# My Worst Mess Up



## ishboo (Jul 19, 2008)

This is a good one:
I was running sound 2 or 3 years ago for Beauty and the Beast. The sound designer put the sound cues in a dj/techno board. Used for replicating drum kits it has 15 buttons each one has a sound effect and plays as soon as you hit it (great for making techno beats, not sound) It also has multiple banks so Bank A key 1 is different than Bank b key 1 even though you're hitting the same key. With over 50 sound effects we used a lot of banks. A-1 was the preshow announcement ("Welcome to Town Hall Theatre") B-2 is a wolf howling in the forest during a creepy mysterious scene. I forgot to switch banks and instead of a wolf you hear our artistic director's friendly voice. The actor's next line was "That's not a nightingale (ironic huh?) The audience got a good laugh and unfortunately that was the night the show was video taped :-(


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## Les (Jul 19, 2008)

Seems like that's always the way it goes doesn't it... 

I remember our director in high school lecturing us about using the sound system for anything other than show purposes because he knew a theatre teacher who let her students play their favorite music through the sound system while on work calls. Well they were doing the show "Annie", and someone forgot to switch discs. So what is supposed to be a sound cue at the top of the show ends up being techno. I can just imagine the action in the booth that night. Sure glad I wasn't there!


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## ishboo (Jul 19, 2008)

At least our sound cues are separate from out music (cd's or mp3)


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## Spikesgirl (Jul 21, 2008)

ishboo said:


> At least our sound cues are separate from out music (cd's or mp3)



We just closed FULL MONTY and one night, our sound board op (who was also the designer) was supposed to use the car horn honking cue (for when Malcolm passes out in the car) - instead he wasn't paying attention and hit the door bell cue. Malcolm tips forward and 'bing bong'. It was very funny.

Another time, same op played a car crash instead of a refrigerator motor for WAIT UNTIL DARK...heh, heh, heh...


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## ishboo (Jul 21, 2008)

In my early days of sound oping (I'm talking 5th grade here) First say of tech for Rapunzel and the designer had 2 cues out of order and when the two kissed there was supposed to be a love harp but instead there was a door slamming. Everyone got a kick out of that.


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## lieperjp (Jul 21, 2008)

ishboo said:


> In my early days of sound oping (I'm talking 5th grade here) First say of tech for Rapunzel and the designer had 2 cues out of order and when the two kissed there was supposed to be a love harp but instead there was a door slamming. Everyone got a kick out of that.



I, too, almost fell off my chair laughing.


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## Van (Jul 21, 2008)

ishboo said:


> This is a good one:
> I was running sound 2 or 3 years ago for Beauty and the Beast. The sound designer put the sound cues in a dj/techno board. Used for replicating drum kits it has 15 buttons each one has a sound effect and plays as soon as you hit it (great for making techno beats, not sound) It also has multiple banks so Bank A key 1 is different than Bank b key 1 even though you're hitting the same key. With over 50 sound effects we used a lot of banks. A-1 was the preshow announcement ("Welcome to Town Hall Theatre") B-2 is a wolf howling in the forest during a creepy mysterious scene. I forgot to switch banks and instead of a wolf you hear our artistic director's friendly voice. The actor's next line was "That's not a nightingale (ironic huh?) The audience got a good laugh and unfortunately that was the night the show was video taped :-(


 If that's your worst mess up, you're very lucky.


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## ishboo (Jul 21, 2008)

Van said:


> If that's your worst mess up, you're very lucky.



Worst mess-up to date, I'm sure there's a lot in store for me


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## bobgaggle (Jul 21, 2008)

At my old high school (yeah college, here I come!), we loaded all of our effects into Qlab on and old imac. Its basically, fool proof...just click the go button and nothing can go wrong.


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## mbandgeek (Jul 21, 2008)

bobgaggle said:


> At my old high school (yeah college, here I come!), we loaded all of our effects into Qlab on and old imac. Its basically, fool proof...just click the go button and nothing can go wrong.



Unless the keyboard tray tips over and your thumb hits the spacebar. Actually had that happen on sunday.


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## soundlight (Jul 22, 2008)

bobgaggle said:


> At my old high school (yeah college, here I come!), we loaded all of our effects into Qlab on and old imac. Its basically, fool proof...just click the go button and nothing can go wrong.



Wait...you just called an old computer foolproof? Hahahaha!


