Corn chips in the booth.
- Thread startersubcinco
- Start date
We still would have had all the dance and choir shows and all that sort of thing. I imagine we would have still had plays as well. Our drama teacher has a contract and credentials to teach English, so even if drama was cut she would still be on campus and probably still work with us and the actors to do a srping and a fall production. As it is, we got a bit of a budget reprive, so we're looking good.
We have someone in the admin office who looks after all that. It's great when they tell us we have an event in two days. And it's a dance show. And needs LOTS of lights and effects. And it's a day before the choir show that was rescheduled and also needs a ton of lights, all in different positions than the dance show. I wish our director looked after all that. It would make my life a lot easier.
waynehoskins
Active Member
Man .. I think back to my high school days, and they were quite different to yours.
Rewind ten years.
The mainstage seats about 800. The prosc arch is 56 feet wide, and 16-ish feet tall, but there is a dead-hung teaser that trims out at 11 feet. The stage has a fhuge apron, a round arcy thing that is at the arch left and right, but at center is 15 feet DS of the arch. The deck has gymnasium-floor shellac applied every year so it's pretty. Upstage of the arch is about 20 feet to back wall. The grid is all underhung and is at 30 feet. There are 10 linesets, two of them electrics with 12 circuits each. The apron has 12 circuits total on two dead-hung pipes.
The booth is 4 feet deep from wall to wall, and there is a wooden desk just barely over a foot deep, 15 inches tops, that runs the width of the room, which is realistically 8 feet. The booth has a door either side occupying the space between the back wall of the audience chamber (it's inset into the chamber) and the front edge of the desk. Your view of the stage, as a board op, is through an 8-inch-by-8-inch windowpane in front of each of the two boards. The windows open up (double-hung), and they are conveniently positioned such that a normal person standing behind a window has his view of the stage completely obstructed by the aluminum window sashes.
The lightboard is a Teatronics Producer II, 24/48. No theatre stack, no show disk. Manual, and you could crossfade submasters. Altman 1KLs and 65Qs. MD288 rack.
Sound board is an EV BK16-something, a 16 channel board. This board used a revolutionary new concept for the faders in that they're not used in a gain circuit, but in an attenuation circuit. The downside of this is that after age and wear, many of the slide pots had an open connection at the very bottom extreme of their travel, making there be no attenuation, so you had to be sure to take the faders down almost, but not quite, all the way. The wireless were Nady VHF sets that we had accumulated over time, some of which worked better than others. One set happened to sometimes pick up the local network television station's field-studio intercom link, which was neat to listen to but not during a play. The main array is three homebuilt cabinets hung by baling wire from cuphooks in the plaster ceiling, fed with zipcord. The amp rack contains two Altec programmable EQs that are not programmed correctly.
The intercom is a two-channel Clear-Com with wall stations. The headsets are all gone, stolen and broken over time. The Call light, however, does still function quite well.
The Ante-Pro is two pipes suitable for holding five, maybe six, lights each, positioned over the house-left and house-right major aisles over Row F and G, a very flat angle. There are six circuits which appear on both positions.
The audience chamber has a curtain track running down the centerline. The revolutionary concept when the space was built was that it could be separated into two 400-seat lecture halls, which is a stupid idea, but an idea it was. The booth is the closet that was originally constructed to hold this curtain in its retracted position. The MD288 rack and Pro2 are a huge improvement over the piano board rack backstage. The EV board and Altec EQs are a huge improvement over a couple of hi-fi speakers in the air vents that have been rumored to still exist there. The two overhead electrics and dead-hung apron pipes are a huge improvement over the original permanent borderlights. The flat AP is a huge improvement over the two track-lighting tracks that were built into the plaster ceiling even farther back in the chamber. The black walls backstage are great; they were originally white, finally painted in the '80s before the MD288 rack existed; the piano board's outline can be seen to this day on the wall stage right.
That is the space I learned in, and I'm thankful for it.
In my college years I designed a bunch of shows there, and during that time I and a few others helped them improve things. New array. AKG wireless. Express 24/48. Build a crap-ton of pin cable. Cleaned lights. Built a stock of lamps. Built an inventory of gel. Struck the teaser for several shows.
I think I LDed the very first show in that space to use a Go-button memory board .. and that was in 2003.
I say all of that (and it is rather lengthy) to say this: Be thankful for what you have. Appreciate it, and take advantage of the opportunity to learn on it. But don't be spoiled by it too much either: you'll go from the high-tech high school to a less-high-tech university (my college theatre, when I started, had in the black box a Hunt 2-preset board and rack with stickers reading Warranty Expires October 1977, and we used it up until 2002. From the university you'll go to an even-less-high-tech community theatre who has whatever hand-me-downs and good deals they could find.
