What are they (not) teaching kids these days?

[JChenault]

I am in the process of cutting back on my main venue ( semi retirement). The theatre has found a guy recently out of college with a degree in Theatre who wants to be a lighting designer electrician.

Here is the Text I got from him the other day, with my reply.

"Now we are encountering a new problem. Jon told me to ask you how you powered them the last time you used snow machines. We plugged them into dimmers and are turning them on instantly manually but they are blowing the fuses. They say each machine is 220V. Do you have any idea why the fuses might be popping?"

My reply
"Do not plug into dimmers. Motors and dimmers do not play well together.

Power them from one of the switched outlets over the stage or over the house and turn them on with the switch."


Just wanted to share my frustration.

 

[Amiers]

Maybe he fell asleep on dimmer day.

 

[MNicolai]

I think schools stopped bothering teaching students the basics of dimmers when most new installs went dimmer-per-circuit. Became a lot easier for people to ignore the nuances of theatrical power distribution. Only moreso now that many installs are becoming relays-only.

TD I used to do overhire work for told me a story of a BFA Theater Design/Tech graduate he hired who had worked as his ATD for over 3-4 years before he became keenly aware of how little college prepared her. He handed a roadshow load-in completely over to her and shortly thereafter she walked up to him and asked "What is a DMX and where do we have one?"

 

[gafftapegreenia]

More and more schools teach design concepts and leave the rest up to the student. The nuts and bolts aspect of theatrical productions are blue collar skills frowned upon by institutions of Higher Learning.

 

[SteveB]

Ours is a “Design and Technical” program, but the “Technical” isn’t getting taught.

It seems our undergrads don’t do multi-year learning and the kids we get only do a semester at best, maybe an intro to stagecraft, no real follow up.

The MFA’s get a decent design education, we have a “name” LD teaching who’s very good, but and as far as I’ve seen tends to not teach much about what’s needed to actually get a design into the theater. As point, nobody knows about addressing, DMX footprints, relays, etc.... and how to use Lightwright to help figure this out. I’m on my 3rd MFA designed show this semester with 150+ spanking new ETC LED fixtures that nobody did any addressing or power on, they just assume the staff will figure out how to get the show up. I can’t even get them to draw a plot that has dimmer or address info. We use Vectorworks and Lightwright, yet it’s not taught, they have to figure it out by themselves.

Rigging ?, FahGedABoutIt.
Scenic Construction ?, only those working in the shop learn anything but there’s no professor teaching scenic construction, as far as I know.
Costumes ?, I’ve no clue what’s taught.

 

[MNicolai]

@gafftapegreenia @SteveB, those are fairly good descriptions of my undergrad experience. All of the skills that made me actually capable and hireable came from off-campus interships. My BFA program taught more towards the art of design than the skill of it, including 2 semesters of hand drafting with very basic VW introduction. At great expense, all the campus venues including the roadhouse switched over to Series 2 Lustr, Vivid-R, and D40's, which the resident lighting professor was kicking and screaming through. He was very uninterested in learning about non-tungsten lighting and thusly never taught his students how to design with LED's or how to program for them. End result was a lot of student designers and inexperienced programmers getting into tech week and getting railroaded over for not being able to turn their concepts into cues in a timely fashion. Their lack of vocational skill meant they never really got to see how their designs should have turned out.

There's that whole snobby higher ed community that believes art should come before vocation, but doing it in total ignorance of vocation makes the art fall flat on its face. There are surprisingly few programs out there that have figured out to strike this delicate balance.

 

[STEVETERRY]

I am in the process of cutting back on my main venue ( semi retirement). The theatre has found a guy recently out of college with a degree in Theatre who wants to be a lighting designer electrician.

Here is the Text I got from him the other day, with my reply.

"Now we are encountering a new problem. Jon told me to ask you how you powered them the last time you used show machines. We plugged them into dimmers and are turning them on instantly manually but they are blowing the fuses. They say each machine is 220V. Do you have any idea why the fuses might be popping?"