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## ishboo (Jul 22, 2008)

We use Sound Cue System now with no problems to date *knocks on wood* The only problem I've seen with it was when a board op had an ICE moment (Inadvertent Cue Firing credit to Les) And thought that by hitting the Go again it would stop it and hit it repeatedly and went through all the sound cues for the rest of the show.


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## midgetgreen11 (Jul 22, 2008)

We were running Rumors, and in the script it says they're supposed to dance to La Bamba, so we got the song, had it all ready to go, and we hit play on our laptop, and Aerosmith's Dream On began playing. At that moment in time, our producer, laughing, says, "Oh, I love stairway to heaven!"


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## ishboo (Jul 23, 2008)

HAHA! We did Rumors this past season and a similar thing happened to us, instead of La Bamba we had a car starting because our sound op switched the files around on accident.


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## Les (Jul 30, 2008)

ishboo said:


> The only problem I've seen with it was when a board op had an ICE moment...



Shout out!


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## HighWattageKid92 (Jul 31, 2008)

My worst I can remember was Blacking out a scene by accident. In bye bye birdie. All the actors walked off stage and I forgot they come back on. it was a LOL moment which made it a bit better on the crew and everyone.


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## Hughesie (Jul 31, 2008)

soundlight said:


> Wait...you just called an old computer foolproof? Hahahaha!



he said qlab....which runs on mac

those things are bulletproof if you have only ever used it for that purpose


Note:_ Macs may not be as bulletproof as hughesie89 states but damm their sexy looking._


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## ishboo (Jul 31, 2008)

HighWattageKid92 said:


> My worst I can remember was Blacking out a scene by accident. In bye bye birdie. All the actors walked off stage and I forgot they come back on. it was a LOL moment which made it a bit better on the crew and everyone.



In a performance of our Extreme Theatre (We put a show together in 24 hours therefore we were dead tired) A board op was out of it and missed the final blackout before curtain call so the actors say their final line and wait... and my friend goes "Maybe if we say it again the lights will go out!".


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## leistico (Aug 1, 2008)

My worst was 18 years ago, summer rep theatre doing Grease. I was sound op, and had just left a high school where I learned and mastered the art of sound design and operation using audio cassettes. This was my first experience with cart machines and with reel-to-reel, and there was some dicey gear up there along with speaker on-off switches to route to different pairs of speakers.

The whole show was reel to reel, f/x wise. Middle of a run, we get to the scene at the drive-in. Audio of a hokey drive-in pic was recorded on the reel. Scene comes up, I get the go, nothing. Reel's playing, faders are up, no sound, for 6 seconds (felt like 6 years while I freaked). I saw the speaker switches off--oh, $#!t! -- I quickly rewind the reel to cue it back up, while *at the same time* bump the speaker switches on. The speakers BANG! on and emit a trail of ahllslkgjlksfdklgLSHGLKSJFHLSKJFGL!!!!!!! while the reel rewinds, I emit a trail of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in fast forward as the house starts laughing and Sandy and (the guy playing the Travolta part) sit there in the car, facing downstage, munching popcorn, passively watching the movie, staring almost right at me in the booth. The SM is trying to calm me down over the clearcom, I get the reel cued, playing, the show goes on, and I'm doing what I can to hide under the sound desk pretending I didn't exist.

I'm now in-demand as a sound guy, but back then I was seriously questioning my ability to do sound, my ability to do theatre, and my worthiness to breathe.

sean


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## Edrick (Aug 3, 2008)

When we did Cinderella we had the big ben sound for midnight the first night we missed the cue. The second night we got it but you could hear it from the other side of the school. It woke the audience up at least....


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## cdub260 (Aug 9, 2008)

HighWattageKid92 said:


> My worst I can remember was Blacking out a scene by accident. In bye bye birdie. All the actors walked off stage and I forgot they come back on. it was a LOL moment which made it a bit better on the crew and everyone.



Oh please! What board op' hasn't done that on one show or another? I know I have; more than once.


