Simple Studio Show, He Said.

Simple studio show, he said.

Hardly any tech, he said.

Then why I am at hour five of a solo focus/design session.

Needless to say the lighting area for the last show in here (one woman on an 8'x12' stage at a 1' height) was not sufficient for a three person production, on the floor, with a shipping trunk, 3'x2' slat box, coat rack, and canvas ship sail/projection screen.

So let's turn an 8x12 foot coverage wash into 24x20 playing space.

Hell yes I love this job.

But sometimes, seriously.

San Fransokyo is gonna get overrun with Heartless while I'm stuck here focusing tips.

Theatre Life Tip: Your Business Agent/Technical Director/Designer will always say "it should be easy" to coax you to take the call, because once you walk into the building, your soul is theirs. It's never "that easy".

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.

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.

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!

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!

Musings:

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