Rock musical

[Dmx512]

Hi Fellow Illuminators

Just in the process of designing and rigging a large moving and generic lighting rig for a rock musical and the director wants to have the show in cue by cue memory style on my pearl expert but I am used to using the roller pages as with conventional live shows.....as with music lots of colour and moves are easier for me to have a hands on approach

I know the pearl has a theatre stack mode has anyone had experience using the desk in this way.....just seems to make everything locked in to me

views welcome

 

Dave

[peza2010]

If your desk is running titan your instantly better off that without. It is useful to have a cue.by cue stack of the show, as then its repeatable every night, but also it allows for easier descriptions of changes required from the director.

 

On the other hand.. its not really upto the director to tell you how to run your desk.

[paulears]

The trouble is that if you have a Pearl, you are probably so used to busking that the requirement for an identical show each day is a whole new way of working. what you could do is use the stack for the basic set lighting - which can then remain consistent, show to show, and then use your normal operating style on the musical numbers. Handy if the music numbers are live as you can run in time with the music, rather than being locked in to a tempo they may drift away from. Probably no help - but I found the Avo cue stack system rather unfriendly for programming theatre shows. Plenty of people got to grips with it, but the usual directorial requests to simply bring something up or down in cue 25, or renumbering and moving cues was a bit clunky compared with a theatre style control.

[gyro_gearloose]

what you could do is use the stack for the basic set lighting - which can then remain consistent, show to show, and then use your normal operating style on the musical numbers.

Which is fine, right up until the point that you can't op the show and someone else has to. You are then relying on this other person to know how to busk on a Pearl. On a long run of shows can you guarantee that this won't happen? Its much to just press the 'Go' button when you're told to, just a bit boring if you're a hands-on operator.

 

Edit: Just to add, the technicians in all large touring theatre-style shows that we've had in our venue change roles throughout the week. So sound ops get to op the lights, or are in the stage crew, and so forth. This means that everyone gets to learn all light/sound/stage positions, and it stops things getting boring for them.

[timsabre]

Definitely you should learn to use cue stacks on the Expert for this. Paul is right, it takes a bit of work to learn how to edit the cues and jump around in the cue stack, but it is worth it for repeatability of the show.

 

You could program the show on playbacks then use Quick Build Mode to make a cue stack out of the playbacks - just start a cue stack then hit the swop button of the playback to add it into the cue.

 

If you are not familiar with cue tracking, and it sounds like you are not, I would switch off tracking mode on the cue stack as it can get really confusing really quickly. (in the Playback options menu)

(Tracking mode is where you only store changes to the cues so lights from previous cues will continue to be on unless you specifically turn them off)

[Dmx512]

Thanks for the input

yes I had here'd the pearls not to friendly in the theatre stack....so I think this is a case of stick with the devil you know and assign 20 faders per song and then roll to the next one

also its just a one week run so I will be on each show

 

Dave

[timsabre]

Don't confuse the old "theatre stack" on Pearl Classic with Titan's cue stacks. Theatre stack was indeed a law unto itself, you could make it work but only with some effort.

 

Titan cue stacks are much nicer. A big plus point is Move In Dark where your fixtures will automatically position themselves for the next cue if they are in blackout, prevents a lot of distracting moves where you didn't want them.