# Rigging Question



## rochem (Nov 9, 2008)

Alright, so I know that this is a forbidden subject on CB for obvious reasons, and that all of the answers I get will probably just say "Consult a Qualified Rigger." But as this is a unique situation, I would really appreciate some answers. If you wanted to answer off CB or something, that would be ok too. But please read this entire post before automatically not saying anything.

Alright, here goes. So in a few months my school will be doing Titanic: The Musical. For those of you who haven't seen it, at the end of Act I a crows nest comes in with a person in it who is singing. The TD (great with construction and such but relatively inexperienced with theatre) has already designed this set piece. It will be a large basket attached to a batten. But since we have no fly space, the basket will be basically hung on the back of the SL proscenium, and then released behind a curtain to hang CS. Then the piece will be returned during intermission. The piece will fly in while the basket is empty, and then a person will climb into it using a ladder, then after he gets out, the piece will be flown back out.

My question: is this safe? I have casually brought this up with my TD, but he seems to think that as long as we're not moving the lineset when it's out of balance, it will be fine. And he may be right, but that's why I'm asking. If you add 200+ pounds onto a lineset while it is locked, can anything bad happen? I thought that the locks were only designed to hold a small amount of inbalance, but I seriously wonder if 200 pounds too heavy on the batten would cause a problem in the rigging. I am inclined to think it might be ok, since something similar is used in Wicked with the bridge that flies in and then two of the leads walk on. Although, they probably use automation for this lineset. Or is there some other way of doing it? We are a high school and our rigging is pretty old and does not get regular inspections, as far as I know.

I realize this is a touchy subject. So here's my question. Is there a serious risk of something in the rigging failing because of this? As of right now, if I do nothing, this will happen exactly as described, without consulting anyone. If I have reason to believe it's unsafe, however, then I will force my TD to consult with a qualified professional. But in our theatre, certain things are usually just not talked about. So I need to be certain that there's a problem with this before going ahead and getting the TD pissed off at me. 

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here. Basically, is there a serious risk of bodily harm or structural damage to the theatre by doing this, or does it generally work, regardless of whether it's officially recommended or not? I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but if I am wrong then I lose all of the respect and privledges I have gained from working with my TD.


----------



## techieman33 (Nov 9, 2008)

DO NOT attempt this, bottom line if you have to ask you shouldn't be doing it. And damage to the theater is secondary, to the life/lives your putting at risk.


----------



## rochem (Nov 9, 2008)

Sorry if I wasn't quite clear. The piece will not fly with someone in it. It will be flown in to trim and locked off. Then someone will enter the basket. A few minutes later, that person will exit the basket (both with a ladder). Then, the piece will be unlocked and flown out. The piece is just going to be made of wood.

Charc, thanks, that's EXACTLY the kind of response I was hoping for. Unfortunately, in high school theatre, many things are done that would be unsafe and even unheard of in professional theatres simply to save money, get an effect to work, or even just not knowing. And that one person who stands up and says "this isn't safe" is more often than not just ignored. High school students don't have a union standing behind us.

Out of curiosity, what would happen if something like this was attempted, just in theory of course? Would the lock just not be able to hold the extra weight, causing the rope to go straight through and the piece to freefall? Would the lock actually fail and be unusable? Would the arbor slam into something causing some severe structural damage? Obviously the biggest concern is the safety of people in and around the basket, I'm just curious as to why it is unsafe.


(I'm not implying I'm going to actually attempt this, I'm just curious as to why it can't be done. Get what I mean?)


----------



## gafftapegreenia (Nov 9, 2008)

So you are asking what will happen if you are 200 pounds arbor heavy?

Basically, the lock WILL fail. If you HAD a lock that was able to effectively hold a rope with such an out of weight arbor, I'd STILL be concerned about stress to the system. Not to mention the risky manpower it takes to handle such an out of weight arbor, or the hazards of having a live load (read: person).

So, what COULD happen?

The rope will slide.

The arbor will come flying down. 

Arbor crashes down.

Damages fly system.

Ropes/cables break-weights fall off arbor.

Batten comes crashing down.

People die.


----------



## techieman33 (Nov 9, 2008)

The list for why it's unsafe is about 10 miles long. 
the rope lock is not intended to hold a load, yes it will hold a slightly unbalanced line in place but not anywhere near 200lbs safely. I wouldn't hang anything on a line to make it 100lbs out of weight, let alone a human being, it's just begging for trouble. 

