kerry davies

The best and worst bits of theatre can be working with young people. Start at Jon's Have Fun and set the ground rules immediately. Just as with any adult crew new to a space or situation there has to be some form of induction; "Do this, don't do that, go here, don't go there" etc. I found it helpful for me and them if there is also a set schedule so that "We do this, then we talk/ask questions/take suggestions/clean up" otherwise you can spend entire days answering the constant "Why" getting nothing done. I always tried to explain the reasoning behind instructions and procedures in all work, with amateurs, pros and youth but they also were made aware that sometimes "Just do it, I shall explain later" was the order of the day.

Discipline is vital in any co-operative endeavour and especially with those less capable of self-discipline. Similarly safety concerns grow as youth and inexperience increase. Set the boundaries clearly, stick to them equably and know your own limitations. As Jon writes, know your escalation process. 

Try to relax and enjoy the experience, kids are like wild animals, they can smell fear and it scares them too.

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The Government has announced that businesses will be given until 30 June 2025 to apply new product safety marking on construction products.

Right again, Alister, the builders appear to have been having a moan about UKCA.

Just had a look at the REUL dashboard listing all they nasty EU laws they are scrapping. They still list Jacob Rees-Mogg as Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency a post abolished back in September. I don't hold out much hope of them not making a pig's ear of it all.

I think others have answered the OP, there is no legal maximum

Students are capable of all sorts of activities if the Risk Assessment takes account of inexperience, lack of maturity and level of responsibility. HSE tells me that.

In construction they use restraining harnesses and tethers to prevent people getting too close to an edge which is a bit OTT for theatre but is one option. When edge marking a platform for amateurs and youngsters I found it helped to mark an "edge" a foot or so inside the actual edge and rehearse them thoroughly. I am not a fan of raised edge markers as with amateurs and youngsters they can too easily become trip hazards.

Never, ever even think "get away with" on safety matters and add yet more negatives when it comes to students. 

You should be looking for full range passive speakers that can handle 500W to start with but everything depends on what you want to do with the kit and how much you have to spend.

Thing being in this here boutique, the more you tell us the better will be the response. Fill in your profile a bit more, tell us where you are and what your interests are and you may even discover someone near you who can help.

I never quite understood why a band member with his back to the video and no idea what it looks like from out front was even considered for this. I have known keyboard players trigger images but always felt the timing was never perfect.

There is the peace of mind of not having to worry about two things but there is also the wonderful confidence booster of having someone else to carry responsibility (blame?)

More deep joy on this subject seeing as it is December soon. In the middle of Gov.UK pushing for EU law revocation (REUL) and claiming they can get what they "think"* is 4,000 pieces of legislation scrapped by the end of 2023, regardless if it is devolved law or not, the latest pronouncement causes more confusion.

* I say "think" because they set up a dashboard with 2,400 laws then found another 1,400 under the carpet..... SO FAR!!

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 The UK government has extended the deadline for the implementation of the UKCA mark and will continue to recognise the CE marking until the end of 2024. 

Nobody has bothered asking them how this matches up with the 2023 deadline being debated in parliament right now. An interesting aside is that since 2016 a grand total of 33 EU laws have been scrapped and repealed and that, in a good year, Westminster manages to pass about 30-35 simple pieces of legislation.  

2 hours ago, ANDYLASER said:

I keep looking at this. Horizontal foam tray for mics laying on their side (agreed a bit wasteful on space) and a couple of trays for mics in their bags/pouches/boxes.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/gator_gm_7w_tsa.htm

The problem with the often excellent proprietary ones like those, Andy, is that most smaller PA hire guys end up with a Paulears mixture of 7 or 8 differing shaped mics that don't fit the cut-outs. Of course Murphy's Law states that once you create your own bespoke foam inserts you then go and buy another bunch of yet different shaped mics and you end up back at jumbleyville.

