Charlotte_R

I've just done a corporate job where techs were talking to each other via slack.

We've all done jobs that turned out terribly and tbh we all end up fine eventually. I did a similar panto in 2018 (the director / choreographer / promotor / dame and his mother) and a star who was a TV actress from the 80s. You just have to grit your teeth and do it; don't make a big deal of it on your CV if possible and then in a few years you can look back and laugh.

We've been asked to help a local School reconnect the Lighting in their Theatre and we're running into issues with their LEDs. They've lost their previous tech guy and all the lights were disconnected for testing, so we've been working pretty much from scratch to get it all back up and running.

I don't have much experience (local Theatre group) but they really need the help for an upcoming Peter Pan performance next month. I'll try and explain the issue as best I can but still have some gaps in my understanding at this stage.

 

Sorry D_Y you really shouldn't get involved in this - you have no role in the school and they shouldn't really be asking you. There are a number of things about this install that I don't like from a quick glance and they need to pay someone to come in and look at it for them properly right through. The advice to employ an experienced freelance tech is the right route. My advice would be to contact the nearest Arts Centre or FE College with performance lighting - there is one in virtually every Hants district council area - and ask for their advice. Most of their techs aren't that busy at the moment....

 

+1. The dimmer pack 'install' is atrocious, for a start, and I'd be very interested to see a close up of whatever is holding the lighting bars into the roof trusses- it might be fine, but purely on the basis of a casual observation from the photo, alarm bells are ringing!

 

Looks like they're attached by threaded rod to the beams via pieces of angle. It doesn't look terrible to me. I agree re: the dimmer packs though.

I found 7909 to be somewhat lacking in depth; but at least one person dropped off the course because they found it too tough. Certainly, I went off to do further electrical qualifications (2391-52) to augment the learning. I would personally be wary of taking someone on who has 7909 and no other electrical experience.

I'd assume that dimmers that are hard wired to the mains (regardless of output patch or hard wired to bars) would be treated the same as any other hard wired device, be it air-con, boiler controls or other building management system as far as testing is concerned?

I suppose the IWB's are slightly unique in that they can be essentially a glorified extension lead if terminated in a patch bay and not hard wired direct to a dimmer and so tested as you would a dom3st1c extension (give or take a couple of adaptors...)?

If IWBs are hard wired to the dimmer, do they then fall under building electrical testing, so similar to a lighting circuit that has wall plate dimmers rather than a simple switch? How do they test lighting circuits with out destroying dom3st1c dimmers?

 

The code of practice has been updated recently, but I would consider dimmers and anything on the load side of them to be part of the "fixed appliances". In fact, this kind of confusion is why the COP has been changed as a lot of things that were hardwired were seen by PAT testers as part of the fixed installation and by electricians as not being part of the fixed installation.

Oddly enough I'm going to take his side on this one. Maybe not on account of 'training' (as if he really felt he wasn't trained he ought to have made the complaint PRIOR to falling) but I should imagine the solicitor has advised him to take this angle since failure to ensure staff competence is a clear breach of HASAWA.

 

It really is about time we stop taking this daft approach that the ladder is the answer to the question. That everyone can use a ladder. That it is obvious. That it's risk-free if common sense is applied.

It's about time we stop finding it totally acceptable to carry a lighting fixture up one and rig it to a bar all on your own, using the hands which ought to be on the ladder. To do 3 points of contact you need 4 limbs available.

 

There are times ladders are appropriate, but we need to end the culture of that time being all the time. There are a plethora of bespoke made options to reduce this risk... from clever towers (I bought a 'Solo' access tower for not much more than a Zarges which folds down tiny and goes up 6m) to motorised grids to powered access to tension wire grids... I am pleased to see that the school has opted for some kind of platform as well as pole up fixtures, this is a step in the right direction; it'd just be nice to see theatres doing this BEFORE people got hurt.

 

I agree. We're an industry that spends a lot of time working at height and we should really try to avoid ladders. IIRC, ladders are the most dangerous form of access at height and they should be way down the hierarchy - I believe they're statistically only slightly less dangerous than rope access; and we expect rope access technicians to do 2 years and 2000 hours of rope access before we allow them to supervise rope access techs.

Could it be done with standard strip lights? I am imagining led units - possibly daylight ones- fitted into a fabricated trough on either side of the reveal. The trough could be painted to match the fabric of the church. It could also act as a semi barn door should it be necessary. Not DMX but I guess you could incorporate a DMX mains on/off?

 

I was thinking LED tape personally. If you get the right driver, they can be DMX controlled.

Going back to the original thread, I went to uni to study electrical engineering and I really did not enjoy it. I found the lecturers to be arrogant and disinterested in lowly undergrad students; and pastoral support was non-existent. I was on the MEng programme and tried to move to the BEng programme because I hated the maths and wanted out; only to be met by a massive propaganda campaign about how if you go on to do an MSc you're basically getting the same tuition but paying more. The best part of uni was the technical committees that I joined.

