[00:00.540 --> 00:02.460]  We feeling a little fuzzy from last night still?
[00:03.140 --> 00:05.700]  People are getting a little blurry-eyed out there, it seems like.
[00:06.200 --> 00:09.120]  A couple of quick announcements that I wanted to make for you guys.
[00:09.780 --> 00:13.200]  Five o'clock here in Lovelace, there's going to be the lightning talks.
[00:13.340 --> 00:15.660]  This is replacing the sniper forensics talks.
[00:16.200 --> 00:21.600]  Also want to mention that amateur radio exams are going on now, down on the sixth floor.
[00:22.000 --> 00:23.740]  Information about this is in the program.
[00:23.940 --> 00:24.660]  Pretty cool stuff.
[00:24.820 --> 00:29.320]  It's great to have the opportunity if you want to take a shot at the test, head on down to the sixth floor.
[00:30.380 --> 00:35.080]  So putting on live shows like this, there is a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work.
[00:35.220 --> 00:36.920]  For somebody like me, it's nice and simple.
[00:36.960 --> 00:40.900]  I walk up to the podium, I talk, there's sound that goes out, everything's wonderfully easy.
[00:41.240 --> 00:43.520]  Guys like Will here running sound make that possible.
[00:44.000 --> 00:48.460]  Tremendous amount of stuff going on behind the scenes with folks that can't be seen.
[00:48.980 --> 00:55.000]  And John Huntington is going to talk to us about a lot of the hacks that go on to make sure that the show goes on.
[01:00.480 --> 01:03.960]  And thanks for getting up on the last day of the conference here.
[01:04.180 --> 01:05.820]  See if I can untangle some of this stuff.
[01:06.460 --> 01:10.640]  Yeah, and I think that's an important point is the amount of work that it takes to put these things on.
[01:10.800 --> 01:15.340]  To put on any kind of show is just enormous and people really typically have no idea.
[01:15.540 --> 01:20.480]  And often if we do our job correctly, they really have no idea how much work it is.
[01:20.480 --> 01:23.000]  And now I'm staring into the black hole here.
[01:24.100 --> 01:26.140]  Yeah, this is so you can see the screen apparently.
[01:27.180 --> 01:28.560]  So yeah, I have a talk here.
[01:28.660 --> 01:32.700]  I'm going to give just a quick overview on who does what on a live show.
[01:32.900 --> 01:34.960]  Just generally, we use a theater model for this.
[01:35.540 --> 01:41.020]  A little bit of an overview of the technologies we use and the process by which they get incorporated into shows.
[01:43.100 --> 01:46.760]  I teach this in college, so this would be a four-year curriculum.
[01:46.760 --> 01:48.640]  So obviously, we're not going to cover all that.
[01:48.780 --> 01:51.100]  We're going to give you just a little overview.
[01:51.400 --> 01:58.000]  But one thing I think is interesting from the hacker perspective is some of the strategies we use to ensure that the show goes on.
[01:58.060 --> 02:00.220]  That's the old cliche, of course, the show must go on.
[02:01.100 --> 02:03.720]  But it is important to us because the show is our product.
[02:03.720 --> 02:04.520]  That's what we're selling.
[02:04.580 --> 02:06.320]  If we don't have it, we're not doing our job.
[02:07.800 --> 02:11.720]  So I'm a professor at a school in Brooklyn called City Tech.
[02:11.900 --> 02:13.220]  I teach entertainment technology.
[02:13.220 --> 02:17.480]  I also teach up at Yale based on my book, which is the first slide you saw up there.
[02:18.080 --> 02:24.520]  I'm a member of Local 1 Stagehands here, which covers Manhattan, Staten Island, and actually Randalls Island.
[02:24.620 --> 02:25.540]  I just discovered this.
[02:25.660 --> 02:28.260]  All the islands around New York are in Local 1 jurisdiction.
[02:28.520 --> 02:31.320]  So I wrote a book on entertainment control systems.
[02:32.120 --> 02:38.600]  And I was one of the people who wrote the certification exam for entertainment electricians in our field.
[02:38.740 --> 02:40.740]  That's a brand new development in the last few years.
[02:41.060 --> 02:44.080]  It shows that our industry is maturing, which is pretty exciting.
[02:44.260 --> 02:50.660]  And I've done a little bit of everything in just about every aspect of live performance and also worked on feature films, TV production.
[02:50.800 --> 02:52.080]  I've been around a long time.
[02:52.260 --> 02:55.560]  So I can't actually see, but who's worked on a show before?
[02:55.580 --> 02:56.240]  I can kind of see.
[02:56.600 --> 02:57.200]  Oh, wow.
[02:57.280 --> 02:57.780]  That's a lot.
[02:57.980 --> 02:58.200]  Okay.
[02:59.160 --> 02:59.900]  What areas?
[03:00.160 --> 03:00.280]  Sound?
[03:00.420 --> 03:00.760]  How about...
[03:00.760 --> 03:01.320]  Just raise your hand.
[03:01.500 --> 03:01.920]  Like sound?
[03:03.360 --> 03:04.820]  The sound guy's raising his hand.
[03:04.980 --> 03:05.280]  That's good.
[03:06.980 --> 03:07.420]  Lighting?
[03:08.980 --> 03:09.420]  Scenery?
[03:10.120 --> 03:11.360]  Why are you all at this talk?
[03:11.500 --> 03:13.140]  You already know this stuff, so...
[03:13.140 --> 03:14.140]  Okay, good.
[03:14.300 --> 03:19.260]  So that gives me a little perspective on who's here.
[03:19.580 --> 03:24.380]  So I'm going to start with some technological trends in entertainment, sort of what's driving the market.
[03:25.180 --> 03:29.540]  One thing is that I argue that the future for our business is bright.
[03:29.680 --> 03:30.780]  Things are going pretty well.
[03:30.900 --> 03:31.980]  I mean, of course, it's a recession.
[03:32.240 --> 03:33.200]  There's always things go down.
[03:33.340 --> 03:37.080]  But the long-term trend is good for us because storytelling is our business.
[03:37.320 --> 03:38.380]  That's what we do.
[03:39.140 --> 03:48.320]  And storytelling can mean anything from a corporate event to the juggler at the Renaissance fair to the barker at Coney Island.
[03:48.320 --> 03:54.620]  It's all part of the same thing, as Teller from Penn & Teller calls it, the show business, which I always like, rather than show business.
[03:55.260 --> 03:56.600]  Technology isn't going to change this.
[03:56.820 --> 04:02.600]  The example that I use for this, that people always want to be in the same room at the same time as this.
[04:02.740 --> 04:04.320]  Does anybody in this room know what this is?
[04:04.900 --> 04:07.220]  There's probably somebody here that was there or something.
[04:08.600 --> 04:14.720]  I don't know if you can see on the picture, but that's about 11,000 computers in a room.
[04:14.980 --> 04:16.820]  There's absolutely... and they're playing games.
[04:16.960 --> 04:18.880]  This was in Sweden, I believe.
[04:19.780 --> 04:22.080]  Absolutely no reason to do this, technically, right?
[04:22.220 --> 04:24.640]  There's a... excuse me.
[04:26.020 --> 04:27.560]  You could just do this over the Internet.
[04:27.800 --> 04:29.660]  There's no reason to have everybody in the same room.
[04:29.900 --> 04:31.060]  So why do they do it?
[04:31.400 --> 04:32.920]  People like to be with other people.
[04:33.080 --> 04:33.740]  We're social animals.
[04:33.740 --> 04:38.480]  So none of this technology, I believe, is going to displace live performance.
[04:38.680 --> 04:40.660]  It's certainly heard over the, you know, hundreds of years.
[04:40.840 --> 04:42.860]  Like, theater is not as dominant as it once was.
[04:43.180 --> 04:43.720]  Things like that.
[04:43.880 --> 04:47.580]  But live... if you look at live entertainment, and I would include this in live entertainment.
[04:48.360 --> 04:51.020]  And, of course, there was more traditional live entertainment at this thing.
[04:51.100 --> 04:52.420]  Bands playing and things like that.
[04:53.240 --> 04:54.540]  Mark, it's pretty good for us.
[04:54.900 --> 05:00.320]  So... and, of course, we've already survived, you know, this was probably the first form of entertainment.
[05:00.600 --> 05:02.940]  We've already survived movies, TV, radio.
[05:02.940 --> 05:05.560]  The Internet's not really a big deal in that context.
[05:05.800 --> 05:07.120]  And, of course, this meeting itself.
[05:07.340 --> 05:08.740]  Why are we meeting in person?
[05:09.600 --> 05:10.380]  Don't need to.
[05:11.160 --> 05:14.580]  Everybody here could manage, you know, some sort of Internet thing.
[05:14.680 --> 05:20.320]  And, actually, this weekend, there's a magic conference online for magicians.
[05:20.680 --> 05:22.100]  And they got a good response.
[05:22.140 --> 05:23.620]  But it'll be very interesting to see...
[05:23.620 --> 05:25.040]  I've obviously been here all weekend.
[05:25.260 --> 05:26.920]  But it'll be very interesting to see how that worked out.
[05:27.120 --> 05:31.760]  Because, I mean, to me, running into people in the hallway is just as important as coming to the talk.
[05:31.760 --> 05:33.020]  So that's...
[05:33.020 --> 05:34.240]  And that's hard to do on the Internet.
[05:34.520 --> 05:34.860]  So...
[05:34.860 --> 05:38.340]  And until they figure that out, I think we're in good shape for live entertainment.
[05:40.020 --> 05:41.780]  So, the entertainment bar is raised.
[05:41.900 --> 05:43.040]  We have a lot of competition now.
[05:43.200 --> 05:45.000]  We have all these things that you all know about.
[05:45.300 --> 05:46.600]  And I'm going to read some of these.
[05:47.460 --> 05:48.660]  I hate to read PowerPoint.
[05:48.900 --> 05:52.000]  But I'm going to read some of this because I know there's some audio-only versions of this talk.
[05:52.140 --> 05:55.120]  So we have non-live media, Internet, the maker movement, of course.
[05:55.700 --> 05:57.300]  There's all these other things out there.
[05:57.380 --> 05:58.320]  So the bar is raised.
[05:58.420 --> 05:59.980]  So people go to see a live show.
[06:00.100 --> 06:03.040]  Their expectations are higher than they were.
[06:03.200 --> 06:10.120]  And, of course, the other trend, which is kind of combined with this, is that everything's moving on the network in our world as well.
[06:10.120 --> 06:15.740]  That's what my book, actually, the first edition of it had, I think, maybe five...
[06:15.740 --> 06:19.140]  That was in the mid-90s, and maybe five or ten pages on Ethernet.
[06:19.720 --> 06:22.280]  The current edition has like two or three chapters.
[06:22.560 --> 06:26.100]  So that's happened over that period that we've gone through.
[06:26.360 --> 06:31.580]  One thing that's very critical for us in order to work quickly is that low-level processes are encapsulated.
[06:31.660 --> 06:32.600]  I'll talk more about that.
[06:32.940 --> 06:35.440]  Of course, computing-powered DSP is ever cheaper.
[06:36.460 --> 06:39.840]  You can put lots of things all over the place and connect them to the network.
[06:40.640 --> 06:45.040]  And a lot of the tedium and intricacy of simple programming has been removed.
