Oh please! What board op' hasn't done that on one show or another? I know I have; more than once.
My Worst Mess Up
- Thread starterishboo
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Oh please! What board op' hasn't done that on one show or another? I know I have; more than once.
O.K. Now that is an impressive screw up!
Hughesie
Well-Known Member
i did that during a production of sweeney todd, we had this factory whisle sound effect and that was my first show solo where i had control of a crown dsp system so i decided final night to deafen the audience in the front row only.
Fun times
I also once worked with an OP who always went by what the stage manager said, so we came to the end of a scene where there is meant to be a blackout and the scene ends and the lights just stay up, being the sound op im not normally wearing comms but i pick them up to see whats happening and the spot ops,asm and LD are all yelling at him to go but he keeps saying "something must be wrong i will wait for the SM" 20seconds later the sm says "WHY ARE THE LIGHTS STILL UP GET RID OF THEM GO GO"
A cast member had disconnected the cans and for 6 nights the scene had ended like this but the stubbon lighting op thought, nah i won't go despite the asm telling me to go i will just wait.
Amatuers, i work with amataurs
My worst screw up was actually a team effort.
I'm going to have to explain a little about our show for this story to make any sense. At the Pageant of the Masters we do a 2 hour presenteation of tableaux vivant or living pictures. In short we recreate pieces of art using real people. Our primary light source for half of the pieces is a 12' high by 28' wide adjustable picture frame. At the time the Frame had 90, 60 watt, daylight blue light bulbs and 8 inkies as the built in light sources. Ideally we would fly this piece of scenery, but with only 9' of fly space, that's not an option, so its a piece rolling scenery.
For the 2000 season, we revamped the rigging system built into the Frame, so that the sides of the Frame travelled on rollers from the bottom rather than hanging from a track at the top. Overall, this has proven to be a more reliable system than what it replaced, however, it is not without its drawbacks as we discovered early in the Pageant's run that summer.
This was our first performance in front of an audience that season, right after the first Frame Painting. My crew partner and I (At the Pageant our crew works in teams of two to move scenery on and off the stage.) were moving the frame off the stage in what should have been a fairly routine scene transition. Unfortunately, the crew pair that was assigned to preset the sets in the part of the backstage area where the Frame parks when its not on stage had not done so. This was not the first time in the three years I had been running the frame that this sort of thing had happened, so I simply dropped what I was doing and went to move the scenery out of my way and into the preset position that it should have been in. I figured I could chew out the crew responsible for the problem later. Unfortunately, at this point, our Flyman decided to be helpfull and grabbed my end of the Frame, steering right into the upstage black traveller and snagging the stage left side piece of the frame. My crew partner kept right on pushing.
My first indication that we had a problem was when I heard a sound like a tree falling accompanied by the sound of shattering glass as 15 incandescent light bulbs broke. By the time I turned around to see what had happened, the side piece of the frame was lying on the stage floor amid scattered shards of broken glass. The brand new rigging which I had spent a considerable amount of time working on was damaged to the point where it was completely unusable and I had 15 medium screw bases to remove.
The first thing I did was to announce over the coms that the Frame was broken. Without the Frame we would not be able to finish the show. If we couldn't fix the frame we would have had to tell 2600 people that the show was over barely 5 minutes into the performance. Fortunately, as I had done the bulk of the work re-rigging the Frame, I understood how it worked better than anyone else on the crew. I dismantled the rigging, picked the side piece back up, and replaced the shattered light bulbs. The rest of the night, my partner and I had to walk the side pieces into position during scene transitions, but we had the frame functional, though not fixed, in two minutes. The audience never knew there was a problem, and we got through the rest of the show by the skin of our teeth.
The next day I spent three hours actually fixing the Frame, and except for one minor repair two years ago, the rigging has held up just fine.
I'm going to have to explain a little about our show for this story to make any sense. At the Pageant of the Masters we do a 2 hour presenteation of tableaux vivant or living pictures. In short we recreate pieces of art using real people. Our primary light source for half of the pieces is a 12' high by 28' wide adjustable picture frame. At the time the Frame had 90, 60 watt, daylight blue light bulbs and 8 inkies as the built in light sources. Ideally we would fly this piece of scenery, but with only 9' of fly space, that's not an option, so its a piece rolling scenery.
For the 2000 season, we revamped the rigging system built into the Frame, so that the sides of the Frame travelled on rollers from the bottom rather than hanging from a track at the top. Overall, this has proven to be a more reliable system than what it replaced, however, it is not without its drawbacks as we discovered early in the Pageant's run that summer.
This was our first performance in front of an audience that season, right after the first Frame Painting. My crew partner and I (At the Pageant our crew works in teams of two to move scenery on and off the stage.) were moving the frame off the stage in what should have been a fairly routine scene transition. Unfortunately, the crew pair that was assigned to preset the sets in the part of the backstage area where the Frame parks when its not on stage had not done so. This was not the first time in the three years I had been running the frame that this sort of thing had happened, so I simply dropped what I was doing and went to move the scenery out of my way and into the preset position that it should have been in. I figured I could chew out the crew responsible for the problem later. Unfortunately, at this point, our Flyman decided to be helpfull and grabbed my end of the Frame, steering right into the upstage black traveller and snagging the stage left side piece of the frame. My crew partner kept right on pushing.
My first indication that we had a problem was when I heard a sound like a tree falling accompanied by the sound of shattering glass as 15 incandescent light bulbs broke. By the time I turned around to see what had happened, the side piece of the frame was lying on the stage floor amid scattered shards of broken glass. The brand new rigging which I had spent a considerable amount of time working on was damaged to the point where it was completely unusable and I had 15 medium screw bases to remove.
