Long time lurker; I finally decided to make an account!
I'm currently in engineering school, about two years away from a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and I plan on minoring in explosives engineering (mostly fireworks with some 'let's blow up a rock' on the side).
Eventually I would like to work at companies like Tait or Hudson Scenic, working on large automation pieces or structural analysis for stages.
What are some of the other big entertainment companies out there? I've realized recently that, compared to most of the engineering majors, I can only name a few big companies in my industry. How about
current groups/websites/forums for entertainment engineering? I searched
ControlBooth (going back 4ish years) and checked out the links people mentioned, but they were all dead.
Any less-obvious ways to improve my skills, so that I have both the entertainment experience and the engineering experience? I graduated from a technical
theatre conservatory a few years ago, and work for the campus
theatre department (which does not offer a major and operates as a small
road house) so I have a background in
theatre. I was thinking about hanging out more on this site in the scenery forum and seeing what I can
pick up.
Industry opinions on becoming a PE? I used the thread on here to write a report on the Ringling Brothers accident and someone mentioned that having a PE sign off on rigging systems was becoming more common. How common is it?
Thank you for any help!
@Quillons You would've enjoyed the structural and mechanical engineering on the four full blown productions of Sunset Boulevard. [Los Angeles, Broadway, Toronto and Vancouver]
Here's a quick description to whet your interest:
The two story mansion had a raked floor and large, sweeping, staircase.
The entire two story mansion flew out of sight.
Not only did the mansion
fly out of sight, it also tracked up and
down stage when in on the
deck AND while hovering overhead during a scene simultaneously played on and below the mansion.
The mansion weighed 40,000 pounds / 20 tons.
The mansion was counter-balanced by another 40,000 pounds / 20 tons for a total of 80,000 pounds / 40 tons of flown weight
supported from the grid.
Basically what Feller Precision were doing was flying the world's largest drawer slides and the mansion was the drawer.
Housed within the raked floor were the equivalent of at least three light pipes to illuminate scenes played on the
deck when the mansion was flown out.
Two levels of
grid were added to each of the theatres above their primary grids with the 11,000 pound 'On the
road' scene automated fly piece and the 14,000 pound 'pool surround' flown from the secondary
grid and the mansion and its counterweights supported from the
tertiary grid. The mansion flew on six 1.125" aircraft cables, three on each side plus twelve enormous sheaves, three on each side and six above the counterweights. The producers had Los Angeles' 'On the
road' piece built by the low bidder and had to invest a great deal of overtime to get it to fly and function for the L.A. production. They spent more money and paid my employer's price to
build the Broadway version of the 'On the
Road' fly piece. We were given a three day window in their Broadway production schedule to load our piece in, assemble, fly and fully test its automated elements. Time is money and you can't buy time. We were in, assembled, flown, tested the automation and had only a handful of lighting circuits remaining to be flashed at the end of our first eight hour day. We were fully complete within the first two hours of our second day. To say they were pleased would be an understatement as we'd just effectively bought them 14 hours of Broadway
load-in time and saved them money to boot. The four of us who accompanied the piece found ourselves with time to
burn in downtown New York. The other fellows went out to find bars and sushi seeking recommendations from the locals. Moi? I neither drink nor like sushi. I leapt at the opportunity to spend my time touring the
theatre from the third
grid to the basement. The fellow in charge of their
load-in hung some credentials around my neck, told me to wear them at all times and who to
return them to then hollered up to the fellow in charge of the grids instructing him to show me anything I wanted. I treasured my free time in their
venue, asked questions and learned as much as I could. They don't teach some the techniques employed there in Yale or Harvard's technical
theatre production courses. Months later, our shop was awarded the contract to
build another 11.000 pound copy of the 'On the
road' fly piece for Toronto. I accopanied the piece to its installation in North York, then went back to disassemble it. A couple of months later, I was flown to Vancouver to install it yet again.
With apologies for droning on (again). I could write paragraphs on how they flew the 'drawer slides' and how they transferred the support of all that weight down to bedrock / undisturbed soil. I suspect you'd have found much to interest you in the engineering of those productions. My shop-mates may have enjoyed some good sushi but I've never regretted the time I spent pouring over that
theatre. I think it was the Minskoff but I could be incorrect. The
theatre was three storys above grade in the heart of downtown New York.
Edit: I guess I should've concluded with how you motivate 40 tons to move, levitate and decelerate on
cue.
The counter-weights were against the USC wall and centered on it.
Below the
counterweight carriage, and firmly anchored to the
deck, was a massive hydraulically powered
winch. I'm pretty sketchy on the details of Feller's
winch but I'll tell you what I can.
The drive shaft was about 4 to 6 inches in diameter, about 6 to 8 feet long and driven from both ends by a redundant pair of hydraulic drives coupled through a redundant pair of reduction gears. There's a name for reduction gear trains where the input and output shafts are physically in alignment and I can't remember the precise term. (Planetary something is coming to mind)
Laterally centered on the shaft was a brake disc about 2 to 2.5 feet in diameter. A redundant pair of hydraulically clamped
calipers grabbed the disc for stopping and locking. On either side of the disc brake were grooved drums driving aircraft cables to motivate the counter-weight carriage. At each end of the drive shaft were the in-line gear reducers and their hydraulic drives. It was built to motivate and lock its 40 ton load and appeared to have little problem doing so. The hydraulic pumps were in an acoustically treated room in the
theatre's basement. The drive was essentially silent in operation.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