What would happen? For starters as soon as the person put their weight in the basket the rope lock would fail sending the actor crashing down to the floor, and the arbor racing to the roof. The arbor would slam into the loft block, possibly causing things like the aircraft cables snapping dropping everything attached to the line down onto the stage which would seriously injure or kill the actor on stage as well as anyone else close the the batton or arbor. the basket will probably also be destroyed from the fall breaking loose from the batton and if for some reason the arbor survives the impact with the loft blocks it will come crashing down into floor, this time breaking the aircraft cable at the batton end sending it crashing down the the ground. And that's just a couple of options. This is extremly dangerous stuff and should not be attempted by anyone that's not highly qualified. I would do everything I could to talk my teacher out of it, and it they wouldn't listen, work my way up to the principle, the school district, osha, the police, whatever it took to keep this from happening. And I woudln't worry about losing the respect of your teacher, if they're willing to do this without going over every possible angle, and bringing in someone qualifed to properly rig it, you shouldn't be learning much from them anyway.


----------



## techieman33 (Nov 9, 2008)

gafftapegreenia said:


> So you are asking what will happen if you are 200 pounds arbor heavy?
> 
> Basically, the lock WILL fail. If you HAD a lock that was able to effectively hold a rope with such an out of weight arbor, I'd STILL be concerned about stress to the system. Not to mention the risky manpower it takes to handle such an out of weight arbor, or the hazards of having a live load (read: person).
> 
> ...



He would be making it 200lbs batten heavy, so things would happen in reverse order


----------



## elite1trek (Nov 9, 2008)

techieman33 said:


> The list for why it's unsafe is about 10 miles long.



Quite True.


> Alright, so I know that this is a forbidden subject on CB for obvious reasons, and that all of the answers I get will probably just say "Consult a Qualified Rigger." But as this is a unique situation, I would really appreciate some answers. If you wanted to answer off CB or something, that would be ok too. But please read this entire post before automatically not saying anything.



Don't Do It. If you have the budget, then I will have to cliche here and tell you to consult a qualified rigger. If your TD is unwilling to purchase the required equipment, don't even bother a qualified rigger, you WILL get laughed at, or at least a really really long safety speech.

Now, since you already have the piece built, you could have Foy or ZFX come in and fly the person safely, but they probably will do it separately from your scenic piece.


----------



## rochem (Nov 9, 2008)

Yea I assumed that the lock would be the weak part of the system here. Thanks for confirming that. I'm gonna speak with my TD sometime soon about this. Most likely we'll just scrap the effect, as it's really not necessary to the show. While we would pay for someone like ZFX, I'm pretty sure that the money spent wont be worth the relatively small gain from having this piece fly.


----------



## elite1trek (Nov 9, 2008)

Charc said:


> Not always, I've seen over a thousand dollars be put into a single 5 second effect, that was lame. You never know what catches a director's attention.



What was that, out of curiosity?


----------



## avkid (Nov 9, 2008)

Since when does a crow's nest float above a vessel?

Why not fly the basket down onto a solid platform (designed to look like a ship's mast) that is wheeled on or hidden behind a drape?
Then the platform takes the weight of the basket and the person.


----------



## avkid (Nov 9, 2008)

Improperly weighted line sets can kill.
Some of the older members may remember this, although the identity of the member affected by this has long since escaped my memory.
Man dies in job accident at school
If I remember correctly Martin was the mentor of someone who used to frequent here.


----------



## rochem (Jan 23, 2009)

I was hoping that I would never need to bring this old thread back, but unfortunately I need to. A quick recap: we will be flying in a scenic piece on a batten, which an actor will enter and perform in for about 10 minutes at the end of Act I. All of this without changing the counterweight in the arbor, which will obviously make the piece very batten-heavy with a live actor inside.

I have expressed concern about this to my TD a couple times, but he insists that it is perfectly safe. He has already spent significant time building the piece, and I believe we're going to rig it up sometime next week. The actor who will be in the piece is a good friend of mine, and he weights about 175 pounds. I considered giving the TD my copy of Stage Rigging Handbook, but I believe there's only a small paragraph there about this kind of thing, and he would probably never read it anyways. The TD, as I said before, is very good at construction and such, but not so good when it comes to theatre-specific things like constructing flats, scenic painting, and the rigging system. In fact, I am always put in charge of reweighting pipes and hanging whatever we have to hang, because he doesn't really know how to do it properly.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might be able to convince him to change this? Unfortunately, as a student, I could be an expert in all things rigging, but have absolutely no way to back it up except my word. He, however, has a college degree and is my boss, meaning that my opinion doesn't really matter. Like, is there anything I can show/tell him to "scare" him into listening? Any industry professionals I should talk to to see if their words could convince him? Anything like that? I sent an email to JR Clancy a while ago asking for help, but I never got a reply. I have already decided that I do not want to work with the show if this effect goes on, but resigning my post at this point would probably mean I don't work theatre at my school ever again. So that will be my last option.

