u/TheEngin3er

Have some money to spend this upcoming year and was looking for a fixture recommendation that meets the following criteria.

1. Moving Head

2. Zoom functionality

3. Gobos

4. Fully LED (Not color/gel scroller)

5. Framing Shutters

6. Under $2k per fixture

If the price range is unrealistic that's good to know too, I don't have a ton of experience purchasing or doing a shootout between fixtures. I have a fair bit of experience with Chauvet and ETC fixtures, but I'm definitely not opposed to branching outside of those brands.

This is more of a vent post than anything, but I'd love to know the perspective of others on similar situations.

I'm the TD at a performing arts center and I have a part time staff that serves in production and operations. We have a partnership with a community theatre that's been spanning about 4 weeks. One of my part timers is the A1 for it. The part time crew is on the younger side, but their competent technicians that are learning more every day. Typically I'm at gig with the crew as the lead, but for this run I've let the team spread their wings and do rehearsals and shows without me, knowing that I'm always a phone call away and there for support when needed.

Recently I had a conversation with one of the crew members that's a part of the community theatre, and they let me know that they felt the mix could use some work, primarily some stuff about the vocals not being loud enough. I played a decent role with getting the console set up, ringing things out, and getting some general levels, but it's primarily been the A1 who's been at all of the rehearsals, and has been working closely with the group. The mentality of the crew member is that, so long as I was there initially to set everything up, get gains, ring things out, and build a good baseline mix, they could have just hired one of the high school kids that runs sound to be there for the rest of the rehearsals and shows due to how they perceive the quality of the mix.

My thought/vent is as follows:

1. If a seasoned technician comes in and sets everything up to be picture perfect, and nothing goes wrong or needs adjusting at all, then you could throw anyone in front of a board to just push faders. The knowledge my technician is bringing as A1 is how to navigate the console, make decisions and artistic changes deeper than just fader position, and infrastructure knowledge of the system.

2. I already wish I could pay my folks more for the job that they do. They pay the high schoolers they use a stipend (fancy way of saying $200 for a 2 week run of shows plus rehearsals) and this is not a good metric to use when saying "We're paying a whole $21/hr for your technician, we could have paid this highschooler $2/hr if you were here to literally set everything up for them!"

3. People have to learn somehow. While education is important to technicians, there has to be a step where they get behind the board and drive. Mistakes may happen, the mix may not be perfect, but how else are they supposed to gain the skills to be successful in the future? Especially when so much of the patron and staff feedback we've been hearing has been super positive. Why is it that the mentality of some groups is just "we don't want to pay any amount for anything and there is no middle ground between hiring a 20+ year vet and a kid that we can pay peanuts".

I've shared the comments that the crew member had with the A1 about the mix, and they said they'll make those changes and pay more attention, but I just feel irked by the interaction and the expectation. I can't stand the mentality of "just set everything up for us and we can put whoever we want in front of the console but if anything happens during the show and our technician can't fix it then it's the venues fault for letting that happen". And also, "This mix has some small issues, we could have just paid a kid who barely knows the system, can't gain stage or EQ, and low passes all vocals to 6k, peanuts to do it and it would be the same thing!" I really understand the desire to have a perfect show, but it's a live event and things happen. People have to learn somehow, and things will never get better if we just keep cutting corners stating that random people could to a better job.

I'm looking for a variety of perspective and different responses from professionals in the industry on this one:

I am a Technical Director at my venue, with my primary background being in running sound. At my center, we primarily do live music, comedy, with a little theatre sprinkled here and there due to some limitations of our space. We have children's and community theatre roughly once every 2 months and I see a wide variety of examples of what a sound designer really is, and I feel like the lines get blurred a lot between what is expected. Based on what I see from the groups that come in, the sound designer is:

• The person who is responsible for all sound effects, music, and audio cues, and getting them uploaded into QLab/whatever other software is triggering cues. (often ripping stuff from Youtube and putting it in the show)
• Will communicate with the FOH operator on how the mix should sound for the show.

I know that this is a narrow description, but for performances that are in our space for such a small amount of time (often a same day load in and load out, may be two days if we are lucky and they can afford it). It's my understanding that the sound designer is typically in talks with the director and rest of the production team long prior to the group arriving in the space, and the Audio Operator/Engineer is actually the one running sound in the space.