[06:45.180 --> 06:46.920]  And that's the only way that we can do what we do.
[06:47.020 --> 06:48.580]  And I'll talk more about that as we go forward.
[06:48.760 --> 06:49.720]  I'm talking about it right now.
[06:50.000 --> 06:55.600]  So we have to work very, very quickly under very, very difficult constraints.
[06:55.940 --> 07:04.420]  So we need to box things in to make them as simple as possible, to make it as reliable as possible, and also be able to fix it quickly.
[07:05.420 --> 07:07.080]  That's really critical for us.
[07:08.960 --> 07:09.960]  Basically what I just said.
[07:10.700 --> 07:12.560]  Oh, and the packaging is a big part of it.
[07:12.660 --> 07:21.220]  So a lot of things that are very high-tech systems that we use in our field will be packaged into something, like a lighting console, which there's probably one in this room somewhere.
[07:21.220 --> 07:22.300]  I know there's one in the other room.
[07:22.500 --> 07:24.120]  There's certainly one in this room because the lights are on.
[07:24.220 --> 07:25.820]  I don't know if there's a computer or not.
[07:26.800 --> 07:38.080]  So something like very complex thing, doing all the moving lights and things like that, we packaged into it, you know, of course, be standard software, some running Linux or Windows or something inside.
[07:38.320 --> 07:42.720]  But we packaged into a box with a lot of buttons on it that has some constraints to it.
[07:42.720 --> 07:49.480]  So that means if something goes wrong, it can't be, well, I don't know, the programmer's on vacation this week and maybe...
[07:49.480 --> 07:57.660]  No, it means you need to be able to, A, call somebody who's already used one of these things that can answer the question, or get somebody from the manufacturer on the phone.
[07:58.300 --> 08:03.000]  So some of these things seem expensive until you think about your providing 24-7 support.
[08:03.100 --> 08:09.520]  If you buy a digital audio console, you know, $50,000, the hardware might only be $5,000 or $6,000, $7,000.
[08:10.200 --> 08:16.540]  But they have to, obviously they have to build it and engineer it, but they also have to provide that phone, somebody to get on the phone, like Yamaha.
[08:17.120 --> 08:20.560]  You can get somebody on the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning wherever you are.
[08:20.640 --> 08:25.040]  And that's important because you don't know, you know, we do shows at all kinds of weird times.
[08:25.040 --> 08:29.340]  I was loading out the New York Philharmonic at 3 o'clock Thursday morning.
[08:31.180 --> 08:33.360]  So just briefly, who does what on a show?
[08:33.580 --> 08:35.920]  I think a lot of people already know this, but...
[08:35.920 --> 08:42.800]  And I'm talking about the theater model because that's the one that's been around the longest and that has all the sort of standardized departments.
[08:43.040 --> 08:55.480]  And most other forms of live entertainment, concerts or corporate meetings or theme park performances, are all derived in one way or another from the theater tradition in one form or another.
[08:55.660 --> 08:58.700]  So those departments are all there.
[08:59.620 --> 09:03.360]  Also in the industry, we have sort of three general sectors of the industry.
[09:03.980 --> 09:06.060]  Product development, which would be manufacturers.
[09:06.320 --> 09:09.840]  So a lot of the, like, hacking and things you'll see on the second floor.
[09:10.400 --> 09:12.700]  You know, traditional hardware hacking you'll see on the second floor.
[09:12.840 --> 09:15.740]  We have people who do that type of work, electrolyzers and so on.
[09:15.740 --> 09:16.880]  Well, that's interesting.
[09:19.320 --> 09:21.560]  But that's done at the manufacturer, typically.
[09:21.840 --> 09:25.180]  And then, again, packaged into a unit that can be sent out for a show.
[09:25.460 --> 09:27.500]  And then there's suppliers and rental shops.
[09:27.620 --> 09:30.740]  So you can either buy this equipment or rent it for production.
[09:31.000 --> 09:34.940]  So for this, I've been on the email list for the AV for this conference for...
[09:34.940 --> 09:39.920]  There's been hundreds and hundreds of emails coordinating all this stuff, getting it from different shops.
[09:40.020 --> 09:40.640]  Who has the cheapest?
[09:40.820 --> 09:41.420]  Where can we get it?
[09:41.480 --> 09:42.440]  Where is the truck coming from?
[09:42.500 --> 09:42.840]  And so on.
[09:43.340 --> 09:47.440]  So that's a whole other sector of the industry is the people who supply the gear and rent it out.
[09:47.560 --> 09:49.720]  And then the actual crews that do the show.
[09:49.880 --> 09:53.320]  So there's lots of gray areas between all of these.
[09:53.600 --> 09:55.860]  A manufacturer might also rent their gear.
[09:57.020 --> 09:59.580]  Suppliers might also provide show crews and so on.
[09:59.640 --> 10:02.140]  But in general, that's sort of the way it breaks out.
[10:03.520 --> 10:07.740]  And within that, the basic process we have is pre-production.
[10:07.960 --> 10:11.940]  So that's getting everything ready, designing it, deciding what the show is.
[10:11.940 --> 10:13.700]  And I'm mostly talking here from...
[10:14.200 --> 10:17.560]  Mostly from the technical perspective, but also from the overall process.
[10:17.960 --> 10:21.040]  So design, preparation, bidding in the equipment and so on.
[10:21.260 --> 10:22.060]  And then rehearsal.
[10:22.080 --> 10:27.220]  This is critical for us in order to do the types of things that people expect us to do today.
[10:28.020 --> 10:32.740]  The amount of technology we have, we almost make it look too good in many cases.
[10:32.740 --> 10:36.500]  Because you'll see people say, well, why can't I just change the lighting right now, immediately?
[10:36.720 --> 10:40.100]  Well, it took us three weeks of testing to get that cue and to put it in.
[10:40.100 --> 10:41.220]  And it's all programmed to do this.
[10:41.360 --> 10:43.160]  We can do it, but it takes time.
[10:43.240 --> 10:48.000]  And that's the more technology we put into these things, the more time it takes.
[10:48.080 --> 10:55.720]  And I'll talk about Cirque du Soleil a lot in this talk, because I would argue that they're really sort of the pinnacle of entertainment technology these days.
[10:55.720 --> 10:58.100]  There's other specific areas that are higher tech.
[10:58.240 --> 11:05.500]  But in terms of embracing it inside their process, certainly, in my opinion, they're doing more of it better than most other people.
[11:06.240 --> 11:09.960]  Their shows take months and months and months and months to rehearse.
[11:10.120 --> 11:12.960]  And that's part of their creative process.
[11:13.300 --> 11:14.780]  But that's really important.
[11:15.300 --> 11:18.440]  So anyway, so we have pre-production, we have rehearsal, and then we have a load-in.
[11:18.500 --> 11:19.400]  We put the gear in.
[11:19.560 --> 11:25.040]  So for this conference, like I said, there was hundreds of emails for the pre-production, coordinating the equipment.
[11:26.380 --> 11:31.960]  There really isn't a rehearsal in this case, although speakers may have rehearsed their talks, for example.
[11:32.300 --> 11:34.420]  Then the equipment's loaded into the venue.
[11:34.500 --> 11:37.700]  I think they were in here Thursday night, overnight, putting in all the gear.
[11:37.860 --> 11:40.700]  It's a tremendous amount of work coordinating all that.
[11:41.640 --> 11:45.040]  Technical rehearsals, this conference probably wouldn't be an example of that.
[11:45.120 --> 11:50.800]  But if you're, say, a Broadway show, you put the gear in, and then you have rehearsals for some period of time.
[11:50.800 --> 11:54.820]  And that's where the performers integrate with the technology.
[11:54.960 --> 11:55.800]  The technology's there.
[11:55.880 --> 11:58.060]  It's often the first time that those are put together.
[11:58.760 --> 11:59.640]  Then previews.
[11:59.720 --> 12:04.140]  Really important to be able to do this to get whatever it is you're doing up in front of the audience.
[12:04.140 --> 12:11.080]  Because this is the sort of black art of what we do, is that you never really know how the audience is going to receive it until you try it.
[12:11.520 --> 12:18.160]  So that trial and error process is very, very important in order to develop the creative content of the show.
[12:18.160 --> 12:18.960]  That's really critical.
[12:20.360 --> 12:21.860]  And often, you don't have previews.
[12:22.420 --> 12:25.640]  I was attempting to show a video here, but QuickTime wasn't cooperating.
[12:25.780 --> 12:30.480]  The Tribeca Film Festival drive-in, which I've done for a number of years, designed the sound system for that.
[12:31.320 --> 12:32.300]  We don't have a preview.
[12:32.380 --> 12:33.500]  We just go in and we do it.
[12:33.780 --> 12:38.420]  And we're able to pull it off, but with no rehearsal, every year we screw something up.
[12:39.080 --> 12:42.340]  But the producers understand that, and they accept that that's part of the process.
[12:42.340 --> 12:48.620]  And it's not worth it, in that case, for them to spend the time to actually rehearse the entire thing.
[12:51.440 --> 12:52.120]  Opening night.
[12:52.300 --> 12:53.640]  So we open the show to the public.
[12:53.860 --> 12:59.240]  That's typically when the designers and people like that will leave the show.
[12:59.240 --> 13:00.960]  And they leave it to the operational crew.
[13:01.280 --> 13:03.680]  Again, this is an idealized model.
[13:03.760 --> 13:05.040]  There's always exceptions to this.
[13:05.380 --> 13:08.900]  And then the show closes, so that our process is not over to that point.
[13:08.980 --> 13:09.980]  It could be an hour later.
[13:10.140 --> 13:12.320]  You could just go in and do a meeting and it's over an hour.
[13:12.500 --> 13:13.920]  It might run for 10 years.
[13:14.000 --> 13:22.460]  It might be, you know, a Cirque du Soleil show, Ka, or Phantom of the Opera, or a theme park attraction that's designed to run, you know, for many, many years.
[13:23.780 --> 13:26.080]  And then, critical part, strike and loadout.
[13:26.420 --> 13:28.300]  You have to get all the gear out of the venue.
[13:28.440 --> 13:30.400]  These guys, I imagine, I think this schedule is tonight.
[13:30.520 --> 13:31.660]  They'll be getting all this stuff.
[13:31.660 --> 13:34.360]  Unfortunately, it goes out a lot faster than it goes in.
[13:35.400 --> 13:45.280]  Custom pieces, if it was made, scenery, and so on, would be returned to the shops or often just thrown out because if you build a custom set for something, it doesn't really work for anything else.
[13:45.440 --> 13:53.700]  In fact, there's an interesting debate online right now with a Broadway producer who is arguing for repertory plots in the Broadway theater.
[13:53.880 --> 13:59.820]  So that repertory plot would mean you install, you get a basic lighting design, you install it in the theater, and you leave it there.
[14:00.440 --> 14:02.660]  It really doesn't work for those type of shows.
[14:02.880 --> 14:08.880]  But it's a good question I ask from a financial perspective because, obviously, you could make the argument it would be cheaper.
[14:09.060 --> 14:11.680]  In reality, it probably wouldn't if you want the same results.
[14:11.680 --> 14:14.600]  If you just want a basic thing, that might be okay.