Thanks for the help!


----------



## waynehoskins (Jan 24, 2009)

rochem said:


> I was hoping that I would never need to bring this old thread back, but unfortunately I need to. A quick recap: we will be flying in a scenic piece on a batten, which an actor will enter and perform in for about 10 minutes at the end of Act I. All of this without changing the counterweight in the arbor, which will obviously make the piece very batten-heavy with a live actor inside.
> 
> I have expressed concern about this to my TD a couple times, but he insists that it is perfectly safe. He has already spent significant time building the piece, and I believe we're going to rig it up sometime next week. The actor who will be in the piece is a good friend of mine, and he weights about 175 pounds. I considered giving the TD my copy of Stage Rigging Handbook, but I believe there's only a small paragraph there about this kind of thing, and he would probably never read it anyways. The TD, as I said before, is very good at construction and such, but not so good when it comes to theatre-specific things like constructing flats, scenic painting, and the rigging system. In fact, I am always put in charge of reweighting pipes and hanging whatever we have to hang, because he doesn't really know how to do it properly.
> 
> ...



Get him a copy of Dr Doom's book. I don't remember the title exactly, but it has to do with theatre safety in schools. (And in case you don't know, Dr Doom is Randy Davidson.)


----------



## rochem (Jan 24, 2009)

waynehoskins said:


> Get him a copy of Dr Doom's book. I don't remember the title exactly, but it has to do with theatre safety in schools. (And in case you don't know, Dr Doom is Randy Davidson.)



That's actually a really good idea. I had meant to buy this book for myself a while ago, but I couldn't justify the cost. And unfortunately that's still so. At $75 plus $10 shipping, the book is just way out of my price range. And there's no way I would get him to buy it for himself.


----------



## icewolf08 (Jan 24, 2009)

You could probably send an email to Dr. Doom, as he literally wrote the book on theatre safety in the academic world. You also might talk to the actor and his parents. I would be willing to be that the parents won't let their kid do anything that is this dangerous.

As for what you could do to make it safer, this is theatre, there is such thing as suspension of disbelief. You might just fly the piece in to the deck and then instead of playing the song in the air, just play it from the deck, the audience will understand. If you fly the piece to the deck then you will never be out of balance, and there is much less chance of failure and injury.


----------



## gafftaper (Jan 24, 2009)

Try contacting these two rigging Jedi masters:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Optima, Trebuchet MS, Verdana]Bill Sapsis [email protected][/FONT][/FONT]
Jay Glerum [email protected] 

Both guys are tops in the industry when it comes to rigging and both are very cool about helping people out. I bet both of them will respond. Explain exactly what the design is and ask them to comment on if it is a safe idea or not and why. 

As for the plan, i'm still a bit confused. Is the T.D. planning to fly the basket in ballanced and then make it 175lbs batten heavy when the actor is added? Or is the plan to start out 175 pounds arbor heavy and then make it ballanced when the actor is added? Both are really bad ideas for entirely different reasons. 

Also how high off the ground is the actor going to be while suspended? According to OSHA, falls from above 6' are more likely to be fatal than survived. Of the 49% that do survive, most have some sort of life altering injury. 

If the T.D. won't listen to e-mails from Jay and/or "Uncle" Bill, I say take this to a higher power... give the e-mails explaining how dangerous this is to the actor's mom. Mom's tend to not like reading that their child is likely to be killed on stage and are VERY persuasive with principles. Now here's the tricky part. You may irritate the T.D. so much that you are no longer welcome to work in the theater. That's a tough choice to make. I would present the information to the T.D. and if he won't accept it say, I believe you are wrong and I will be passing this information on to the family of the actor to decide for themselves if they want to take the risk. Personally I would rather get kicked out of a theater than watch a friend die. 

Also I'm going to send an e-mail to CB's rockin' rigger Whatrigger? to make sure he is reading this thread. Maybe he will have some advice as well.


----------



## What Rigger? (Jan 24, 2009)

Ro, the only thing I'll add to this is: BLOW THE WHISTLE ON THIS TOOL! Go to your school admin's and just make sure you're not even in the building if this piece/fiasco happens.


----------



## rochem (Jan 24, 2009)

Gaff, thanks for those emails. I will definitely shoot them an email right after I type this up. In answer to some of your questions: I believe that we are going to weight the piece so the empty basket is balanced, so that it will only be out of weight for ~10 minutes while the actor is in it rather than for the whole show. This could definitely change, but as you said, neither option is particularly appealing. I'm not sure exactly how high the actor will be, but it will be at least 8 feet I'd assume. There is other stuff happening on stage at the time, and people will actually be acting while standing under the basket (a brief pause to let you go back and re-read that in disbelief), so it would need to be at least 8-9 feet high. 

