@"Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)" said:
Opening night was Friday. The kids were freaking amazing! Especially Puck. This was played against a weather forecast that called for 50 m.p.h. winds. To be prepared, I printed out rain checks, in case the lights went out half-way through the performance, that we could pass out to patrons so they could return for free to a subsequent performance. Fortunately, the power failure waited to occur until just after the cast took their final bows and folks gathered front-stage to bestow flowers and take photos. Perfect timing -- assuming it had to happen at all!
But there was a glitch in the LED effects. Each effect was prepended by a pattern on the scrim that I used to map the LEDs, so I could restrict certain effects to certain areas, e.g. twinkling stars near the top. I figured it must be a program bug, so I went to the HS yesterday afternoon to try to fix it. The stage manager told me that it only occurred when the effect was transmitted from the lighting booth, not when it was keyed in backstage. Oh cripes! RF interference? I tried it myself from the lighting control booth, but I could not get the glitch to recur.
Anyway I wracked my brain to figure out where in the program the glitch might be coming from. After an hour and a half, the director said, "Okay, Phil, you've got ten more minutes!" Then the light went on: the mapping effect was assigned to the number (#) key on the keyboard, which I assumed no one would use during a performance. The effects were assigned to keys 1-6, with 0 to fade off, and * to kill instantly. The only way the glitch could occur would be for someone to hit the # key. So I deleted the effect from that key at the last moment.
Last night's performance went without a hitch. It finally occurred to me today to ask the director how the effects were denoted in the lighting script. Were the key numbers prepended by #, e.g.#1, #2, etc.? "Well, maybe." And the lighting tech must've interpreted these instructions literally!
-Phil
Well thought out. I'd bet a coke you are 100% correct! Well done!
Comments
Well thought out. I'd bet a coke you are 100% correct! Well done!