[14:14.740 --> 14:15.440]  But that's unusual.
[14:15.620 --> 14:17.580]  Most things are put in and taken out.
[14:18.480 --> 14:25.540]  And, for example, this conference, they chose to bring in their own AV because I'm sure the hotel has some speakers in the ceiling and so on.
[14:26.180 --> 14:28.380]  But it might not do what you want to do.
[14:28.580 --> 14:30.420]  And it also might not be as good as you want.
[14:30.500 --> 14:32.980]  Or you might not be able to control it in the way that you want.
[14:33.080 --> 14:37.260]  So this is why it often seems to not make sense why everything is put in and taken out.
[14:37.380 --> 14:38.480]  But it really does.
[14:39.460 --> 14:40.380]  It does make sense.
[14:40.380 --> 14:44.680]  And all the rental equipment, if there is any, is returned to the shops.
[14:44.720 --> 14:45.920]  And then they check it back in.
[14:46.100 --> 14:55.000]  So the cost, if you're renting a video projector or something, the people will go, oh, my God, I can't believe how much money it is.
[14:55.060 --> 14:58.680]  But then if you think of the cost of providing that projector, it's unbelievable.
[15:00.020 --> 15:02.080]  You have to buy the gear, number one.
[15:02.260 --> 15:03.200]  These things aren't cheap.
[15:03.660 --> 15:04.900]  You have to maintain it.
[15:04.940 --> 15:05.760]  You have to prepare it.
[15:05.900 --> 15:07.240]  You have to deliver it to the venue.
[15:07.440 --> 15:09.720]  Operating a truck in New York City is not cheap.
[15:09.720 --> 15:13.360]  Most of my friends that own these shops, they don't make any...
[15:13.360 --> 15:16.140]  They charge an enormous amount for trucking, and they lose money on it.
[15:16.620 --> 15:28.240]  You know, it might be $500 for a truck run in New York, but you have to have a truck, a guy running it, a parking ticket, the tolls, the two, three hours it is to get here, and then you get back in New Jersey or Queens or wherever it is.
[15:28.800 --> 15:31.020]  You know, it costs money.
[15:31.200 --> 15:33.220]  So it's amazing.
[15:33.220 --> 15:35.660]  Any rental shop can stay in business, to tell you the truth.
[15:35.820 --> 15:38.320]  So it's pretty incredible the way that stuff works.
[15:39.920 --> 15:43.220]  So the departmental organizational structure is really key to us.
[15:44.280 --> 15:45.980]  This is the way that we operate.
[15:46.140 --> 15:47.900]  We break everything down into departments.
[15:49.260 --> 15:52.180]  Again, there's often times where these are merged together and so on.
[15:52.260 --> 15:53.340]  But we have scenery.
[15:53.680 --> 15:55.620]  Who builds any scenery for conference?
[15:55.740 --> 15:58.140]  Actually, we do have some scenery back here.
[15:58.320 --> 15:58.660]  Paint.
[15:58.780 --> 15:59.900]  That would have to be painted.
[16:00.420 --> 16:03.600]  Props would be, you know, things that are handled by the performers.
[16:03.600 --> 16:11.900]  The prop department handles all kinds of unusual things like mopping the floor, food that actors would eat on stage, and so on.
[16:12.220 --> 16:13.220]  Costumes, of course.
[16:14.280 --> 16:16.780]  That's a whole other separate department.
[16:17.260 --> 16:20.420]  Lighting, sound, video, et cetera, et cetera.
[16:20.520 --> 16:30.540]  Some bigger shows might have additional specialties like special effects, although special effects are really just the things that don't fall into other departmental departments.
[16:31.300 --> 16:33.840]  Rigging, for example, in a circus, things like that.
[16:34.000 --> 16:35.400]  You might have a specialty rigging department.
[16:35.840 --> 16:41.120]  Show control, that's sort of one of my specialties that you really only find in a big...
[16:41.120 --> 16:47.400]  As a separate department, anyway, you find it all over the place, but as a separate department, you may only find it in a theme park or a place like that.
[16:48.040 --> 17:01.520]  Communications, if you're doing the Grammy Awards or whatever, there literally will be a separate department that just handles the intercom system because it's so massive and it's so critical to the show that you need separate people to handle it.
[17:03.960 --> 17:08.940]  So I'm just going to go quickly through some of these areas just to give you a quick overview of the process.
[17:09.080 --> 17:12.640]  The process is more or less the same for each, so this will go faster as I go through.
[17:12.880 --> 17:16.320]  But generally, there's someone who's designing, for example, the scenery and the paint.
[17:16.560 --> 17:18.960]  Scenic designer, they're called in a theatrical production.
[17:19.660 --> 17:21.060]  That's a creative artist.
[17:21.260 --> 17:26.120]  They'll make drawings, sketches, and often contract the documents with an assistant.
[17:27.120 --> 17:32.040]  They send this creative package to the scene shop, who are really sort of the engineers.
[17:32.340 --> 17:33.640]  They bid on this.
[17:33.840 --> 17:37.740]  It's very hard to... these are things you've never built before, so you have to come up with a number.
[17:38.400 --> 17:43.220]  I have friends who run scene shops, and I don't know how they don't all have ulcers instead.
[17:43.520 --> 17:49.780]  The ones that have been successful in that business, it's pretty amazing the way they've survived because it's a really tough business.
[17:50.040 --> 17:57.880]  And even if you're somebody who has 20 engineers on staff to do really complex things, you're still competing against the guy in a garage with a table saw.
[17:58.060 --> 18:01.120]  So it's always... it's always... it's always rough that hard.
[18:01.220 --> 18:10.100]  Fortunately, for the larger shops, the shows are getting more and more complicated, and the guy in the... with a table saw is not going to be able to build...
[18:10.100 --> 18:13.300]  There's a show in the shop right now called Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
[18:13.500 --> 18:16.740]  It's kind of based on that movie, where the entire bus has a video screen.
[18:16.740 --> 18:21.360]  And it's... I don't know how many millions it's worth, but it's... they've been working on it for months already.
[18:22.160 --> 18:26.220]  So the shop will build this equipment... I'm sorry, they bid the equipment.
[18:26.420 --> 18:31.160]  Then the contract is awarded by the producer, the general manager, the people who control the finances for the show.
[18:31.820 --> 18:33.720]  They base that on a lot of factors.
[18:33.740 --> 18:38.200]  Might be, you know, the... only this company can do it.
[18:38.400 --> 18:43.260]  I've been working with this guy for 20 years, and I know that I can get him on the phone if there's a problem, and so on.
[18:43.320 --> 18:44.400]  That's actually worth a lot.
[18:45.140 --> 18:46.560]  And all those factors.
[18:46.740 --> 18:47.360]  Very complicated.
[18:47.880 --> 18:54.680]  The shop people build the scenery, and then the producer is going to own that scenery, typically, unless it's automation equipment, which is often leased to the show.
[18:55.380 --> 18:56.820]  Again, it always... it depends.
[18:56.960 --> 18:59.700]  There's no... this is an idealized model here.
[19:00.840 --> 19:04.840]  Scenery shipped out to the theater, and then the head carpenter in the theater would...
[19:05.300 --> 19:07.400]  or on the production would install it.
[19:07.400 --> 19:10.900]  Then the carpentry crew would run the moving scenery during the show, and so on.
[19:12.560 --> 19:12.920]  Props.
[19:12.920 --> 19:14.460]  Same type of process here.
[19:14.880 --> 19:16.640]  There's a person called a property master.
[19:16.820 --> 19:18.140]  Sometimes there's a buyer, and so on.
[19:18.620 --> 19:20.100]  They go out and find this stuff.
[19:20.180 --> 19:26.320]  This is a really interesting job for people who like to do lots and lots of different things, and they're very good at building stuff.
[19:26.900 --> 19:29.740]  If you watch the MythBusters, that's what Adam used to do.
[19:29.840 --> 19:36.080]  He used to do a lot of property work and sculpting and things like that, because it's lots of little different things, and you have to work very, very fast.
[19:36.080 --> 19:37.160]  Have you ever watched...
[19:37.160 --> 19:50.160]  Actually, some of the most impressive props to me are things like on The Daily Show, or Letterman, or those kind of shows, where the writers come up with something at 3 o'clock or 2 o'clock, and they have to get something together by 5:30 or 6 when they tape.
[19:51.060 --> 19:52.660]  That's... these guys have to work fast.
[19:52.900 --> 19:54.300]  They don't plan that stuff out.
[19:54.420 --> 19:58.580]  You know, you're not going to know that Dick Cheney said something stupid that needs a prop a month in advance.
[19:58.580 --> 20:04.160]  You know that at 2 o'clock today, and that person's running around throwing stuff together very quickly.
[20:05.240 --> 20:07.180]  So there's a prop queue that does that.
[20:08.580 --> 20:10.200]  Costumes, same sort of process.
[20:10.440 --> 20:14.540]  Again, very... costume shops are very... need some very specialized employees.
[20:15.460 --> 20:23.160]  You know, people that will do tiny, tiny bead work or know how to cut things in 3-D.
[20:23.340 --> 20:24.660]  That's very hard to do.
[20:26.160 --> 20:30.400]  Costumes is one of the areas... costumes and paint are the areas that I don't deal with.
[20:30.400 --> 20:34.560]  So... but I have a lot of respect for those people because it's really, really amazing work.
[20:34.740 --> 20:39.520]  And all... again, all custom made, and you have to fit this to the performers.
[20:40.340 --> 20:40.940]  Oh, sorry.
[20:41.160 --> 20:44.700]  When... should mention the... the costume shop again.
[20:45.120 --> 20:48.560]  There's... the shop will make it with these specialist costume shop people.
[20:48.780 --> 20:51.020]  And then there's a wardrobe typically called mistress.
[20:51.220 --> 20:53.720]  It is usually women most of the time.
[20:54.240 --> 20:56.140]  Wardrobe mistress is a wardrobe crew head.
[20:56.140 --> 21:01.240]  We'll... we'll run it... the costumes in the theater or the venue or whatever it is.
[21:02.120 --> 21:03.220]  Assist with changes.
[21:03.420 --> 21:04.460]  Handle quick changes.
[21:05.440 --> 21:07.460]  Have... you know, and be able to fix things quickly.
[21:07.700 --> 21:09.460]  I used to work at the Metropolitan Opera.
[21:09.920 --> 21:12.140]  And I was doing sound for a front of house event.
[21:12.320 --> 21:13.360]  And I had to go get a tux.
[21:13.440 --> 21:14.280]  And I don't own a tux.
[21:14.360 --> 21:17.380]  And I wouldn't wear it if I did own it because I'd be loading the truck later.
[21:18.400 --> 21:20.200]  And I got a chorus tux.
[21:20.860 --> 21:21.300]  And...
[21:21.300 --> 21:22.680]  I'm gonna disable this.
[21:24.400 --> 21:24.840]  The...
[21:26.000 --> 21:30.080]  There's... you know, the Met has rooms and rooms full of tuxedos because the chorus needs to wear it.
[21:30.140 --> 21:30.740]  So I got one.
[21:31.360 --> 21:33.680]  And about five minutes before... or maybe... sorry.
[21:33.740 --> 21:37.920]  About an hour before the party started, every single button fell off the shirt on this thing.