The first thing I did was to announce over the coms that the Frame was broken. Without the Frame we would not be able to finish the show. If we couldn't fix the frame we would have had to tell 2600 people that the show was over barely 5 minutes into the performance. Fortunately, as I had done the bulk of the work re-rigging the Frame, I understood how it worked better than anyone else on the crew. I dismantled the rigging, picked the side piece back up, and replaced the shattered light bulbs. The rest of the night, my partner and I had to walk the side pieces into position during scene transitions, but we had the frame functional, though not fixed, in two minutes. The audience never knew there was a problem, and we got through the rest of the show by the skin of our teeth.
The next day I spent three hours actually fixing the Frame, and except for one minor repair two years ago, the rigging has held up just fine.
Tonight, during Act I Preset, 'dip and I were moving a set from the stage building to the shop building. Neither of us noticed that the roll-up door to the shop was two feet shy of being completely open. We were going at a pretty good clip when we slammed that set into the roll-up door. Fortunately, all we did was pop a few staples and crack a support. Our shop forman, who by the way was the one who had not completely opened the shop door, despite a policy that it always be either all the way open or all the way closed, spent the next 20 minutes repairing the damage that 'dip and I had done. As with my previous incident, the audience never knew there was a problem.
On Gala night too! Oh, the havoc we wreak...
(No, the set was fine, this was what--Two and a half hours before the start of the act it was half way through?)
I still felt really bad about it though!
Always look up, even if there hasn't been anything there for two months, and nothing should've been...
Edit/Addition: Maybe you should have put this under "my worst theater injury" as opposed to "my worst mess up" because one of my fingers is swelling and looking a little bit more surprise pink...
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Yeah, two and a half hours sounds about right.
Oh good. I'm glad one of us felt bad about it.
And, yup.
In that order.
JoeGriffin
Member
Sony
Active Member
Yup, that would be me......
I also work at the Pageant of the Masters, during the run of the show, as the Flyman. When we recreate a painting, the picture frame rolls downstage into position and I trim the teaser and first blacks so the audience sees a frame on a black wall with a painting in it. Then the set of the painting rolls downstage into the frame, and I close the third blacks upstage of the set.
When we are finished presenting that painting, I open the upstage blacks and the crew moves the set and frame away to clear the stage for our next presentation. We are set in an amphitheater and also present works of art on several stages out along the sides of the house.
My biggest screw up was seeing the lights go down over the frame/set and hearing the music go out as well, I opened the upstage blacks thinking the piece was over. The crew started moving the set, and they unplugged and started to move the frame, and THEN I realized the piece was going on, not off. The lights were work lights for the people who pose the cast in the set, and the music was for a piece that we were presenting out in the house.
-----
Someone once asked me if I had ever operated a carbon arc followspot. My reply was, "I have never arced anything." After everyone's eyes widened and eyebrows shot up I added, "Intentionally."
Pip
Active Member
I never underestimate human ingenuity. For everything I make idiotproof, someone makes a better idiot.
renegadeblack
Active Member
When I was in middle school and we were doing the national junior honors society induction. I said let's have a backup mic. First wireless mic started popping, second didn't work. Tried a wired, no dice. Like the 5th that we tried actually worked.
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Eboy87
Well-Known Member
My most mortifying one was pretty bad. Allow me to set the scene. My high school's theatre would always be rented out to host one of the Miss Missouri qualifying pageants. Back then, I was just making the switch from lighting to sound, and wound up running the sound board. Any of you who've ever done these (or seen one) obviously knows they do the talent portion, and a lot of the talents are set to CD's.
The school was a bit light in the equipment department; I had two consumer CD players (which work fine by the way) going through a dual stereo -> single mono into channel 24 of the console. Yes, a single fader controls two CD players. I think you see where this is going.
So we're in the middle of the talent portion, and I'm swapping CD's like crazy in the two CD players. Contestant 1 in CD 1, play, load contestant 2's cd into deck 2, stop deck 1 at the end, play on deck two, contestant three load into 1, etc. So the girl on stage finishes her clogging, I pull the fader down, hit a button on the CD deck that I thought was pause, and hit play on the other one. Bring up the fader as soon as the girl's ready on stage, only to find out both decks are playing. She just stood on stage smiling at the audience while I'm scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on. Finally figured it out, and we started her over with no problems.
I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed after screwing up a very high profile show. The TD had a field day with that one.
The school was a bit light in the equipment department; I had two consumer CD players (which work fine by the way) going through a dual stereo -> single mono into channel 24 of the console. Yes, a single fader controls two CD players. I think you see where this is going.
So we're in the middle of the talent portion, and I'm swapping CD's like crazy in the two CD players. Contestant 1 in CD 1, play, load contestant 2's cd into deck 2, stop deck 1 at the end, play on deck two, contestant three load into 1, etc. So the girl on stage finishes her clogging, I pull the fader down, hit a button on the CD deck that I thought was pause, and hit play on the other one. Bring up the fader as soon as the girl's ready on stage, only to find out both decks are playing. She just stood on stage smiling at the audience while I'm scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on. Finally figured it out, and we started her over with no problems.
I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed after screwing up a very high profile show. The TD had a field day with that one.
Um . . . you know what generally happens right after you tempt the theatre gods like that, right . . . ?
marshmolly123
Member
In the theatre i work in there is only one person to run everything in the booth we were running Nunsense A-men and this was one of my first shows. One of the mics started to crackle and this was the first time that i had run into this problem. I did not know rather I should leave it on so the actor could be heard or mute it and let him project to be heard so in a panic i left it on. Fortunately the actor who's mic was having the problems (was also playing sister mary amnesia and also the director) ad libed a line about crackers being eaten in heaven and how it was really loud. This gave me the ok to shut down the mic. Really emberrasing!!
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