The "mom" idea is a good one. If those people can give some convincing statements, anyone should be scared from reading them. I doubt I could get the actor to agree, but I should be able to at least get him to show the letters to his parents. And you're right, I would rather not work with this show than go along with it and have my name accredited to a horrible high school theatre disaster. I guess my last hope would be that my resignation might convince him to change his mind, but that will come after I have tried all other options.

Thanks for all the help with this.


----------



## jwl868 (Jan 24, 2009)

And to add to everything already said, draw this guy a picture. How could you even lift the actor? It's not strength of the pullers, it would be their weight. If one puller lets go, the actor falls and the lone puller flies up. And the lock won't hold the actors weight.

After you have given a chance for the TD to see the error in his ways, if he insists, you have to call the administrators. I'd even call the local news - February is sweeps month and that is a great story - School endangers students.


Joe


----------



## waynehoskins (Jan 24, 2009)

And if the TD and Director still insist on the effect, even after the Mom letter, if I were you, I'd put in a letter of resignation, copies sent certified to your local administration and your district's safety or risk management department, detailing what's been proposed to be done, why it's terribly unsafe, and that it's a violation of your ethics to be involved in that. Explain that you have explained (and sought the advice of experts) how it is endangering the lives of not only the actor in the basket but those under him and everyone else on stage. That should raise some red flags at the district level, hopefully stop the effect, but if somehow the effect goes on, it's CYA.


----------



## gafftaper (Jan 24, 2009)

The school district's risk management department would shut this down for sure... IF they fully understand the danger. Some districts are well informed on rigging and some are not. There was a recent thread about a production of Peter Pan where the district said they couldn't fly students even WITH the services of a professional flying company. 

I have to admit that 10+ years ago when I was a young and dumb T.D. I did something similar to this. Thank God, no one was injured. Fortunately I was smart enough to rig it in a little safer way than you describe, but not by much (It still involved flying an actor 8' in the air). No one at the school ever questioned the safety of it. My entire administration saw the show and said it was fabulous. Parents said it was a great effect. Everyone who should have said, "you know that isn't a very good idea" instead told me I did a fabulous job. People just assume that you know how to do this sort of thing safely. And I assumed because my College T.D. flew a person on a swing, that I knew how to do it safely. Looking back on it what we did in college wasn't very smart either.

The point is these things build momentum. It's hard for your T.D. to stop and think this over clearly and consider the forces he is applying to a system in a way it's not designed to work. Everyone's expecting something great. Now he's got "a kid" telling him what he is doing is a bad idea. Let's face it Michael, if you hadn't been hanging out around here for so long you would probably think it's a good idea too. So It's really hard to slow this down. 

Any chance of getting your T.D. to read this thread?


----------



## waynehoskins (Jan 24, 2009)

gafftaper said:


> Looking back on it what we did in college wasn't very smart either.



Ah, college. I have a few pictures of some things that never happened from back in college. 

Thinking on the problem at hand now, it occurs to me that, though still not suitably safe, it would probably be less unsafe to use a hemp set in this case, where you could throw a second clew on there and put a second set of bags on when the actor enters the thing. Still not safe enough to do, but potentially less unsafe, because in theory you might actually be able to keep the thing moderately in balance.


----------



## rochem (Jan 24, 2009)

waynehoskins said:


> Thinking on the problem at hand now, it occurs to me that, though still not suitably safe, it would probably be less unsafe to use a hemp set in this case, where you could throw a second clew on there and put a second set of bags on when the actor enters the thing. Still not safe enough to do, but potentially less unsafe, because in theory you might actually be able to keep the thing moderately in balance.



I actually just had an idea that was similar to this. Assuming we had the time to do this, what if the piece was weighted empty and then we attached sandbags to the batten that equal about 175 pounds. Then, immediately before the actor is supposed to enter, we put him in at max in trim, THEN remove the sandbags, and make the piece just slightly batten heavy. The end of the scene is intermission, so we would be able to re-attach the sandbags, THEN remove him from the basket, and the piece would stay in weight the whole time. This still isn't an ideal solution, but it might be better than just leaving this as it is. Of course, this is assuming that we would have the time to do this out of sight of the audience.

I was planning to print off some of the really good threads and show them to him, but again the problem comes up that there are no qualifications. Don't take offense to this, but since it's the internet, there's no way to truly tell someone's qualifications. Since I've been around a while, I've learned to just trust that certain people know their stuff about certain things, but how can an "outsider" know that Ship knows a thing or two about lamps, or that Whatrigger has used a fly system once or twice before? But we'll see what happens.


----------



## derekleffew (Jan 24, 2009)

A counterweight fly system is NOT designed, nor does it have the requisite safety factors, for elevating other than inanimate objects.


----------



## jwl868 (Jan 24, 2009)

rochem said:


> This still isn't an ideal solution, but it might be better than just leaving this as it is. Of course, this is assuming that we would have the time to do this out of sight of the audience.



A solution should be fail-safe. An error by an over-anxious actor or stage hand will be catastrophic. 175 lb runaway. What if a 150 lb stage hand tries to "save" the batten from rising?

Joe


----------



## icewolf08 (Jan 24, 2009)

You might try giving your TD copies of the news articles about the girl who was killed in a flying accident in her church christmas pageant (thread link). And then also give this article from Uncle Bill Sapsis. Yeah, it all comes from the intertubes, but you never know. I am willing to bet that if you show those articles to the actor and his parents it will also quickly sway them.

You might also consider getting the director involved or the department head. While they may not understand everything, they certainly can understand what is safe and what isn't.

Also, you might try contacting some of the companies like Flying by Foy or ZFX, I bet they would be happy to talk to your TD about what a bad idea this is.


----------



## waynehoskins (Jan 24, 2009)

jwl868 said:


> A solution should be fail-safe. An error by an over-anxious actor or stage hand will be catastrophic. 175 lb runaway. What if a 150 lb stage hand tries to "save" the batten from rising?
> 
> Joe



Exactly. To be clear, my idea of using a hemp set is a very bad idea as well, just perchance an iota less bad than using an arbor. Well, actually worse, because if there's too much counterweight there's nothing like a rope lock that could keep it from flying out on its own if it were bag-heavy. Hmm. Both are very bad ideas, and that's even before you consider that you should only fly inanimate objects anyway.


----------



## rochem (Jan 24, 2009)

Yea, that's what I assumed, thanks though. I've already received a response from one of the emails I sent, so I will be following up on that as well.


----------



## willbb123 (Jan 27, 2009)

rochem said:


> Yea, that's what I assumed, thanks though. I've already received a response from one of the emails I sent, so I will be following up on that as well.



Can you post the emails? I am very interested to see what they say.


----------



## derekleffew (Jan 27, 2009)

willbb123 said:


> Can you post the emails? I am very interested to see what they say.


Posting confidential emails on a public forum is a serious breach of ethics. If you want to quote anonymous excerpts, rochem, I suppose that would be acceptable, although I'm not sure how beneficial.


----------



## rochem (Jan 27, 2009)

willbb123 said:


> Can you post the emails? I am very interested to see what they say.



It's really not much different than what's already been said in this thread. They just said that I was correct in my concerns, and that this should not under any circumstance be allowed to happen. They also offered to assist me in talking to my TD by writing a letter or calling him at school or something similar. Nothing too special.


----------



## Dionysus (Feb 9, 2009)

avkid said:


> Since when does a crow's nest float above a vessel?
> 
> Why not fly the basket down onto a solid platform (designed to look like a ship's mast) that is wheeled on or hidden behind a drape?
> Then the platform takes the weight of the basket and the person.



You would need more support than this. You would need to be able to support the possible force applied by the arbour, load, everything.

My rigging teacher told me about doing a fly somewhat similar to this once (He was a trained professional of 30+ years.). I believe he used a sunday to aid the lock while the batton was secured in place, very securely mounted. BUT DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF.


----------



## jml42691 (Apr 11, 2009)

I hate to be the one to revive a dead thread, but out of curiosity, how did all of this work out?


----------



## rochem (Apr 11, 2009)

jml42691 said:


> I hate to be the one to revive a dead thread, but out of curiosity, how did all of this work out?




We ended up building the Crow's Nest on a platform which was elevated about 10 feet off of a wagon, then rolling the wagon on stage when it was needed. We simply ran out of space above the stage to hang it, so it was changed to a rolling piece.


----------



## wfor (Apr 11, 2009)

rochem said:


> It's really not much different than what's already been said in this thread. They just said that I was correct in my concerns, and that this should not under any circumstance be allowed to happen. They also offered to assist me in talking to my TD by writing a letter or calling him at school or something similar. Nothing too special.



Man- I really wanted to hear that phone call though.


----------



## gafftaper (Apr 12, 2009)

wfor said:


> Man- I really wanted to hear that phone call though.



From what we are learning in this thread it wouldn't have really mattered. 

_Bill Who!?!? This is High School, I don't have time for Safety!_


----------