[21:38.100 --> 21:38.380]  So...
[21:38.380 --> 21:46.280]  I went to... ran up to the wardrobe guy and he actually stitched every single one back on before I had to go out and hand the microphone to Pavarotti or whatever it was.
[21:46.280 --> 21:46.620]  So...
[21:47.200 --> 21:47.580]  It's...
[21:47.580 --> 21:49.240]  Again, high pressure stuff.
[21:49.440 --> 21:50.940]  But you have to be able to move quickly on that.
[21:51.140 --> 21:52.540]  This is why this stuff is expensive.
[21:52.720 --> 21:54.560]  You need lots and lots of people around.
[21:54.980 --> 21:56.360]  Because you're not gonna... you know...
[21:56.360 --> 21:59.640]  It's not worth engineering a robot to put buttons back on the tux.
[21:59.740 --> 22:00.760]  You don't know when that's gonna happen.
[22:02.480 --> 22:02.860]  Lighting.
[22:03.000 --> 22:06.180]  Again, lighting has gone from being very, very low tech to very high tech.
[22:06.260 --> 22:07.360]  Although it's really...
[22:08.060 --> 22:09.260]  It's stuck in a lot of ways.
[22:09.400 --> 22:11.160]  I could spend three hours talking about that.
[22:11.240 --> 22:13.760]  You can read my blog about that if you want.
[22:14.380 --> 22:15.000]  Same idea.
[22:15.000 --> 22:15.840]  You have a lighting designer.
[22:16.000 --> 22:17.900]  You have a master electrician or a production electrician.
[22:18.380 --> 22:19.180]  They'll prep...
[22:19.560 --> 22:20.680]  One thing that's a little bit different.
[22:20.760 --> 22:24.000]  They'll prep as much of the gear in the shop in advance as possible.
[22:24.440 --> 22:25.820]  Time on site is expensive.
[22:26.560 --> 22:30.920]  Even in this place with volunteer labor, they had to rent the hotel.
[22:31.140 --> 22:34.340]  And so, you know, it'd be really nice if you could just rent the hotel for the whole week.
[22:34.340 --> 22:37.880]  You come in, you work eight-hour days, and it's not worth it.
[22:38.320 --> 22:39.500]  So, this thing...
[22:39.500 --> 22:41.340]  I don't know what time they got in here, but Thursday...
[22:42.020 --> 22:43.360]  What time did you all get in here Thursday?
[22:44.420 --> 22:45.280]  Ten at night?
[22:45.420 --> 22:46.160]  Ten at night?
[22:46.700 --> 22:46.960]  So, yeah.
[22:47.240 --> 22:48.160]  So, that's...
[22:48.820 --> 22:49.180]  Yeah.
[22:49.720 --> 22:50.960]  You got in at 3 a.m.
[22:51.420 --> 22:51.740]  or...
[22:51.740 --> 22:51.960]  No.
[22:52.760 --> 22:53.080]  So...
[22:53.820 --> 22:54.140]  So...
[22:54.140 --> 23:00.360]  And again, so you want to do as much of that prep work as you can off site, because you want to make everything go as smoothly as possible on site.
[23:00.780 --> 23:03.840]  And also, you have to be ready for everything to go wrong when you get on site.
[23:04.000 --> 23:05.360]  So, that's the other part of it.
[23:05.400 --> 23:06.500]  But basically, the same structure.
[23:06.960 --> 23:07.280]  Same...
[23:07.280 --> 23:09.620]  I'm just popping together sound and video here.
[23:09.740 --> 23:12.300]  They're not typically the same departments, but they have a very similar process.
[23:14.040 --> 23:17.720]  Again, there's some designer or consultant or engineer that designs it.
[23:18.220 --> 23:22.800]  The crew chief will pull and prep the gear, again, as much as possible off site, if it's possible.
[23:24.320 --> 23:25.240]  The gear...
[23:25.240 --> 23:26.660]  Actually, I should have mentioned this with lighting, too.
[23:26.700 --> 23:38.960]  The gear is typically rented to the production on a weekly basis, if it's a theatrical production, or on an event basis, like this meeting has, you know, gear rented from Thursday until probably very early Monday morning.
[23:40.420 --> 23:43.060]  And again, operated and maintained by a crew on site.
[23:43.240 --> 23:43.980]  And then it's sent back.
[23:44.120 --> 23:50.280]  So, this is the advantage of lighting and sound and video and things like that, is that it's built up out of standardized components.
[23:50.640 --> 23:57.580]  These lights back here, Source 4 PARs, and those are probably Source 4s up there as well, really become the workhorse standard instruments.
[23:58.280 --> 24:00.520]  That could have been used on another show on Wednesday.
[24:00.840 --> 24:03.000]  It could be used on another show tomorrow morning and so on.
[24:03.200 --> 24:05.480]  Same thing with mixers and speakers and so on.
[24:05.540 --> 24:08.340]  So, that's the only way that we can afford this really expensive stuff.
[24:09.000 --> 24:10.940]  in order to get the show done.
[24:11.300 --> 24:20.960]  Scenery, though, is built, you know, you make this backdrop, for example, whatever the next meeting is in here, whenever that is, they may not want this.
[24:21.280 --> 24:21.520]  Right?
[24:21.640 --> 24:27.120]  So, you're not going to leave it around and, you know, maybe be able to sell it to somebody else.
[24:27.260 --> 24:30.220]  So, that's why scenery ends up being all custom and being very expensive.
[24:31.440 --> 24:31.840]  Okay.
[24:32.800 --> 24:38.180]  So, the title of the talk here is called Hacking and Live Entertainment and I really do think that that's what we do.
[24:38.420 --> 24:39.600]  Actually, the title is Hack for an Audience.
[24:40.760 --> 24:45.860]  So, our industry, we've grown a huge amount in the last couple of decades.
[24:46.260 --> 24:48.440]  I've been in it about 20 years, 25 years.
[24:48.980 --> 24:51.420]  It's gotten changed so much in that time.
[24:51.560 --> 24:52.120]  It's really exciting.
[24:52.120 --> 24:55.080]  It's still tiny by standard most industries.
[24:55.280 --> 25:04.360]  So, I did a little bit of Googling the other night and just found quickly the entire concert industry was about $4 billion gross in 2008.
[25:04.460 --> 25:05.660]  That's a lot of money, $4 billion.
[25:06.600 --> 25:10.440]  Revenue GE in that year, $183 billion.
[25:10.940 --> 25:18.660]  So, trying to all concert production, I can't do that math in my head, but a very tiny fraction of both one major company's revenue is.
[25:18.660 --> 25:21.620]  So, we're a tiny business in the big picture.
[25:21.980 --> 25:24.660]  So, that means we can't afford a lot of basic research.
[25:25.380 --> 25:29.800]  So, and what does that mean if we can't develop things specifically for our business?
[25:29.880 --> 25:30.980]  Well, that's changing a little bit.
[25:31.840 --> 25:34.280]  What we have to do is hack other people's technologies.
[25:34.960 --> 25:41.680]  One thing that's interesting is the basic research thing is still very much true, but people are starting to recognize us as a testing ground.
[25:42.240 --> 25:48.380]  If you look in the other room, there's some LED fixtures on the ground that are uplighting those columns in the ceiling.
[25:49.020 --> 25:58.900]  The LED manufacturers are realizing that, hey, you know, what they want to make for the home market is a really nice looking white light incandescent replacement.
[25:59.200 --> 26:02.400]  We want really weird colors and things like this.
[26:02.720 --> 26:06.260]  Very vivid reds and greens and blues and ambers and whatever.
[26:06.860 --> 26:09.980]  So, they've said, hey, here's a market that we can develop all this stuff.
[26:09.980 --> 26:13.680]  So, a little tiny market or company from our business actually got bought by Philips.
[26:14.520 --> 26:17.340]  And obviously, you know, they'll make some money for them.
[26:17.440 --> 26:24.020]  But I mean, again, it's 1% of what their lamp, you know, residential lamp market will be.
[26:24.180 --> 26:25.580]  So, they're starting to realize that.
[26:25.700 --> 26:39.560]  And also in the Ethernet world, the guy that's in charge of the power over Ethernet committee actually comes from our business because we do really weird things with Ethernet and drag it through the mud, through elephant crap at the circus and things like that.
[26:39.800 --> 26:44.040]  So, you know, typical office environment, people don't do that.
[26:44.300 --> 26:47.820]  So, I don't know where you work, but...
[26:48.840 --> 26:53.000]  So, we have to also do all this while meeting these challenges and these constraints.
[26:53.300 --> 26:55.420]  It has to happen right now, right?
[26:55.540 --> 26:59.800]  Directors don't want to wait and time on stage costs a lot of money.
[26:59.900 --> 27:02.960]  I work up at Radio City occasionally and I can't...
[27:02.960 --> 27:05.140]  Well, don't call me on the numbers because I won't remember.
[27:05.140 --> 27:08.720]  But per hour up there is thousands of dollars.
[27:08.980 --> 27:11.060]  And it's not that the guys are making thousands of hours an hour.
[27:11.140 --> 27:13.060]  They make a good living, but they work a lot.
[27:13.500 --> 27:14.820]  There's lots of people working.
[27:14.980 --> 27:16.520]  That's why it's expensive.
[27:16.660 --> 27:29.300]  And you're in the middle of Manhattan, this big massive room that can only be used for, you know, to make money a few nights out of the year, you know, in the big picture compared to a hotel where you can constantly churn that stuff.
[27:29.660 --> 27:30.580]  We have to move now.
[27:30.740 --> 27:31.640]  We have to move right now.
[27:31.640 --> 27:34.900]  It also has to be reliable or at least appear to be reliable.
[27:35.960 --> 27:37.020]  I'll talk more about that.
[27:37.500 --> 27:42.900]  So, you know, the example I always use for this is if you go see a Broadway show and the mic is cutting out all the time.
[27:42.900 --> 27:44.280]  You're talking and it's like this.
[27:45.960 --> 27:47.240]  People are going to want their money back.
[27:47.400 --> 27:49.020]  But we're using a radio transmitter.
[27:49.220 --> 27:49.940]  It's typically analog.
[27:49.940 --> 27:53.540]  But same thing that there's, you know, the same basic technology.
[27:53.700 --> 27:56.840]  Their cell phone works, uses, their cell phone craps out all the time.
[27:56.980 --> 27:58.180]  And they're like, you know, it's the same thing.
[27:59.420 --> 28:01.160]  But, you know, we're doing a show.
[28:01.160 --> 28:03.720]  So, it has to sort of work and for a good reason.
[28:03.820 --> 28:06.900]  And you don't want to, you're in the, doing that period piece.
[28:07.120 --> 28:11.260]  And, you know, you don't want things, you know, they didn't have microphones then.
[28:11.260 --> 28:12.880]  So you don't want to have those kind of problems.
[28:13.780 --> 28:14.720]  Show must go on.
[28:14.940 --> 28:18.600]  Again, we're not doing brain surgery or something, but the show is our product.
[28:18.720 --> 28:19.460]  That's what we sell.
[28:19.580 --> 28:21.320]  So without the show, we don't have a product.
[28:21.380 --> 28:28.360]  And this is one thing that we pound into the heads of our students is that, you know, not only this, but the key to this is you have to show up on time.