My reply
"Do not plug into dimmers. Motors and dimmers do not play well together.

Power them from one of the switched outlets over the stage or over the house and turn them on with the switch."


Just wanted to share my frustration.

I assume the original message was meant to call the devices snow machines rather than show machines? Looking beyond that typo, one of the most troubling comments was "They say each machine is 220V. " If so, what were they doing anywhere near a dimmed outlet that is clearly delivering 120V? And, there is no such distribution voltage as 220V in North America--it's either 120V, 208V, or 240V. Taken together, these comments reveal a profound lack of basic electrical understanding.

ST

 

[bobgaggle]

Could be how the program was structured as well. The school I went to focused heavily on practical application, but since it was a conservatory, you picked your concentration and got the appropriate training. So LD's got lots of design and electric training, costumers got design and sewing training, TD's got a little design and a lot of CAD/build training. I went the TD route, and took an 'electricity for the stage' class as part of the general curriculum, but not much more beyond that. The LD track guys had 3 or 4 more classes beyond that where they dived into the nitty gritty. Everybody took the basic stagecraft class, but an LD wasn't expected to know how to set up a dado stack on the table saw. Know what I mean?

 

[TheaterEd]

My school gave a lot of attention, knowledge, and training to the BFA students, and left the BA students to fend for themselves. As a theater BA / Education major, my college education taught me precisely zero about electricity. Didn't even know how to calculate how many fixtures could fit on a circuit. We learned how to hand draft basic lighting designs and got hands on with a light board less than five times. My ability to use google and the resources here on the other hand has taught me plenty. If anything, college taught me how to learn things on my own, so I got that going for me! Although I learned a lot about education and the acting side of theater, I probably learned more about tech theater in my first two years out of college than in the 4.5 I spent there.

Even more laughable is the amount of sound design that was covered for BA students. Our sound unit was literally a tour of the booth. Thank god I spent my high school years mixing live bands and took a class on sound senior year or I would have been totally lost.

As I approach ten years post-grad, I am amazed at how much I've learned since then and continue to learn. I think the day I stop learning is the day I am no longer qualified to teach.

 

[ScottT]

The MFA’s get a decent design education, we have a “name” LD teaching who’s very good, but and as far as I’ve seen tends to not teach much about what’s needed to actually get a design into the theater. As point, nobody knows about addressing, DMX footprints, relays, etc.... and how to use Lightwright to help figure this out. I’m on my 3rd MFA designed show this semester with 150+ spanking new ETC LED fixtures that nobody did any addressing or power on, they just assume the staff will figure out how to get the show up. I can’t even get them to draw a plot that has dimmer or address info. We use Vectorworks and Lightwright, yet it’s not taught, they have to figure it out by themselves.

Is being able to lay out a show one of the learning objectives of this design/tech MFA program? I would never expect a designer to submit a plot that has dimmer or address info on it. In the theatres that your "name" LD is working in that's the domain of the production electrician.

If the students going into the MFA program don't know LW/Vectorworks then it sounds like their undergrad programs woefully unprepared them. Too bad there are no refunds on education!

 

[TheaterEd]

In the theatres that your "name" LD is working in that's the domain of the production electrician.

Should the MFA students be counting on jobs at those theaters, or should they be prepared to maybe have to work their way up to that point? They should know how to design within the capacity of the system they are using or at least keep their design within a rental budget. A good design is useless if the client is physically or fiscally unable to install it. There is a difference between not putting dimmer or address info on your plot (your example), and not understanding DMX footprints and addressing at all (SteveB's issue).

 

[SteveB]

Is being able to lay out a show one of the learning objectives of this design/tech MFA program? I would never expect a designer to submit a plot that has dimmer or address info on it. In the theatres that your "name" LD is working in that's the domain of the production electrician.

If the students going into the MFA program don't know LW/Vectorworks then it sounds like their undergrad programs woefully unprepared them. Too bad there are no refunds on education!

