Junior8

Brother in law was a PO Telephones linesman up to 2001 and would agree with everything Kerry says. Throughout the eighties he was always bemoaning the drive for cheap rather than best in what he always referred ti until he retired as the Post Office.

I was a teacher for 21 years and enjoyed every minute of it I only left as I do think once you get between 45 & 50 you are really too old to easily relate to the students as each year passes. I realised I was turning into Mr Chips and the thought terrified me. I'd only add two things.1) Unless you are determined to teach only under elevens try not to limit the age groups for which you are training - exam work with 14-16 year olds which I ended up doing most of the time is incredibly fulfilling. 2) Don't fall in love with teaching, it is very easy to do this if you make a go of it - treat it like any other job and make sure you make time for yourself.

 

Jolly good luck and if you need any sounding boards at any time we'll still be here!

 

(My one negative note - if you find it isn't for you, and you might, walk away. It won't be your fault. I worked with quite a number who stayed when they should have gone and I can tell you it is the most miserable job that anybody could do just for the money in my opinion. Sorry for adding that but I think it ought to be said.)

Find out if they run them themselves or use a contractor and what their waste policy is. Veolia have set up the one I use so that only about 10% goes unsorted as domestic waste the rest is sorted at the site by bin or container. I was told that they often send five or six containers a week of electricals for re-cycling. Hampshire have good info on all their sites online which make clear what they will take and what they do with it.

Thee are charities that take old woodworking & metalworking tools for reuse in 3rd-world countries, but does anyone know of one that take electronic bits (Rs, Cs, connectors, project-boxes, nuts & bolts, etc, etc.)?

 

I take all this sort of stuff to the local recycling centre where they separate the electronics stuff which goes to Africa by the container load, I think for disassembly.

And the genuine question has to be "how do you define who get the extended schemes" - the government have already proven themselves useless as understanding / quantifying the Theatre / Festival / Events business. How do you word the eligibility so that everyone in the sector gets support and it doesn't become a scheme that other sectors backdoor into. Like it or not that's the most important concern the government will have.

 

"anyone who works in theatre" - what about the people who work across multiple sectors; what percentage of your income has to come from theatre to make you qualify?

"actors, crew, technicians" - what about all the job titles that don't fall neatly into those categories; what do they do?

 

That's right. I don't know how anybody in the events sector, leave alone someone to whom it is a complete unknown, could come up with a sensible definition of something that has Little Twittington Steam and Vintage Rally at one end and Glastonbury at the other with maybe a stop off or two at Olympia along the way as well as maybe a bit of Corporate Entertainment yet there will be suppliers who work happily at all.

Been there. Got the job. My advice? If you can - walk away. Even if the process is completely fair and above board no one will believe it is. And if you get the post it will never be glad morning again. Everything will be different

I'm not sure there's much mileage in streaming. Remembrance is one of those events where you either watch the Cenotaph on TV or you attend your local one - I suspect most of the spectators are there because their little (& big) darlings are in the parade.

 

I suspect you are right. My grandfather who served in France 1916-18 and my father whose dad was killed at Dunkirk, having responded to the radio call for reservists to rejoin, wouldn't go near what they thought was a fairly hollow civic ritual. Neither had any great opinion of the RBL either.

 

 

 

Second hand equipment comes with no warranty. Somebody will have to rate these wire them in and then monitor them going forward. In fact the only thing you will have saved is the cost of the winches. If you want a flying bar do it properly from first principles.

We'll be going back to Flit next...

Domain registered 05/08/20. 1 job done? Specialists?

The secret to re-opening is having a staff and creative team that can adapt on the fly and be able to present anything from a one-man panto right up to the full spectacular with only a few weeks notice.

 

Like weekly rep!

 

 

 

 

As with many viruses which is how they work of course. Nothing new here.

On the social distancing distance, as I understand it, 1m is permissible with risk mitigation (which can include face coverings), certainly 'in the workplace'. Whether one can apply this definition to an audience in an auditorium or not isn't evident, but could be viewed in the same way as customers in shops?

Source: https://www.gov.uk/g...ancing-guidance (Sections 1.1 & 1.4)

 

As far as I can see in the latest guidance re performances https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19/performing-arts#arts-3-1 Social Distancing is mentioned but not defined at any point except the usual definition for work which is 2m or 1m with robust mitigations. Later it says 2m wherever possible. My own view is that while it might be nice to view Auditoria as the same as shops they simply aren't and while they might have a relationship to production line workplaces they resemble few other workplaces either. As usual with the Leader of The Conservative Party and his pals there seems to be plenty of words but very few which give anybody any real guide. (Oh how I would like to find out who first used the dread phrase 'road map' and give them a good slapping.)