[28:28.440 --> 28:29.320]  You have to be reliable.
[28:29.640 --> 28:38.000]  You can be the most amazing lighting board programmer in the world, but if you oversleep routinely, you're not going to work.
[28:38.000 --> 28:40.040]  If you're an asshole, you're not going to work.
[28:40.240 --> 28:40.940]  It doesn't matter.
[28:41.040 --> 28:41.880]  You've got to get along with people.
[28:42.000 --> 28:43.140]  We'll talk more about that in a little bit.
[28:44.160 --> 28:46.500]  And again, one way or another, you have to get through the show.
[28:46.720 --> 28:49.540]  Cirque, actually, I forgot what the French term is, but they have a thing.
[28:49.880 --> 28:53.100]  When everything else breaks, they'll send the jugglers out, right?
[28:53.180 --> 28:55.580]  So if you want your money back, they'll give you your money back.
[28:55.700 --> 28:57.960]  But they'll give you a show one way or another.
[28:58.100 --> 28:58.940]  That's what we sell.
[28:59.020 --> 28:59.600]  That's our product.
[29:00.360 --> 29:01.560]  So how do we do that?
[29:01.700 --> 29:04.500]  We do the highest level systems integration we can.
[29:04.500 --> 29:10.000]  So I think, like, hardware hacking in particular is really cool.
[29:10.140 --> 29:10.800]  I think it's great.
[29:11.600 --> 29:16.100]  I personally try to do as little as possible that on anything related to an entertainment project.
[29:16.820 --> 29:18.040]  There's a bunch of reasons for that.
[29:18.120 --> 29:18.940]  Number one is time.
[29:19.180 --> 29:25.620]  And number two is while it's great to learn about stuff and how to do it, I don't want to...
[29:25.620 --> 29:32.400]  You know, if I'm... I just put an interactive sound system in a guy's garden in Nantucket, I don't want any phone calls about that.
[29:32.540 --> 29:33.940]  I don't want to be, wow, I never...
[29:34.320 --> 29:38.940]  I never, you know, knew that the sensor would interact with this that way.
[29:39.080 --> 29:39.840]  I don't want to hear that.
[29:40.800 --> 29:41.640]  That's another story.
[29:41.800 --> 29:44.060]  But the...
[29:44.640 --> 29:46.080]  So we do systems integration.
[29:46.220 --> 29:48.300]  We take blocks of things and put them together.
[29:48.500 --> 29:49.840]  And there's a lot of reasons for that.
[29:50.060 --> 29:51.220]  Speed, of course, is one.
[29:51.220 --> 29:54.980]  The other part is the boundaries between things are good.
[29:55.140 --> 29:56.040]  I like that.
[29:56.280 --> 30:03.180]  Because that means if I can test it as working from here to here, it's not working from here to here, I know that this box is the problem.
[30:03.360 --> 30:07.260]  And if I have ten minutes before the show, I need to be able to fix it right now.
[30:07.380 --> 30:11.620]  I can't be, well, you know, we'll get to it tomorrow and, you know, that doesn't work.
[30:12.540 --> 30:14.780]  The other thing for us is about the end result.
[30:14.980 --> 30:17.680]  In a magic trick, there's an effect and there's a method.
[30:17.680 --> 30:21.700]  There's the effect is what the audience sees and the method is what the magician is doing.
[30:21.920 --> 30:23.740]  So we're like the magicians.
[30:23.920 --> 30:26.060]  We're the method people backstage.
[30:26.720 --> 30:28.700]  What the audience sees is the effect.
[30:29.240 --> 30:31.200]  So I was talking downstairs.
[30:31.220 --> 30:34.160]  There was a guy who did a really cool live wire.
[30:34.580 --> 30:36.560]  I think it's Martin Luther King thing.
[30:36.640 --> 30:37.580]  Anybody see that down there?
[30:38.560 --> 30:39.500]  It's really cool.
[30:39.680 --> 30:41.500]  He built everything himself, which is great.
[30:41.920 --> 30:43.880]  I would never build it like that ever for a show.
[30:44.160 --> 30:46.260]  In fact, that stuff has been used by Blueman Group a lot.
[30:46.920 --> 30:54.200]  We have animation controllers that are built, packaged up, that have front ends for it and all that, that we could build that.
[30:54.340 --> 30:56.480]  Probably cost ten times as much as his costs.
[30:56.800 --> 31:00.700]  But number one, I can do it very fast.
[31:00.740 --> 31:02.300]  I could build that in a couple hours.
[31:02.640 --> 31:04.480]  I'm underestimating the complexity of that.
[31:05.400 --> 31:08.140]  But also there's somebody on the phone I can get.
[31:08.320 --> 31:10.300]  And also other people that use it.
[31:10.640 --> 31:14.060]  Those people have already made all the mistakes and done that for me.
[31:14.060 --> 31:18.040]  So that's really important in order to work for the show.
[31:18.720 --> 31:26.800]  So, but when we can't find something that we can build from technologies that we really understand, then we appropriate, adapt, and hack when we have to.
[31:27.660 --> 31:31.960]  Hacked items, I'll give you a good example of that, often morph into a real product eventually.
[31:32.840 --> 31:40.080]  And then again, the product development really takes place by manufacturers, and they package this technology.
[31:40.220 --> 31:41.820]  I've said that a few times, but that's really important.
[31:43.160 --> 31:52.460]  The people on site, you know, typically people who like to build electronic components are not often the type of people who want to sit and run a Broadway show for ten years.
[31:52.800 --> 31:56.900]  I'm not saying either one is smarter than the other or anything like that, but they're just different mindsets.
[31:57.240 --> 32:03.940]  So, you're not really going to get somebody who can do board level repair often, who wants to sit on the show.
[32:04.120 --> 32:05.800]  Again, there's always exceptions to these rules.
[32:06.020 --> 32:12.700]  But generally, the people that do the work on the show are good at having a different skill set.
[32:12.980 --> 32:15.220]  So, again, this packaging is really important.
[32:15.340 --> 32:17.280]  These boundaries are really important to what we do.
[32:17.280 --> 32:19.880]  So, I'll give you some examples of this.
[32:20.400 --> 32:21.080]  Oops, sorry.
[32:21.240 --> 32:21.740]  I hit that one.
[32:21.960 --> 32:22.700]  This is a...
[32:22.700 --> 32:29.720]  I built a little lighting system when I was 13 and made my own flashpots, something I don't recommend.
[32:31.520 --> 32:34.620]  And I use black powder for flashpots.
[32:34.780 --> 32:35.460]  So, again, I don't.
[32:35.780 --> 32:36.640]  There's people who know.
[32:37.020 --> 32:38.040]  I was 13.
[32:38.040 --> 32:40.180]  I lived in a little small town down in Maryland.
[32:40.720 --> 32:48.160]  But even worse than that is I actually fired the flashpots with 110 bolts with two bolts sticking up through a piece of wood.
[32:48.840 --> 32:50.360]  So, I'm still alive.
[32:50.520 --> 32:51.760]  I have all my fingers and everything.
[32:52.000 --> 32:55.040]  But, yeah, not recommended to do that.
[32:55.120 --> 33:00.520]  The best was actually when I misfired all three at once in the band, my brother's band or something.
[33:00.700 --> 33:03.160]  But we were in the second four of the volunteer firehouse.
[33:03.260 --> 33:03.660]  It was okay.
[33:04.200 --> 33:04.580]  But...
[33:04.580 --> 33:07.060]  So, this is the type of hacking I don't recommend.
[33:07.640 --> 33:08.520]  But here's some...
[33:08.520 --> 33:11.020]  We have a thing called the Stagecraft mailing list.
[33:11.420 --> 33:12.880]  Some of you all might be on that.
[33:14.120 --> 33:15.000]  It's often...
[33:15.000 --> 33:17.820]  There's a very low signal-to-noise ratio on that list.
[33:17.920 --> 33:19.600]  But there's a lot of good people on it.
[33:19.640 --> 33:20.460]  So, I posted up there.
[33:20.560 --> 33:23.020]  I said, hey, I'm giving this talk on misusing technology.
[33:23.400 --> 33:24.580]  And I asked for a few examples.
[33:24.600 --> 33:25.620]  And I got some good ones.
[33:26.440 --> 33:27.560]  This is going to drive me crazy.
[33:29.540 --> 33:30.520]  So, solar shower.
[33:30.640 --> 33:31.520]  This is meant for camping.
[33:31.700 --> 33:33.980]  Used to provide running water for a kitchen sink.
[33:34.080 --> 33:36.160]  So, that's a great idea.
[33:36.320 --> 33:36.920]  It's a little...
[33:36.920 --> 33:38.280]  You obviously have to hang it somehow.
[33:38.440 --> 33:39.820]  But maybe you can hang it behind the scenery.
[33:40.300 --> 33:41.740]  You know, you could also go and...
[33:41.740 --> 33:44.060]  And you could really plumb the thing to the stage.
[33:44.560 --> 33:47.420]  But that's not going to be worth it for an effect that runs five minutes.
[33:47.720 --> 33:49.180]  Of course, there's lots of operational issues.
[33:49.320 --> 33:50.280]  You have to make sure it's full.
[33:51.100 --> 33:52.560]  There's enough pressure and so on.
[33:52.660 --> 33:55.700]  But, you know, this thing you can go down and buy for $15, $20.
[33:56.280 --> 34:02.360]  And, you know, to get a plumber out there to plumb copper pipe out to the stage would be, you know, hundreds of dollars.
[34:02.360 --> 34:05.280]  So, this is the type of mentality that we have for this stuff.
[34:05.720 --> 34:06.940]  This is one I didn't know about.
[34:07.060 --> 34:11.260]  But, people use baby diaper wipes to remove theatrical makeup.
[34:11.480 --> 34:13.620]  There, of course, are theatrical makeup removers.
[34:13.740 --> 34:15.460]  But, they probably just have the same materials as this.
[34:16.080 --> 34:17.700]  This is a really important one.
[34:18.220 --> 34:19.480]  I should have thought of this myself.
[34:19.720 --> 34:21.620]  But, chain motors.
[34:21.860 --> 34:23.080]  That's... or chain hoist.
[34:23.220 --> 34:28.140]  That's a product from industry for hoisting heavy things.
[34:28.260 --> 34:28.760]  Get back to that one.
[34:29.800 --> 34:34.100]  The pic... the way I have the picture there is the way they were really designed to operate.
[34:34.360 --> 34:35.420]  There's a hook on top.
[34:36.480 --> 34:38.180]  The chain lifting mechanism.
[34:38.360 --> 34:42.660]  The little black thing there is the... where the excess chain goes.
[34:42.860 --> 34:43.540]  And then the hook.
[34:43.680 --> 34:46.560]  So, if you're using this in an auto garage, you hang this thing on the ceiling.
[34:46.960 --> 34:50.120]  You hook up the bottom hook to whatever you want to lift and you lift it up.
[34:51.280 --> 34:56.680]  In the 70s, when concert touring really first started, they needed to lift heavy things in the air.
[34:56.680 --> 34:58.480]  Lighting truss, the speakers, and so on.
[34:59.120 --> 35:05.720]  But, it's really a pain in the ass to hump one of these things that weighs a couple hundred pounds all the way up to the grid of Madison Square Garden.