After uni, I went to work in the railway for a few years before deciding to become a lampy, and doing various vocational electrical qualifications. Luckily, those qualifications coupled with previous learning allowed me to join NAPIT and that's got me through the pandemic. I think what I learned - at uni, in the railway and now working in the entertainment industry - is that I like being hands on. I've met various people who quit uni to go into an apprentice scheme, and I honestly think that I would have been happier if I'd gone off to become a spark. Equally, I've known people who have completed an apprenticeship and gone on to do HNC/HND/BEng/MSc and be much better than the people who did the "traditional" degree route.

 

All the way through my education, the bright people went to uni and the "thickos" went to become apprentices. There was no talk of what an apprenticeship could actually lead to and if I'd known, I'd probably have taken a more vocational route. I think that's what's lacking, and I would urge any young people to explore all routes into the industry.

However, I do agree about not learning a theatre apprenticeship / degree. My life experience makes me a better tech and I do think that there's a lot of people who live in tiny theatre bubbles.

 

I've used an air compressor before. With a regulator and a moisture trap, it's done the job for cleaning moving lights. It was what we were given, I didn't choose it, so I can't necessarily comment on its suitability.

Electrics are unsafe and all stage rigging has been removed for similar reasons.

 

The sockets in one of the downstairs rooms are safe (but not yet connected to anything), what more do you want?

Neon Tubes 2 for headers, Maison Neue Extended for the body of the text.

Please download the toolkit, the full branding guidelines are on there with all colours, etc that are required. The brand guidelines are very comprehensive.

 

Just one. Sorry, I missed your statement that you were looking for a 5-way split.

I've seen ones that look to be a standard barrel with a stuffing gland on the side and a flying lead with a powercon on it. I don't know if these are a proprietary item or if they were made up by the hire co?

It feels a bit disingenuous for furlough to be extended without extending SEISS. The majority of staff in this industry are freelance and furlough isn't helping many freelancers.

If you're looking for something cheaper, I've set something similar up for my mum for Skype. She's a piano teacher, so she has a forward facing camera, document camera (just a webcam on a gooseneck), a camera for her piano keyboard and a window capture. It's all run on a windows desktop through OBS.

OBS is mainly designed for streaming, but I'm sure that there will be a plug-in that does pretty much exactly what you want.

 

Stick a buffer between the desk and the dimmers

Personally, I think that the best abbreviation for technicians is "tech". "Tech!e" feels so condescending (and a bit infantilising to be honest).

 

I think "lampy", "spark", "noise boy", etc is dependant on context. If I'm speaking to another tech, I'll happily describe myself as a lampy or spark; anybody else, such as a director or client, "lighting tech(nician)" or "electrician" - but I often say that I'm part of the lighting team rather than specifically saying that I'm a lighting tech.

Speaking as someone who turned my hobby into my job nearly 2 years ago, I think that the best advice is to turn up and be willing to turn your hand to anything. I used to be an engineer, most of my USP for clients is my attention to detail and work ethic but obviously successful teams are made up of a range of people.

The Hard hat is certainly a wise one.

Hard hats are for building sites, places where someone might drop something on you (though of course you shouldn't be standing where someone might drop something on you!!) & for politicians doing photo-ops. IMHO for rigging or focussing lights, whether crawling round a grid or up a ladder, the amount they restrict your vision makes them dangerous. On the other hand wearing a bump-cap, or even a baseball-cap or beany, can save you leaving portions of scalp on things you thought you had ducked under.

 

What about when you're focusing lights from a work positioning harness?

 

Bump caps and baseball caps also have a peak, why are they so much safer? It is possible to buy hard hats without a peak - I own a petzl vertex - are they acceptable?

Wine and nipples? Pulling assets?

 

Goodness me!

 

Are you telling me that you've never had a wine and nipple party? You've never lived.

Thirding Clive's suggestion. I think that this also makes people much more rounded - in my experience, people who have only ever worked in theatre are very good at the theatre specific bits, but are a bit lacking in terms of their life experience outside of theatre.

The flagship would be source 4 lustrs with the fresnel attachments, but there's too many variables here to make a meaningful suggestion.

I'm going to preface this by saying that my only knowledge of flying people is watching Foys from a distance; but I got the impression that the waist belt was a work restraint system meant to prevent someone falling off the rig in the first place rather than to catch them if they did?

Oh no they most certainly don't replace Fresnels but how often does an AmDram show really need the accuracy of proper fittings?

 

All the time for many of us.

 

+1 for this. I'm a professional tech, but I still do a fair amount of design for amateurs because it's a good way to build my portfolio. I approach an amateur design in the same way as I approach a professional design, which I must admit has surprised a few directors because they're used to having someone to turn the lights on at the beginning and off at the end!

 

I'm also not sure that I agree with the idea that you can dump all of your socas either: most of the rigs that I work on professionally still have a breaker per fixture or for a couple of fixtures.

In reality, as you walk along the corridor that leads to the workshop, projection and production areas you are walking on a cable duct. An underfloor area divided into two sections, power and signal. It's accessed by lifting the floor panels. Not easy or fun, but very functional.

 

I've worked in quite a lot of venues that have a cable duct accessed by lifting the floor, both as a venue tech and as a touring tech. I generally find them easier to use than the alternative of hanging cables on hooks, but perhaps that's because installations of ducts show that running cables has been thought about in advance?