As the house LD for a road venue, I saw way too many LD's who paid no attention to the venue system and left it up to the house to figure out how to make it work. That's BS. The LD needs to know what will fit, just like they need to pay attention to the structure, rig and architecture. If the LD doesn't know as much, or almost, as the Prod Elec, how can they do a design ?, budget ?, etc.... Many designs are started long before a PE comes on board. As well, typical MFA designers are NOT going right to venues and events with a Prod Electrician budgeted and the LD needs to know how to figure it out for themselves. You can be a great conceptual designer but if you can't get the plot into the venue, than all that concept is just BS.

For the same reason a scenic designer needs to know how stuff gets fabricated, they cannot be just designing crap out of the air. How many shop TD's here face this continually, a design that cannot be built as drawn nor built on the budget ?.

 

[JChenault]

I assume the original message was meant to call the devices snow machines rather than show machines? Looking beyond that typo, one of the most troubling comments was "They say each machine is 220V. " If so, what were they doing anywhere near a dimmed outlet that is clearly delivering 120V? And, there is no such distribution voltage as 220V in North America--it's either 120V, 208V, or 240V. Taken together, these comments reveal a profound lack of basic electrical understanding.

ST

Steve
1 - Thanks for the typo.
2 - yes - the 220 V question was the other very big red flag in the thread. ( I knew from prior experience that they were 120V machines)

Sigh

 

[bobgaggle]

For the same reason a scenic designer needs to know how stuff gets fabricated, they cannot be just designing crap out of the air. How many shop TD's here face this continually, a design that cannot be built as drawn nor built on the budget ?.

I almost always run into problems with designers drawings. In both materials AND processes. Usually its something like all the walls are 2 or 3 inches bigger than standard sheet goods. Yeah, I can build it this way but the costs go up, now you're over budget (simple example, but you get what I'm saying). Or things like, they want the tracking platform to have built in brakes, but left no provision for brakes in the design of the unit, no where to hide brakes. Rarely though, you do get the "floating platform" or some sort of cantilevered thing thats drawn at an inch thick and hold up four or five people.

Recently I did a show where the second level was 10' above the deck and there was no handrail drawn. When asked, designer said she and the director didn't want one and didn't need it because, "no one is even going to be close to the edge".

All that being said, it seems like (this is my experience as well) designers are being taught to draw the vision of the design and let the details work themselves out. Rather than being constrained from the get go with things like budgets/manpower/physics/gravity etc etc. Design what you want, then pare back. People resist paring back.

 

[MNicolai]

In both materials AND processes.

Referencing again my lighting/scenic prof from college, the biggest show he worked on that was going to be great for him he designed the set for -- but with no ability to cost estimate his design or reconcile it with a production budget even to rough order of magnitude, it was too late by the time they discovered he was about 250% over budget and couldn't gracefully pare it back. They ended up having to wholesale gut the design on the fly.

 

[ship]

Must be a recent development for schools, all theater educated people I see in end result, once they spend a little time slinging cable and re-learning in the shop... reality tend to excell. That said very few do I see with proper education. This year's batch of people moving up from what I see at best have college with a few theater classes. Two weeks ago, I had to teach Ohm's Law, yesterday I had to re-teach it to them as the crew chief's on a job site when they had to re-figure their load for a smaller breaker size... "Amber Shift" concept was a lesson for today for one of the crew chief's in why for the small venu the 575w lamp will have been better to use anyway even if the breaker size issue was resolved. Where do all the properly educated lighting people go - this even if semi-educated as above points out anyway? I certainly don't see many of them given a fairly large company.

One thing good to say about college education - even if not fully educated is those with it, once they get over their frat boy like I know everything days/years, they will progress further and faster. The young ladys above - neither with a degree in theater were crew chiefing a show together. One just last week was in charge of installing a set of LED video screens for a very high profile custumer. It was both technical on the installation of the panels and cables, and computer in making it function.

You get phases in education perhaps, a few years ago it was the over educated who would not listen to reality and took years to fix. Key perhaps is good "Grumpy Old Men Of The Theater" to train once the schooling and lofty ideas are crushed. Or to guide them into what we were and became. This in making up for what is lost in every generation in making room for technology or other things to the next generation of tech people.

