The role of Lighting Director for Balticon '02 seemed to take slightly less
toll on my brain than Arisia had, and what was interesting about it was that
I was also trying to prepare a tentative syllabus for Techno-Fandom University
on "Lighting 101".  Maybe it was fewer little details to have to chase down.
Maybe it was the lack of having to design the club-dance stuff.  But then
there was the *play* that had to be lit too, which a nontrivial amount of
script-reading and planning went into.  Maybe it was not having to order, and
then absorb, the whole manual for the Status 24/48.  Maybe having a couple of
plot designs under my belt just made this one go easier.  Not having to *fix*
most of the intruments before being able to use them was certainly a big help,
and I could just poke other people about what to please make sure showed up at
the con.  I will note that an awful lot of email flew back and forth in the
weeks preceding, some of it in an insufficiently bidirectional fashion.  And
it was Boots and Liz dealing with most of the inventory at teardown, not me.
I wonder if that one missing Atmosphere twofer ever showed up...

Nonetheless, there were several more lessons to be learned from this one.
The plot was sort of a rehash of the funky asymmetric one from the SAAS show,
which seemed to fit well into how I was reading the play script, but probably
didn't work as well as some of the more traditional masquerade plots.  The
main reason for doing it that way was to conserve instruments.  There also
should possibly have been a few more lumens on stage in general, but then
again due to budget/resource limitations I had to keep things pretty tight.
I made an attempt at color versatility by hanging a lot of R/G/B triples from
various directions, which probably helped here and there, but it was difficult
to just ask the rig for a truly neutral white wash, or the same warm or cool
FOH wash from both sides at once, etc.  I believe the masquerade runtime folks
were able to mostly compensate for this in the way I had prescribed -- warming
the cool-wash side and cooling the warm side with the appropriate colors, etc,
but not as optimally as they're used to.  At least Boots got to run his own
board for a change!

I totally fell down on a couple of sight-line calculations.  I think the main
cause was that I hadn't drawn out the *entire* room from Marc's descriptions.
For example, the closer-in house boom positions I wanted didn't take into
account the spot throws, and I probably would have gotten away with it but
just barely.  Regardless, we decided on the fly to split the difference and
cheat the trees slightly farther away, but not quite to their old positions.
It took a little doing to find new safety-line tie points to building steel
[which I learned are called "pick points", cuz rigging therefrom is what picks
up the pipe], but once found, rigged, and tensioned up, the bare trees were
floating right off the floor until weighted down with sandbags.  So, no problem
with safety in that sense.  The really ugly thing was the projected shadows on
the cyc from the ends of midstage curtain line and/or the shuttering to match
them, and not a lot to be done about it since the stage was so narrow to begin
with and that's where the wing curtains had to be.  Some additional light
straight on from the front may have helped wash that out a little, but it was
way too late to think about a third tree, or a truss flown at center-house, or
even instruments to put there.  Objects *on* the stage were lit okay, but the
cyc looked funny behind it.  Basically we had to just live with the shadows and
try to use a little more side and cyc light and less house wash to compensate
for it.  That "clams" submaster, set up to provide mostly neutral from the
sides and a *tiny* bit of fill from the house and not blind the band, didn't
really show these shadows, but traditional frontal masquerade lighting
certainly did.  The gobo specials were also all oddly off-center, and really
needed to come from dead-center house to work optimally.  Note that they would
have been just as off-axis from last year's positions too...  Maybe we *should*
think about a fifth tree next year, or at least a wider stage, or something.
Or maybe some fill-in wash from just upstage of the curtain line??  Many of
these ideas would require more lights and possibly more dimmer channels.