Try opening economically after reading that lot. At the permitted safe capacity my old venue will take £540 at a £15 ticket - that's if they sell the lot. For the first live show on Sept 2nd they have so far taken £24 in bookings. The £10000 save the place appeal launched a month ago has made less than a grand so far. Yet no one seems to be willing to face up to the grim reality. I am very sorry for the employees, I know them all well, but the numbers and the calendar are working relentlessly against them. The place would have to take £400 a day just to pay the staff costs and another £145 to pay the utilities bills.

The venue I used to help out at is hoping to reopen soon. I wish them good luck but after reading the restrictions etc which will be in place I do wonder who in their right mind would want to access live entertainment in this way, temperature checks or not. As it is it's clear that few are booking seats in the restricted occupancy seating plan. They realise of course that an evening out as a social occasion is impossible and many have been taking great care since March anyway. Sadly looking at the reality I really don't see either a) the point or b) how it will ever pay. I am very sad about this but I think there is a lack of realism amongst both the paid staff and the trustees. Mothballing would be eminently more sensible than what they are thinking of doing and I'm afraid the Trustees will sooner or later have to live up to their responsibilities and let the staff go. They really will, I fear, have little or nothing to do.

It's an interesting point I've noticed over the years that very few threads under this heading have anything to do with lighting. Control yes. Dimming yes. Patching yes. DMX yes. Lanterns yes. Actually what you do with any of this? Probably less than 1% of queries. I just make the observation. It's almost as if at the same time as the scope of what can be done technologically has expanded the fact that what we are trying, or should be trying, to do is actually very simple might have been forgotten. I do worry about this.

They'll always try to do it unless you make a fuss. As I said in the other thread where the poor chap was having to fault find in a 12 way hard wired system I used to have shouting matches with salespeople about this - usually over the trivial overall saving saving of not having a cord patch. Looking back the Junior 8 got a lot right for school and community settings

See here for another PLASA campaign

The worst was the money saver in small halls which saw alternate, or occasionally every three sockets paired. Often on a bar you ended up with a couple of positions you really could do with using on their own so it was temporary cable time.

In a multipurpose hall with no fixed stage I'd say do what you like. If there is a prosc or a stage the No 1 bar is always the first behind the prosc. FOH depends really on what is there and where - as long as it is shown clearly on the plan you can call it what best describes it at least in my opinion.

The positive desk supply from the Eltec packs from what I recall was about 21v. Control voltage 0 to 10v.

 

Eltec was good solid kit aimed mostly at schools. I still have some analogue racks and as far as I know they work.

 

Does anyone know what happened to Phil Snowden?

 

I recall visiting their base at Llanfyllin in Wales and later a farmhouse in Shropshire (I think).

 

Prior to Eltec Phil worked for Contel Thespak in Stroud who produced early thyristor dimmers and desks with a 1.2v control voltage.

 

Pre DMX/d54 Eltec made a memory console called the "Sceptre". This was designed by Peter Wiggins from Derby. It was advanced for it's time and used a bbc model B computer to do the work.

 

Anyone remember that?

 

I went to the premises in Stroud in June 1973 when they were called I seem to recall Thespak Major. They offered me a summer job but a local factory offered more money. All I recall are some PAR lamp floods of the type later marketed by Pulsar and a very posh sounding girl behind the desk. They didn't seem to be very busy.

It's been obvious to me for some time that the civil service have mentally deserted this particular sinking ship of an administration. In other circumstances it would be quite amusing to see this shower so out of their depth. Now it's merely tragic.

It's highly likely a lot of pantos will not be happening this year almost entirely because in 3 hours today government went from confirming venues could open to insisting venues should close which has spooked some major producers

 

Is this surprising even allowing for the mixed massages continually coming from the, I suppose we must call it. government? I wouldn't be investing any money in anything in the live entertainment field at the moment. Planning is completely impossible surely?

One of my Chinese suppliers tells me their theatres have reopened this week where she lives. She also tells me that foreign sales, to people like me have just collapsed and their big sales of ship freight have ceased. The sea journey takes too long for people to risk waiting.

 

In the retail trade they were already realising just how far China was away before all this happened, and that was quite separate from the quality issues. The grey market knock-offs via ebay were getting direct to the punter quicker than their stock to the wholesalers.

Seemingly you have to set the DMX testing addresses on the pcb using three switches. This is something that a beginner may not wish to do.