 

[Chase P.]

I almost always run into problems with designers drawings. In both materials AND processes.

This, exactly.

A common one I see is lighting designers dropping instruments into a design, then using their little silhouettes to figure out how many they can pack into an area, forgetting that they have a yolk as well, and have to have room to focus. Movers are frequently shown in top view, even when they're going to be hung on a pipe-and-cheese side arm. Then they cram more fixtures below them and suddenly they're not movers any more. Also, designers who look at the set from a top view only, and forget that they might want to check it against elevations. "Oh, there's a wall there? But I wanted side light from behind it."

On the other hand, I've got one house whose blueprint they send out fails to note that there are dead areas on box booms and other wall mounted battens where you can't hang a light. Their unistrut plot fails to mention that big chunks of the strut are used to support conduit, and aren't remotely available for hang.

Too many artists designing the impossible, then getting frustrated when physics get in the way of realizing their dream.

As far as education, I see too many people thinking that their formal education or degree has taught them everything, and are now afraid or too proud to say "I don't know". Leads to folks attempting something they shouldn't and either making a mess or creating a dangerous situation. There's no shame in asking for help or clarification.

 

[tjrobb]

As a note, our house runs 127V on each leg so we end up pretty close to 220V phase to phase (3P system). Apparently our POCO can tap a transformer for this as a standard thing.

 

[STEVETERRY]

As a note, our house runs 127V on each leg so we end up pretty close to 220V phase to phase (3P system). Apparently our POCO can tap a transformer for this as a standard thing.

Back in the dawn of time (say up to 2005), when big dimmer systems were being installed, it was common practice for us to specify dimmer-specific, K-rated (or harmonic mitigating), delta-wye feeder transformers with 230Y/133V secondaries. These transformers had 2 x 2% taps either side of the nominal 133V, so we could adjust them at commissioning time if the utility was delivering a high or low voltage as a matter of course. We would then commission the the system (Sensor racks with per-dimmer maximum scale voltage setting) to deliver exactly 120V at the outlet with a typical load (usually 1kW). This allowed us to eliminate branch circuit voltage drop and dimmer losses.

This was a great solution, but became less useful as tungsten loads made an exit to be replaced by arc or LED sources. It also required some adjustment when the 115V HPL lamp became prevalent.


ST

 

[StradivariusBone]

Let me paraphrase and ask an inverse of the OP's question- as a HS tech theatre teacher/TD who occasionally sends these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youngsters out into the real world where they encounter salty guys and gals such as yourselves, what do you want them to know so they don't ruin your day?

My typical curriculum starts out with a 3 month crash course in sound, lighting, rigging and construction in the slow time before we get busy with our shows and rentals. The kids learn everything, forget everything, and then relearn it as we build and run shows over the course of the rest of the year. There's a magical time when I get a kid for more than one year, but less than say 3 years where they actually know a decent amount and are really useful. Once they hit that senior year, motivation tends to evaporate.

I usually have maybe 5-10% say to me, "This is really fun! I want to hang out in dark theatres and wear black clothes for the rest of my life!" I usually give those ones some special attention and explain that they can go to school for it, get a degree and find a job where they might have to coil cable for a bit before they earn their stripes despite being woefully in debt for their education. I also explain that they might find joy in doing something else and lending their knowledge to a community theatre as a hobby. Then I explain that networking and hanging around places like theatres, theme parks, cruise ships or arenas they might get asked to push a case around. And if they're helpful and stay out of the way (physically and emotionally) they might get asked to come back. I've got one former student right now who is trying to make inroads at a roadhouse. She told me she proudly offered to sweep the deck and coil cables and wouldn't complain a bit and that they were pretty impressed with that attitude. She's probably the best SM I've ever had and she was one of the ones that really "got it" that none of us are ever done learning about the craft. I'm positive she'll go far.

So are there things you'd like me to tell these kids before the government hands them a square hat and piece of paper and unleashes them upon your spaces?