A word of caution; there is far too little information for anyone on an open internet forum to make any kind of guess at an answer to this. Brian and Stuart are exactly right, we can't tell you but the installer/designer might be able to. Failing that it needs examination in situ by a structural engineer.

This is life safety critical stuff and as the warning on the Safety thread says; If in doubt, consult a qualified professional.

The Grauniad has an article which might be of use. Our friend G Keith Still is quoted and ends the piece with one of his memorable aphorisms; 

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“People don’t die because they panic. They panic because they are dying.”

It is a tragedy but wasn't an event or in a venue and the only planning possible would have been police shutting down the whole district which could have caused just as much chaos. Reports highlight that several bars and clubs happily kept operating in total ignorance of the problem as the bodies were being lined up outside. I suspect that each bar, club and venue had perfectly adequate individual crowd management measures and couldn't have even imagined a crowd surge in a public thoroughfare like the alleyway which was the site.

It seems that nobody expected such crowds so it isn't even like The Hajj or a festival or even a mass protest march.

Welcome to BR David and just a couple of tips.

It doesn't pay to tag new requests onto threads 18 months old, we call it thread necrophilia and additional new ones can get overlooked. Be brave, start your own topic.

Next, do a bit more work on your profile, my first response was "Buy one, they are cheap enough" then I thought "Ah, but he might be in darkest Borneo" but you don't say what part of the world you are in. Might sound pedantic but members currently posting are from the West Indies, the Antipodes, China, Sweden and WALES!

My best advice is still buy one and copy it if you must because they are probably cheaper to buy than to make a bespoke one-off. We used to build all sorts of kit like propellers and blanking discs but always started from a Solarsystem or single rotator and in fact used them as the quick way to build spinning screens and mirrors. Have a search for Opti rotators but also for the original Rank Aldis Tutor 2 rotators. 

I would fake it. If you have half a dozen open white fairly tight beams on the walls, roof, pros arch etc and sequence them to jerkily lead the eye toward the target and have a tight but hapless followspot try and fail to catch up with the non-existent arrow the FS can come to rest on the target half a second before the arrow appears it might work with the appropriate sound effects. Personally I would ham it up with inappropriate effects and make a feature of timing and pauses.

Combine this post with Tim's to get the idea.

11 hours ago, Stuart91 said:

I've always been tempted to slip in something outrageous (risk of Godzilla attack etc.) and see if anyone pulls me up on it. 

I told this tale here before but one new EHO seriously asked to see my RA for a scheduled flight falling on a torchlight parade we used to do at Caerphilly castle. "Everyone will die" I said and walked away.

I find it hilarious that anyone should be concerned about the copying of RA's when HSE provide pro-formas and detailed examples to all and sundry. At least Stuart "tweaked it" to his purposes, I have seen some that were obviously and blatantly cut'n'pasted without being read.

This sounds incredible if I understand you right. 

The law states that employers must inform employees or self employed persons or the employees of other employers who share their workspace of all risks, preventive and protective measures, procedures etc and enable the self employed and the employees of other employers sharing the same workspace to carry out their own obligations under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Same with LOLER. If a business or organisation undertakes lifting operations or is involved in providing lifting equipment for others to use, they must manage and control the risks to avoid any injury or damage. That obviously includes providing those others with the information required to use the lifting equipment safely.

If they refuse to share their fire evacuation plan with you as an incoming company then you need to seriously consider not using them and referring all this to the relevant licensing authority. Are they expecting to give every member of your group a rigorous and extensive induction course or what?

Sixth richest country in the world prepares for large numbers to starve and/or die of hypothermia.

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UK prepares for winter blackouts as energy rationing campaign discussed

Exclusive: business department and industry consider drive to cut household use, despite Liz Truss ruling it out

 

This sort of effect is right up my street and I can make it work but I wouldn't attempt it onstage before a live audience. For film it is eminently possible and I have done lots more complicated and more enormous effects outdoors.