[35:06.300 --> 35:06.680]  So...
[35:07.800 --> 35:08.380]  Excuse me.
[35:09.320 --> 35:12.380]  So, they tried... they ran them upside down, actually.
[35:12.600 --> 35:18.840]  So, we actually put the motor down and the chain with the hook... the long length of chain up.
[35:19.000 --> 35:20.560]  So, all you have to do is pull the chain up.
[35:20.680 --> 35:21.520]  It's a lot easier.
[35:21.720 --> 35:26.380]  First, the manufacturer... this picture is from CM, which is a very big manufacturer of these things.
[35:26.380 --> 35:28.760]  They think, whoa, you're violating every warranty and so on.
[35:28.940 --> 35:31.620]  Now, they all make them to operate that way.
[35:31.740 --> 35:35.260]  So, this is our basic workhorse component that we...
[35:35.260 --> 35:40.040]  rigging component that we sort of found by misusing it originally.
[35:40.480 --> 35:42.680]  So, interesting development comes out of that.
[35:44.300 --> 35:48.640]  Condoms... we use on wireless mics because performers sweat a lot.
[35:49.440 --> 35:51.040]  Dancers and so on sweat.
[35:51.040 --> 35:54.400]  And, you know, salty sweat gets into the electronics of the mic.
[35:54.720 --> 35:55.560]  Shorts it out.
[35:55.720 --> 35:56.420]  It's not good.
[35:56.580 --> 35:59.020]  So, the cheapest thing is to buy some condoms.
[35:59.380 --> 36:01.140]  Preferably non-lubricated condom.
[36:02.440 --> 36:04.020]  Put them around the mic.
[36:04.120 --> 36:08.620]  It's also great to send production assistants down to the store to buy a case of condoms.
[36:09.240 --> 36:11.820]  They have some strange things for that.
[36:13.260 --> 36:16.180]  Somebody's 55-gallon drums for fog effects.
[36:16.460 --> 36:19.380]  I built one of these in that same system you saw back there.
[36:19.500 --> 36:26.120]  We just use it for... put dry ice in it and a heater, get hot water, and then we get... release carbon dioxide fog.
[36:27.140 --> 36:29.500]  Now, this was the way it was done for years and years.
[36:29.620 --> 36:30.660]  These things always rust out.
[36:30.800 --> 36:32.580]  The bottom will fall out on stage and stuff.
[36:33.500 --> 36:39.580]  The company out in New Jersey, used to be in Manhattan, came up with a plastic version of this.
[36:39.640 --> 36:43.400]  And those are used much more widely now because they don't... doesn't corrode over time.
[36:43.580 --> 36:45.820]  But, again, something that we found from another industry.
[36:46.380 --> 36:47.380]  So, this is somebody...
[36:47.380 --> 36:48.440]  Steven Reed sent in here.
[36:48.620 --> 36:49.120]  Pool noodles.
[36:49.500 --> 36:51.680]  You can buy them at the end of the year.
[36:52.180 --> 36:52.840]  Very cheap.
[36:53.000 --> 36:57.640]  And then use them for... to fake up molding and things like that because it just has to look like molding.
[36:58.320 --> 36:59.840]  It doesn't really have to be molding.
[36:59.900 --> 37:00.660]  Molding is expensive.
[37:01.600 --> 37:02.980]  And there are times where you need it.
[37:03.060 --> 37:08.780]  But, in this case, not only do we... you're not going to be that close to it, but often our scenery has to be moved.
[37:08.920 --> 37:10.440]  So, we want it to be as lightweight as possible.
[37:12.160 --> 37:13.120]  Cremora for pyro.
[37:13.220 --> 37:19.740]  This is used... this person said that Disney was using this on Dragon, which I would believe because I did this myself in college.
[37:20.020 --> 37:23.740]  If you get enough Cremora in the air and light it up, you get a pretty good dust explosion.
[37:25.620 --> 37:26.520]  And it's cheap.
[37:26.520 --> 37:28.680]  So, I don't know what...
[37:28.680 --> 37:32.820]  I don't think the MSDS on Cremora really talks about combusting it and burning it.
[37:32.980 --> 37:35.440]  So, there are some issues with that.
[37:36.520 --> 37:36.960]  But...
[37:36.960 --> 37:38.240]  This is...
[37:38.240 --> 37:38.660]  I did a...
[37:39.360 --> 37:42.020]  Right when I got out of college, I was working for a special effects guy.
[37:42.280 --> 37:44.540]  And this is me hanging in a crane in California.
[37:45.140 --> 37:51.700]  And those are photo strobes, big, high power photo strobes that photographers use.
[37:51.960 --> 37:54.480]  And we had hacked this thing together in a system.
[37:54.780 --> 37:55.220]  There's...
[37:55.220 --> 37:57.900]  I think we had two racks of 12, was it?
[37:59.120 --> 38:04.040]  And like a thousand amp three phase generator feed these because the load on them is unbelievable when they recharge.
[38:04.340 --> 38:09.500]  So, to do lightning effects, not the bolt, but the flash and the lightning, we would fire these off in sequence.
[38:09.660 --> 38:11.860]  We built a little sequencing box to trigger these.
[38:12.540 --> 38:20.160]  And the interesting thing about this is not only did you get the flash and the different flashes, but you get a little bit of movement in the flash, which looked good on film.
[38:20.260 --> 38:23.860]  Of course, that would sort of beat against the camera shutter and do weird things.
[38:25.060 --> 38:30.760]  So, this actually, when I was up in that bucket even higher, there was a brush fire broke out underneath me, which is very exciting.
[38:31.260 --> 38:33.220]  So, it's always interesting stuff happening.
[38:33.720 --> 38:35.100]  This is with that same company.
[38:35.560 --> 38:42.460]  I don't know if anybody recognizes this location, but we had bought a military surplus 20,000 wide Xenon searchlight.
[38:42.660 --> 38:45.440]  So, we actually used it to shoot up on the World Trade Center.
[38:45.840 --> 38:50.920]  So, actually, I drove a U-Haul truck onto the plaza, the World Trade Center 20 years ago.
[38:51.660 --> 38:53.500]  There's the same light there.
[38:53.660 --> 38:58.260]  A big thing was taken off like some weird helicopter in Vietnam or something.
[38:58.380 --> 38:58.840]  I don't know what it was.
[38:58.920 --> 39:00.280]  And that was on Little Shop of Horrors.
[39:01.300 --> 39:07.460]  So, you know, again, something that was meant from military surplus from a searchlight, we're adapting it and using it for our purposes here.
[39:09.580 --> 39:10.320]  Let's see.
[39:10.780 --> 39:11.080]  Okay.
[39:11.440 --> 39:14.000]  I'm going to just check something really quick, make sure.
[39:14.600 --> 39:15.640]  Oh, I think I'm in good shape.
[39:16.040 --> 39:16.460]  Okay.
[39:16.460 --> 39:20.460]  So, again, I've talked a lot about the sort of strategies, how we use this stuff successfully.
[39:20.680 --> 39:24.500]  But it really is the key thing, the key factor in all this is the people.
[39:24.500 --> 39:31.740]  You have to have people, of course, but you need good people to do the show correctly, and you need to treat them well.
[39:31.800 --> 39:37.500]  My friend, the head sound guy at Radio City was just saying the other day, bad catering equals bad show.
[39:37.900 --> 39:41.560]  And it's not about that, oh, we got crappy foods, we're not going to do our job.
[39:41.560 --> 39:44.220]  It just shows the approach of the producers to everything.
[39:44.360 --> 39:47.660]  If they're going to scrimp on the catering, that means they also scrimped on everything.
[39:48.120 --> 39:49.720]  I can't read that, but 15?
[39:50.320 --> 39:50.600]  15.
[39:50.780 --> 39:51.080]  Great.
[39:51.500 --> 39:51.540]  Thanks.
[39:52.960 --> 39:54.360]  Also, generalists with specialties.
[39:54.480 --> 39:56.080]  That's what's really interesting about this.
[39:56.180 --> 39:57.700]  You really have to be able to do everything.
[39:57.840 --> 40:04.080]  In our program that I teach in, even if you only want to do sound the rest of your life, you still have to take scenery, lighting, and some other areas.
[40:04.620 --> 40:06.860]  Because, A, you have to interact with those people.
[40:06.920 --> 40:07.840]  You have to get along with them.
[40:08.220 --> 40:11.100]  Also, B, you don't know what you're going to end up doing.
[40:11.240 --> 40:13.300]  When I got out of college, I wanted to do lighting.
[40:13.500 --> 40:18.920]  I ended up doing sound and show control and all kinds of weird video, weird special effects, things like that.
[40:18.920 --> 40:19.480]  You don't know.
[40:19.720 --> 40:24.580]  So, being able to bounce around, excuse me, in different areas is important.
[40:24.860 --> 40:28.360]  In the film world, it's interesting, because even the union is very specialized.
[40:28.620 --> 40:36.640]  You go in and you are set up in Local 52, or whatever the union is, as a focus puller, or a camera assistant, or whatever.
[40:36.760 --> 40:38.280]  That's what you do, a gaffer, a grip.
[40:38.640 --> 40:41.920]  In the stagehands local in New York, there aren't any job classification.
[40:41.920 --> 40:47.440]  If you can get hired as a master carpenter one day and a head video person the next, great.
[40:48.180 --> 40:51.940]  And those people, the more skills you have, the more valuable they are.
[40:52.120 --> 40:52.320]  Excuse me.
[41:00.330 --> 41:01.010]  That's nice.
[41:01.230 --> 41:02.490]  And you have to love it.
[41:02.550 --> 41:04.510]  You have to love the job.
[41:06.070 --> 41:12.170]  I was saying we were out, we did New York Philharmonic Monday through Wednesday, and it's raining, it's hot, you know.
[41:12.350 --> 41:13.390]  And, but it's exciting.
[41:13.570 --> 41:15.110]  It's even that, it's so exciting to do that.
[41:15.210 --> 41:17.290]  I've done that for, like, more than 10 years.
[41:18.190 --> 41:21.390]  The people are great, and you have, that's the only way to do it.
[41:22.110 --> 41:26.330]  Also, you need to be able to have people who can load the truck and talk to the CEO.
[41:27.050 --> 41:28.630]  There's lots of people who can load trucks.
[41:28.730 --> 41:30.050]  There's lots of people who can talk to the CEO.
[41:30.510 --> 41:32.290]  It's a sort of small subset that can do both.
[41:32.410 --> 41:33.470]  But that's what you need to do.
[41:33.710 --> 41:39.670]  Like, I literally, on that job, I was standing next to Zarin Mehta with the microphone on stage at 8 o'clock.
[41:39.690 --> 41:41.050]  He was the director of the Philharmonic.
[41:41.250 --> 41:44.050]  And then, 2 a.m., I'm loading the truck with the Teamsters.
[41:44.270 --> 41:46.410]  So, that, to me, that's cool.
[41:46.410 --> 41:53.430]  But if you don't want to get dirty or you only want to get dirty and never want to get clean, that's not the place to go.
[41:53.950 --> 41:55.130]  Had to be able to handle chaos.
[41:55.190 --> 41:57.170]  I'm talking a lot about that show because we just did it.
