Another day in the life....
"So you told me you had moving lights".
For reasons that escape me, the LD opted to not focus 7 Source 4 Zooms as specials on the 1 electric from spare units, even though we were at least an hour ahead of schedule, having just finished focuing about 110 units for this one-off dance company with a 2pm show. It was about 10:45 in the morning and had started load-in at 8.
As we sit now at the console to do a cue to cue (he had e-mailed me the ASCII cue file and I pre-loaded the cues), he asks about the ML's. I know that I did indeed mention that we had them available, but Jeez, when was he going to tell me ?.
So, nothing on the Ion is configured. And this is pretty much how easy it is to get this up and running.
- A call on headset for the fly rail folks to fly in to a preset spike, the 1A Electric with the 5 Studio Spots (numbered 1 thru 5, as SR to SL and spaced evenely across the pipe)
- On the local Unison LCD panel, go to ML Power and turn on the units
- On the console - Display, Patch, Ch's 301-305 (my standard assignment), @ 2/1 (patches all 5 SS's to Universe 2, addresses 1-120 in sequential order, which the Net2 node for the units is already configured for).
- Again in Patch, Type, High End, Studio Spot CMY Zoom
- Display again, File, Merge, "Basic" file, Merge in the Fix Groups, Color, Focus and Beam Palettes as well as all Presets that I had pre-written and keep available. Not sure why I hadn't put them in the show file....
- Display again to set a Direct Select to Lower Left on the right display, again for a Direct Select in a Tab and again as a Direct Select in the Central Information Area. Now I have 3 sets of DS's set on 2 touch screens. I then configure the CIA and Tab DS's to 2x10, which give me a DS set of 2x10 touch screen buttons for Fixtures 1 thru 5 and All, a Focus Palette set as 2x10, a Color Pallete set that already has about 20 preset colors ready to go, A Beam Palette set, with a ton of ready-to-go gobo's in assorted image sizes, slow and fast rotations in clockwise and CCW, as well as basic Small/Hard, Small/Soft, Large/Hard and Large/Soft open images. Plus 50 potential Presets which group the above.
- Console is normalled as AutoMark Enabled, so good to go.
Time from the LD request to when I'm panning and tilting a light into position, maybe 5 minutes and the thought occurs that there is no way I could have done this on an Expression or Express, even with Emphasis. Many other consoles - GrandMA, Hog, Compulite, or possibly a Strand can get set up as easily, but only the Strand would have 600 cues in the console as an import.
I did one piece using 4 Units, with #1, 3 & 5 focused to a CC area in Red, Blue and Green that faded in and out a couple of times as color mixing on a solo dancer, with Fix 3 at C/C changing to a N/C breakup gobo image at the end (during a cue when the fixture had time to change). Plus Fix 2 in a large pool UL in a Yellow. Then another piece with Fix 5 in a Pool DL in a light amber. The dancer kept changing position during the (very brief) tech and I updated the Focus Palette 4 times on that one. Then a third piece using Fix 2 again in a light blue, again in an UL pool. Then a hip/hop number with all 5 fixtures functioning as an Audience blinder wash in N/C, using a ready-to-go preset. Unfortunatly the LD, who admitted to having never used ML's prior, and not having any idea as to what these fixtures offered, had never dealt with the need to check the cue prior, as well as the cues following to make sure nothing drifts while lit. Had that happen twice. This was also the first time I had attempted to use the ML's as substitutes for conventionals in any kind of conventional dance event, so some pretty good lessons learned and learning how to do this and what additional thought processes are involved is crucial, as I am buying 8-10 Martin MAC700's that are going on the #1 & #2 electrics in place of S4 Par Wides and that can be used in the way I used the SS's for this event, or as additional washes.
Did the ML's add something to the show ?. Hard to say. The LD, had he planned ahead, had conventionals available to do the same thing and he had plenty of time to focus. Easier to cue conventionals as well - Lamp On, Lamp Off. I was able to tweak ML positioning with the dancer(s) in place and that was very useful. I also had other tools available, such as the ability to spin a gobo if so desired that a conventional would not have offered. Bottom line though was the LD kind of screwed up and our having an Ion saved his butt.
