"Mark" cues on an Expression

Jezza

Active Member
So, cue to cue for Les Mis starts tomorrow and I need some help w/ building some Mark cues. I've got 5 movers and 6 scrollers that need to be "marked" or blacked out during the show many times as I don't want to see the moves. However, the only way that it seems the expression knows how to build a mark cue is with 4 cues. Cue 1=First look Cue 2=Instruments to be marked to black Cue 3=Move to new position Cue 4=Restore Intensity.

This, although effective, is painstaking to cue and equally painstaking to update as cues are changed. Yes, I can have the cues follow each other during the show making less actual "GO" presses, but it is very tiresome to cue. Does anyone have a better suggestion how to achieve this cuing sequence or perhaps a Macro that will select the un-tracked channels and understand what to do? Let me know.
 
Ouch...I understand your pain...that is so tedious to do. I haven't found a solution yet, so I'd be interested to hear one if anyone has one, because this is a problem that has plagued me on a few shows. If only these boards had a nice easy way to do this.
 
Unfortunately, this is what you have to do for an expression console.

Unless you can get an emphasis server attached to it with the "Move Before Bright" functionality, you have the right approach.
 
There is no easy way to do this but really it should only by one extra cue unless you always have the lights on. What I did when I was programing the last dance show was use focus points for all the scrollers so after I had everything recored I could just find a cue were the instruments with the scrollers were not on andhit <group><200><at><focus point><14> <recored><enter> and move on. For movers its a harder, I found the best way was to set all the cues again andgo back touch all the encoders (capturing the channesl at the values) except intensity, go back a cue or two and recored that.
 
Well, it is true, on the Expression, you only have very basic ML functionality, so what you describe and what others have said is really the only way to do it. You have to record the position changes when the fixtures are off. So the cue sequence that you described is what you would need to do unless the fixture is already off. It is a bummer, but the Expression is just not "smart" enough to handle that kind of cueing with "Auto move while dark" or true reference and mark cues.
 
Oh well, such is life. I spent a good 8 hours today just building the first act, w/o mark cues mind you. I figured that it would be useless to build then until I have my cue structure and changed locked in because then I would have to update all the marks as well....oh well...that will be my life for a few hours during dress. Thanks for the input guys.
 
I don't remember if you can do this in Expression, but when you go back to create your "Mark" cues, try creating the cues in Blind or creating a B/O cue and then while in that cue try using Chans [@] [CUE] X, where Chans = any channel that you want to be the same as the the next cue, cue X. I know you can do that in Obsession, but not sure if it work in Expression. So, for example, if you are inserting a mark cue at cue 4 to get the lights in position for cue 5 this command structure should copy the level data of the channels you select from cue 5.

I hope that makes sense (and works)
 
Sort of makes sense, I see where you are going with that. My solution, thus far, has been to build a macro that takes the intensity of the movers and the scrollers to 0%, 2 cues, one for fade out, and one for move, using the macro to blackout the previous cue and the "move to" cue. It will work, it will just have to be done a few days before the show opens after I have made all my adjustments.
 
The macro sounds fine for the ML's, but think about if you really want your color scrollers to go all the way to zero each time... if you have a lot of them they can be really loud if you don't have music playing to cover it up. I've not worked on the expression, but I have spent quite a bit of time on the Express and the Obsession. On the Express I generally wait till the day before dress rehearsal, then through each cue, capture the ml's, take the intensity out, then hit the back button and record it into the previous cue or make a point cue when necessary. With the color scrollers I rarely take them back to zero, I wait for a good loud part in the show that I'm not using them to let them scroll to the next color. I usually just run through the show cue by cue to catch things moving before dress rehearsal or I fix it while I'm cueing if I have the time.

Good luck!
 
Thankfully this is an opera of sorts, Les Mis, so I won't have too much trouble hiding the noise of the scrollers, or the noise of my one VL2500 that has a pretty nasty squeak at one point in its pan function. I won't be using the macro to take the scroller channels actually to 0, but the intensity of the fixture. Scrolling back and forth from 0 each time would your right, be very noisy, but also potentially harmful for the scrollers and the scrollers over time. To many quick moves and those things are lible to break.

Thanks
 

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