My grand day out

kingfisher1

Active Member
Well, i guess i'm obligated to share this, even if its jsut for my own personal gratification.

I GOT TO PLAY WITH A RIG OF MOVING LIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAAAAHOOOOO!!!!!!

(clearly this isn't an experience i'm used to, lol)

So, about two weeks ago, my school had it annual fundaising gala. My shcool is a small private school near NYC, so enevitably there are a few parents there who are a bit well know, or well connected.

For the last two years we had been doing this event at a very artsy old dye factor-turned art gallery. it was a very nice place, but, seeing as it was, A, not a theater, and B, it was built a century ago, loading in there was a long tedious three day process. my contribution was to unhang a few s4s and S4 PARS from school, drag them the the gallery, climb up some rickety ladder and hang and cable until the wee hours of the night. standard technical stuff.

this year turned out a bit different.

about five days before this enourmous event, the gallery calls and says that the fire marshall has shut them down and that we can't use the space. In between convulsions, the organizer comments that someone must have forgotten about bribe season...
So a-scrabbling away we go looking for a new venue.
Lucky for us an grand coverence center, run by IBM was avaible to rental, so we booked teh place. this is where this gets good. i was uninformed of this move until two days before the event. at that point i was getting a littel nervous about it, because i had procrastinated about the whole thing to the point where i had done nothing but move our folder of gels from their spot to the door of our boothe. So, anyway, i get a call that, "by the way, the venue has been moved. and you don't need to do anything but show up." (so i guess my procrastinating @$$ was saved)
hmmm i think, i guess they hired a professional LD, there goes my fun...sigh...
boy was i wrong. I walk in the ball room of the conference center, a well appointed place, and look up. 18 Moving heads. Despite me never have actually seen one that up close, and especially never controlling one for that matter, a smile crept across my face. This is going to be fun i said to my self. "i'm sure theres someone here who can explain the board to me, and help me program etc...then i'l get to light the show". again i was wrong. the house technitian, a very, very nice A/V guy,had almost no clue how to run the lights, beyond turning them on and pullign up a few preprogrammed looks. (looks which were less then flattering.)

Why people diss user manuals i have no clue, because they saved my life. the board was a circa 1990 board i think, the azure 2000 (a least i think the 2000 has nothing to do with its realease date) but the manual had a nice online crash course section, and i was able to figure things out.

by four o'clock that afternoon everyone was pretty much kicked back waitning for the show to start at 8. (this instead of the last two year where the Genie and ladders get put away ten minutes before the doors open.)

Doors opened at eight, and being it was a fundriser with an auction, all the adults were getting force fed booze. I felt better, "everyone will be so drunk they won't notice the bad lighting...." the performance portion of the niht started up, with no bad mistakes on my part, and i got to sit through fantastic stories told by celebs, like bill irwin, Jonathan Demme, Tyne Daly, and my favorite, Kevin Clash, teh voice of elmo.

So now i get to add to my resume, that i have used ml's, and that i have lit elmo :)
 
now if that doesnt get you into a job i dont know what will :p
 
so the epilouge to my grand day out. (no zac, i'm not writing this just to make you jealous.....well yes, i guess i am...)

So anyway, i previously said the nigh went off without a flaw. that was a little lie, in that i had two no big deal glitches. these did not detract from the show, but annoyed me none the less, and i was hoping some one could sate my curiosity.
First, one fixture would not respond at all to the board. since i did no wire nor patch the lights i just let this slide and let the light sit. second, two of teh lights, one Studio Color and one Studio spot would respond along the pan and tilt attributes but they wouldn't respond to anyother thing like color or intesity. this was a bummer, because teh two lights both were place in sortof important places, and without them all of my washes looked a bit blah.... i tried turning off the board, and when i did so all of the fixtures re homed as they should have. i assumed this fixed the problme, but teh Studio spot was still stuck half way between two colors, just like before...
Does anyone know what was going on? on the board i was using the, Azure 2000, is there some sort of function to set the light to a default setting? my guess was teh problem was in the patch somewhere, but i didn't have the time nor will to find out...
 

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