You kind of blew it in your original post when you wrote about resorting to the safe option of projection. It's the safe option.

Give a listen to a pair of HK Polar 10's or even 12's which might be a more flexible set-up.

The 8 inch ZXA1's that Jon mentions are worth checking out as well.

As a nosey parker I PM'd James who replied;

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 Yes it was a success in the end. The school changed its mind at the last min for a marquee ( I know typical school business looks at the budget then says we cant aford it anymore) so we had it out in the open and hired in a screen trailer with a gennie onboard. We copuled that with 2 y10p and 4 y7p and 4 b6 units. Then hired in a ton of cable and cameras

All's well that ends, as my Dad used to say.

20 hours ago, KevinE said:

I don#t want to sound too northern but the closest I've got to onsite catering has been receiving vague directions to the nearest chip shop

I didn't want to bring a downer on the OP but being the guy who organised the cookers and the tent and the gas and the fridge and... well you get the picture, when a self-employed person tracked me down on an empty festy site to ask about crew catering I used to advise them to "take that to your employer, he hasn't paid for your name to be down here." 

E2B are great and I did a gig with their silver service corporate company who are even more yummy but in six weeks they were on site for 4-5 days only. Then again I did a six week gig where they fed me three a day in a medieval hall they used for a Harry Potter location but the week of the festival they shut down so it was DIY. Rough with the smooth, innit?

Welcome to BR, an interesting one. I would be tempted to keep it simple, buy some empty razor clam shells and create a long "hinge" from sellotape or similar. It might require some sleight of hand to pull the effect off well and a dab of Bluetac to keep them together.

The shells are sold fairly cheaply as decorative items and reuse for environmental reasons, though laudable, is rarely practical. They are collected empty in the first place.

Cyrus, I can't give you technical answers but you raised a smile with "the fees are $XXX so the school can afford it." U2 aren't exactly short of cash and they hire them. That way they don't have to maintain them and if they break the hire company replaces them. To justify expenditure, especially on environmental terms, you really need to be using kit on a regular basis and as ITom writes, stuff that is lying around always seems to degenerate faster than kit in use. 

The main reason I used to hire is that once you buy something you are stuck with it and to get the full range of mist, smoke, dry-ice, haze effects you would need to buy lots of different bits and bobs while you only hire what you need, when you need and where it is needed. You can also hire or borrow different ones to try out if, like you, you aren't sure exactly what you need. 

"Filling the stage with smoke" might be too dangerous. As the security fogger boys say; "Can't see it? Can't steal it!" A cast and crew wandering about fogged out is not a good idea and s/he may be thinking of haze but as others have said a smoker each side downstage with backlight might be what s/he wants. Theatre audiences also insist on outbreaks of psychosomatic coughing which the very same people in a club or concert do not do. 

All of them suit different folks and different strokes. We always bought a replacement pouch for broken or lost ones and used your Number 4 case but often made up kits in lidded plastic crates of mics in pouches, mic stand heads, leads, radio mic and drum mic sets. 

The one gizmo we scrapped on day one was a shaped foam insert in a mic stand bag because the first client group opened it upside down and bounced 5 SM58's on a stage. 

Tarp bungees like those can be commonly found to stretch up to 18 inches but you can buy the bungee cord and make your own to whatever length you like. Hooked bungees are available in far more varieties. We used to have heavy duty home-made ones to hold a bundle of 10 x 2" ali tubes together.

God call, Hippy

Black paracord is good, as are Lights4Fun and what Bryson says about time is right, you always need more, but why festoons? The wedding venue branch of our family use masses of sparkley-twinkley fairy lights in white, veritable flocks of uplighters and miles of ropelight with a very small fixed overhead rig over the dancefloor. Festoons they use for walkways around lakes, woodland and glamping pods. 

I have a thing about festoons after running 12 kms of the stuff through woodland over hill and dale in the rain but for me it is a tad "industrial" for a classy wedding.