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## cdub260 (Aug 9, 2008)

leistico said:


> My worst was 18 years ago, summer rep theatre doing Grease. I was sound op, and had just left a high school where I learned and mastered the art of sound design and operation using audio cassettes. This was my first experience with cart machines and with reel-to-reel, and there was some dicey gear up there along with speaker on-off switches to route to different pairs of speakers.
> 
> The whole show was reel to reel, f/x wise. Middle of a run, we get to the scene at the drive-in. Audio of a hokey drive-in pic was recorded on the reel. Scene comes up, I get the go, nothing. Reel's playing, faders are up, no sound, for 6 seconds (felt like 6 years while I freaked). I saw the speaker switches off--oh, $#!t! -- I quickly rewind the reel to cue it back up, while *at the same time* bump the speaker switches on. The speakers BANG! on and emit a trail of ahllslkgjlksfdklgLSHGLKSJFHLSKJFGL!!!!!!! while the reel rewinds, I emit a trail of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in fast forward as the house starts laughing and Sandy and (the guy playing the Travolta part) sit there in the car, facing downstage, munching popcorn, passively watching the movie, staring almost right at me in the booth. The SM is trying to calm me down over the clearcom, I get the reel cued, playing, the show goes on, and I'm doing what I can to hide under the sound desk pretending I didn't exist.
> 
> ...



O.K. Now that is an impressive screw up!


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## Hughesie (Aug 9, 2008)

Ricky Smith said:


> When we did Cinderella we had the big ben sound for midnight the first night we missed the cue. The second night we got it but you could hear it from the other side of the school. It woke the audience up at least....



i did that during a production of sweeney todd, we had this factory whisle sound effect and that was my first show solo where i had control of a crown dsp system so i decided final night to deafen the audience in the front row only.

Fun times

I also once worked with an OP who always went by what the stage manager said, so we came to the end of a scene where there is meant to be a blackout and the scene ends and the lights just stay up, being the sound op im not normally wearing comms but i pick them up to see whats happening and the spot ops,asm and LD are all yelling at him to go but he keeps saying "something must be wrong i will wait for the SM" 20seconds later the sm says "WHY ARE THE LIGHTS STILL UP GET RID OF THEM GO GO" 

A cast member had disconnected the cans and for 6 nights the scene had ended like this but the stubbon lighting op thought, nah i won't go despite the asm telling me to go i will just wait.

Amatuers, i work with amataurs


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## cdub260 (Aug 11, 2008)

My worst screw up was actually a team effort.

I'm going to have to explain a little about our show for this story to make any sense. At the _Pageant of the Masters_ we do a 2 hour presenteation of tableaux vivant or living pictures. In short we recreate pieces of art using real people. Our primary light source for half of the pieces is a 12' high by 28' wide adjustable picture frame. At the time the Frame had 90, 60 watt, daylight blue light bulbs and 8 inkies as the built in light sources. Ideally we would fly this piece of scenery, but with only 9' of fly space, that's not an option, so its a piece rolling scenery. 

For the 2000 season, we revamped the rigging system built into the Frame, so that the sides of the Frame travelled on rollers from the bottom rather than hanging from a track at the top. Overall, this has proven to be a more reliable system than what it replaced, however, it is not without its drawbacks as we discovered early in the _Pageant's_ run that summer. 

This was our first performance in front of an audience that season, right after the first Frame Painting. My crew partner and I (At the Pageant our crew works in teams of two to move scenery on and off the stage.) were moving the frame off the stage in what should have been a fairly routine scene transition. Unfortunately, the crew pair that was assigned to preset the sets in the part of the backstage area where the Frame parks when its not on stage had not done so. This was not the first time in the three years I had been running the frame that this sort of thing had happened, so I simply dropped what I was doing and went to move the scenery out of my way and into the preset position that it should have been in. I figured I could chew out the crew responsible for the problem later. Unfortunately, at this point, our Flyman decided to be helpfull and grabbed my end of the Frame, steering right into the upstage black traveller and snagging the stage left side piece of the frame. My crew partner kept right on pushing.

My first indication that we had a problem was when I heard a sound like a tree falling accompanied by the sound of shattering glass as 15 incandescent light bulbs broke. By the time I turned around to see what had happened, the side piece of the frame was lying on the stage floor amid scattered shards of broken glass. The brand new rigging which I had spent a considerable amount of time working on was damaged to the point where it was completely unusable and I had 15 medium screw bases to remove.

The first thing I did was to announce over the coms that the Frame was broken. Without the Frame we would not be able to finish the show. If we couldn't fix the frame we would have had to tell 2600 people that the show was over barely 5 minutes into the performance. Fortunately, as I had done the bulk of the work re-rigging the Frame, I understood how it worked better than anyone else on the crew. I dismantled the rigging, picked the side piece back up, and replaced the shattered light bulbs. The rest of the night, my partner and I had to walk the side pieces into position during scene transitions, but we had the frame functional, though not fixed, in two minutes. The audience never knew there was a problem, and we got through the rest of the show by the skin of our teeth.