The reason I'm confused on what is the "norm" (even if there isn't really a norm) is because I'm adept enough on QLab to load in and organize files for a basic show, whether that is with sound or projection. So typically when we get a school in for children's theatre, or a community theatre in with not much in depth vision on what the show should be, the needs seem pretty light overall. The mixes I have are pretty good from a FOH perspective, so often times the person designated as sound designer doesn't say much to me about what they need. Because of this, I just don't think I have a really good understanding of what a sound designer's role is in the level of theatre that I see on a consistent basis.

Just looking to see what sound designers in this group or sound designers that people in this group know, are responsible for, and what level of theatre/production that they're operating at.

I've been going through my MASSIVE backlog of switch games, and I finally got to the Castlevania Advance collection. Just wanted to share a few of my thoughts and maybe spark discussion about what you all think of these games. All of these games were beat without using the added save, load, or rewind functions that the Advance Collection brought in.

1. Circle of the Moon:

I actually beat this game last fall and made a post on the game already, but just a few things.

-Not a huge fan of this game. I think the DSS drops are way too rare, and almost essential for some bosses. Grinding felt absolutely necessary just for the cards, which wasn't a great experinece Also maybe I'm bad, but this game is just hard as hell. Had the hardest dracula boss I've experienced to date. Castle design is way too bland, large, and if I see one more push-able box that I can't pass without the ability I'm going to explode.

-There were good things about this game though. The sound track is good, Nathan is a cool character, and the game feels good to control (save for double-tapping forward to dash)

2. Harmony of Dissonance

Last fall I started this game straight away after Circle of the Moon. I heard lots of bad things about this one, but as a symphony of the night fan, I was REALLY enjoying myself at the start. It also helped that the game was easier by a large margin and after Circle of the Moon, I welcomed that. I also think the visuals on this game are good contrary to what others may say. The graphical step up over the course of only a few years between COTM and HOD is insane, and I really enjoyed it (music wasn't taken in a great direction though). Game felt fast, cool, I like the simplified magic system compared to the DSS system from COTM, and I was having a good time. I put the game down out of nowhere because I remember getting stuck and not feeling like using a guide. I came back to the game literally yesterday and I suddenly remembered why I stopped....

The backtracking and castle design in this game is absolutely, unacceptably horrible in my opinion. The Castle A+B system is just total ass. The amount of running around the castle having no idea where to go made me so frustrated, I couldn't believe how many times I was running to a guide or checking my map over and over and OVER again. This game is so easy, but the backtracking made it very difficult to get through. I used to think that HOD was above COTM in my eyes, but after beating the game literally an hour ago, I may have to rethink that. It's a shame too because the game feel is great, and it looks really good too, but the castle design almost ruins all of it.

3. Aria of Sorrow

I heard so many people say this was their favorite castlevania game, and now I definitely see why. The game respects your time, gives you a ton of options for weapons and armor, and the soul system is just directly better than the DSS system in my opinion. No combining cards, just get a card, throw it on, and watch some awesome unique animations and get different utility to suit your style. Seeing some characters and their descendants return to the franchise was really cool, and it really did feel like a handheld version of SOTN. I can go on about this one but I imagine my feelings have been echoed by fans for much longer than I know. Not my favorite in the franchise among the games I've played, but it's top 3 easily.

4: Dracula X

Ugh.

Ok so I've never played Rondo of Blood so I don't know exactly how the game SHOULD be, but this game is chalk full of bullshit. Spear guards out the ass, cheap shots by bats, birds, medusa heads, and projectiles gallore, and knockback Knockback KNOCKBACK everywhere you go. The metroidvania games (save for COTM to some degree?) are obviously easier than the classic castlevania games, but this one really kicked my ass. Some good things are here for sure. Richter is cool, the music is FANTASTIC and the visuals are great especially for a SNES game. But literally this game had me seething with rage towards the end. The Dracula boss fight probably took me 40+ times to beat due to my stubborn strategy of face tanking Speedo Dracula in the 2nd half (completely my fault I understand). I was able to beat all 3 of the other games with the best endings for each of them, but for this? I only cared about rolling the credits. This is a game that I've visited from time to time over the years, but after beating this for the first time, I won't be going back anytime soon.

It's hard to rank these games at the moment since I literally beat Aria, HOD, and Dracula X all within the past 3 days, but Aria would definitely be at the top.

Long post, but yeah. What are y'alls thoughts on the games in the advance collection?

Kinda bummed out right now so apologies if this comes off as a rant.