[41:57.230 --> 42:01.890]  We had a Chinese orchestra in the first act and then the New York Philharmonic in the second.
[42:02.790 --> 42:04.010]  Mass chaos had changed.
[42:04.110 --> 42:05.250]  It wasn't planned very well.
[42:06.130 --> 42:08.690]  Everything, they waited too long because of the rain and so on.
[42:08.730 --> 42:10.350]  It was really badly planned.
[42:10.350 --> 42:11.770]  I can say that on recording.
[42:12.410 --> 42:13.490]  I'll stand by that.
[42:13.870 --> 42:15.290]  It was very badly planned and managed.
[42:16.130 --> 42:18.970]  But, for us, that's, you know, you just got to deal with it.
[42:19.030 --> 42:20.310]  You still have to get the show up.
[42:20.410 --> 42:22.590]  So, you have to be able to deal with that pressure and that chaos.
[42:23.550 --> 42:26.530]  And I actually enjoy working in that situation, especially when...
[42:26.530 --> 42:28.990]  Unless, if I didn't cause the chaos, that's bad.
[42:30.930 --> 42:31.590]  Deadline's a deadline.
[42:32.170 --> 42:33.250]  You got to get the show.
[42:33.450 --> 42:34.350]  You got to do the show.
[42:35.010 --> 42:35.990]  Something has to work.
[42:37.050 --> 42:41.810]  This is the cardinal sin of being late and not getting this show off.
[42:41.910 --> 42:43.830]  These are the things that we try never to do.
[42:46.530 --> 42:47.590]  We work in teams.
[42:47.770 --> 42:49.350]  That's the only way we can accomplish any of this.
[42:49.430 --> 42:52.810]  There's really no room on a show for a selfish, you know, backstage star.
[42:52.970 --> 42:55.970]  Somebody, I'm the greatest, whatever, you know, in the world.
[42:56.250 --> 42:56.850]  So what?
[42:56.990 --> 42:58.330]  You have to get along with people.
[42:58.330 --> 43:01.710]  You're going to ride in a van with them for 14 hours or whatever it is.
[43:01.770 --> 43:02.970]  Or be on tour for a year.
[43:03.290 --> 43:06.150]  Or be stuck with them in a room for three days.
[43:06.610 --> 43:07.230]  Things like that.
[43:07.390 --> 43:09.010]  And also, it's not about us backstage.
[43:09.010 --> 43:12.270]  It's about the person, the performer on stage.
[43:12.470 --> 43:16.510]  So, you need to have social skills.
[43:16.570 --> 43:17.870]  You need to be able to deal with people.
[43:18.230 --> 43:23.430]  Also understand intuitively how people work, how groups work, things like that.
[43:24.490 --> 43:27.370]  The really cool part about that is that everybody has the same goal.
[43:27.370 --> 43:29.170]  We're all working towards that opening night.
[43:29.310 --> 43:30.450]  And that's really exciting.
[43:30.570 --> 43:31.210]  That's unusual.
[43:31.630 --> 43:35.170]  The older I get, the more I realize how that's kind of rare in other industries.
[43:36.050 --> 43:39.010]  I mean, of course, you have personality conflicts and so on.
[43:39.110 --> 43:41.310]  But everybody's still trying to get the show up.
[43:42.070 --> 43:43.310]  And again, I mentioned this before.
[43:43.310 --> 43:46.490]  We like these departmental boundaries because we need...
[43:46.490 --> 43:50.970]  It gives us points of accountability and points to manage the communications between departments.
[43:51.070 --> 43:51.710]  That's really important.
[43:52.990 --> 43:56.070]  Also, like technical boundaries, I mentioned this before.
[43:56.070 --> 44:05.570]  But something like an Ethernet port is great because, you know, we used to use, you know, serial and parallel and 12 other contact closures and whatever all coming in and out of some device.
[44:05.930 --> 44:07.250]  Now it's just an Ethernet port.
[44:07.330 --> 44:10.090]  And that's great because that means it gives us a way to test things.
[44:10.250 --> 44:13.610]  So, also in sort of technical design, we like that stuff.
[44:15.790 --> 44:22.670]  So, my system design principles for the way we work because I'm going to try to go through this pretty quickly because I want to leave a few minutes for questions here at the end.
[44:23.890 --> 44:25.510]  Absolutely, number one, ensure safety.
[44:25.850 --> 44:26.530]  Have to do that.
[44:27.210 --> 44:28.110]  Get to that in a second.
[44:28.550 --> 44:29.350]  Show must go on.
[44:29.450 --> 44:32.550]  And these are in order of importance in my mind.
[44:32.550 --> 44:35.430]  And this is literally directly out of a chapter in my book.
[44:35.470 --> 44:38.250]  So, I have a lot more information up there if you're interested.
[44:39.630 --> 44:40.650]  Simple is always better.
[44:40.810 --> 44:41.890]  Strive for elegance.
[44:42.370 --> 44:43.250]  Complexity is inevitable.
[44:43.450 --> 44:44.350]  Convolution is not.
[44:44.910 --> 44:46.810]  Leave room for unanticipated changes.
[44:47.230 --> 44:48.870]  I don't know what's going on with my voice today.
[44:50.950 --> 44:52.250]  And ensure security.
[44:52.250 --> 44:56.510]  This is a new one, actually, for us because of the people like at this convention.
[45:00.110 --> 45:03.750]  So, pretty obvious, but the old cliche, safety is no accident is really true.
[45:04.030 --> 45:06.630]  You have to think about this from the beginning to the end.
[45:07.050 --> 45:10.550]  No show is worth taking a risk and getting your arm crushed or something.
[45:11.590 --> 45:19.130]  I keep talking about this gig, but loading the truck the other night at 2 o'clock in the morning and a 1,000-pound rack of speakers fell over onto the truck.
[45:19.410 --> 45:20.250]  Nobody got hurt.
[45:21.450 --> 45:26.710]  That's partly luck, but also partly people have been doing this long enough that you know you don't stand there.
[45:26.950 --> 45:31.610]  So, if you watch Deadliest Catch, you don't stand in a certain place where that pot's going to fall onto the deck.
[45:31.830 --> 45:35.590]  If you're loading the truck, you don't stand anywhere near these speakers for that reason.
[45:35.750 --> 45:37.830]  So, experience counts for a lot.
[45:39.490 --> 45:42.530]  I don't really have time to go through this stuff, but there's some safety principles.
[45:42.690 --> 45:44.850]  We don't really have a lot of safety standards in our industry.
[45:44.930 --> 45:54.070]  There's a few sort of coming in now, but there's some basic concepts like single failure-proof safety, fail-safe design, emergency stop, peer review for safety, and so on.
[45:55.030 --> 46:07.850]  And I'm going to run out of time for it, but I have on my blog, which I'll give you the URL at the end, there's a video of the Pink concert from, I think it was last week, where it was, it looks to me, total speculation that it's a procedural failure,
[46:08.030 --> 46:10.270]  because she didn't get clipped into her harness properly.
[46:10.430 --> 46:13.610]  She goes like this, which means stop, and they went anyway.
[46:13.950 --> 46:16.390]  And she got dragged off the stage into a barricade.
[46:16.790 --> 46:24.290]  And amazingly, in the era of YouTube, there's somebody right next to them with a camera, who had captured the entire thing, which is great for us to figure out what happened.
[46:24.830 --> 46:33.670]  So watch that on there, it's pretty, you know, fortunately she's okay, but that kind of stuff is, that's, this is why safety is so important for us.
[46:33.710 --> 46:35.990]  And that looked to me, again, like a procedural failure.
[46:36.150 --> 46:39.350]  Not, it's pretty rare that a motor goes crazy and just starts pulling things.
[46:39.450 --> 46:40.570]  That doesn't happen very often.
[46:41.610 --> 46:45.770]  More likely is there somebody got complacent, they couldn't see, something like that.
[46:45.770 --> 46:46.770]  But again, I don't know.
[46:47.910 --> 46:51.570]  Part of that, though, is humans always need to be in the loop of anything that can hurt somebody.
[46:53.250 --> 46:56.870]  Because we never want to put your life into the hands of some computer.
[46:58.130 --> 47:01.330]  Because, although we certainly use the computers a lot to help us with this.
[47:01.430 --> 47:02.650]  I have a lot about this in my book.
[47:03.130 --> 47:05.590]  In factor automation, they just fence the machine off.
[47:05.770 --> 47:06.550]  We can't do that.
[47:06.650 --> 47:10.550]  We can't just build a fence across the stage and say, don't come near them.
[47:12.690 --> 47:13.750]  Right, talked about that.
[47:13.750 --> 47:13.770]  We can't do that.
[47:14.950 --> 47:15.390]  Oops.
[47:15.810 --> 47:15.830]  Sorry.
[47:16.470 --> 47:17.270]  Effect enabling.
[47:17.470 --> 47:18.570]  These are ways that we do this.
[47:18.710 --> 47:21.690]  That we integrate computers and humans into one system.
[47:22.550 --> 47:25.310]  Really interesting idea of enabling that comes from theme parks.
[47:26.290 --> 47:29.270]  Operator issues, you have to consider, like I was just talking about.
[47:29.650 --> 47:31.030]  Dead man switch, very important.
[47:31.170 --> 47:33.590]  That comes from, we stole that from the train industry.
[47:34.190 --> 47:37.950]  If you've ever seen Taking of the Pelham 123, the old version, they have a good explanation of that.
[47:38.030 --> 47:38.590]  Not the new one.
[47:39.970 --> 47:41.010]  Show must go on.
[47:41.610 --> 47:42.490]  Redundancy reliability.
[47:42.910 --> 47:45.070]  So I want to make sure I get to this before I run out of time.
[47:46.590 --> 47:49.910]  So this is really the easiest way to make sure that we can get a show in.
[47:50.450 --> 47:54.610]  These days, it's not that expensive to have another machine running a backup somehow.
[47:54.950 --> 47:56.790]  Or at least some sort of backup functionality.
[47:57.050 --> 48:02.170]  If your lighting consoles are expensive, but you can get a little box for a few hundred dollars that will run a few scenes.
[48:02.270 --> 48:05.270]  A work light scene, a basic lighting for the show, house lights.
[48:05.450 --> 48:06.530]  You can have that ready.
[48:06.690 --> 48:11.890]  So if something goes wrong with the main system, you can switch to the backup quickly.
[48:12.430 --> 48:14.790]  Always use copper instead of radio wherever possible.
[48:15.010 --> 48:16.470]  Only use radio when you have to.
[48:16.530 --> 48:17.150]  You have no choice.
[48:17.330 --> 48:18.110]  It's something that's spinning.
[48:18.210 --> 48:19.390]  It's spinning on stage or whatever.
[48:19.810 --> 48:21.250]  For obvious reasons with that.
[48:21.690 --> 48:23.530]  I'm going to skim over this because you know all that stuff.
[48:23.770 --> 48:24.870]  But I wanted to get to this.
[48:26.290 --> 48:27.430]  Have a backup plan.
[48:27.590 --> 48:29.270]  Very, very important for this.
[48:29.430 --> 48:30.230]  Train for disasters.
[48:30.410 --> 48:31.310]  Talking about CERC again.
