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.

Musings:

The individual words in "Booty Call" and "Butt Dial" are synonyms, and yet together they have -very- different meanings.

There is a phrase used to describe people, often strangers, as “ships passing in the night.” The phrase is meant to describe how fleeting the intersection of two lives can be, how briefly people we don’t know can flicker in and out of our lives. 

But when I read about the Titanic, I think we can push the phrase further. Because sometimes, as you pass another ship in the night, you may hear a cry in the dark. A person in danger. A shout for help. Distress rockets and SOS signals wailing into the night. A stranger in crisis. 

And in those fleeting moments as your ship passes theirs, you get to make the choice- are you the Californian, the closest ship to the Titanic, which saw the distress rockets and saw the lights on the horizon and sat and did nothing; or are you the Carpathia, turning on a dime, pushing all steam to the engines, racing to help?

We can not say for sure what caused the Californian to not help the Titanic in that night of crisis. Whether is was apathy or incompetence or fear, we don’t know.

 But we know that every single soul who survived the Titanic survived because of the Carpathia. Because the crew and the passengers of that ship raced nearly 60 miles through ice fields above their maximum speed in the dead of night, readying life boats, readying triage, to pull them from the water. 

So, yes, we are ships passing in the night, and when given the chance to turn away or do good, always err on the side of reckless compassion. 

Oh man, when I was a kid there was one just like this in Lewiston, NY. Dad had a P.O. box in town and I looked forward to going to the giant house MickeyD's. Same as you place it had an upper inner balcony level, and I always remember the washrooms deep in the brick basement because each of the stalls were completely walled to either side of the toilet, proper painted brick walls and full doors.

It's called Frontier House and "In September 1973, the manager and chef of Frontier House were rescued in a fire. One dining room was destroyed along with widespread water damage.[6]Two years later the historic hotel of Lewiston's future was handed to William McDonald, who restored the interior and leased it to the McDonald's food chain. McDonald's closed in 2004, and the structure has been vacant ever since. It was acquired by the village of Lewiston in July 2013." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_House_(Lewiston,_New_York)

Apparently it's haunted? The basement always felt unnerving.

There was also one in Montreal that had something to do with Cadillac but the building was just a converted brick storefront type, built in a historical location.

I'd love a trend of fast food chains working to preserve and restore historical landmarks - rather than just plopping down another plastic window modern mess.

So me and my friends were out playing pokemon go and we had to literally stop the car and turn around because we may have found the fanciest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen in my life

A MANSION

And the inside is actually beautiful??????

Like there were live plants and I felt like I was walking into an upscale hotel??

It also had a second fancy entrance???

Not only that but there was like a secret upstairs that’s apparently open usually, but it was too late for us to go up too (I’m deffo gonna go back and check that out because come on)

Like what is she hiding 

But yeah I think I found either the most cursed or fanciest McDonalds in America

Also!

It was a pokestop!

Theatre Tips and Tricks:

Nightvision:

No, not the goggles.

So you're backstage and it's dark and you forgot your flashlight and you KNOW there's scenery and props that you are probably going to run in to, but no matter how hard you stare, you can only see the black void that exists in all technician's souls.

And there's an actual, biological science reason as to why.

It comes down to those little things in the eyeball called rods and cones. Cones are near the center of the retina and are great at picking up colour. Rods are on the edges of the retina and are great at picking up light. Rods are a bit shit at colour, but cones are a bit shit if there isn't a lot of light.

So when you stare -AT- something in low light conditions, you're mostly using the Cones, and they're like "We can't tell what that is because it's too dark so here's a dark blob."

What you want to do is look Above or to the Side of what you want to see. And then gather information with your peripheral vision. This uses the signals from the rods who are like "We'll suck in all the light we can to help you see, but we're not sure what color that is," which is fine.

It's tricky to get used to, because of course we want to look right at where we're going, but next time you're waving your arms blindly in the wings, give it a go.

Also note it takes five to twenty minutes for your eyes to fully adjust to dark conditions, and you can wreck that in a couple seconds by flicking on a light, so keep one eye closed if you have to click on your MagLight to check something and that can help retain your vision in at least one eye.

Hope that helps!

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!