gareth

Keep it simple - go with your first option. If you want three seconds of silence at the end of a spoken line and then have the cue fire, write down that that's what you want to happen. I mean, you *could* be a little more vague and specify that you just want a couple of beats of silence before the cue - which would probably be better when the op is someone who knows the show. But for the best chance of getting what you want, be specific. If the sound op is someone who can't comprehend a simple instruction like "count three seconds at the end of this line then press 'go'", then the answer is to find a new sound op.

Don't think QLab can do this. Probably best to prepare your audio files in an editor (Audacity - https://www.audacityteam.org/ - is free, easy to use and very capable) before bringing them into your QLab workspace.

Glad you managed to get it done OK. For clarity, it's not the insulation on the cable that I'm talking about - there's an insulating disc sandwiched between the bottom of the lampholder and the lantern chassis, and that's what may well be asbestos, The venue I worked at for many years ended up having to get a specialist contractor in to remove the asbestos insulators from our old 243s in a ventilated 'tent' in our loading bay before we could dispose of them. (Had to do likewise with our old 793 followspots as well, just in case anyone reading this has any of those! Which suggests that certain vintages of 252 projector will probably also have these.)

Be very careful with the insulating discs between the lampholder and lamp tray - they're very likely to be asbestos.

No, there's no one standard approach to this. General rule of thumb is to look at it from the point of view of someone who's never seen the show before, and has been tasked with operating the sound for it. Will they be able to establish, from the notes and markings in the script, what has to happen when? Could a modestly-capable sound operator step up and make a reasonable job of operating the show sight-unseen if necessary? If 'yes', then the way you've marked the script up is fine! As someone who's had to deal with a fair few small-scale visiting shows over the years, I've seen my share of scripts which are marked up in a way which makes little, if any, sense to anyone other than the person who generated it. Or even worse, no script at all, just being handed a CD of badly-edited tracks with some vague verbal instruction to "play track 3 when you hear this line" or something similar. It's clear that you're not going to be 'that person', so that's great. Whenever I've had the misfortune to encounter that sort of poor-quality script, I've always made an effort to see that it left my venue in a better state than when it arrived - proper cue points, etc. written in where required, and so on.

Another recommendation for QLab - it's about as close to being an industry standard as anything. Well-prepared source files, normalised and edited nicely, set up in a neat, logical and well-labelled cue list in QLab for triggers, level changes and sstops, with a properly annotated script for the operator, along with some clear explanation of what's required and a chance to run it through with the talent to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn-sheet, and you'll be in a pretty good position. Getting the right results is very much a function of asking for the right thing in the right way - so as long as you're clear about what you want the local operator to achieve, and give them the best resources you can in order to achieve it, you'll be OK.

Carrying my own headset is something I've done for years. Partly for comfort reasons (I wear glasses, and find the TecPro headsets which are commonly found in venues are not very comfortable for anything more than short periods of time), and partly for hygiene reasons - I've seen far too many instances of inconsiderate people sneezing and coughing copiously into communal headsets with absolutely no effort made to clean the mic afterwards. I have a really comfortable Sennheiser one now, but the first one I bought was an ASL HS1/D - I'm not sure that these are manufactured any more, but it could be worth a look, as it's light, comfortable, and really cheap. Might be a possibility for you, if you can find one?

Title specifically mentions back projection - but that might just be someone not knowing what that actually means...

A few more details will allow much better responses. However, one thing does leap out. If you're looking to do back-projection in the proper sense of the term - that is, the projector is on the upstage side of the projection surface, projecting an image intended to be viewed from the other side - then a regular cyclorama (white filled cloth) is absolutely the wrong thing to be buying. To back-project successfully, the surface you're projecting onto has to be the right medium - do a Google for 'back projection screen' or 'rear projection screen' and you'll see what I mean. (If, on the other hand, you're just talking about projecting a background image onto a white cloth at the back of the stage, with the projector on the same side as the image is being viewed from, then that's a simpler job - but it isn't 'back projection'!)

As with any purchase of this nature, it's a subjective thing and definitely a case of 'horses for courses' - you should investigate both options to see what really works for your situation. But that's definitely the option I'd favour!

I'm with Ian. I've used both, and given the choice I'd take a regular Gio, for much the same reasons. It didn't take long to find myself a layout which worked for me with one large internal screen of the @5 and two external touchscreens - but it never felt as comfortable as the two smaller screens of the Gio. What I missed most was the additional faders. The only advantage of the @5 for me is the extra programmable macro buttons - but that's a minor point, and far outweighed by the advantages the Gio has over the @5, in my view.