The next day I spent three hours actually fixing the Frame, and except for one minor repair two years ago, the rigging has held up just fine.


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## cdub260 (Aug 24, 2008)

Tonight, during Act I Preset, 'dip and I were moving a set from the stage building to the shop building. Neither of us noticed that the roll-up door to the shop was two feet shy of being completely open. We were going at a pretty good clip when we slammed that set into the roll-up door. Fortunately, all we did was pop a few staples and crack a support. Our shop forman, who by the way was the one who had not completely opened the shop door, despite a policy that it always be either all the way open or all the way closed, spent the next 20 minutes repairing the damage that 'dip and I had done. As with my previous incident, the audience never knew there was a problem.


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## Serendipity (Aug 24, 2008)

cdub260 said:


> Tonight, during Act I Preset, 'dip and I were moving a set from the stage building to the shop building. Neither of us noticed that the roll-up door to the shop was two feet shy of being completely open. We were going at a pretty good clip when we slammed that set into the roll-up door. Fortunately, all we did was pop a few staples and crack a support. Our shop forman, who by the way was the one who had not completely opened the shop door, despite a policy that it always be either all the way open or all the way closed, spent the next 20 minutes repairing the damage that 'dip and I had done. As with my previous incident, the audience never knew there was a problem.


On Gala night too! Oh, the havoc we wreak...
(No, the set was fine, this was what--Two and a half hours before the start of the act it was half way through?)
I still felt really bad about it though!
Always look up, even if there hasn't been anything there for two months, and nothing should've been...

Edit/Addition: Maybe you should have put this under "my worst theater injury" as opposed to "my worst mess up" because one of my fingers is swelling and looking a little bit more surprise pink...


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## cdub260 (Aug 24, 2008)

Serendipity said:


> On Gala night too! Oh, the havoc we wreak...
> (No, the set was fine, this was what--Two and a half hours before the start of the act it was half way through?)
> I still felt really bad about it though!
> Always look up, even if there hasn't been anything there for two months, and nothing should've been...



Yeah, two and a half hours sounds about right.

Oh good. I'm glad one of us felt bad about it.

And, yup.

In that order.


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## JoeGriffin (Sep 3, 2008)

mbandgeek said:


> bobgaggle said:
> 
> 
> > At my old high school (yeah college, here I come!), we loaded all of our effects into Qlab on and old imac. Its basically, fool proof...just click the go button and nothing can go wrong.
> ...





Yeah, not much is actually "foolproof."


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## zac850 (Oct 6, 2008)

JoeGriffin said:


> Yeah, not much is actually "foolproof."



FEBCAD
Fault Exists Between Chair and Desk


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## Sony (Oct 7, 2008)

zac850 said:


> FEBCAD
> Fault Exists Between Chair and Desk



I personally prefer PEBKAC

Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair


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## mbandgeek (Oct 7, 2008)

Yes sir, what you have there is an ID-10T Error.


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## philhaney (Oct 7, 2008)

cdub260 said:


> My worst screw up was actually a team effort.
> 
> ... at this point, our Flyman decided to be helpfull and grabbed my end of the Frame, steering right into the upstage black traveller and snagging the stage left side piece of the frame. My crew partner kept right on pushing.
> 
> My first indication that we had a problem was when I heard a sound like a tree falling accompanied by the sound of shattering glass...



Yup, that would be me...... 

I also work at the Pageant of the Masters, during the run of the show, as the Flyman. When we recreate a painting, the picture frame rolls downstage into position and I trim the teaser and first blacks so the audience sees a frame on a black wall with a painting in it. Then the set of the painting rolls downstage into the frame, and I close the third blacks upstage of the set.

When we are finished presenting that painting, I open the upstage blacks and the crew moves the set and frame away to clear the stage for our next presentation. We are set in an amphitheater and also present works of art on several stages out along the sides of the house.

My biggest screw up was seeing the lights go down over the frame/set and hearing the music go out as well, I opened the upstage blacks thinking the piece was over. The crew started moving the set, and they unplugged and started to move the frame, and THEN I realized the piece was going on, not off. The lights were work lights for the people who pose the cast in the set, and the music was for a piece that we were presenting out in the house.


-----
Someone once asked me if I had ever operated a carbon arc followspot. My reply was, "I have never arced anything." After everyone's eyes widened and eyebrows shot up I added, "Intentionally."


