Mic Pick Ups for Shows

[Mercedes]

How reasonable is it to ask for a perfect show each night?

I am a PSM running the LX board and calling/hitting shifts and sound cues. My SE runs all the shows without an A2 and often has to field issues with either our packs or our band in the pit. Because of this, he has the occasional missed mic pick up.

We recently lost our Director of Production, and our Assoc. Artistic Director has taken on the role of keeping tabs on the shows. He now has it that if it's not a perfect show every single night, then my SE can't do his job. Is this a reasonable approach? I'm wondering because I am being put in the middle of all this, and I'd like some advice from y'all more experienced people out there. Thank you much.

It's been awhile since I have been on here, so mods please move if this is not the appropriate forum.

 

[Dionysus]

When you can't focus on the next cue, either because you are taking care of something else on the console or dealing with something off the console; the reality is you are going to miss a cue or two.
If you want him to hit every cue he can't have his hands tied as it were. Thats why you need other people to deal with things and only have your engineer deal with it when he actually has the time.

Then again, sometimes you just miss cues. We all try our best not to, but it happens. Especially when there is something else you are trying to do, such as fixing the EQ on an actors mic because they got makeup in the damn thing again and oops I missed that cue.

 

[themuzicman]

How reasonable is it to ask for a perfect show each night?

Unreasonable. Sometimes mistakes happen, sometimes gear fails, sometimes actors flub lines and throw things off. You can have a perfect show or near perfect shows with extreme regularity however. When I was younger and freaking out about having a perfect show every show a sound designer I was working with stopped me and told me that I would only ever have a perfect show 1 in every 100 -- every single thing needs to be just right, every actor needs to hit their mark, and then the audience has to respond appropriately - if anything falls short then you didn't have a perfect show. Yes it's cheesy, but if you remember that you can have many great shows, but rarely a perfect one you'll do much better.

I am a PSM running the LX board and calling/hitting shifts and sound cues. My SE runs all the shows without an A2 and often has to field issues with either our packs or our band in the pit. Because of this, he has the occasional missed mic pick up.

Well then, your A1 can't mix a perfect show if they aren't supported correctly. How can 1 person do everything by themselves? They have two hands, and both hands need to be mixing the show. If a mic pack breaks you need to have redundancy built in. I mix a long-running show (10+ years) that has no A2. I have 4 mic packs backstage, 1 in the Green Room, 1 SR, 1 SL, and one USC, if a pack breaks I get on Com and let the SM know to route an actor to the closest available pack, they tell me which one it is and I patch that new mic into the actors console channel at a patch rack by my feet. This is a price the producer has knowingly paid for skimping on a labor budget for an A2, and one they fully expect.

The pit one is a little more iffy -- it depends on how thoroughly mic'd your pit is. I often have 2 outputs from every instrument, so if one is acting up in a show I can find it pretty quickly and mute it and just rely on the alternate input. However if it's a musicians fault, what can you do about it from your console while mixing a show?

 

[MRW Lights]

If you have a perfect show you're not doing theater... on of the thrills for me is that it's never the same twice. We work tirelessly with extreme effort to make certain it's as darn close as it can be, but the best moments of any show I've done are the moments that went "wrong". I did a show where members of the crew stood for a 12 minute scene during a Sherlock Holmes because someone missed a locking pin in a wall and the crew had to hold it in place... as far as the audience knew the transition was "perfect" after the show the crew received a case of beer and a week off from the gym.

If you want to use "Broadway" as the example even we don't get it right every time. It's the ability to react in the moment, recover and continue that make the magic of live production.

There are of course cases where someone is simply bad at the job, the expectation you're in caught in is expecting one person to be great at 3 jobs... that is almost always a recipe for disaster.

 

[Amiers]

Middle management sucks. Take your director aside and be very blunt with him about lack of help and barking down to what little staff is left will result in more people leaving. It will generally go two ways they will agree with you and realize their mistake and hire someone or yell at you about how they aren't doing it well enough and should do better.


That being said we run a skeleton crew here and a lot of us over the years and have hone the show issues down to little or none. I know saying this is gonna jinx me but the system I'm running on hasn't seen critical failure in 3 years. Do we ever have a full perfect show hell no. Animals Performers automation sound video lights is a wicked combo to try for a perfect show.

Good day we have a few mic pops and some poop.

Bad days well anything critical.


You have two choices do something and hope he will act like a normal person or do nothing and wait for your sound guy to throw in the towel.

 

[Silicon_Knight]

I'm still very much an amateur compared to many people in these groups; however, I can relate to this issue in my work at churches and community theater. If I'm mixing the show (especially if it's something complicated, IMHO, like a musical), then anybody tapping my shoulder will almost certainly result in me missing cues. To alleviate this, I've started positioning in production meetings for an A2 backstage and even a Tech Runner to sit in the booth and handle crises during the show. Since the vast majority of my work is volunteer, some days are better than others, but I always assumed the people who actually get paid to do this as a day job would have enough people to help.

 

[Amiers]

I always assumed the people who actually get paid to do this as a day job would have enough people to help.

One would think.

 

[JonCarter]

This is live theatre. If you want perfection, get out of live theatre. Make movies and do a dozen (or more) takes of each scene until it's PERFECT, then cut them together.

 

[Silicon_Knight]

This is live theatre. If you want perfection, get out of live theatre. Make movies and do a dozen (or more) takes of each scene until it's PERFECT, then cut them together.

That's one of our running jokes with many of the performances we do:

"No worries, we'll just fix it in post!" ​

 

[Jay Ashworth]

And one other note from Captain Obvious:

We always know what's a mistake.

The audience doesn't. Better than 50% of the things that can/do go wrong during a show, the audience will never notice, unless they're coming to every performance -- they're not following book; they're not on PL.

Lots of errors -- be they crew, performer, or gear -- we can cover before the audience ever notices.

It's possible the person remonstrating with you has forgotten this.

 

[Silicon_Knight]

Well, my latest adventure is a local Community Theater Children's production of Mulan Jr. Tonight was our soft opening - it was not the complete disaster that I was expecting (since we've only had one complete run-through of the show, and this is our director's very first show directing) - in fact - it was quite a nice soft opening, and I think we are really ready to give the audience a great show over the next 3 weeks!

(Yes, of course, some things went wrong - I replaced 3 mic headsets tonight - maybe the largest quantity I've ever replaced mid-show - some stage tech cues were missed - I had some sound effects that still needed to be trimmed, but I expect that the audience mostly didn't notice 90% of the real problems).

I always say that my goal is "to miss fewer cues each night!" (jokingly , of course!)

I truly appreciate everyone on this board for supporting people like me who are desperately seeking to learn from the experience of others!