My email to Selecon

I’ve been working at a theater with Selecon fixtures for the past few years, and I’m writing to offer some criticism and suggestions.



We have Selecon Pacific zooms and 7” Rama fresnels.



The zooms have a great output and a great cooling system, but are unwieldy and tend to fall apart. The red or blue plastic pieces on the endcaps tend to be mistaken for handles by people used to working with Source Fours and Altmans, and are often picked up by these non-handles and broken, resulting in a lot of not-so-safe black-tacked endcaps in the grid. The end caps are also difficult to seat correctly for someone not accustomed to them (and most technicians in NYC are not accustomed to them). The gel clips are unnecessarily difficult, and the shutters fall out and will not go back in. Most of our zooms have only 3 shutters at this point. Granted, they are about 10 years old, but we have 30-year-old Altmans that are easier to repair. The focus knobs on the side get really tight sometimes and can cause hand injuries when they are finally loosened. I think this is due to the shape, where one side is longer than the other.



Our Rama fresnels are new as of last summer, and already metal pieces are falling off of them (usually breaking off of the dials) without provocation. We don’t use the safety cables that came attached, because they are quicklink and not carabiner, which is simply annoying. The “quick-focus” attachments for these units are sitting in boxes collecting dust somewhere, because they were too difficult to attach, and made little sense when the rest of our units have traditional c-clamps and require wrenches anyway. Good idea in theory, but they just weren’t worth taking the time to figure out. If they had come pre-assembled, we may have been able to use them. Again, these have great output, but the only 1k lamps that work in them die after only 250 hours. We will be switching to 750w next season to save money, but it will be disappointing to have a system that is not as bright.



Nobody I know enjoys working with these units, and I think if you made changes to address these issues, you may find more buyers in the states. I know this is easier said than done, but I wanted to put in my two cents.

Musicians

In the world of theater, things are generally scheduled tightly, due to budget constraints, time constraints, etc.

In the world of music, most gigs are quick, painless, and fun.

They don't sound so different, these two worlds. Yet- musicians expect to show up for a gig maybe half an hour prior (at the most), make sure the mics are working, and then play a show.


Theater technicians, however, expect to see musicians hours before a show, to check and re-check and re-check the re-checks of everything. And to program some light cues. Because running a show live off of an Express board with Altmans and Selecons just plain sucks.

Musicians- when you have a gig at a real theater, please show up on time. Technicians, when you have rock musicians coming in- expect them at least two hours late. If we all just think this way, then maybe something will meet halfway, somewhere. Yes?

Lame

From TVTower.com:

"Almost all wireless mics operate on the same frequencies as TV stations. The TV stations are licensed by the FCC and are running at very high power levels. Virtually all wireless mics are not licensed, and must accept any interference they get from TV stations. For this reason, a wireless mic that works fine in one city, may not work in another."

Right...so we knew that already...but what's below is what sucks



"As new stations go on the air, your wireless mic may become useless. It is important to understand this, because every TV station in the country is getting a new frequency for digital TV broadcasting. Only some of these new transmitters are on the air yet, but in the {future], they should all be on the air. Check with all your local TV stations to determine what new channels have been assigned to them for digital broadcasting, and when they expect to be on the air. Most manufacturers can switch your existing wireless mics to different frequencies if needed. It would be wise to determine today if your existing mics will have problems so you can get them changed at your leisure, and not in a panic after they fail."

things fall apart

So, the theatre I work in likes to fall apart. It particularly enjoys doing so the day of a load-in. Circuits fry, lighting instruments die inexplicably, and I myself shed a bit of dignity while unsuccessfully attempting to hold in sighs of frustration.

We had twelve 8-inch fresnels before this summer. As of today, we are down to nine. They don't break in a way that they could be salvageable, no. The fucking porcelain lamp seat fuses to other things and then breaks off. The reflectors melt into funny shapes. In short, they are old and decrepit.

When a light won't work, it can't just be a bad lamp. Of course not. You must have a bad lamp, a bad cable, AND a bad end cap all at once! And then the second unit you lug up on the ladder will ALSO have a bad end cap. But also, you were in "patch" on the board, you lameberg. Your day is SO awesome. You are really good at making things work.

So you'll toss everything in a big pile labeled NFG and hope that it will disappear before you ever need to repair it.

And why in the world are there eight versions of our rep plot (some from the early 90's) floating around amongst NYC designers? It feels like a bad joke.

I'm tired and cranky, and in about an hour, I get to hop on a train full of annoying people and not have enough room even to cross my legs. What I'm sayin' is, if you're lucky enough to glimpse me in the next coupla hours, you're gonna see some bitches* feel my wrath.

*And by bitches, I mean anyone, male or female, who: can't walk in a straight line, repeatedly jostles me while singing along to Oochie Wallie on a cellphone, talks about their awesome new tv addiction, or generally breathes in my direction.