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## Pip (Oct 8, 2008)

mbandgeek said:


> Unless the keyboard tray tips over and your thumb hits the spacebar. Actually had that happen on sunday.



Or freakin QLab sucks ass and crashes all the time...


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## cprted (Oct 23, 2008)

JoeGriffin said:


> Yeah, not much is actually "foolproof."



I never underestimate human ingenuity. For everything I make idiotproof, someone makes a better idiot.


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## renegadeblack (Nov 13, 2008)

When I was in middle school and we were doing the national junior honors society induction. I said let's have a backup mic. First wireless mic started popping, second didn't work. Tried a wired, no dice. Like the 5th that we tried actually worked.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Eboy87 (Nov 13, 2008)

My most mortifying one was pretty bad. Allow me to set the scene. My high school's theatre would always be rented out to host one of the Miss Missouri qualifying pageants. Back then, I was just making the switch from lighting to sound, and wound up running the sound board. Any of you who've ever done these (or seen one) obviously knows they do the talent portion, and a lot of the talents are set to CD's.

The school was a bit light in the equipment department; I had two consumer CD players (which work fine by the way) going through a dual stereo -> single mono into channel 24 of the console. Yes, a single fader controls two CD players. I think you see where this is going.

So we're in the middle of the talent portion, and I'm swapping CD's like crazy in the two CD players. Contestant 1 in CD 1, play, load contestant 2's cd into deck 2, stop deck 1 at the end, play on deck two, contestant three load into 1, etc. So the girl on stage finishes her clogging, I pull the fader down, hit a button on the CD deck that I thought was pause, and hit play on the other one. Bring up the fader as soon as the girl's ready on stage, only to find out both decks are playing. She just stood on stage smiling at the audience while I'm scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on. Finally figured it out, and we started her over with no problems.

I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed after screwing up a very high profile show. The TD had a field day with that one.


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## seanandkate (Nov 13, 2008)

bobgaggle said:


> Its basically, fool proof...just click the go button and nothing can go wrong.




Um . . . you know what generally happens right after you tempt the theatre gods like that, right . . . ?


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## marshmolly123 (Mar 10, 2009)

ishboo said:


> And thought that by hitting the Go again it would stop it and hit it repeatedly and went through all the sound cues for the rest of the show.



Back buttons are nifty things


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## PeytonJr (Mar 11, 2009)

a while ago during Rumors the board op forgot to stop the cues after the police drove away from the house, causing them to "crash" the car. Thankfully, the actors ran with it.


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## drama81 (Mar 11, 2009)

In the theatre i work in there is only one person to run everything in the booth we were running Nunsense A-men and this was one of my first shows. One of the mics started to crackle and this was the first time that i had run into this problem. I did not know rather I should leave it on so the actor could be heard or mute it and let him project to be heard so in a panic i left it on. Fortunately the actor who's mic was having the problems (was also playing sister mary amnesia and also the director) ad libed a line about crackers being eaten in heaven and how it was really loud. This gave me the ok to shut down the mic. Really emberrasing!!


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## theatre4jc (Mar 12, 2009)

My worst was during a very boring Checkov play. Can't remember which one and am to lazy to look it up. I was the lightboard op. It was back in my college days. 2 weeks into the run of the show. One night left. We had a scene where the blackout was suppose to happen while this girl spun a little twirl on stage. I fell asleep. Like really out. SM was yelling and cursing in my ear. The sound op who was on clearcom with us and sitting right next to me just laughed and I woke up after this girl had spun in circles on stage for a full 60 seconds. Haven't fell asleep during a show since. Been 6 years and about 1,000 shows. (I did 6 years of touring with near 180 shows a year)


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## PeytonJr (Mar 13, 2009)

My personal high score was in a run of Guys and Dolls. I was setting up a scene behnd the mid traveler, and it was almost totally dark. I can see in the dark quite well, but even so, this was dark. Somehow, another stagehand had already put a large metal trash can i place, unknown by me. As I was finishing up, I accidentally brushed up against it, and over it went, rattling loudly for at least what seemed like 20 seconds. But miraculously, nobody else had heard it, which still baffles me.


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## beachcombah15 (Mar 13, 2009)

everything always seems to be louder, brighter and longer when you do something yourself...