[48:31.850 --> 48:35.870]  They have an entire exercise where they'll just sit around and think of everything that can go wrong.
[48:36.070 --> 48:38.670]  And every week or every month or whatever, they train for that.
[48:38.770 --> 48:39.410]  They try it out.
[48:39.550 --> 48:40.750]  The military does this.
[48:41.110 --> 48:45.230]  So that way you know, oh, somebody just got hurt over here.
[48:45.330 --> 48:46.170]  How do we get them out?
[48:46.450 --> 48:47.550]  You don't have to figure it out.
[48:47.630 --> 48:48.110]  We already know.
[48:48.170 --> 48:48.830]  You do it like that.
[48:49.670 --> 48:53.950]  I used to do a lot of events with, you know, an important person speaking at the podium.
[48:54.170 --> 48:56.510]  I would have another mic under the podium ready to go.
[48:57.350 --> 48:59.750]  Just makes me, gives me less stomach acid, right?
[48:59.750 --> 49:04.870]  If something happened with this, which is very rare that this happens, but if something went wrong, here you go.
[49:05.030 --> 49:05.190]  Boom.
[49:05.410 --> 49:05.590]  Done.
[49:05.830 --> 49:06.790]  I don't have to think about it.
[49:07.790 --> 49:08.950]  Test and test and test.
[49:09.170 --> 49:13.470]  If you're on a console like this, there's a PFL bus, pre-fade listen bus.
[49:13.570 --> 49:17.570]  You can listen to this microphone before it's turned on into the audience.
[49:17.710 --> 49:18.270]  Listen to it.
[49:18.410 --> 49:19.430]  Lighting, same type of thing.
[49:19.870 --> 49:20.730]  Experience is important.
[49:21.710 --> 49:24.810]  Gracewell Bort's a concept that a friend of mine came up with.
[49:24.930 --> 49:27.310]  We were working on a pirate battle in Las Vegas.
[49:28.070 --> 49:31.410]  A way to get out of a failure in a graceful way.
[49:31.550 --> 49:32.590]  That's an important concept.
[49:34.110 --> 49:41.550]  Failure, we certainly embrace in this, in that sort of hacker community, we embrace that in entertainment as well, but you have to do it early enough.
[49:41.810 --> 49:44.170]  Failure on the stage is not really an option.
[49:44.330 --> 49:46.890]  We want to do that well in advance so we can fix the problem.
[49:47.590 --> 49:48.290]  Great, thanks.
[49:48.650 --> 49:51.530]  Fix the problem before it's visible to the audience.
[49:52.850 --> 49:54.030]  Simple is always better.
[49:54.410 --> 49:55.950]  That kind of goes, explains this.
[49:56.150 --> 49:59.730]  So, I'm just going to go through these because I want to get time for questions.
[50:01.230 --> 50:03.450]  Really important, leave room for unanticipated changes.
[50:03.570 --> 50:09.290]  The one thing you can guarantee is you have no idea of what's really going to happen when you get to the venue, when the show runs.
[50:09.490 --> 50:10.270]  Things go wrong.
[50:10.490 --> 50:11.510]  That's what makes it interesting.
[50:12.070 --> 50:13.410]  Audience members do weird things.
[50:13.530 --> 50:14.090]  You never know.
[50:14.090 --> 50:15.550]  So, you have to be ready for that.
[50:16.990 --> 50:18.210]  I think that, yeah.
[50:18.650 --> 50:22.310]  So, I think that leaves about five minutes for questions, if anybody has any.
[50:22.390 --> 50:23.850]  And I can't see anything, so...
[50:24.370 --> 50:25.150]  Oh, thank you.
[50:33.110 --> 50:38.070]  You had mentioned that you were using copy creamer for flame effects and the like.
[50:39.090 --> 50:46.930]  Would you use copy creamer over like sawdust because it's more controlled, easier to attain, or cost, or what's the factor in there?
[50:49.190 --> 50:53.150]  I think when we used it, something like that, the key, the real answer is you'd have to test it.
[50:53.290 --> 50:54.750]  You have to try it and see how it works.
[50:55.730 --> 50:55.990]  That...
[50:55.990 --> 50:57.090]  Liability, sort of?
[50:57.490 --> 50:59.530]  Well, again, I can't recommend that you do that.
[50:59.670 --> 51:01.550]  So, you would have to try it.
[51:01.650 --> 51:02.750]  And I wouldn't endorse it.
[51:02.810 --> 51:03.590]  You'd have to test it.
[51:03.690 --> 51:05.450]  And then the key is talk to your...
[51:05.450 --> 51:06.670]  You can do anything safely.
[51:06.850 --> 51:10.390]  You just have to talk, you know, think it through, and then work with the authority.
[51:10.570 --> 51:13.390]  So, what I would suggest something like that would be do a lot of experimentation.
[51:13.390 --> 51:16.470]  My own experimentation with that was something like Cremora.
[51:16.590 --> 51:17.790]  This is a long time ago.
[51:17.970 --> 51:22.850]  But it's much more consistent in terms of how the surface area and how small it is.
[51:24.270 --> 51:27.090]  Something like sawdust is sort of, by definition, something random.
[51:27.310 --> 51:29.030]  But the key is test it out.
[51:29.090 --> 51:33.550]  In fact, when we did that effect, we got the fire marshal.
[51:33.630 --> 51:34.350]  This is in college.
[51:34.450 --> 51:35.850]  We got the fire marshal of the college in.
[51:36.030 --> 51:41.310]  We set the thing up, fired it off, and then realized that we positioned this thing directly under the smoke detector.
[51:41.930 --> 51:48.810]  So, the big cloud of smoke goes up and, unfortunately, the guy just starts laughing and calls it in on the radio and tells them to disregard the alarm.
[51:48.970 --> 51:50.250]  But work with those people.
[51:50.350 --> 51:50.870]  That's the key.
[51:51.270 --> 51:51.730]  Thank you.
[51:53.430 --> 51:53.870]  Hi.
[51:54.510 --> 52:05.410]  What advice would you have for maybe a student-run, like, high school theatrical tech group, which I happen to be on?
[52:05.570 --> 52:05.690]  Sure.
[52:05.770 --> 52:08.550]  Like, as far as organization and training.
[52:09.530 --> 52:19.250]  Because I know in the professional world, you have a lot of the funding and, you know, experienced people, but in a high school setting, you know, you have people that are just trying it out for the first time or just learning.
[52:20.790 --> 52:27.530]  There's actually, since the time I was in high school a long, long time ago, there's actually quite a few resources now.
[52:27.530 --> 52:32.950]  Of course, there's lots of books and stuff, things that weren't written down 20 years ago.
[52:33.310 --> 52:38.470]  Also, there's a couple good online resources, the StageCraft mailing list I mentioned.
[52:38.590 --> 52:39.930]  I have a link to it from my website.
[52:40.210 --> 52:48.670]  If you have a specific question about X, Y, and Z, like any other thing on the Internet, you know, you have the... there was a session yesterday about don't beat up on the new guy.
[52:49.250 --> 52:50.390]  That happens, of course.
[52:50.590 --> 52:54.210]  There's also one online forum called the Control Booth.
[52:55.010 --> 52:58.210]  But then mostly, you should just start reading stuff.
[52:58.390 --> 53:02.950]  There's lots of trade magazines in print that are still free, lots of information online.
[53:03.550 --> 53:09.110]  There's ESTA, which is the Entertainment Services Technology Association, has training now.
[53:09.250 --> 53:11.890]  We have certification, and they're also working on a thing called...
[53:11.890 --> 53:15.350]  I'm going to get the name wrong, but it's like essential technical skills.
[53:15.610 --> 53:18.330]  Start reading that curriculum and looking for training.
[53:18.810 --> 53:19.550]  Start working with people.
[53:19.630 --> 53:20.710]  Where are you located?
[53:21.690 --> 53:22.490]  Northampton, Mass.
[53:23.970 --> 53:24.370]  Yeah.
[53:24.550 --> 53:25.090]  What's the...
[53:25.090 --> 53:26.290]  Is it high output up there?
[53:26.450 --> 53:27.050]  What's the...
[53:27.050 --> 53:27.930]  There's a dealer in Vermont.
[53:28.410 --> 53:29.150]  Talk to them.
[53:29.370 --> 53:30.610]  Have them come in and do a seminar.
[53:31.330 --> 53:32.270]  There's not a whole lot.
[53:32.370 --> 53:34.050]  Maybe somebody from Boston, too, could do it.
[53:34.170 --> 53:34.350]  Cool.
[53:34.570 --> 53:34.750]  Thanks.
[53:36.650 --> 53:38.950]  Could you talk for a minute about automation control?
[53:39.150 --> 53:48.410]  It sort of seems like a lot of the big shops have their own proprietary things, and we keep hearing that ACN is going to change everything and not seeing anything actually out there.
[53:49.650 --> 53:54.510]  I just got the one-minute sign, so I could talk for about three hours about that.
[53:55.410 --> 53:58.730]  I mentioned, though, yeah, most automation systems are proprietary.
[53:59.030 --> 54:00.530]  That will continue to be the case.
[54:01.030 --> 54:01.650]  There's a really...
[54:01.650 --> 54:02.410]  And I shouldn't...
[54:03.070 --> 54:03.690]  Maybe next...
[54:03.690 --> 54:05.430]  In two years, maybe I'll do a whole session on it.
[54:05.430 --> 54:10.010]  But there's a really amazing new protocol called ACN, Advanced Control Network.
[54:10.230 --> 54:13.270]  It's an open standard developed by ESTA.
[54:13.630 --> 54:16.110]  It has some incredible opportunities for hackers.
[54:16.110 --> 54:18.110]  I've been trying to get the people who...
[54:18.110 --> 54:20.010]  And there's an open source implementation online.
[54:20.990 --> 54:22.470]  It's going really slow.
[54:22.590 --> 54:28.690]  Unfortunately, there's a lot of factors that when it came out, the lighting market got its first serious offshore competition.
[54:29.130 --> 54:30.150]  The bottom fell out of that.
[54:30.290 --> 54:31.110]  The recession happened.
[54:31.110 --> 54:33.830]  So those people aren't putting a lot of money into that stuff.
[54:33.830 --> 54:35.470]  But it is slowly but surely coming.
[54:36.010 --> 54:38.650]  ETC is spearheading this, the biggest lighting manufacturer.
[54:38.950 --> 54:40.890]  They've got an enormous investment in this stuff.
[54:41.270 --> 54:42.930]  And they're not going to let it die, I think.
[54:43.030 --> 54:44.150]  And that's probably the last question.
[54:44.410 --> 54:45.550]  But check on my website.
[54:45.570 --> 54:46.910]  I have a whole article on that.
[54:47.170 --> 54:50.690]  And I have actually a blog section just on ACN.
[54:51.070 --> 54:51.530]  Everybody...
[54:51.530 --> 54:54.390]  If you're doing anything with computer stuff, you should check that out.
[54:55.250 --> 54:55.710]  So...
[54:55.710 --> 54:56.530]  Thanks very much.
[55:01.200 --> 55:01.840]  You bet you got it all planned right.
[55:01.840 --> 55:03.400]  Bet you got it all planned right.
[55:04.360 --> 55:08.640]  Bet you never worry, never even feel the fright bet you never worry, never even feel afraid.