Dimmer Beach

For the past two days at my theatre, I've been having a very slow heart attack. One of our 96 racks was intermittently deciding not to work, at all. It seemed particularly averse to working late nights (understandably). As we have a show opening tonight (which I'm designing lighting for), this was cause for concern. Half my systems weren't working, and I had no house lights. For hours, I looked at this CD-80 rack, frowning, and fucking with cables, and taking out cards, noting, nervously, that it was built in 1981. At least five people looked at this mess and shrugged.



The rack was on, and it was not communicating with the light board. Our other 96-rack was working just fine. So last night, I called my buddy Michael, who's very good with these types of things. He had me trace all the cables back, check out the opto splitter, and...the lights on the splitter were not on. Which meant that it wasn't getting power. Tracing the power cable back to its source, I found that it was hooked into the same circuit as our amps, which get shut down by our sound tech at the circuit breakers. So when the sound tech leaves, our CD-80 rack went bye-bye. The other rack still worked because it was plugged into the pass-through on the opto, which doesn't require power.

I guess the moral is: when in doubt, it's the dumbest, simplest possible solution you can think of.

Making Bad Lighting Work

Every so often, in my technical career, I'm asked to deal with shitty lights. It happens. It just so happens that this week, it's track lighting. I can't describe the emotional issues I have with track lighting, but they begin with the fact that you can't put each light on a separate channel. That, and most track lights are expensive and look like hell. The hot spot is up at the top, the units themselves get unbearably hot after about 30 seconds, and they break when you sneeze. To work with track lighting for a day is to feel pain. At some point, the part of you that wanted to make the whole thing look nice succumbs to the part of you that has a raging, aneurysm-style headache.

And then you can design comfortably. So, in closing, if you can just skip that whole "I want this to look great" phase, you'll have an all-right day.

Nightmarish People

In the day-to-day life of a NYC techie, he or she will encounter many new people, mostly artists and their friends, but also the occasional lighting designer or touring audio tech, what-have-you. It is great meeting most of these people, whose names will leave your memory shortly after they themselves leave your theatre. However, there is a special breed of folks that will burn an everlasting impression into your psyche, such that the mention of their name will bring up in your trachea the aromatic essence of your last meal (wasabi peas? really?).

I was talking with a couple of friends/co-workers about one of these special people last night. She is mentioned in another post of mine, albeit not by name. That's the tricky part of this blog. Anywho, we were talking about this woman, a lighting designer, who is easily the most horrifying designer I've ever worked with. And the conversation then turned to another jerk we'd worked for, who was much more bearable, but a jerk nonetheless. My friend said in these cases it is best to adopt an "okay, whatever" policy and basically turn your brain off, so that nothing this person says will affect you emotionally- you remain stoic, leave work later, and drink yourself to sleep or something. Sometimes that's not possible (such as when the designer has a nails-on-chalkboard kinda voice), but sometimes it really works.

Sometimes you'll work with a little-known artist who demands rock-star treatment, and hey, I guess you can't blame him/her, because starving for art sucks, so why not get a little respect and free booze before you go home to your shitty roach-infested Bushwick half-closet?

Regardless, I guess it's important to remember that you will most likely work with this person again, since NYC theatre is a small world after all. That's the sad part. There are some wonderful people that I have worked with only once; the horrible people are the ones who seem to keep coming back for more. Maybe the good ones all move onward and upward? Don't know.

It's also good to remember that as awful as some people may be, they may give you jobs in the future. If you miss out on some awesome touring gig in Asia because you mouthed off to a director, you will be sad. And here's where the arts get really fake, which I hate. But it's a balance of integrity versus income, and in the world of struggling twenty- and thirty-somethings, I think income mostly has to win that battle.

Once in a While...

Once in a while there is a Master Electrician who:

1. Makes you label both sides of the yolk of every lighting instrument in the plot- with channel number, circuit number and unit number. Then has you label each end of every cable with the same. And even has you label the fucking daisy-chained CXi, because lord knows it's difficult to trace that shit back.

2. Yells at you when you can't find something that you never even touched that day.

3. Has absolutely no sense of humor.

4. Ridicules YOU when someone else labeled your cable wrong.

5. Is 45 years old or older, and really should have moved up by now, unless there is something wrong with her, which there is.

6. Needs to get laid.

7. Thinks it's so cool that she works in New York.

8. Will tell you three effing times that there is no smoking inside. Because you were really gonna just light up on stage.

9. Makes a calm, reasonable person consider snapping on her and going home after two hours in her presence.

10. Hates you upon first meeting you. Because you are not her.

That's all I got to say.

I'm sitting back with Guinness and trying to scrub all the bipolarity off of me.