Ironically, because it's one of the things I bitch about fairly often, there
was a lot of podium-shot spill onto the stage, preventing it from getting even
close to black for entrant presets.  Larry's zooms aren't quite as clean of
beam as we would have liked, and a few scratches in the neutral-density filter
I threw into house left probably didn't help.  At one point Larry thought he
may not have shuttered the HR zoom as tight as it should have been, but where
I fell down was failing to go and recheck all of this myself and try to get it
fixed before going live.  Well, that wasn't the only problem stemming from the
tiny stage, but everyone dealt in their own ways.

On the plus side, the differences in stage spread resulting from the fiddled
and re-fiddled tree placement were fairly slight and still confirmed my first
calculations -- a 26deg barrel wasn't quite as "head-shot" tight as Liz feared
it might be, but was reasonably well-controlled and didn't need a whole lot of
shuttering.  This was what I was after with the closer trees in the first
place -- not wasting a whole lot of light into shutters to make it look right,
and getting a slightly higher angle.  The 50degs lighting center stage from
the high sides worked really well to down/side-light those specific areas, I
thought, but naturally weren't right for everything.  In combination with the
wider fresnel side wash they worked well, although color uniformity was a
little, ah, odd.  Oh, and in general, we had real focus time this go-round,
although resources like the genie lift were in high demand for other things.
I could still use to get a little faster on directing focus, but it really
helps when you have people like Larry and Harvey and David up there who know
how stuff *should* generally look and what to frob with to get it there.

Frank's instruments are generally in great shape -- he maintains them well.
There were the occasional and expected slipped strain-reliefs here and there,
especially on the Edison plugs, but that happens.  I only needed to tweak
maybe one lamp focus, which is pretty good considering that most of them had
been out another show for a long time beforehand and had then gone directly to
the con.  By contrast, one of the Glen Echo parcans that showed up was all
rusty and battered and full of cobwebs, which was a good example of Ancient
Crvft for the TFU class.  I will also point out that Frank's responsiveness to
email is exemplary, and we got a lot done through that avenue pre-con.  We
unfortunately didn't get much time to hang out at the con itself, since he
wasn't there for too long.

With the schedule as full as it was, the only time to jam in a real rehearsal
for the play was at *7am* Sunday morning.  Ick.  I wish to once again loudly
thank the intrepid crew who managed to tolerate getting up at that hour --
Joanne, Catherine, David, Jeff, Joel, as well as the entire play cast and
assistants -- everyone really pulled it together in a ridiculous timeframe
and the actual run of the play went really well.  And I learned several new
things here too, since this was my first shot at lighting a play at all.  The
primary thing was delegation, since it was decided that once the show was
designed, I would simply call it and someone else would actually run the cues.
This was a slight sidestep out of my comfort zone, but quite instructional.

There wouldn't be much time at all to design the looks for the play scenes,
so over the two days preceding rehearsal I banged little bits of it into the
board whenever I could.  First to go in was the framework of fade-to-blacks
bracketing the actual scenes, and then in odd moments between other events
I could darken the house and try to get as many scenes set up, guessed at, and
recorded as I could.  By the time the actual rehearsal came, I only had to
write about a half-dozen more cues, and even that took a little time during
which I had to ask the actors to halt their run-through until I got it looking
right and could then run it normally.  We didn't finish the entire run-through
but managed to fake up the rest of it.  One lesson here is don't bother using
point-cues for acts that aren't even going to occupy as many as five cues in
the first place -- trying to make them 40, 40.5, 41, 41.5, etc is silly when
40, 41, 42, 43 would do, is faster to type, and still allows for plenty of
insertion if needed.  It helped a lot that I had pre-numbered all the cues
inline into my copy of the script already, and had made that marked-up copy
available to whoever was interested in run-crewing so they had some advance
notion of how things would proceed.