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## willbb123 (Mar 13, 2009)

My worst mess up? Probably the one night that I forgot to lock out the unison panel. So mid show the house light came up to full in a 5 count. Good thing they hit preset one, which is only house lights, instead of preset two, which also brings up stage works. Now that I think about it, any button would of been bad, and brought up a random assortment of show looks.

Of course it was an award show, and my boss's boss was there. I'm still getting crap about it. When ever something minor goes wrong, I hear, "well atleast the house lights didn't come up."


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## Sony (Mar 17, 2009)

Only partially my mess up, but the computer system controlling our heating system at MVPAC was outdated a years before it was installed, I don't know why it was installed but it's horrible. So this system is very old, and requires a computer running HyperTerminal to access it. Also the Backup Battery for it is dead and so every time we lose power...we lose heating to almost the entire school because we lose the program. 

Now, when living on an island in the Atlantic Ocean where power comes from 7 different undersea cables...power isn't exactly stable and it flickers often and goes out every couple weeks.

So it was the day of a show and we had lost power that night and therefore the air conditioning system was busted. It was getting very warm and I was trying to at least get air flowing in the PAC so it wouldn't get too stuffy until my boss got there so he could access the computer to get the system back online fully. Well in order to do this, manually fired up the air handlers using the override switch (by the way, standing next to a massive air handler and hitting the override switch which in turn makes a huge BANG as the 100amp contactor starts the motors and then the cacophony of the fans starting up is one of by favorite things ever.  ) Anyways, so about 20 minutes later by boss shows up around the time we start loading the audience into the PAC and despite the air handler running its still getting very warm. 

At this point the event production manager was starting to get frustrated by the lack of AC so my boss and I go in the back to fix the system. Well we get the system back online eventually, and walk out to find that the 20+ Ton 3 Stage AC Chiller on the roof of the building has failed to start up and therefore AC still is not working. So we freak out and go back to the computer and try to force it to start up, no luck, we tryed everything.

Well, about 15 minutes before the show starts we finally figure it out. Apparently with this control system, the Air Handler is considered part of the Chiller and wont start up the Chiller if the Air Handler is in Override mode. So after I shut down the Air Handler and returned it to Automatic mode we were able to get the whole system up and running again. 

We were really worried because once before my boss said he had all of the fans on the Chiller die in one winter because they were shut down and not run at all for the entire winter so they all rusted solid and blew all the bearings. He feared that it had happened again.


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## chris325 (Mar 19, 2009)

So, in my high school's production of Beauty and the Beast about 4 years ago (before I was there), one of the scenes ended with two of the characters (freshmen at the time) joyously banging together their beer mugs before a blackout. At the last rehersal before the show, one of the characters manages to drop his mug in the process, where it proceeded to shatter on the stage floor. Afterwards, the two of them promptly exited the stage and frantically brought the shattered remains of the mug to our set builder, who still makes fun of them for that brilliant move four years later.

Here's the video: YouTube - The Mug


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## KyleBaczynski (Mar 23, 2009)

mbandgeek said:


> Unless the keyboard tray tips over and your thumb hits the spacebar. Actually had that happen on sunday.



Our lighting guys did that on our Friday show... I was supposed to be spinning a set around at breakneck speed to make the scene change as fast as possible and right when I went out to grab the set the lights came on.

Grabbed one of the Clear-Com headsets when I got back to SR to ask what happened... one of the guys in the booth left their talk button on and you could hear the director yelling at them. It was mildly amusing.


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## Trimble (Mar 26, 2009)

Our marching band's color guard performs in the school's variety show each year. For their grand finale, they throw their flags WAY high in the air and catch them. I am supposed to do an instant blackout the minute the flags hit their hands. After a performance, the not-so-nice team captain informed me I was blacking out too slowly-- "YOU need to kill the lights A LOT sooner, ya think?" At the time I had misinterpreted her and blacked out when the flags LEFT their hands. The effect for the next audience was a bunch of screaming blind color guard girls running from death-flags ten feet in the air and the sound of sixteen flags being dropped to the stage. Slightly amusing after their rudeness.


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## NJLX (Apr 3, 2009)

HighWattageKid92 said:


> My worst I can remember was Blacking out a scene by accident. In bye bye birdie. All the actors walked off stage and I forgot they come back on. it was a LOL moment which made it a bit better on the crew and everyone.



I did the exact same thing during our production of bye bye birdie last year. fortunately for me, the actors didn't notice and skipped that part, and the director got confused and thought i did it right


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