Which do you prefer? 2

What would you rather do?


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Inaki2

Active Member
Since we're going all technical, I'd like to know what would you rather do in terms of the actual show.
 
Nice spin off man...

That's a tuffy man. I'm mostly a sound guy so concert style wins hands down. With theater, you don't have an excuse to compress every input in the board heh heh. And there isn't the intensive cueing going on. I've worked forms of a festival were I had mixed several acts, it's really nice to work with a series of acts. The major down side is unless your rolling in dough you gotta setup the same equipment for every act. Its a pain to keep the sound consistent. You have a completely different board layout for each act, it's not a problem if you digital or you have snapshots. Concert style is probably the most fun because you can go really crazy it's not like you can use audience blinders during a drama. Concert really rules for lighting, it's really the only place you can use truss w/truss warmers. And its nice to relax when you have a little more room for error, you don't necessarly have to follow the kind of cueing found in theater.

But musical/dramas can be amazing too. It's a little trickier coming up with awesome designs. Its sometimes really rewarding if you can really increase the intensity of a scene with lighting. I've gotten goose bumps during an intense scene and the lighting really accents everything. Lighting and sound(music/musical interludes) can realy push a scene to the top. I've seen so many basic school plays with just a basic stage wash and zero sound, not even reinforcement. Unless the acting is incredible it seems so boring. Adding awesome music really accents things. The competitive theater show I did this year was just playback for sound. Billios of musical interludes and some sound effects. The judges thought it was so amazing how the sound painted apart of the image. It set the mood, and when lights joined in and helped capture the emotion of a scene it just acented things amazingly. But you still have to be aware about not upstaging actors. I've also seen too many productions when the technical asepects completely upstage the acting, and it just ruins everything. I love musicals when you mic the pitt completely, and tons of nice lavs are using. But as far as sound goes, they aren't as action packed. Its mostly just intense lav cues, and just reinforcing the stage. Musicals are nicer since there is singing involved. You can use effects and really accent the show. It's just a little frusterating when all you can do is reinforce the stage, it's more exciting when you have a chance to accent the performance more.

I just realized this was a lighting forum, so I put some sound stuff in. Sorry about that folks.
 
Compressing uh? Well u can do it in theatre....kinda :roll:
I love theatre, especially musicals, I absolutely love to do that. As long as its good, I've been stuck with some reaaaaallllllyyyy bad stuff in which u get like 0 inspiration. Lighting the hokey pokey kinda stuff.
Concerts are so cool...but I'm sorry to say, raves rule above all. Ddn't add them cuz this is a high school oriented page and most people here wouldn't even be allowed into one!!! Some would actually run away from one in Argentina.
As an off note....what the hell is up with Florida weather??? They sky's falling on me now!
 
Musicals. Hands down.

I'm a big fan of lighting, and you can't beat the lighting style of a musical. Since the whole thing is kind of dreamlike, the lighting for a musical can be much more imaginative than in drama or anything else. For instance: as fun as Noises Off is, you won't find too much of lighting interest in it. You're not going to, say, flood the stage with red downlight. In a nice musical, though, most of the lighting is colorful and awesome, since it doesn't have to be quite as naturalistic.

I also like variety and talent shows, though. Especially when the lighting operator doesn't get to see the show before lighting it; it kind of keeps you on your toes.
 
I do lighting, and I like musicals the best. I find that for musicals I can be the most creative, and come up with cool effects. For instance, when we did Into The Woods, we had grandmothers house half scrim and half wood, so through front light, then back light, then flashing the back light, I had little red outside, then inside, then getting eaten. I had a lot of fun with this effect.

Also I find that my school gives the most time for the musicals, so I have the most time to set everything up, and I am not rushed (OK, i'm rushed, but less so).

Of corse, lighting rock concerts could be fun (I rarely do this, only when my school has a band playing) because then I can flash things, and program chases, which is always fun.
 
My school did Noise's Off this past spring. That is one of the funniest plays out there. Sound was pretty intense, the lav cues are sick its on and off. The actors are in and out constantly. That was my first show with over 3-4 lavs (we used 9 for each actor, no rotation). That is possible the hardest comedy to do soundwise. I can't imagine a broadway engineer doing this show up to broadway standards without a digital console. What made it really hard is we setup four effect speakers (ran door sound effects through these) behind the set for the second act when the front of the set is turned around. I ran all the lavs through these during the II act through these, it was really tough getting good GBF. The actors are literally walking around the clusters setup backstage, there was a lot of frequency cutting to prevent all the feedback. But it sounded so intense, it really did sound like they were performing noises on to a crowd. We also setup some lights back there to make it appear like there was an actual crowd. Another tough element was the director is sitting in the house constantly. His cues are so unpredictable that it was impossible to mute his mic. I had to be very careful of feedback because the actors walked around all the various speakers (including the mains). I would barely run the mains in act II, I only use it for some extra reinforcement. But we ran (4) 12" biamped cabs as the effects speakers. We also had (2) 12" sidefills that were used for the telephone rings during Act I and III. This show was so intense, during the II act I would need three people to help me mix this show. One for playback, one cue prompter (only for rehersals), and the designer would back me up by watching the effects levels and he had his hands on the EQs at all times. Its pretty hard to mix a show blindly. Now that I think about it we should have setup cameras back stage.