The halfass-random-number flicker-generator reappeared, in the form of a trio
of effects subs with different timings and chase types, to cycle the 3 or 4
channels involved in the Balrog scene.  I hung two special fresnels aimed up
at the ceiling gelled red and amber, to simulate how a fire-demon would light
the general area by showing up, and that plus the "rocks" gobo plus any reds
to hit Gandalf from that same direction were all made to flicker fast, randomly
and differently for that part of the scene.  It worked pretty well, and is not
hard to program -- it just can't be *cued* on that board, and requires manual
push-up of the set of subs at the right time.  I was able to set levels of
them and the base cue so that the flicker-subs just barely overrode the cue
level and made a true flicker, instead of looking like a bunch of red lights
turning on and off.  Useful that DMX cycles 44ish times per second, eh?

The play's lighting was possibly a bit greenish here and there, especially
in forest or cave scenes.  But it seemed appropriate for the mood.  I was
pleased with how the "crystal light" turned out -- the special fuzzy cyan in
the follow spots to move along and simulate Gandalf leading the group through
the Mines by the unnatural light of his staff.  I will admit I did take some
ideas from watching the recent movie, and most of what I envisioned while
reading the script managed to find its way to lighting reality, and other
folks helped suggest tweaks here and there to make it all look better.  I
didn't let the play consume my entire life, but I gave it what I could.  I
gather the play cast and Dave Keefer were pretty impressed that tech went to
that much effort in the first place, and frankly there was a lot more we
*could* have done with enough time!

And I did miss a few things while calling the thing, such as at least one
gobo-swap, but David as "Ook", the highly intelligent gobo-monkey, covered for
me and just did it from the "breakout" cue-sheet I had printed for him.  I
also relied on two good spot-ops to turn what I said into what I meant and
execute various complex changes on their own.  I tried to more or less parrot
Larry's style that I've heard over the 'com in the past, but he's done way
more of this than I have.  I seemed to have the most difficulty with setting
up go-to-black cues, to make sure lights and spots go out at the same time
and speed, but again, good ops can just make it all fit together.  I also
observed that if you've been staring down at a cue sheet under a fairly bright
work-light for an entire scene, it's really hard to look up and see the stage
after everything's gone to black afterward.  Well, hopefully the audience
had the same problem..

I once again did mostly pre-cut gel for the gig, which saves quite a bit of
time and organization at-con, and I already had a lot of the stuff recovered
from SAAS anyways.  A few other bits were snarfed out of the Arisia boxes,
and I didn't have to buy anything new.  The precuts for the ministrips were
too large, but fortunately only in one noncritical dimension, and the excess
could be bent down under the spring-clip bar without cutting it any smaller.
For the cyc I used the same combinations of clear silk and colors I like better
and that throw a lot more light than the traditional r/g/b "primaries".  The
only disadvantage with this particular set is not having a really deep blue,
but unless you're trying for all kinds of subtle sky shading, who cares.

Despite talk of far-cycs and ground-cycs previously, the traditional zip-strips
worked okay although they didn't quite cover top-to-bottom even with the silk
inserted.  And the lamps were just a little visible through it, but not
distractingly so.  The wraith-light bounced off it nicely, too.  The radio-
tower truss appeared to work quite well for hanging the cyc, and matched it
and the color scheme of the rest of the room.  It occurs to me that if the
seam excess across the BSFS cyc were trimmed a bit shorter, it wouldn't be
nearly as obvious when lit from behind.  I would encourage experimenting out
near one edge, to test continued strength after the flap is cut down to a
quarter inch or so -- I wouldn't anticipate any real trouble, since that flap
isn't the structural part, and would do much to narrow that annoying dark line.
Laying the remainder down one way and doing a single line of stitching through
the whole thing would keep it from standing up off the surface, *and* double
the strength of the whole seam as well.  I do realize that getting that done
would require a team of handlers and a very clean space to sew in.

