So, you want to work in Vegas

[ruinexplorer]

Interesting article about backstage in Las Vegas. It includes some backstage photos from [user]gafftaper[/user]'s favorite Vegas show.

Professor Joe Aldridge, coordinator of UNLV’s Entertainment, Engineering and Design program ... a stagehand in multiple Strip shows in the 1980s, says many of the behind-the-scenes job titles remain from past years: rigger, spotlight operator, soundboard controller. The need to think quickly and respond to the unexpected also remains. It’s the equipment that’s changed, as well as the education needed to understand and operate it.

 

[Grog12]

Yep that sounds like my Papa Joe.

 

[Footer]

He also envisions motorized spotlights that will employ Bluetooth-style technology, like that used for mobile phones, coordinating the movements between spotlight and entertainer. So how will those advances be used in the next generation of shows?

“That’s up to the people who are really creative,” Wright said.

Wright needs to go to LDI sometime... Wybron has been doing this for a number of years.

 

[ruinexplorer]

I think that he means something more reliable than the Wybron type units as I am pretty sure that he has gone to LDI more than a few times. Also, you have to remember that the journalist probably does not understand stage technology at all and that was the closest to anything said that he understood.

 

[Pie4Weebl]

“For example, you have to understand the programming language for automated lightboards. You don’t have to know how to program them, just how to fix a glitch.”

Uhh..... yeah?

 

[Grog12]

Uhh..... yeah?

Board ops and programmers are two different things.

 

[SteveB]

“For example, you have to understand the programming language for automated lightboards. You don’t have to know how to program them, just how to fix a glitch.”

Yeah, pretty dumb comment. As Steve Terry was once quoted, way, way back in the era of computer lighting consoles first making their appearance on Broadway, and referring to the complaints often heard from the producers about the salaries of someone pushing a Go button, and to paraphrase "You're not paying someone $70,000 to push Go, your paying them to know what to do when Go doesn't work".

Not much has changed in 30 years except that the same skill sets are still used, only we've adapted to newer gear and requirements. Just like going from gas to electricity, which some here might well remember !

 

[mstaylor]

Very,very true.