You Mentioned Being A Spot Op For A Concert. Can You Talk A Little About How That Works? I Work In Theater

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!

My studio venue had one - it had been bought because the mainstage operator wanted to slave it to his system for moving lights when my room didn't have shows. He was vetoed because the possibility of rentals. So I had a "moving light" board in a room that just needed scene playback with outdated conventional fixtures. It. Was. THE. WORST.

We didn't even have a monitor so I had to use the tiny pixel display to guess intensity. It's only seven pixels tall? What the hell % is 5 out of 7 pixels?

It's gotten SLIGHTLY better since ten years ago - I was there back in the fall and they'd finally put updates on it and ETC added the ability to designate which Point cue you want to insert a cue as. When I was running it, it would just auto assign a point by splitting the middle of the cue you were in and the next cue. So if you had a Cue 2 and 3 and designer wants to add three cues in between? Be in Cue 2 and build 2.5 - then be in Cue 2 to build 2.3 - then be in Cue 2.5 to build 2.7. Good times.

Anyone I've mentioned that board to has also groaned and rolled their eyes and asked "WHY."

A good anecdote however: I was running a spot light for the Hamilton, Ontario stop of the BTS concert last year, and there were eight of us out on a line of truss suspended at the far end of the arena. Below us was the FoH stage, covered in consoles and controllers and operators, and camera operators for the live feed LED screens.

So I'm peering down at the lighting boards, the backup lighting boards, the lighting board specifically for the spot lights, and so on and so on when something catches my eye.

We were in a lull so I thumb my headset open to ask the American who was in charge of the equipment and standing by in case the Korean operator had any issues... "Is that... An ETC Smartfade...? In the last row of tables?"

"Sure is," he responds in his smooth southern drawl.

"Holy shit," I exclaim. "I've never actually seen one being actually used in a professional lighting rig!" Was my little garbage studio board actually useful after all?

"Oh, no," he responded, chuckling. "It's for the Pyro."

Photos mine, do not reuse without permission, because I probably shouldn't have taken or be sharing them in the first place but c'mon, Smartfade, lawl. It's the redheaded stepchild.

Can someone who actually does lighting/more tech than I do confirm that Smartfade lightboards are terrible

Because I’m stuck working with one in a rented storefront right now and honestly, what the fuck

7:30 pm. -3°C. Ontario.

Getting paid to sit next to gear while a bunch of middle class white people present the story of a teen-pregnant Jewish middle-eastern refugee family.

By singing to synth music tracks.

But there's a real donkey and horse.

If that's the most important thing for a load-in, then this is the most important thing of a load-out.

One size fits fattest, as usual. I have so many unused dresses.

The most important sign of any concert load-in or movie/tv location shoot.

I'm killing time by decorating my helmet with LEDs anew.  The lights on the Icon Variant Thriller lasted from December to May, which was when I crashed and had to retire the helmet.

So I'm sitting here sticking the lights to the peak on my Scorpion Exo and this church asshole keeps glancing over at me and I can tell he's dieing to say something.

 I finish up and he blurts out to the audio guy "There's no way that's gonna hold!"

 I calmly inform him it held last year.  And last year I used low tack green painters tape.   So by logic, the gaff tape I have now should be even better.

He's flustered for a second, then retorts gleefully "then you must not go very fast!" as he grins triumphantly at the audio guy again.

 "Yah, I mean, I've only got a 750cc Adventure bike so I top out around 180 (km).  Maybe if I could break 250  I'd work in more zip ties."

 He got mad and turned his back to me. And hasn't talked or looked at me since.

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!