Yeah Toul, I agree with ya. Lights was pretty boring during this show. The only had to do some minor focusing with the lights on the first electric to accomadate that huge eff'n set. During the show all they had to do was control the house lights (flash them), take out the curtain warmers, bring up/down the stage wash, and control the lights that were setup behind the set which were cyc lights which are always there. Haha, they actually prefered to go manual for this show (just throwing submasters up and down) just for to make up for the lack of action they would have received if they programmed the console for cues. You could control lights for this show while blindfolded w/your arms and legs strapped down to a chair, even if your nose was off limits you could still do it. It was a whooping total of 4 submasters (curtain warmers, house, act II lights, and the stage wash). Lights was actually excited when they go to turn off all the worklights back staged at preshow. Even more exciting when they got to turn of the house lights. Haha, I remember the one spare moment of that amazing 2.5 seconds to actually look over at the lighting console. They looked bored out of their minds, they've seen the show a billion times already haha.

Variety and Talent shows are more festival/concert style those are always the most visually and audioly (if thats even a weird) striking/stimulating in my opinion.
 
Ok..I'm gonna move right into sound for a bit here...don't shoot me!
Having intensive cueing is not merely a choice for digital. I've had the pleasure (yeah it's a fkn mess, but so much fun) to do shows with over 70 inputs, and those were overe 16 lavs man. Didn't use a digital board, did have VCAs. Nevertheless, most large format consoles have mute snapshot as standard, this is a great way to do these kinda shows if u can't program VCA scenes.
And if not..use the damn fingers!! These guys are payed vast amounts of money to OPERATE sound, so the might as well do more than a sound check and press "Go" on every cue. If you gotta push those mute buttons, or ride faders like a maniac, you better do it. I've done it, you get all stressed up till u get the hang of it though :?
 
The_Guest said:
Yeah Toul, I agree with ya. Lights was pretty boring during this show. The only had to do some minor focusing with the lights on the first electric to accomadate that huge eff'n set. During the show all they had to do was control the house lights (flash them), take out the curtain warmers, bring up/down the stage wash, and control the lights that were setup behind the set which were cyc lights which are always there. Haha, they actually prefered to go manual for this show (just throwing submasters up and down) just for to make up for the lack of action they would have received if they programmed the console for cues. You could control lights for this show while blindfolded w/your arms and legs strapped down to a chair, even if your nose was off limits you could still do it. It was a whooping total of 4 submasters (curtain warmers, house, act II lights, and the stage wash). Lights was actually excited when they go to turn off all the worklights back staged at preshow. Even more exciting when they got to turn of the house lights. Haha, I remember the one spare moment of that amazing 2.5 seconds to actually look over at the lighting console. They looked bored out of their minds, they've seen the show a billion times already haha.
I would have a lot of trouble getting excited about doing those things. Although when we did The Importance of Being Earnest this past year, I amused myself during Act II by turning on and off the cloud I was projecting onto the cyc. I would fade it in and out over ten minutes, so that nobody in the audience would realize it unless they thought about it. It was a cheap thrill.

It sounds like you did the hell out of the sound for Noises Off. I don't think my school did that much with sound when we did the show. As far as I know, we just did sound reinforcement with standard hanging mics that covered the whole stage. I wasn't involved at that point, since I was in elementary school, but I remember falling in love with the show completely. It's so funny.

The crowning achievment of any venue that successfully puts on Noises Off, though, is the set. You're damn right: it's a huge set, and what's more, it has to be on wheels and playable from both sides. When I saw the show, the intermission was the best part as I got to watch the techies turn the whole beast of a set around. It was so wide that it overhung off the front of the stage and took up the first row of seats during rotation.

One of my favorite shows ever, but nobody better ever make me light it.
 
Yeah, the designer actually thought the show was pretty weak. I was like what? Yeah that set is amazing, this probably the hardest play to do on all aspects except lighting. The set, I should post some pics its such a beautiful set and it's so amazing when you finally finish it all. Yeah our set would push up on the curtain when it woudl spin around. This set is so extravagant, what makes it tough is that on top of everything in has to be able to turn around. It took a long time to get this thing angled properly on the stage.
 
She's a beauty, I have to find someone with pics of ours. Brook is wearing an even more revealing wardrobe in your production. But our Brooke was hotter, trust me.
 
Concerts hands down becasue for lack of a better description its loud and by the seat of the pants, the only sure thing is the guitars will be too loud
 
Could I have seen a movie of this??? Is this about a show that goes really well and go on tour and then tings start getting all freaky?
 
Could I have seen a movie of this??? Is this about a show that goes really well and go on tour and then tings start getting all freaky?
 
I have lite just about everything. From small theaters to churches. From plays to rock concerts. I like church jobs and industrials the most. I would get back into theater, but the type of lighting im into is not used much in theater yet.
 
Inaki2 said:
Could I have seen a movie of this??? Is this about a show that goes really well and go on tour and then tings start getting all freaky?
There was, in fact, a (mediocre, in my opinion) movie of Noises Off. It's a play about a play. The three acts take place in a (I) rehearsal of the play, (II) on opening night, and (III) at the end of the show's run. However, things never go well with this play. One of the actors is a drunkard, actors have very confusing crushes on each other and on the director, and nobody seems committed to the show. Things go hilariously funny almost immediately; this play is full of awesome physical comedy and is worthy of a peek if it shows up on any stage near you. I would advise you not to see the movie, though, as it just doesn't convey the same kind of humor as a live performance does.
 

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