Learn well the basics and you'll do well on anything, and appreciate the toys you have to play with, and the space in your booth (and the catwalk to the AP) you have to play with them in.
Rewind ten years.
The mainstage seats about 800. The prosc arch is 56 feet wide, and 16-ish feet tall, but there is a dead-hung teaser that trims out at 11 feet. The stage has a fhuge apron, a round arcy thing that is at the arch left and right, but at center is 15 feet DS of the arch. The deck has gymnasium-floor shellac applied every year so it's pretty. Upstage of the arch is about 20 feet to back wall. The grid is all underhung and is at 30 feet. There are 10 linesets, two of them electrics with 12 circuits each. The apron has 12 circuits total on two dead-hung pipes.
The booth is 4 feet deep from wall to wall, and there is a wooden desk just barely over a foot deep, 15 inches tops, that runs the width of the room, which is realistically 8 feet. The booth has a door either side occupying the space between the back wall of the audience chamber (it's inset into the chamber) and the front edge of the desk. Your view of the stage, as a board op, is through an 8-inch-by-8-inch windowpane in front of each of the two boards. The windows open up (double-hung), and they are conveniently positioned such that a normal person standing behind a window has his view of the stage completely obstructed by the aluminum window sashes.
The lightboard is a Teatronics Producer II, 24/48. No theatre stack, no show disk. Manual, and you could crossfade submasters. Altman 1KLs and 65Qs. MD288 rack.
Sound board is an EV BK16-something, a 16 channel board. This board used a revolutionary new concept for the faders in that they're not used in a gain circuit, but in an attenuation circuit. The downside of this is that after age and wear, many of the slide pots had an open connection at the very bottom extreme of their travel, making there be no attenuation, so you had to be sure to take the faders down almost, but not quite, all the way. The wireless were Nady VHF sets that we had accumulated over time, some of which worked better than others. One set happened to sometimes pick up the local network television station's field-studio intercom link, which was neat to listen to but not during a play. The main array is three homebuilt cabinets hung by baling wire from cuphooks in the plaster ceiling, fed with zipcord. The amp rack contains two Altec programmable EQs that are not programmed correctly.
The intercom is a two-channel Clear-Com with wall stations. The headsets are all gone, stolen and broken over time. The Call light, however, does still function quite well.
The Ante-Pro is two pipes suitable for holding five, maybe six, lights each, positioned over the house-left and house-right major aisles over Row F and G, a very flat angle. There are six circuits which appear on both positions.
The audience chamber has a curtain track running down the centerline. The revolutionary concept when the space was built was that it could be separated into two 400-seat lecture halls, which is a stupid idea, but an idea it was. The booth is the closet that was originally constructed to hold this curtain in its retracted position. The MD288 rack and Pro2 are a huge improvement over the piano board rack backstage. The EV board and Altec EQs are a huge improvement over a couple of hi-fi speakers in the air vents that have been rumored to still exist there. The two overhead electrics and dead-hung apron pipes are a huge improvement over the original permanent borderlights. The flat AP is a huge improvement over the two track-lighting tracks that were built into the plaster ceiling even farther back in the chamber. The black walls backstage are great; they were originally white, finally painted in the '80s before the MD288 rack existed; the piano board's outline can be seen to this day on the wall stage right.
That is the space I learned in, and I'm thankful for it.
In my college years I designed a bunch of shows there, and during that time I and a few others helped them improve things. New array. AKG wireless. Express 24/48. Build a crap-ton of pin cable. Cleaned lights. Built a stock of lamps. Built an inventory of gel. Struck the teaser for several shows.
I think I LDed the very first show in that space to use a Go-button memory board .. and that was in 2003.
I say all of that (and it is rather lengthy) to say this: Be thankful for what you have. Appreciate it, and take advantage of the opportunity to learn on it. But don't be spoiled by it too much either: you'll go from the high-tech high school to a less-high-tech university (my college theatre, when I started, had in the black box a Hunt 2-preset board and rack with stickers reading Warranty Expires October 1977, and we used it up until 2002. From the university you'll go to an even-less-high-tech community theatre who has whatever hand-me-downs and good deals they could find.
Learn well the basics and you'll do well on anything, and appreciate the toys you have to play with, and the space in your booth (and the catwalk to the AP) you have to play with them in.