Doing a theatrical run of performances at the venue I'm the TD, and today (and the past few days have been rough). Our Countryman E6s have been dropping left and right. Literally over the past 4 days I have had 4 of them become essentially unusable. The either no longer pass any signal at all, or sound like they are rolled off up to like 2k. I can confirm it's the mics because the beltpack (Shure ULXD1s) work great, and when I put in a functional mic, it sounds just like it should. I know that elements and lavs should be handled with care, and myself and my team are careful with them, but when its taped up and with the actor (children in this case for Jr. show performances), who the hell knows what can happen. Our lead actor has a cowl on for the show, and I kid you not we've had of these mics permanently crap out on us twice now . Today it happened 15 minutes after the soundcheck right when the curtain opened. Just stopped getting signal from that mic entirely, and had to switch mics after the first piece.

My plan is to send them to back to Countryman to see what they can do, but give it to me straight, am I just an idiot? For 4 of these guys to go down over the course of 2 days just makes me feel so stupid like they're something I'm missing. I know that kids can't be trusted with microphones, but literally myself and the crew are the ones fitting them before the show, save for the lead actor's mic. I suppose something their doing has broken the microphone in some way shape or form, but I don't know how that can happen so consistently. Are these mics just not made for musical theatre handling? Has anyone else had these things fail on them like this? What may be causing this?

Side note (and not entirely sound related), but folks in venues that rent out to musicals and stuff, how much staff do you have on hand for gigs like this? This is a "Jr." style musical and there are 16 mic'd kids and it just feels like chaos. The parents and staff of the renters have no one to facilitate any mic changes and it feels like they're expecting us to know their show better than they do. I'm not against having more folks to cover more areas like this (literally myself, the LD, and the SM are the ones who are taping mics to actors 15 minutes before doors open) but it just feels so surprising that folks sometimes don't have any agency or responsibility over the production. We want to put on a good show, so myself and my crew (who I'm incredibly thankful towards) break their necks to help out, but it didn't seem like enough today. That, tacked onto the fact that this company "has their own wireless gear" and it was all VocaPro awful garbage that is PLAGUED with interference and dropouts no matter what you do, and we had a show we're two young girls couldn't be heard because their mics, which were fine at sound check, were suddenly plagued with static and unusable, and where I had to leave the console to run a Wireless Mic to an actor before she sang onstage because her mic just stopped working entirely.

Sorry for the vent, sorry if I sound like I'm inexperienced or asking stupid questions. I just want these kids and the audience to have/see a great show, and these mics breaking so consistently combined with the general chaos of all of this just makes me feel like an idiot.

I'm a TD at a Performing Arts Center seeking some perspective/suggestions on handling when outside entities rent a space

Recently we've had a separate groups rent out theater for productions, a "jr" style musical. We are a small sized theater, roughly 500 seats, but we have a lot of great gear in house (full LED house, good sounding PA, ETC ION XE20 for lights, and a DM7 at FOH Audio) and our technicians are decently skilled with the gear. However for this production, the group only rented the space for one day. This means that all load in, tech time for cuing, blocking, projection mapping, QLab creation, etc., was all done within the span of about 9 hours, with only one single run through that we got before the performance. In addition, even though I did reach out to ask, the group couldn't get us a stage manager to call the show. I will say that I was able to get the group to mark up 4 different scripts (lighting, sound, projections, main rag) with cues and mutes so we could follow along that way, however it really makes for a seemingly unnecessary amount of stress to try and pull of a show on a time-frame like that with no one even on comms to call the show. For the TDs or PMs of road/rental houses in this group, I was wondering:

1. Is it typical for productions to come in (even for things like Jr. shows) with no Stage Manager? I feel like it really puts the production at risk when no one from the renter's party is involved in tech during the show to aid the technicians running AVL.

2. When instances like this occur when there's only one run through to see the show, it's incredibly strenuous on the A1 running sound to catch all of the mutes and rides accordingly. I actually ran sound for this show and overall I think it went well and sounded good, however my background is in audio and I have 10 years of experience. For less seasoned operators, it seems like a tall task to ask someone to follow a script/score and follow the mutes and the rides and make the necessary adjustments to 10 headworn mics (which is the amount we had for this instance) with not even a cue-to-cue to go off of, and then get it as perfect as possible. (Before folks come out of the woodwork saying "that's nothing one time I had to run 100 mics with no rehearsal at all and only 2 hours between load in and the show!" or something similar to that, I'm just trying to see how expectations are tempered in these situations to make it so the crew doesn't have to risk a show going poorly, and the proper people are put in place)

Any examples of how other venues do this are appreciated. Thanks for y'alls time.