Shows touring a lighting file

[Shez]

Branching off from the current topic about new lighting desks for a venue, I wanted to start a new one about shows that tour with a file for a lighting desk.

 

On rare occasions, we've had a show say that they're bringing an etc show file for their lighting. Our house desk isn't etc and only has a floppy drive anyway so from that purely practical perspective, it's a non starter. But ignoring that, my boss's response (and I'm inclined to agree) has always been that in a different venue with different lanterns rigged in different positions with different throws on different dimmers with different curves (we have odd dimmers!) you'd likely have to reprogramme every state anyway so what's the point in trying to use an existing show file? On similar lines, we've had relight techs in who insist that lantern X has to be at 45% in this cue because that's what it says on their bit of paper. The reality is that that 45% is meaningless because of all the differences I've mentioned above - you have to set it by eye.

 

In a well funded arts centre who spend a full day pre-rigging to your exact spec, I can see that a show file might be a useful starting point but in a venue like ours with a fixed, saturated rig that is adapted to each show, I just don't see the point. Some touring techs are entirely capable of relighting a show with whatever is available but others seem to really struggle with anything that doesn't exactly match what's on their paperwork.

 

Discussion points then:

• How useful are LX showfiles when touring a variety of different venues?
  
• Are an increasing number of touring techs button pushers rather than being capable of properly adapting a design?
  

[indyld]

For me, the main use of a touring theatre show file (particularly in a circuit with all the same desk type, used to be Strand, now likely ETC) is the cue structure, numbering, and timings of a complex cue stack.

 

Next comes the ability to softpatch the channels in the cues to the house dimmers, meaning that the right fixtures are in the cues with the timings. Levels are always gonna need tweaking, but starting with a cue list and roughly the right kit coming up when you fire the cue is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a blank cue stack and a list 100 cues that need making from scratch including blackouts (where no levels need tweaking..) - all with their own timing.

 

There are also often the possibilities for integration with the show QLab file too, again easier with a known cue stack.

 

Touring stage management are now often expected to relight the show along with everything else (yeah, that goes down well...) and so I wouldn't say that it's an exclusively tech vs LD issue. Plenty of times when a touring show comes in and there is no option but to programme a stack up from scratch, that'll happen. But there are plenty of situations where integrating an existing show file is still easier and, as lighting systems become more complex, having any existing programming to fall back on is desirable even if you spend 10 minutes morphing into the house rig.

[gareth]

You're underestimating the usefulness of touring a show file!

 

Even a modest mid-scale touring theatre production might have upwards of 100 cues in the show. The vast majority of theatres in the UK these days have something that will read an Eos-family show file (in much the same way that 10 years ago you were pretty sure to find something that you could load a Strand show disk into), so compatibility is rarely an issue. (And if it is an issue for a few venues, then an ETC Nomad-based system is so affordable and portable that there's little excuse to compromise the technical integrity of a show because of lighting control compatibility/availability issues.)

 

By having a base show file with your cues and timings in it, with a well-thought-out channel numbering scheme, you gain a huge advantage over pitching up at a venue and having to start from scratch crunching the show into the desk from a paper plot.

 

Sort your patch so that the lanterns doing the same job are on the same channel numbers, a bit of judicious scaling with proportional patching, and you're four-fifths of the way to having a decent show.

 

This doesn't apply so much when you're looking at a show which is sufficiently small that the lighting spec is just something like "warm wash, cool wash, three specials across downstage and a three-colour cyc", or some such thing. But even then, having a basic structure as a jumping-off point has value.

[jonathanhill]

On the last tour I relit, we toured the overheads and their dimming/power distribution, as well as proscenium units which plugged to house dimmers. The only things that we required from the house was 18 profiles with R132 from a FoH position and their desk.

 

Of the 31 venues we visited, 30 had some form of ETC EOS family desk (we rented one in for New Brighton). The decision was made that it was better to tour racks for the overheads, rather than a console. This meant that levels as plotted in production were consistent (obviously assuming that the overhead lights were in the same position on-off stage and crucially the same height) across the tour.

 

Relighting then was focused on FoH and prosc unit levels. I would generally use Proportion and Curve functions to correct these, rather than re-writing levels.

 

So for us, touring a show file was all we needed to do. However, a lot of thought and prep went into making this viable. I did also tour my Nomad package, in case we ran into difficulties.

 

e2a: This was touring weekly, one day in and up.

[Boggy]

From a different point of view and while not the original topic I think the following points are useful.

 

As a start, I am an amateur who for the last 30 years has done 6-10 shows per year in 4 local theatres ranging from dance school concerts, amdrams and one or two night shows for local schools. These theatres range from 24 channels of conventionals through to 96 channels of conventionals with a bunch of LEDs.

 

One of the theatres I work in also has a desk which is not ETC and has a floppy drive. This desk scares the cr4p out of me as I don’t feel that this is a reliable way of backing up a show. If my showfile got lost or corrupted the quality of the show (and my sanity) would be compromised. To get around this I have bought a Chamsys mini wing and run the show from a PC. What has surprised me about this is how much I re-use files from previous shows. Effects that I have programmed for a school show often appear in dance concerts. When I return to a venue I am not starting from scratch.

 

Two of the other theatres have ETC desks. I have only used these theatres a handful of times in the last 5 years but use the desk files to get me back up to speed. About 8 week before the show I will do a theatre tour to check what is in the rig and get a copy of the desk file. I can load the desk file onto my PC at home (using Nomad software I think?) and then setup a cue stack and effects. This means that I go into the theatre with 80% of the work done. I fix what I can during dress rehearsal and make notes on the other issues. Most of the time I can fix the issues at home instead of hiring the theatre for additional hours.

[gareth]

1. Floppy drives worked perfectly well for many, many years as a means of backing up and archiving console data, since the days of the Strand Galaxy and the Avab Viking.

 

2. The question here is about touring show files, not using them for archival purposes, so we're drifting off-topic.

[neilwf]

I agree with everyone, having the structure of the show cue nos fade times etc is a great head start even if most everything else has to change. If your channel nos and groups are well thought out so much the better.