How To Spot A Tech.

How to spot a tech.

So we're seeing Letterkenny Live tonight in downtown St. Catharines. We stop it at the local student coffee shop for drinks on the way over. There's a group of four guys waiting for their order. I glance over at their all black attire, then down to their feet. "Heh, Blundstones," I snicker to Garwik, pointing out some of the group had the favoured steel toes of Theatre Tech workers everwhere. And that's when I zoned into their conversation and caught "so I don't care about the lights, I just need to know what I can do with the truss..." Oh they ARE theatre people. Hah.

This is perfect. Next time I doze off at the console while the designers are bickering during a 14 hour levels session I can just point to this.

From the second link: " ‘I’ which means ‘to be present’ in a situation that is not sleep and ‘nemuri’ which means ‘sleep’. Erving Goffman’s concept of “involvement within social situations” is useful I think in helping us grasp the social significance of inemuri and the rules surrounding it."

"In this context, inemuri can be seen as a subordinate involvement which can be indulged in as long as it does not disturb the social situation at hand – similar to daydreaming. Even though the sleeper might be mentally ‘away’, they have to be able to return to the social situation at hand when active contribution is required. They also have to maintain the impression of fitting in with the dominant involvement by means of body posture, body language, dress code and the like."

I am at the board, dressed in black, ready to type. Just wake me up when you figure out what you want. Golden.

In Japan, public napping is a sign of hard work. It’s called ‘inemuri,’ which means ‘sleeping on duty’ or ‘sleeping while present.’ Because falling asleep in public is thought to be a symptom of working yourself to exhaustion, it’s socially acceptable in restaurants, stores, commuter trains, and on park benches- as long as you don’t sprawl out and take up too much space. Source Source 2

You mentioned being a spot op for a concert. Can you talk a little about how that works? I work in theater so I know a little about concerts but I’ve always wondered how the locals know which person to hit (especially if you’re not familiar with the band), how much practice you get ect ect. Thank you!

Yah sure, uhm. So how it goes for me is, I'm a member of the union IATSE. We handle everything from theatres to TV shows to movies to concerts to live events and more. Basically if it's entertainment and it needs someone technical, we can do it. So for things like concerts? Generally the venue hosting the concert will have a contract with the local IATSE chapter, and when a tour gets booked in, they send ahead a list of how many local crew they need to put everything together. That list gets passed on to the Union Business Agent, who then phones and texts members until enough people agree to take the jobs that are needed.

In most locals how the BA prioritizes is Seniority based; the member who's been a member the longest gets first dibs, then the second longest, and so on. This system has a lot of flaws, needless to say. The other typical method to fill the jobs is Meritocracy; What you know gets you work. So for example, I may be "Member 102" on the seniority based list, but I'm also one of only 5 people who can operate a lighting board. So if they need a Board Op, the BA skips all the people without the proper skillsets and just calls those five directly.

Does that mean the properly skilled people are always in the right jobs? No, sadly. There were guys who'd said "yes" to operating spot on that same concert, and they'd never touched one before in their lives. Sometimes you learn trial by fire. Some of them did just fine, picked it up and did their best. One guy was outright incompetent to the point that the designer just turned his lamp off. You hope your fellow members who "know things" are nice and share their information. You do what the road crew says.

And not all venues have IATSE contracts. They might staff their concerts from a temp agency, or have regular people they call, or something else... but. Ehn. Unions protect their members and also hold them accountable. If you skip a call you get fined. If rando from Generic Temp Agency skips a call, so what. He doesn't care. And the show gets short staffed.

So I guess the best way to find out what method your local venues use is go ask 'em? See if they hire off the street, or if they're affiliated with an agency or union, and then figure out if you want to sign up for that sort of thing.

We'll have members who 'went to school for this', members who have a family member already in the Local, members who just enjoy the job, members who just earn some spare cash now and then. It's a mixed bag, but -generally- you used to find out by knowing someone in IA already. Back before all this social media info sharing.

And unless you're in like, New York, Toronto, or Hollywood? Or land a job as a permanent venue technician? This is NOT a job that will keep you alive. Hamilton members who aren't in the top 50 are lucky if they get one call a month, because the main concert venue has decided it can't be bothered to actually book any tours in. It's -great- cash when you can get it, but unless you have a main job, or a spouse willing to shoulder the primary income; it's just like being an actor. Sometimes you work, sometimes you don't. I've only had six days of calls so far this year? 21 days into January. It's a lot of "hopefully the phone will ring this week".

As for "practise"? At the BTS concert the spot ops met the Korean Operator Designer - not sure her exact title, but the lady who would be directing us who to pick up. Through a translator, she assigned us lamps, talked us through each song, and showed us some footage to try and explain more complicated pickups and swaps. This is not what usually happens, in my experiance.

For a concert that rolls in one morning, unloads, sets up, performs, tears down, packs up, and drives away, all in one day, you generally get told "You'll be on spot six. Follow the guitar guy with the white shirt. I'll tell you on headset what number spots are going to be on for each song. Have a good show." And then you hope like heck there aren't two guys with guitars and white shirts.

I had a coworker who did an Irish Riverdance style concert and the touring tech came on comm and said "quick, pick up the girl with red hair and the green dress." Hot tip. That's every girl in a show like that. Ouch.