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So this year, we are actually enforcing the no food/drink rule ANYWHERE in the theater. Last spring our school had a really bad rodent problem.
Actually, a somewhat funny story to follow...
We were doing some cleaning/maintenance and on top of our "cage" (walk-in storage for most of the equipment we own) there was a black plastic tub up there that once had sprite or 7-up (there the same anyways) and it never got washed out. I went over to it and picked it up and saw this mouse (dead) that got stuck trying to climb out of the tub. It was about halfway up the side of it so of course when it died it "emptied it's bowel" and solidified inside the tub.
At least it didn't have maggots on it at the time like another one we found had.
Actually, a somewhat funny story to follow...
We were doing some cleaning/maintenance and on top of our "cage" (walk-in storage for most of the equipment we own) there was a black plastic tub up there that once had sprite or 7-up (there the same anyways) and it never got washed out. I went over to it and picked it up and saw this mouse (dead) that got stuck trying to climb out of the tub. It was about halfway up the side of it so of course when it died it "emptied it's bowel" and solidified inside the tub.
At least it didn't have maggots on it at the time like another one we found had.
willbb123
Active Member
Ok I'll add my 2 cents.
In highschool we had no booth. The stage shared the room with the elementary gym. Every night we had to set up a table, set up the audio mixer, light board, and speakers. Then run the respective cables. I remember actors saying that they never saw us without food, but I honestly cant remember what I ate.
For our last show we actually built a booth. I should add that It wasnt my idea, one of my crew has ADD and just kinda stared building it one day. And of I helped cause it was awesome. Of course it had a couch and a mini fridge.
I then did an internship sorta thing at a professional theater in town. The booth was tiny. Both lights and sound were in it and for the sound guy to get in or leave the lighting guy had to get out. The show was in the summer and it got REALLY hot in there. So we always had a drink.
Now I work at a professional theater. The booth used to be a projection booth, which is pretty large. 2 of our spotlights are in there so it gets pretty hot when they are both on and there are 3 or 4 people in there. The bad thing about the booth is that it is really hard to see the stage, which makes it really hard to light. I have moved the light board to the rim of the balcony into what was a handicap seating area. Now I can see exactly whats going on on stage. I also love being able to see what lights are on in the catwalk.
I normally eat dinner at my desk (my new booth with the light board). We have alot of concerts and the day normally goes like this, Call 2:30pm, Load in 3pm. As soon as they set up they have sound check. When they are doing sound check I focus anything I need to front of house. then as soon as they finish I run on stage and bounce focus back light. Then I normally have 30 min to do any programming and eat dinner.
I dont really have a problem with [-]people[/-] the crew eating in the theater. They just have to be very careful not to get it on anything. And not eat chips during the show, because even if you are trying to be quiet they will still hear you crunch in the house...
hope you guys enjoyed my pictures... took me forever to upload them...
In highschool we had no booth. The stage shared the room with the elementary gym. Every night we had to set up a table, set up the audio mixer, light board, and speakers. Then run the respective cables. I remember actors saying that they never saw us without food, but I honestly cant remember what I ate.
For our last show we actually built a booth. I should add that It wasnt my idea, one of my crew has ADD and just kinda stared building it one day. And of I helped cause it was awesome. Of course it had a couch and a mini fridge.
I then did an internship sorta thing at a professional theater in town. The booth was tiny. Both lights and sound were in it and for the sound guy to get in or leave the lighting guy had to get out. The show was in the summer and it got REALLY hot in there. So we always had a drink.
Now I work at a professional theater. The booth used to be a projection booth, which is pretty large. 2 of our spotlights are in there so it gets pretty hot when they are both on and there are 3 or 4 people in there. The bad thing about the booth is that it is really hard to see the stage, which makes it really hard to light. I have moved the light board to the rim of the balcony into what was a handicap seating area. Now I can see exactly whats going on on stage. I also love being able to see what lights are on in the catwalk.
I normally eat dinner at my desk (my new booth with the light board). We have alot of concerts and the day normally goes like this, Call 2:30pm, Load in 3pm. As soon as they set up they have sound check. When they are doing sound check I focus anything I need to front of house. then as soon as they finish I run on stage and bounce focus back light. Then I normally have 30 min to do any programming and eat dinner.
I dont really have a problem with [-]people[/-] the crew eating in the theater. They just have to be very careful not to get it on anything. And not eat chips during the show, because even if you are trying to be quiet they will still hear you crunch in the house...
hope you guys enjoyed my pictures... took me forever to upload them...
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