And this time I took the blame, because the producer hired me specifically to oversee the tech setup and get everything done in time.
We were supposed to get the hall at 1pm for setup, and begin rehearsal at 4pm with sound and lights for an 8pm show, knowing that we would have to refocus a bit during the rehearsal. I was the only one of the crew who had seen the show being rehearsed.
Okay, a bit crunched, but not impossible. Well, the hall was being used the morning of the show for another event, and they did not clear out until 2:30pm. The crew came with four technicians for the setup, plus me. The head guy (he was the owner of the sound/light company we had hired) told me he was calling more crew to come help us, and that we could have a rehearsal with sound at 4pm, and with lights at 5pm. I believed him.
The sound was ready at 4pm, we set levels for everyone, and started rehearsing.
The lights were not ready until 7:30pm for an 8pm show. Originally we had four crew members, but after hanging the lamps, two of them left to go get the dimmer board that they had forgotten, and no replacements came to fill in for them. The dimmer board was in a different city, and took 1.5 hours to arrive. So two crew members were left for focusing the lights, and one of them was very new to this so needed constant instrution. That left one technician and me. I do not know so much about focusing, and I am female so they did not want to let me up the ladders or lift anything. The amount of time wasted yelling at me to get down, put it down, and leave it to them eventually convinced me to just leave it to them. Plus at this time I was trying to run the sound for the rehearsal also, at the same time.
There were no sets, backdrops, or props for this show, and no costume changes, so I had asked two people to show up at 4pm to be general stage runners. Only one showed up. I asked her to mark the stage for the performers standing in a special, but that did not happen. Since we had no time to rehearse with lights, I did not know this unil the performers were standing in shadow during the show. They were at the corners of the stage, not covered by the general wash, which wasn't 100% focused anyway.
Someone started letting the audience in at 7:30pm without consulting us. So here we were with crates, wires, and ladders all over. We quickly taped everything down and cleaned up, but we had not finished focusing and the stage had not been marked.
The head technician ran the lights, he quickly tried to do a cue to cue at 7:30-8pm with the audience pouring in. We stared at 8:30pm. Once again, there was no stage manager. I did my own cues for sound, and the lighting tech had someone cueing him who knew the show. But she was absorbed with watching the show, so her cues were along the lines of "oh yeah, blackout".
I had such high hopes. After the show, the lighting technician and I looked at each other, and we both felt like crying. Putting everything away after the show was super depressing.
We were supposed to get the hall at 1pm for setup, and begin rehearsal at 4pm with sound and lights for an 8pm show, knowing that we would have to refocus a bit during the rehearsal. I was the only one of the crew who had seen the show being rehearsed.
Okay, a bit crunched, but not impossible. Well, the hall was being used the morning of the show for another event, and they did not clear out until 2:30pm. The crew came with four technicians for the setup, plus me. The head guy (he was the owner of the sound/light company we had hired) told me he was calling more crew to come help us, and that we could have a rehearsal with sound at 4pm, and with lights at 5pm. I believed him.
The sound was ready at 4pm, we set levels for everyone, and started rehearsing.
The lights were not ready until 7:30pm for an 8pm show. Originally we had four crew members, but after hanging the lamps, two of them left to go get the dimmer board that they had forgotten, and no replacements came to fill in for them. The dimmer board was in a different city, and took 1.5 hours to arrive. So two crew members were left for focusing the lights, and one of them was very new to this so needed constant instrution. That left one technician and me. I do not know so much about focusing, and I am female so they did not want to let me up the ladders or lift anything. The amount of time wasted yelling at me to get down, put it down, and leave it to them eventually convinced me to just leave it to them. Plus at this time I was trying to run the sound for the rehearsal also, at the same time.
There were no sets, backdrops, or props for this show, and no costume changes, so I had asked two people to show up at 4pm to be general stage runners. Only one showed up. I asked her to mark the stage for the performers standing in a special, but that did not happen. Since we had no time to rehearse with lights, I did not know this unil the performers were standing in shadow during the show. They were at the corners of the stage, not covered by the general wash, which wasn't 100% focused anyway.
Someone started letting the audience in at 7:30pm without consulting us. So here we were with crates, wires, and ladders all over. We quickly taped everything down and cleaned up, but we had not finished focusing and the stage had not been marked.
The head technician ran the lights, he quickly tried to do a cue to cue at 7:30-8pm with the audience pouring in. We stared at 8:30pm. Once again, there was no stage manager. I did my own cues for sound, and the lighting tech had someone cueing him who knew the show. But she was absorbed with watching the show, so her cues were along the lines of "oh yeah, blackout".
I had such high hopes. After the show, the lighting technician and I looked at each other, and we both felt like crying. Putting everything away after the show was super depressing.