Followspot cue sheet

Jlarmen

Member
I found an old thread about a special FileMaker cue file for followspots, does anyone have something they can share? I'm looking at a way for my students to use our follow posts more inline with what's industry standard for spot operators, or of least a more organized manner.

Thank you,
 
If you're going for industry standard, one person follows that cue sheet until its memorized, the other spots are called by that one person. That said, I don't know that there is an industry standard cue sheet. I've seen a few dozen and none have been the same.
 
At our HS, I use a 4 person lighting crew. One person (ALD) follows the script and calls all lighting and SFX cues for the lighting operator and two followspot operators. The lighitng Op sits next to the ALD and can see/anticipate their own cues. This works well as long as egos are in check. I have had a couple outstanding followspot ops in the 15 years I've done this. I find it correlates to those who have a love history (not just get good grades). I theorize their brains are well trained in organizing things sequentially. YMMV
 
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A while back someone posted a spot cueing system they built with eos magic sheets to one of the eos Facebook groups. That might be helpful? A lot of touring productions are using etc nomad set ups for cueing their spot OPs these days.
 
A while back someone posted a spot cueing system they built with eos magic sheets to one of the eos Facebook groups. That might be helpful? A lot of touring productions are using etc nomad set ups for cueing their spot OPs these days.
A recent rock show at our local arena... it was so loud the LD could not give spot calls over an open mic, so all the verbal cues were pre-recorded and triggered from the Grand MA and injected into the com line. The usual "spots 2 and 3 standby to fade".... "spots 2 and 3 GO". It was refreshing to hear the calls without bleed into the headset mic. The one cue delivered live was almost impossible to understand.
 
If you're going for industry standard, one person follows that cue sheet until its memorized, the other spots are called by that one person. That said, I don't know that there is an industry standard cue sheet. I've seen a few dozen and none have been the same.
This is industry standard for touring, but not for regional, broadway, or one-offs in general. It's really going to depend on what/where you're working.

Like SM's, most designers/ALD's evolve their own paperwork, and I don't think theres any superior solution at the moment. The nice thing about filemaker or another database vs. a spreadsheet is that the data is separated from the presenation. I'd encourage your students to think about the differrence between what a designer might care about on the cue sheet and what an operator might care about on the cuesheet--and then extend it to other forms of paperwork as well. One of my biggest pet peeves about the labelling trends on tours these days is that the labels are made so that someone doing production in the shop has all of the information they need to prep a show, but when I'm asking local friends to grab "Light #1" out of the rack, and they have to choose between numbers representing the unit number, channel number, address, opto port it's plugged into, circuit number, universe, cable length, position, and anything else the PE felt useful to include, It's always a struggle.
 
A recent rock show at our local arena... it was so loud the LD could not give spot calls over an open mic, so all the verbal cues were pre-recorded and triggered from the Grand MA and injected into the com line. The usual "spots 2 and 3 standby to fade".... "spots 2 and 3 GO". It was refreshing to hear the calls without bleed into the headset mic. The one cue delivered live was almost impossible to understand.
That makes me want to come out of retirement just long enough to work a gig that has spot cues called that way!
 
That makes me want to come out of retirement just long enough to work a gig that has spot cues called that way!
So far that one show has been the only one. Here's to more!
 

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