ImagineerTom

Just a practicality note - it’s often better to create your models from scratch than take others and scale them. For example someone might have a perfect model of some steel deck with correct wall thickness steel tube for all the bracing and legs. At many print scales that might be fine but when you shrink it down to print at the scale you’re using those walls will be thinner than the printer can print…. So will fail. doing your own parts / models means you know what level of detail you actually need to use and will result in more, easier, reliable model prints.

Exactly - just like the world of submersible building key safety processes were dropped by people who didn’t actually understand why they were created in the first place.

If there's not enough X's then that style of structure is just a series of (top heavy) basic A-frame shapes that are only held upright by the strength of a few dozen pop rivets being pulled in their weakest orientation - only a slight knock (enough to pop a couple of rivets) would be enough to set of a cascade of failures that would end up looking remarkably like the "after" picture. In 't olden days the original install method for that style of structure was to install a series of proper guy ropes to several of the frames so that there's a pyramid shaped "solid" structure from which everything is built and it's only when every cross brace and re-enforcement was installed would you remove the guys; reversing the process for the take down.

I'm not seeing anything like the number of diagonal / X-bracing beams I would expect to see on a structure that size. I'm also wondering why they're using a crane to install.... Clearly the weekend for it - a stage in Strasbourg had to be held up with emergency telehandlers as it would appear someone only put half the bolts in and a bigtop with stage in it in Vitry-sur-seine came down in a storm because the lighting truss inside were installed so close to the rough they acted like a knife when the winds hit.

It also begs the question…. Has this set been cleared with the venue you’re performing in as there are very few fringe venues that have enough backstage, on the same level, not a fire exit, floor space that big for ALL their productions, let alone just one.

They won’t. 2.4m tall flats on top of a 12cm pallet is significantly taller than the 2m or sometimes 2.3m total height allowance. as the op has already accepted the design needs to be reconfigured to fit shipping norms and even then it won’t be as cheap as hoped. Transportation costs have effectively doubled in the last few years.

Shipping is based on volume - the empty space inside your object is space they can't sell to anyone else so the more you can flat-pack your set to make it denser the better. That said you're in for a shock about how much it costs to put a vehicle on the road and the prices you are quoting are at the bottom end of the scale. It's 400 miles and about 8 hours (so basically a full working day) to travel from london to edinbugh. That's £140 in staff wages, another £40 in NI/HR costs and around £200 in fuel & operating costs for a van for each leg that the van takes so unless you can find a company with a van already traveling on the dates you need AND that can find someone else to book the van for the mirrors of your trips this is a £1000-1500 cost job. Ask other shows in your promotor network to see if anyone else needs to transport sets around the same time as a larger van would have virtually the same operating cost as a smaller one but with two people paying for it...

There’s nothing “standard” in theatre automation since every theatre, show, concert has a very unique set of requirements. Some shows have driver line of site and do it manually, some have IR or laser line of sight, some have LiDAR and related local scanning systems, some are hot wire followers feeding positions data back to show synchronisation, some use a deck embedded grid of position transceivers, some are wire or job controlled (masked by other scenic and decorative items) some use one, two or all of the above systems. Your question is like asking “what is the standard sort of microphone used in shows” - there’s no a single answer other than “whichever one can do the job and meets the budget of the particular show”

I understand but there are many situations where the old agreements are in force and the best solution to this problem is pushing management to ensure all future contracts are to TMA standards and norms because get out terms for crew won’t be the only unintended side effect if we’ll evolved and researched norms are abandoned.

Isn't the issue of crew allocation / costs / BECTU compliance etc already covered in the TMA standardised contract (and affiliated terms) that the show almost certainly signed when the original booking was made? Going forward discussions might need to be had about such matters but from a legal point of view this is probably already resolved for bookings made in the last few years.

Yes I know that (and directors are employees btw). But legally once old LM is in receivership they loose their titles and or cannot actually do anything as the receiver is completely in charge. The new LM is legally a totally different company so is not the one being taken to court so again, no legal obligation for them to have any involvement at all. Not at all ethical but legally correct in a case where the old LM company is the one being prosecuted. If an action is launched (criminal or regulatory) which assigns liability to individuals then it’s a different matter and those people would have to attend but from my reading of this it was a claim against (old) LM company for breaching it’s obligations and liabilities.

Once a company is in receivership / liquidation it’s existing shareholders, directors etc are all replaced instantly be the official receiver (government licensed accountant) who is obligated to act in the best interests of winding up the business ONLY. So the original owners managers are now no longer employed by the company so have no obligations to turn up in court. The receiver might attend a court hearing if they believe they could swing the result in a way that would save / make the business money but in a case like this (where the guilt of the company isn’t really in question) they wouldn’t attend since to do so would involve spending money on legal advice and their own wages to attend- reducing the amount of money that can be used to pay back debts which they can’t do. there’s an ethical argument that leMaitre original management should have attended court but they couldn’t actually be involved (because they no longer work for the business) and I’d guess if you’ve been running a business for years that has had a lot of accidents, a death toll and kept being critiqued for its safety and operational procedures “ethical actions” probably aren’t high on their list?

The ultrasonic / hydrosonic chilling based low foggers are rapidly becoming the norm now and they use a lot less power and (if properly set up and with the right fluid) are the closest I’ve ever seen to real dry ice chiller fog with vibe of the safety / practicality issues.