For something like a theatre play that runs for weeks or months, you'll be rehearsing spot during the tech weeks, what character, what color, how fast or slow, how big, going along with them as they practise running the show to hopefully create a smooth and fluid experiance. In a rock concert there's so much lighting and flashing and video and pyro that if you miss a pick up, it's not the end of the show. It might look sloppy but no one will even remember. Since plays have more intimate designs, less intentional "blind the audience", if you're cutting the actors head out of the beam, it's going to look a lot worse. So the rehersals help tidy that up.

Not sure if that answered what you were wondering!

On the topic of precarious ladders:

So writing about working at heights hijinks and life-panicing moments got me thinking about an old member of my first local. This guy had been installing wiring for the Big Bang, I garuntee. We were talking one day about ladder adventures. Both being short, small, and overconfident, we had plenty of moments to swap, but his took the cake.

He was on a North American tour of an Opera, back in his day, and they were down in the States, I want to say California but I can't recall precisely.

So this venue they're at, they're doing the load in, and it has this odd grating installed over the last few feet of the stage that allows the actors to walk right above the orchestra, a sort of grid covered pit.

The touring rig has a lighting pipe that needs to be hung right out over the stage edge, so motor lines are dropped in, everything is built and hooked up, and up it goes. But then, the local crew explains to Ronnie, because of the unique floor covering the pit, it wasn't load bearing enough for a scissor lift to be run across it. "But how do we focus those lights?" Ronnie asked, confused.

So that's when the house crew went out into the house, up to the back of the third balcony, and pulled out three segments of an extension ladder, 20 feet each. A quick chat determined that the apron pipe was about 40 feet above the deck, so two chunks of the ladder were passed over the edge of the third balcony to the second; over the second to the main floor, carried out to the edge of the stage, and linked together.

"Now what," Ronnie asks, probably well caught on, but just making sure. The local guys grin, and walk the ladder upright. Then four of them get around the base. "Up you go."

40 feet, straight vertical, no safety, nowhere to anchor to, no wall around, held in place by four crew hugging the bottom.

Up zips Ronnie, straddling the top rung and hooking his feet into lower bars, pulls out his wrench, and gets the first light focused.

"Okay, now, hang on," the guys at the base holler, and proceed to waddle-walk the base of the ladder to get Ronnie to the next fixture.

One foot, pivot-twist - rock onto other foot, pivot twist. Stop, work, repeat.

The whole width of the apron.

I can still see the grin on Ronnie's face retelling it, I bet he was having the time of his life.

And then, the story goes, he was so comfortable up there, and the ground team so competent, they got the pipe done in record time, but halfway along, tragedy struck upstage.

If you've never heard a motor bag dump a full length of chain after everything has been flown out, well, consider yourselves lucky. A collective groan went up from the carpentry team as a bag spilled, the only way to clean it up being bring the set in again.

"Hold up," says Ronnie, "maybe we can help." And his base team waddle-walked his ladder across the stage, where he pulled up the chain and stuffed it back in the bag to the cheers of the other crews below. Lighting was the hero of the show for the rest of the production's stay there.

So... Every now and then, when my leg is cramping because my harness is biting off circulation in my thigh because I'm folded in half trying to adjust some fixture, and my retractable lanyard is trying to choke me to death, or at the very least pull my hair out, and some Technical Director is griping that I "shouldn't be doooiiiing thaaaaat..." Okay fine, then I guess you can't have the effect, because I can't set it up legally; I think back to Ronnie, seated on the top rung of a forty foot ladder, being waddled across a stage, and I wonder if all this safety has dumbed down our skills.

And I wish like hell I could try that.

Oh great, snow. You know what that means.

It means inconsiderate, lazy, selfish, assholes are going to be driving around with their vehicles covered in snow.

Roof, hood, trunk, windows, mirrors, bed covers - covered in snow, the barest hints scraped away by the windshield wipers and maybe the effort of holding the button to make a side window roll up and down.

Hoping it'll all melt eventually, or blow off once they start driving.

Yah. In my FACE.

Don't "have time" to clean your car off?

How much time you going to waste when you cause me to crash and I take your ass to court? How's a criminal negligence charge going to look on your resume?

"But my children's-sports-team-minivan / suburbitank-for-grocery-shopping / lifted-full-cab-hemi-truck is too tall to reach all that snow on top!"

You live in Canada. Snow isn't a surprise. The LACK of snow is maybe a surprise. But now it's here, like it always is eventually, own up and clear it because it's the decent thing to do. It's the same reason you shovel your sidewalk. It might not actually benefit - YOU-, but it helps everyone else, and covers your ass from fines.

- like seriously some dudebro sunglasses boi pulled up beside me with a sports car shorter than my motorcycle, and it had an inch of snow on it. One sweep would have shoved it all off. The barest minimum effort. Ugh .-

To everyone who does their part to make sure their vehicles are safe, we appreciate you! Thank you!

Letterkenny Live Encore Tour

Wed Dec 5, 2018

Meridian Center, St. Catharines, Ontario

In the audience for a change! A holiday treat.

Season 6 confirmed for Xmas Day!

Check your local LCBO for the official Puppers beer!