From someone who used to be the custodian of a large fleet of Strand SLs, I can assure you that this problem is in no way unique to LED fixtures

If you were only producing your own work using in-house kit and presenting 'one-nighter' type tours which travel with no LX equipment and rely on picking up lighting rigs in-house, then I think you may well have a case for a dimmer-free venue. However, if by 'receiving tours' you mean presenting commercial theatre productions, on whatever scale, then I think leaving dimmers off the spec would be a big mistake. Even the smallest touring theatrical productions will probably be carrying a handful of pracs, etc. which need dimmed feeds - and as you move up into the realm of mid-scale commercial tours it's even more likely that they'll be carrying some LX equipment with them as part of the rig which will need a dimmer to plug into (quite possibly an entire overhead rig which might need two or three dozen dimmer channels). As a touring production electrician, I'd be quite unsettled by the idea of a receiving house having no conventional dimming at all - it would almost certainly mean that either I'd have to sacrifice some of my budget and some of my truck space, both of which are at a premium, to some touring dimmers which would only get used at a couple of venues ; or I'd have to ask you to rent some in for me, which would mean extra thing to deal with on what'll probably already be a fairly tight one-day fit-up along with a contra charge to pay for them.

On the subject of asbestos - depending on the vintage of the unit, beware of any insulating discs between the lamp holder and lamp tray. At my old venue we discovered that a whole bunch of 243s, 252s and 293s had asbestos discs in that location - the whole lot had to be stripped down and decontaminated by a specialist contractor. I've never personally encountered a 223/743 with an asbestos insulating disc - but that's not to say they don't exist.

Edit: Yeah. OK.

It'a been a fair few years since I last took one apart! But I've disassembled a few of them over the years, and from what I remember you have to pretty much dismantle the focussing mechanism in order to be able to lift the spiral focussing gear out of the lantern with the lamp tray attached to it.

Having spent a huge chunk of my not-insignificant working life in regional theatres, I don't recall ever encountering a scenario where the daily rate for a scenic painter, or any comparable technical role, has been determined in part on the basis of venue capacity or the number of weeks that a production runs for. A set of a given size requires the same amount of painting regardless of the number of people who'll be looking at it every night, or how many performances it'll be on stage for.

For scenic painters?

Unlike in TV/film, I'm not aware of specific rate cards for scenic artists in theatre. BECTU might have something relevant, it's worth a look on their website (although it might be members-only) - but I doubt you'd find anything specific. Scenic artists are highly-skilled individuals, so I'd expect they'd be looking for rates which reflect that. As I'm guessing you'd be looking for a self-employed person rather than an employee, it's kind of down to them to set their daily rate in negotiation with you - so having a chat with one or two, outlining the size of the job (and I don't quite see what relevance the audience capacity and length of run have on this!), and asking them what they'd be looking to charge you.

If you just want some really cheap'n'cheerful wobbly lights for a home nightclub, which don't have to be of professional quality and durability (i.e. you're not going to throw them in and out of a van every week), have a look on a couple of the second-hand lighting & sound equipment groups on Facebook - some real bargains pop up on there from time to time.

Proximity of Disc>Mem and Mem>Disc buttons on Strand systems of 70s/80s vintage is no doubt something that's been the ruination of many a lighting session. I always made very, very sure I was hitting the right one, but that brief passing moment of sphincter-clenching paranoia is something that young programmers of today will never experience!

You won't find 'list prices' for things like Light Consoles, MMS, Galaxy, DDM, etc. - they were all built to order, and each example was made to the customer's spec. Theatr Clwyd in Mold originally had 180 channels of STM installed across the two performance spaces when it first opened in 1976 (120 main house, 60 studio). This has been expanded upon over the years with Permus dimmers and Strand/ETC touring racks to become more than double that number - but with perhaps 2 or 3 exceptions all 180 ways of STM are still doing their thing 45 years later, thanks to having been looked after properly over the years. I somehow doubt they'll be many LD90s or Sensors still working when they're almost half a century old!

I thought it looked great - with that much kit it would've been easy to overcook things, but Tim kept it just on the right side of the line, and really worked the rig hard to bring the empty space alive at appropriate moments. It was strange at first having no audience reaction at all, but it's surprising how quickly it started to feel normal. I'd much rather it that way than the hyped-up, whooping, hollering, shouty audiences that seem to be the norm these days on light ent shows. I don't doubt that the performers really felt the lack of any audience reaction - it must've been far stranger for them than it was for us watching at home. It also showed the benefits of having an empty theatre available for lots of fit-up, programming and rehearsal time! In more normal times, when something like that recorded at the Palladium would've had to have been in and out within 36 hours to record on a Sunday over the top of the show that was sitting in the theatre at the time, I suspect there wouldn't have been the time to be able to be quite so adventurous and extravagant. Dancing On Ice, on the other hand... not something I'd normally watch, but I caught the bit at the end last night where they run through a little excerpt from each of the routines while voting is going on. With one exception, they seemed to be a lesson in why using all of the LX and video kit all of the time is generally a bad idea! Visually it was a garish, confusing mess. They say "less is more" - well, more is clearly less, too! There's an expression I've heard used to describe firework displays where there's so much product being fired at once that it just overloads the sky into a mess of colour and light - "skypuke". This was the televisual equivalent.

I see you're in Bristol - if you decide to go with apprenticeships, have a look over the Severn Bridge at the Wales-wide technical apprenticeship scheme which is run by Wales Millennium Centre. It's been running for a few years now, and is very successful.

For some reason I hadn't heard about your fire - so sorry to hear it, but very glad that things seem to have taken an upward turn in the weeks since. Good luck with the recovery and rebuilding - onwards and upwards!