I'm not an accountant. There are systems and processes in place so that (as Dutch co say) they are not charged VAT as you're providing the service to a non UK company but / and they then have to "import" and at the end of the gig "export" the items with all the related paperwork and logging; exactly as if you'd rented it to them, shipped it to their warehouse in holland and they brought it over in their truck and took it back at the end only to later ship back to the rental co. However, if anyone gets any of the paperwork wrong or if revenue / customs decide they want to look at this transaction a lot closer than normal then costs / penalties start racking up fast so if the VAT amount is only a few thousand then it would be cheaper and more sensible to just charge the VAT and know that the matter is closed. A lot of business's in Europe don't understand the details of how the trading relationship with the UK has changed and that (despite politicians hinting otherwise) the deal we have isn't simple or "zero tarif" nor is it like the deals EU has with any other country so we have already experienced problems and had to educate companies that their accountants general advice is wrong because of the special deal the uk has.

just for the record - we do it twice nightly in a long running show. The use of small magnets added until they're just strong enough to hold it in place rather than chucking hundreds in means you can fine tune the grip and ensure it's enough to hold but not to fight back. The damage the inflatables get from the performers handing them on the other hand is an order of magnitude worse....

You can get very small “neo magnets” (NdFeB) as in 2mm diameter on eBay / Amazon etc for pennies. You could insert those into the inflatable through the blow up nozzle and whilst one alone wouldn’t be powerful enough half a dozen would clump together and give you some serious magnetic grip inside the inflatable.

Also capacities in an area of a venue aren’t just defined by the physical area but also by the width and number of fire exits SPECIFCALLY available from that area (almost certainly you cannot evacuate people from the stage and out the auditorium exists since that would involve going down narrow FOH side stage stairs) but also the number of toilets available backstage for them to use, the size of the corridors and flow spaces available backstage. There’s a reason why once you have a license and a set of figures you fight to keep hold of them!

If you are planning to do some work whilst in the EU (and from your description, you unquestionably are) then you will need a visa or work permit for the appropriate country you will be doing the work in. If you're just travelling with a laptop then boarder security is more likely to assume its for personal use and wave you though unquestioned; but if you turn up with a highly specialist piece of professional equipment of significant financial value then you're forcing them to ask questions about what the object is and why you will be working in the country without appropriate permissions. There are some countries (Spain for example) that have set up waiver programs for theatre professionals to work there but you still need to go through a notifications process and jump through some hoops.

+1 for the Navis windy units; the fact you can “just give access” to as many people as you want is very useful and earns some serious brownie points on site.

Remembering that energy costs have shot up (both for manufacture and transport) AND Uk looks set to have inflation of 10%+ for 3 consecutive years whilst the rest of the world, though not as bad, is still hitting 6-7% annual inflation it's folly to think that prices will drop down to pre-covid levels or anything close to them. You should be looking at your needs now and working out whether it's worth buying several now (and getting some sort of bulk discount) or one by one over the next couple of years and hoping that transportation inflation drops faster than retail inflation rises.

Pre covid etc I could get a 40ft container to anywhere in the world and have change from £2k. Current rates aren’t at peek they once were but at the moment it’s £7k for a container from China to uk dock…. Plus processing / paperwork and onwards uk delivery by road of around £1000.

It's not so much they are lightweight so much as high volume & low value. Container shipping (which is 99% of the goods you buy) is based on volume and the prices have gone up a lot; the 30cm cube needed to ship a single mirror ball costs just the same to ship as a 30cm cube full of smartphones. The former has to absorb the increased shipping costs into the price of a single low cost high volume item whereas with the smartphones the increased costs are shared across 50+ smartphones that each already sell for 10 times the price of the mirror ball so barely makes a dent. Also the B-word is a huge contributor even for non EU goods as before there was 2 ways to get things on and off the island (EU & Non EU) whereas now there is only 1 channel which is more prone to delays and backlogs (because they're handling more than twice the volume) and lots of new paperwork procedures to deal with. All these create work originating the paperwork and variables no one can predict so costs for delivery and processing now have to include a huge buffer because your shipment might sail through the boarder no problem or it might be parked on the side of a motorway for 2 days; it is almost impossible to get a guaranteed time cross boarder transport service at the moment.

Getting a show on stage at a festival is a fraught experience at the best of times. If you’re serious about delivering a quality performance and all your elements hitting as you want them to then every single person needs to have one job to do and no distractions. Can your drummer reposition his drum, adjust the tuning, fix a low battery warning on the iPad / playback device, resolve networking and cabling faults, calibrate and interface with the venue screen all at the same time minutes before he has to start playing live? spoiler - he can’t. Musicians should focus on music, techs should focus on tech and a VJ should focus on VJ’ing; keep to this principle and you’ll be able to present a great performance for your audience.

As with so many things in effects- precisely what you want to do with the object will define what solution or technology you should use. If it just has to look like milk (and whilst not drunk is at least relatively safe to get on skin / eyes / mouth) the goto in the industry at the moment is “milk tex”.

Emulsion isn’t a durable paint. Outdoors (but protected from the elements) it should just about last but if there’s any chance it will get wind or rain on it directly then it will degrade surprisingly quickly.