"So you told me you had moving lights".
For reasons that escape me, the LD opted to not focus 7 Source 4 Zooms as specials on the 1 electric from spare units, even though we were at least an hour ahead of schedule, having just finished focuing about 110 units for this one-off dance company with a 2pm show. It was about 10:45 in the morning and had started load-in at 8.
As we sit now at the console to do a cue to cue (he had e-mailed me the ASCII cue file and I pre-loaded the cues), he asks about the ML's. I know that I did indeed mention that we had them available, but Jeez, when was he going to tell me ?.
So, nothing on the Ion is configured. And this is pretty much how easy it is to get this up and running.
- A call on headset for the fly rail folks to fly in to a preset spike, the 1A Electric with the 5 Studio Spots (numbered 1 thru 5, as SR to SL and spaced evenely across the pipe)
- On the local Unison LCD panel, go to ML Power and turn on the units
- On the console - Display, Patch, Ch's 301-305 (my standard assignment), @ 2/1 (patches all 5 SS's to Universe 2, addresses 1-120 in sequential order, which the Net2 node for the units is already configured for).
- Again in Patch, Type, High End, Studio Spot CMY Zoom
- Display again, File, Merge, "Basic" file, Merge in the Fix Groups, Color, Focus and Beam Palettes as well as all Presets that I had pre-written and keep available. Not sure why I hadn't put them in the show file....
- Display again to set a Direct Select to Lower Left on the right display, again for a Direct Select in a Tab and again as a Direct Select in the Central Information Area. Now I have 3 sets of DS's set on 2 touch screens. I then configure the CIA and Tab DS's to 2x10, which give me a DS set of 2x10 touch screen buttons for Fixtures 1 thru 5 and All, a Focus Palette set as 2x10, a Color Pallete set that already has about 20 preset colors ready to go, A Beam Palette set, with a ton of ready-to-go gobo's in assorted image sizes, slow and fast rotations in clockwise and CCW, as well as basic Small/Hard, Small/Soft, Large/Hard and Large/Soft open images. Plus 50 potential Presets which group the above.
- Console is normalled as AutoMark Enabled, so good to go.
Time from the LD request to when I'm panning and tilting a light into position, maybe 5 minutes and the thought occurs that there is no way I could have done this on an Expression or Express, even with Emphasis. Many other consoles - GrandMA, Hog, Compulite, or possibly a Strand can get set up as easily, but only the Strand would have 600 cues in the console as an import.
I did one piece using 4 Units, with #1, 3 & 5 focused to a CC area in Red, Blue and Green that faded in and out a couple of times as color mixing on a solo dancer, with Fix 3 at C/C changing to a N/C breakup gobo image at the end (during a cue when the fixture had time to change). Plus Fix 2 in a large pool UL in a Yellow. Then another piece with Fix 5 in a Pool DL in a light amber. The dancer kept changing position during the (very brief) tech and I updated the Focus Palette 4 times on that one. Then a third piece using Fix 2 again in a light blue, again in an UL pool. Then a hip/hop number with all 5 fixtures functioning as an Audience blinder wash in N/C, using a ready-to-go preset. Unfortunatly the LD, who admitted to having never used ML's prior, and not having any idea as to what these fixtures offered, had never dealt with the need to check the cue prior, as well as the cues following to make sure nothing drifts while lit. Had that happen twice. This was also the first time I had attempted to use the ML's as substitutes for conventionals in any kind of conventional dance event, so some pretty good lessons learned and learning how to do this and what additional thought processes are involved is crucial, as I am buying 8-10 Martin MAC700's that are going on the #1 & #2 electrics in place of S4 Par Wides and that can be used in the way I used the SS's for this event, or as additional washes.
Did the ML's add something to the show ?. Hard to say. The LD, had he planned ahead, had conventionals available to do the same thing and he had plenty of time to focus. Easier to cue conventionals as well - Lamp On, Lamp Off. I was able to tweak ML positioning with the dancer(s) in place and that was very useful. I also had other tools available, such as the ability to spin a gobo if so desired that a conventional would not have offered. Bottom line though was the LD kind of screwed up and our having an Ion saved his butt.
