bands arriving during our Canadian winters needing to doff their heavy parkas and winter boots, don their uniforms unpack their tubas, clarinets, trumpets, drums, et al and march on
stage, down into an
auditorium aisle, around the audience, across the rear, possibly through the
lobby, up the other side and back onto the
stage.
- The
amateur drama groups wanted great
acoustics, great lighting and SFX facilities and fabulous dressing rooms.
- The
amateur opera groups wanted a combination of all of the above.
- The
amateur choral groups wanted a concert shell.
- The socialites wanted an elegant private bar and box seats to be seen by all patrons.
You've got the picture: The biggest hurdle was conjuring one design that would appease all of the voters, all of whom were pestering their aldermen and city councilors for a new
venue with enclosed parking and a drop-off lane to accommodate their limo's. ALL of the above on a small lot with nowhere to grow due the proximity of buildings on one side and an underground
line pumping jet fuel to an airport well below finished grade on the other.
Circling back to my starting
point (and fortunately this was caught prior to the drawings being released for bidding).
Approximately 30' above finished
deck level on SR was a full depth
catwalk for spot lines to
hoist and locate LX multi-cables.
At the same 30' height on SL was a
catwalk for the fly
system's operating
rail with another
catwalk / loading floor above it.
THE PROBLEM:
Access to the SR hemp
rail was through a fire door in the prosc' at
deck level DSR.
Up an enclosed stairwell on the
house side of the prosc' back in via a second fire door through the prosc' and there you are on the SR hemp
rail.
So far, so good.
How do you get to the operating
rail on SL (and the loading floor above it)??
Up the same enclosed stairwell, out yet another fire door, across the first LX
cove, back in through ANOTHER fire door and (finally) you're on the SL
catwalk / slash operating
rail.
The loading floor? Same route plus a ship's ladder straight up the US wall (of course).
FORTUNATELY two of us caught this prior to the drawings being issued for bidding, neither of us were getting anywhere with the architect but fortunately we were able to HOLLER at City
Hall and convince a ranking staffer to intervene.
One thing that made this all the sillier was the architects already had a stairwell in place on the US side of the US wall directly behind the operating
rail; with only minor re-drafting, a fire door added at the US end of the operating
rail lined up with a landing in the already designed and specified stairwell.
The architect and GC argued that fire doors were expensive.
We countered: Since this was all still a matter of shuffling paper with neither drawings released, bids received, nor shovels in mud, why not relocate the fire door at the DS end of the operating floor to the US end and
call it a day.
We almost won that one 'til the
Fire Marshal looked at the drawings pre-release and withheld his blessings due to needing a second
egress route OFF the operating floor. Initially NOBODY gave a rats rectum about how you got there but it sure became a 'show stopper' when it came to emergency
egress.
Sometimes end users' desires are difficult to meld with bureaucrats, socialites, civic officials, architects, interior designers, budgets AND fire marshals.
I've got AT LEAST one more chapter for this novella.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard