The Cranky Old Gnome

Ok so picking up where I left off yesterday, about 630 the house opens and the audience starts filtering in.  Since 600-700 is usually when I have dinner break I have to make sure that everything is up and running by 545 to give the crew time to clean up before we break.  I make sure that a preset look is up so that the stage isn’t a dark, empty, boring shell.  Usually I put up a nice amber wash, to warm up the stage a little; add in some pink front light to give depth; add the Celebrate Brooklyn! logo on the scrim upstage; and sometimes throw in a template wash for variety.

During the actual show, we run two light boards.  One of them controls the conventional fixtures, the other controls the moving lights.  This isn’t actually typical.  Most venues only use one board, but we have a lot of conventionals, and a lot of movers, so it’s just easier for use to have two boards and two operators.  I run the moving lights, while my assistant runs the conventionals.  There was a time when the Production Manager (who used to be the lighting director) ran the conventional board, but this past summer he’s decided to take a step back from running the lights during the show so he can focus on bigger picture stuff.

So anyway, the first band comes out and we set up a couple static looks.  After all, we don’t want to waste all the good stuff on the opening band.  While they play we do some slow steady changes between static looks; broad general washes, mostly one or two colors.  Sometimes we might throw in an effect or two, to get the crowd moving and the excitement going, but nothing too crazy.  If we even turn the movers on at all they don’t actually move.  They come up, shine general washes, and stay that way.  Some days it’s too hot and humid to fire them up, so we leave them alone until the headliner comes out.

Both board ops have to be in constant communication the entire time though.  We can’t just do our own thing without talking otherwise we may end up with clashing looks.  Usually we’ll decide right at the beginning of the song what color pallet to use and then he will bring up the conventionals in a wash and then I will overlay the movers in a template, color wash, and add some movement.

Before the headliner comes out we keep the stage dimly lit in blue.  If you’ve ever been to a concert you may recognize this trick.  During the intermission the houselights are up and the audience is milling about, and the roadies are doing their thing on stage.  Then the houselights go down, the stage goes blue, and maybe a few movers (or followspots, depending on the situation) start tracking around the stage and audience.  This creates a dramatic tension and sense of anticipation.

Typically at CB the producer and artistic director come out during the intermission and stand downstage left and drone on for a few minutes about this that and the other.  Thanks for coming, thank you to the sponsors, here’s some upcoming shows, blah blah blah.  Then they introduce the headliner and walk off stage.  Some bands just walk on.  But others take advantage of this dramatic tension that I just mentioned.  My favorite moments are when the producer and artistic director walk offstage, I bring the houselights down, bath the stage in blue, and then start tracking a few movers in the house.  Then the keyboardist sneaks into place and starts playing a riff, and I bring up a white backlight, putting him in a silhouette/halo.  Then the drummer (who also snuck onstage) starts jamming in and I bring up a low light behind him that uplights him as well as backlights him.  Then the base player starts in and she gets a cool backlight.  Now the band is playing the intro riff, and the tension is building and the crowd is cheering and I start strobing the lights a little and finally the lead signer/guitarist comes out and a front and back follow spot snap on as she makes her way onstage.  From that moment on those follow spot ops had better stay on her at all times, except for the periodic black out.  At CB we also have a second spot from the front that can pick up soloists when needed.  Anyway, the intro riff ends and the band pops into the song and the moving lights start flashing and moving around and it’s a totally awesome moment and the crowd starts cheering and everyone goes nuts.

And that’s how the show goes.  Since the bands that come through CB are different every night and most of them I’ve never heard of, I have to make it up every night.  I don’t have time to write specific cues for specific songs.  I have to feel it out–get the emotions of the song and the feeling for the music.  I have to feel the rhythm so I know when to change and move the lights.    And let’s not forget that the other board op has to be doing all this too and we have to be talking to each other so we know when to move and change and such.

Another one of my favorite moments is the ending of a song, especially a really rocking one that I’ve done cool lighting effects for.  The end comes and the band goes into the final moment where they are gearing up to hit that last note and then BAM! They hit that last note and we hit a black out.  Awesome.  Or sometimes we hit a blackout but leave the back follow spot still shining on the lead singer.  It creates an awesome look.

Conversely, one of my least favorite moments (re: I hate it when this happens) is when the ending of a song fizzles out.  Either it just ends really sloppy or they strum that last note over and over, acting like they are going to hit that one last beat really hard, and then…nothing.  It all falls apart.  I hate that.  It’s such a let down.  There’s all this build up and everyone on the lighting crew (two board ops and three spot ops) are expecting an awesome blackout moment  and then…thhhbbtt.  It’s crap.  I hate it.

If the band is planning on doing encores then about 1015 they head off stage.  I keep the house dark and the stage blue, using that same dramatic tension moment as I did earlier.  Then they come back out and the lights come back up.  But at 1030 that’s the end of the show, because at 1030 in Prospect Park the law says we have to shut the hell up.  And if we don’t we get fined.  And we sure as hell aren’t gonna be the ones paying it, so if the band doesn’t follow our signals to get off stage at 1030 (and there are plenty that just can’t seem to get the hell off the stage), then we pass that nice $2000.00 fine right on to them.  I remember one year we actually had to kill the power to the sound system and turn on the houselights and stage works because they just refused to stop playing.

Once the show is over, I turn on the house lights and leave a post show look up (something dark and templatey), and the spot ops pick up the producer who comes out and says something like, ‘thanks for coming, it was a great show, please put your trash in or near (that’s my favorite part) a trash can, and start making your way to an exit’.  If we’re lucky the crowd just makes their way out, no muss no fuss.  If not, then the producer has to come back out and make another announcement.  You know it’s a bad night if he has to come out a third time because if people don’t start leaving then the cops have to come in and shovel them out–or arrest them for being drunk and disorderly.

I usually wait about 5 minutes after the producer has made his announcement and then I turn off the post show look and we go to work lights.  Because we leave a lot of the lights on over night for security we have to swap the control from the light board to the building.  Because I have to turn off the light board and the dimmer racks and all the giant power suckers, and wrap up the front of house tower and go home.  We call this ’swap over’.  Oh I should have mentioned that we have to do this exact same swap over (only the other way; from building control to board control) when we come in each morning.

Finally, we make sure that all our equipment is wrapped up and tarped to protect it from the rain.  There’s a lot of rain.  If we’re going to be gone for more than a day, then we have to lock up anything that can easily walk away.  Even though we usually have 24-hour security when we’re gone, it’s still just a good idea to make sure that things can’t be easily stolen.  Because those damn punk kids that run loose in the park have been known to try and steal from us in the past.

So that’s a typical show.  We have between 20 and 25 shows a summer.  Once that’s all over we start strike.  In a nutshell, strike is just load in, in reverse.  We take everything down, pack it up, send it back, and put it away.  Strike is super easy because unlike load in where we have to put things up in a specific and ordered way, we just strip everything down and toss it in boxes.  There is a little bit of order in that we have to make sure that the equipment that we ordered all goes back, but it still all comes down quick.  Load in, 3 to 4 weeks, strike, 5 to 6 days.

And that’s what it’s like (or at least in a super gigantic broad overview) at Celebrate Brooklyn! Hopefully this has at least been somewhat interesting and educational.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]“
~Fizz