#u68c3

Today we spent the morning getting ready for the tech to start this afternoon. We made more some groups and palletes and I set up a birdie under the rake for the av operator.

The actors did not come in today as the set is not finished yet, so whilst the construction team were finishing it off. We set up the production desk on the seating bank.

I also rigged four birdies on the set, there are two inside each structure to light behind the scrim just in case the directors want to put anyone behind there for a scene or tableaux.

At one o’clock was the final production meeting, I filled everyone in one what we had done that morning and found out that plotting will begin tomorrow afternoon.

After the meeting I led the rest of the team in setting up the footlights and birdies, I did this by linking the footlights into three groups (Center stage, stage left and stage right) and using grelco's to link the birdies together on each side. This meant that only five dimmers were needed and I could fit everything into one spider under the stage, I then ran socapex to the upstage left wall box and used another spider to plug everything into the dimmers.

I then left my team  to put in some A7’s behind the cyc (for back-light) whilst I started making groups and palletes to make things easier tomorrow.

I also created this floor plan to show the location and channel numbers of the birdies, footlights and the two new A7's:

Today we started by taking the desk and booms out of the auditorium; I then went back to the venue to help tech the music gig. We had a lot of problems with the dimmers today and so the number of lights that actually worked changed many times throughout the day. I have a bit more knowledge with using the Ion desk than the others and so I stayed on it whilst we were figuring out the channel numbers and refocusing a few lights. I am also the only one of the team who has worked with moving lights, so while the others were sorting out the generics I was working with the a7’s to make some preset groups, colours, effects and focuses which I stored on palletes, this will help Ollie to use them whilst opping the gig. I made five colour palletes: open white, blue, red, green, and purple. As well as this there were four focus palletes: home, back wall, audience and strobe (strobing in the home position.) One problem that we had today was with one of the par cans on the back bar; the low ceiling in the venue combined with the higher rostra for the drums meant that it’s original position had a tendency to cook drummers. We resolved this by moving the light further along the bar and then refocusing it. Another problem we solved was taking all of the lights that didn't work and pairing them with other lights that did work using Grelco's, this allowed us to use our entire rig.

We have taken the Ion back into the venue to use for the gig: