# Today's Grand Opening



## YesItWillWork (Jul 22, 2010)

Alright, so today we had the grand opening of our high school's new (well actually just seriously renovated - so pretty much new) gymnasium which has a sound and lighting rig which I'll try and get some photos of later. Being a Catholic school the ceremony was a mass and blessing ceremony. It was quite a big affair with the school's 1100 students, just over 100 invited guests, the Bishop who had traveled to be there, 2 other priests, and a handful of brothers and nuns. Without getting too descriptive, we are rather short on technicians at school. In fact there is me, who is in my last my last year of high school and probably the most experienced, a friend of mine who has some experience, and then a student who is in the year below me and reasonably experienced. I don't particularly enjoy working with this student because we don't get on personality-wise, but we manage because we need to in order to pull off events. 

So it was just me and him running the setup for the mass because my friend was setting up another room in the school for a dance party which was happening later in the day. I was running the sound desk which was a very simple set-up, we just had a wireless mic on a stand at the lectern, a wireless lapel on the Bishop, two AKG condensers (not sure of model) covering the choir, and a line in from this other students macbook (which was playing all the music and outputting karaoke style lyrics for some of the songs to the video scaler for the projection system, so it was running Qlab and the karaoke program which runs under windows XP within OSX, and it was also recording a video of the event coming in through firewire), I think you can probably see where this is going. It was a disaster, we had the macbook run out of hard drive space halfway during the video, and we got views of things on the projectors that we didn't want because he didn't freeze the scaler output or blank it, the whole thing crashed just before one of the songs. I had tried telling him to split it up and I would run the music of one laptop and he could do projection, but this students likes the glory of doing it all.

Though my area in sound wasn't exactly faultless either. All of a sudden halfway through mass we start getting a fairly loud hum, turn down the lights and the hum goes away. This other student starts fiddling with things trying to get rid of it (God knows what he was doing to be honest) and of course keeps bringing the lights back of to see if he has fixed it, so not only do we have lights coming and going on stage, but the hum also coming and going. He continues to do so even when both myself and the head of drama who was sitting next to me tell him not to because we don't actually need the stage lights as its daylight in the room as the blackout curtains haven't been installed yet. Then even with the lights off there is a slight background hum in the system which was never there before, and also that we had lost the left speaker cluster (2 speakers) so the system was only running one side, which was still adequate. 

Once mass finishes I begin troubleshooting because its only half an hour until the next event starts in the venue which was ZUMBA. I start repatching through different lines etcetera trying to find the source of it. Finally I reach the last step, a 2m cable from the patch panel in the amp room into the amp rack. This is a brand new install with a brand new cable. It's been in there no more than 2 weeks, and has run perfectly during that time, and the cable decides to die right in the important part. So swapped that cable out with another one and the system was back up running both sides hum free ready for the zumba and then the rock concert which followed.

All in all an eventful day, plenty of fun and excitement, overall happy with the sound rig though, it has so much headroom and is so clear, a lot better than what I was expecting.


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## Studio (Jul 22, 2010)

My school's new auditorium had something very similar happen opening night. According to the stories our Strand 300 series got into a DMX cat fight with the Vista Panel Architectural Lighting Control System (since replaced and i have not been able to find any trace of it on the web). This system worked fine for the rehearsals before but halfway through the show the lights began to dim down and up.


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## derekleffew (Jul 22, 2010)

Studio said:


> ... Vista Panel Architectural Lighting Control System (since replaced and i have not been able to find any trace of it on the web). ...


When did the building open? Are your dimmers Strand?
I ask because I believe the Vista (no relation to either Jands or Microsoft Windows) architectural control system was a product of Entertainment Technology, which may or may not have been a sister company to Strand at the time, 1998-2002?


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## Studio (Jul 22, 2010)

derekleffew said:


> When did the building open? Are your dimmers Strand?
> I ask because I believe the Vista (no relation to either Jands or Microsoft Windows) architectural control system was a product of Entertainment Technology, which may or may not have been a sister company to Strand at the time, 1998-2002?


 
We opened in 2003 and we have an all strand system. So that sounds right. Also their ips dimmer strips look very familiar.


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## DaveySimps (Jul 22, 2010)

We have the IPS Dimmers, but ours are by Entertainment Technology (the predecessor to your Strand models), as well as a VISTA system. We had horrid issues with our system that took ET more than 2 years to really figure out. In the end, terminating the data lines, and replacing the control nodes of all of our raceways ended up taking care of the problem. The new nodes are actually a newer product, our original ones were quickly discontinued.


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## museav (Jul 23, 2010)

This reminds me of a common situation where when someone says a construction project will be done one day people start planning major events for the following day. Don't do this if you can at all avoid it! For one thing, the construction will inevitably run into snags or delays, resulting in Contractors scrambling to try to complete everything before the events, which leads to corners cut, tests skipped and so on. In addition, new systems and buildings will almost always still have some issues and bugs come out during the initial uses. No matter how careful you are or how many tests you run, something will change or happen that no one planned for. So try to schedule some less critical events and some time to get familiar with the systems before planning for major events.

I don't know if any of these issues are actually relevant to this particular instance, but I've seen them happen so many times and thought it might help others avoid similar situations.


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## Studio (Jul 24, 2010)

DaveySimps said:


> We have the IPS Dimmers, but ours are by Entertainment Technology (the predecessor to your Strand models), as well as a VISTA system. We had horrid issues with our system that took ET more than 2 years to really figure out. In the end, terminating the data lines, and replacing the control nodes of all of our raceways ended up taking care of the problem. The new nodes are actually a newer product, our original ones were quickly discontinued.



Our VISTA system was replaced with this Doug Fleenor Design - Preset 10 Architectural and it works a lot better, however we still have one dimmer on one strip stuck in non dim and it is not the console that is doing it.


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## derekleffew (Jul 24, 2010)

Studio said:


> ...however we still have one dimmer on one strip stuck in non dim and it is not the console that is doing it.


I've heard that's a common problem with those dimmers. One resets it to be a dimmer again and after a period of time it changes itself back to thinking it's a non-dim. Have you contacted ET, as I'm certain they know about the issue?


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## Studio (Jul 24, 2010)

derekleffew said:


> I've heard that's a common problem with those dimmers. One resets it to be a dimmer again and after a period of time it changes itself back to thinking it's a non-dim. Have you contacted ET, as I'm certain they know about the issue?



We have had people in to try to fix them, but this is the second one to go bad.


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## YesItWillWork (Jul 25, 2010)

museav said:


> This reminds me of a common situation where when someone says a construction project will be done one day people start planning major events for the following day. Don't do this if you can at all avoid it!



The opening was actually scheduled for a month after the revised completion date (after the first delays which set the project back about a month), however then there were more delays so it isn't actually even fully completed yet. Right at the very start of the project when the principal of the school told me the date it was due to be finished I laughed and said that it would never be finished by then, just jokingly really because I'm just a student and didn't know the full details, but now its turned out that I was right.

They were working intil 2 AM the morning of the opening finishing installing the bleacher seating. And the corner sections of the truss are from the installer's hire stock because ours haven't yet arrived. The thing that is worrying me the most is that we have the schools yearly "Best of" concert, with about 5 items each from the dance, drama, and music departments, plus the pacific island group and maori kapahaka group (google if you aren't familar with New Zealand indigenous culture) on this thursday which could be very 'interesting', with probably a total of 7 hours rehearsal time for nearly 20 different items.


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## museav (Jul 25, 2010)

I always identified with the line from Ocean's Thirteen "This is why we have soft openings."


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## CSCTech (Jul 25, 2010)

Sorry to hear about your opening. It seems every year the day before our opening day of one of the drama clubs musicals goes on something happens to our lighting. Last year, they decided to paint the ceiling. Alright, great no problem, except when I come in the weekend before the show and am greated with missing equipment and moved foh fixtures. Good thing I went in when I did or else I am not sure we would have of had time to fix things. 

But hey, stuff happens, hope your new system goes well. We are getting a new sound system put in aswell and I am hoping the best for it.


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## WooferHound (Aug 1, 2010)

Our 35 year old theater is being remodeled. We are getting new

Dimming system- from 72 to 365, no more huge Hot Patch
Sound system- from announce only to concert capable
Fly system- Double purchase to single, pipes to flat trusses
Mix position moving from Balcony booth to Audience level
and much more . . .
we will still be using our old lights as we are not getting any new fixtures. Should be opening back up September or October. I hope all the bugs get worked out before our reopening. It will be nice to be getting a real paycheck again too.


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## calwalker1 (Sep 29, 2010)

YesItWillWork said:


> this other students macbook (which was playing all the music and outputting karaoke style lyrics for some of the songs to the video scaler for the projection system, so it was running Qlab and the karaoke program which runs under windows XP within OSX, and it was also recording a video of the event coming in through firewire), I think you can probably see where this is going.


I certainly could. and I'd hate to be in your shoes as someones gotta get blamed and it is in fact usually the senior tech who does. I am personally an advocate of running things from computer for theatre;What I'm not an advocate of is this sort of thing (and I know it isn't your fault).

My policy when it comes to computers running cues is that each computer has their own role. one for FOH audio, One for Video, One for other things which are not essential (eg. recording). When it comes to things like this (eg a person {*especially* other students} Providing their own computer) I tell them that their computer must be prepaired for a show environment; eg Formatted, Latest everything, all bloatware deleted, all systems running and the computer is to be used for *NOTHING*else between now and the end of the show.

I feel for you man, but it's the schools own fault for planning something so soon to it being opened.


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## calwalker1 (Oct 15, 2010)

by the way did you end up getting rid of your computer man? as that is dare I say. unacceptable behaviour. especially if you have instructed him against that.


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