I liked the side colors from the high angle; I think that worked well and it
definitely helps keep things out of the path of costumers.  It could maybe have
used a little more fill from shins or mids position.  With more instruments and
possibly more dimmers, I would have changed things to have either base wash
available from either side of the house, and possibly all the R/G/B color
punch-ups as well.  Maybe what a masquerade needs is the lighting equivalent
of a "stereo house" -- the ability to produce signal, i.e. throw any of the
selection of colors, from any origin point.  But that currently requires a lot
of separate channels, which most of our usual rigs barely provide if you don't
take special stuff like plays into account.  So I guess this is one way to
implement a set of cross-event compromises, and I'll certainly welcome
additional input on how it can be done better next time.  This sort of
versatility will be a lot easier once various nifty programmable multicolor
units start hitting the mainstream and fitting within a con's budget.  Just
leave that hamper fulla vari*lites right over here, o-tay, and we'll take
care of it...

Saturday morning while testing some stuff I was back near the dimmer pack,
and heard the faintest little "bzzt" while shifting the wires around.  I
also noticed a little spark through the clear plug cover of one of the multi
breakouts -- which turned out to be one of the heavier loads, going to the
3fer-ed house wash.  The plug was warm, and there was also some telltale
cloudiness and bubbling in the plastic.  I opened it up, and sure enough
the screw into the stage pin for hot was *loose*.  Its threads were stripped,
so I had to wind up swapping the physical hot and ground pins and screws so
that hot could have a nice tight connection to carry long-term high current.
Those clear covers are nice -- they can reveal a multitude of otherwise hidden
errors, and encourage shop people to take pride in their wiring jobs.

The Scrimmer pack is *really* nice.  Its curve seems rigidly linear, which
yielded a preheat level of about 9 or 10% to do exactly the right thing, and
fades are smooth and even.  Why can't they all be made this way?  The only
very minor gripe is that you can't see much inside the quad-circuit modules,
so there wasn't much to show and tell upon yanking one out for that part of
the TFU class's backstage tour.  Aah well, dimmer innards aren't exactly
101-level material anyways, but since the "darkon fighting" bunch never showed
up, we were into gravy-territory by then anyways.  Maybe all our discussion of
lighting scared the darkons away entirely!

The TFU class went okay, I guess, although it could have been better attended.
I should nonetheless have made more than 14 handouts because they went fast,
and should have kept a set of masters to run off more of them for next time.
But maybe I want to change the handouts for next time anyways.  I of course
stumbled a few times, and I later realized a few points I had missed telling
people.  I should have perhaps urged a little more hands-on participation from
the audience.  We didn't manage to rope in anyone completely *new* to TF to
help with teardown, but a couple of the people that have been around for a
while anyways pitched in and helped.  Hopefully everyone gained more useful
knowledge all round.  I even picked up a couple of factoids about microphones
and EQs just by half-hearing it during Sound 202 while pounding cues into the
light board.

I think TF people are getting more used to my text-only hang-chart format,
including myself, but this time I doodled up a quick picture to distribute
along with.  There didn't seem to be much doubt left about how to put it all
together as a result -- I think everything just came up and worked without
having to replug anything.  The transition repatching between masquerade and
play was really minimal, and nothing required going up the trees again except
to reinstall a couple of things pulled down for TFU show-n-tell.

Something I learned after returning home -- the tunafish-can-lid gobos, while
amusing and sort of fun to dremel out, apparently don't have the longevity
I was hoping for after all.  The "treetrunks" one was in one of the Arisia 1K
lekos all weekend, and we used that blue-green trees effect quite a bit.  It
is almost toast at this point.  The steel withstands the heat okay, but now
what's happening is that with each heat cycle, more of the surface oxidizes
into mill scale -- that flakey gray stuff that then falls off the surface.
Enough of this eventually makes the metal just too thin, while its outer
surface slowly crumbles into grey dust and exposes more outer surface.  So
I guess I need to start with stainless steel stock or something else that
resists that.  They're now making gobos out of high-temp aluminum, which
apparently last better than the traditional steel ones!  Now, where can I get
sheets of that stuff?  Hmmm, that and a plasma cutter, and I'd be all set...

_H*  020605