Headset Etiquette?

[midgetgreen11]

I am stage managing a show right now, and since I am calling from tech-table in the balcony, I am right next to the sound board. The sound guy's rack has the base station for com connected to it, and conveniently I'm plugged directly into the station. He made a note of the "remote mic kill" button, which cuts every mic except mine, because its plugged into the front of the main station. I generally let my crew talk on com, but when they get too loud I cut them out. They are aware then when I call "warn" their talking should slow down, and when I call "stand-by" nobody else talks.

 

[icewolf08]

He made a note of the "remote mic kill" button, which cuts every mic except mine, because its plugged into the front of the main station. I generally let my crew talk on com, but when they get too loud I cut them out.

Just be aware that this only works when all of the outstations are clearcom. If you happen to have a Production Intercom beltpack on a clearcom system (which you can do) the remote kill won't kill the PI pack as PI has a physical mic toggle as opposed to electronic.

Also, for those of you on multi channel systems, I believe the remote kill will kill everyone on all channels, which could actually pose a serious safety issue. If some department were trying to solve some issue and you just kill the outstations you could end up with issues. While the feature is useful, you should not get too used to using it. It is really more of a safety feature for the SM.

 

[photoatdv]

BTW our comms are currently dead so we use 2-way radios. On one show we had a lot of volunteers who wouldn't shut up (to be blunt). Seriously, they were taking turns pretending they were working at and ordering from macdonalds! So we used two channels, one for the TD, LD, and SM. And one for the spots, ASMs, flys, and runcrew. Generally if there was a cue for them my ASM (I was LD and calling the spot cues) was to call it to them. If it was urgent/ important I would switch my radio over and they knew if I was on they needed to be quiet and listen (the TD could visually cue me while I was on the other channel).

Actually worked pretty well. There was no way they would be quiet for the whole show so we kept them off our channel and they knew if I came on it was serious.

 

[tech_man]

While working at a performing arts center that had road shows on the weekends and elementary band shows and choir concerts during the week, we wired the sound system in to the intercoms so we could play music in the com's to block out the noise. It was a cool system till one day we hade music going over the com's (random music) and one of the mom’s watching the kids back stage in formed the SM that there was this weird music that was talking about sex and other inappropriate this playing over the com’s (the playlist had moved from rock and other ok music to Avenue Q). The moral be careful what you do on the com’s as you never know who might be listening (also disabling the speakers stations in the back so that they need a headset or handset is a good Idea with little ears nearby)