Honestly it's all personal opinion. If you are running the show, then whatever it takes to make the show look good that you are comfortable with is your answer. If you are programming a festival rig for others to
walk up and use, keep it simple. A executor that has each type or group of light's
intensity parameter stored at full is a must. From there, 5 basic positions on buttons is usually sufficient. From there, a bunch of 2 color
cue stacks and 5 good
strobe looks. A lot of LDs who are just punting want a random
dimmer sin, a
dimmer chase, a circle
effect, and a pan or a tilt
effect with a
fader for each one that they can just turn on and off. Make a speed master for
intensity and position and you are basically done. It's always a good idea to keep everything on physical buttons or faders and to leave some room for the one or two cues that they might want to add. Label the crap out of everything. Keep your groups organized and make sure you use presets for everything. If you have any clever lamp off the rig macros, make sure they aren't somewhere that can be run accidentally.
I personally
lay out my MA2 Light as follows:
Exec 1- Spot Int
Exec 2-
Wash Int
Exec 3- Beam Int
Exec 4-
LED/Other Int
Exec 5- DS
Wash Int
Exec 6- Int Speed
Exec 7- Pos Speed
Exec 8- FX Speed (For color chases or anything else)
Exec 11-
Smoke
Exec 15-
Moles
All Position are the same pan with a Up/Down tilt. That way I can use my executor time and get nice sweeps through the audience. A co-worker puts his tilt on a temp
fader so he has
manual control of it.
Exec 101-105- Spot Position
Exec 106-107-
Wash Position
Exec 108-110- Beam Position
Exec 111-115 are full rig colors. I usually assign macros from my color
grid so that I can use my delay sweeps and
fade times.
Exec 201-205 are NC Flashes that are split like my
Intensity Faders
Exec 211-215 are 2 color stacks
Exec 206-210 are
fixture strobes
Exec 216-220 are actual strobes
I usually run a color
grid which I made via a
Lua plugin from
this YouTube video along with his corresponding sweep and
fade times.
All of my
gobo and
prism stuff is stored on action buttons since I don't often end up using them for daytime shows. I also store my effects on Action buttons and have a
cue stack which contains macros to turn them off and on.
A lot of my co-workers shy away from macros and don't like my
punt page. However, it works well for me and that's what's important. I have a different
page for guest LDs that puts a lot more stuff on physical faders/buttons and simplifies things a good deal.
Cloning is a very interesting topic which I would recommend visiting the
MA-Share for more information on.
