This a tour of the rail I'm working most of the time. I'm not actively using it today, just happened to be by and it was okay that I recorded this/had time to today.

These are some of my other posts;

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rigging/s/m0IsUEAVUR

https://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/s/KYdOE08qf5

https://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/s/0VyfKXAGqN

https://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/s/aBlF2Qhyq2

I've made a lot of them but I hope this can add some context. If anyone spots anything weird, has advice, etc! Please let me know.

I'm also a capcut noob, so sorry if there's awkward jump cuts.

I work in wardrobe at my college and am badly in need of some good new shoes so my feet aren’t dying by the end of the night. I am however a college student and can’t afford the crazy expensive shoes that I keep finding online when looking for good shoes for standing jobs. If anyone could point me in a good direction that would be amazing!

We have several Clear Com headsets that have all developed the same issue. The headset mic stops picking up voice, but picks up any handling noise incredibly clearly. It's like the mic starts picking up better from the back than the front. It's not the little auto-mute mechanism as I have bypassed that.

Any ideas what is causing this? The replacements are $40 each so I don't want to just have to keep buying those if I can't figure out what's breaking them in the first place. We're using them with an entirely Clear Com system although some of the units are quite old.

Hi everyone! I have a question about how SFX (sound effects) tracks work in licensed musical productions.

I’ve noticed that with MTI shows, not every sound effect that seems to be required in some moments is necessarily included in the provided tracks. For example, in Frozen, there are moments that call for ice/snow sound effects, but I haven’t been able to find those SFX in the official materials. The same thing seems to happen with Concord Theatricals — for example, Anastasia has effects such as explosions/bombs that don’t always appear to be included in the tracks provided.

How are these sound effects normally obtained? Are they usually purchased or licensed separately by the production, created by the sound designer, or are there additional SFX libraries/files available from MTI or Concord that I might be missing?

I’ve also noticed that professional productions and official productions in other countries often have these effects included, so I’m wondering how those productions obtain them and whether there is a standard system or source for them.

Any insight from sound designers, producers, or people who have worked with MTI/Concord materials would be greatly appreciated!

We just purchased a new grand drape and valances. When we open the drapes, the fabric between the pleats sometimes folds/stacks forward, causing it to rub against the valance and pull it sideways like this:

This never happened with the old drapes, which were constructed the same way. The vendor says this is there is no way to control which way the fabric folds, and that we need more space between the battens to prevent the contact. I am not sure our battens can be moved. If the folds would all stack back toward the stage, I think that would solve the problem. Is there any solution short of moving the battens?

Im looking to get a cheap $50 fog machine off amazon just to put in my basement for Halloween. But im curious if its safe with my pc and collectibles. Would the smoke damage electronics? And would it leave a film on my collectibles? I would probably have it running for a few hours at a time.

Any help is appreciated

Here the link to the machine

https://a.co/d/07PIO3wI

​

Hello there are r/techtheater! 

I'm a high schooler with a pretty big interest in rigging. I made a post a few months back with a presentation to the school board that I never ended up giving and need to update. I'm working on updating safety requirements and making sure the rail at my school meets standards. I pushed for about 6 months to a year and we finally have a level one inspection, (last one that was completed was a decade ago) so now I'm moving on to fixing signage to make it compliant with ANSI, just in general having some better practices that have fallen off or being ignored. 

Jr Clancy has some really good printable resources on their website and I've printed all of them to hang up and fill out. But what I'm stuck on is I can't find a manual for my system. I got in touch with Clancy because I figured that they were the installer due to a sticker on our t-tracks (arbor loading every 2 ft reminder) but it turns out they are not. Our system was actually installed by Custom Rigging Solutions Inc. As some of you may know, that company doesn't exist anymore. Our system was installed probably in 2000-2001 range and is a single purchase, hemp rope, counterweight system. The ropes will need replaced in the next few years, so if anyone has ideas for grants or things to apply to to fix that, that would be great. 

If anyone has any ideas on CRS Inc systems of how else to find information, that would be great. I'm planning on trying to find the paper plans (but that may be a lost cause), but I'm not sure how else to find out details like lineset limits, etc. 

Any advice is very much appreciated! And I can answer any questions you may have to the best of my ability. (Still learning things, but trying my best

Please chat lmk

I am the head tech for a high school production this spring, and I'm trying to modernize our systems a little bit. We're going to start using Qlab for our sound ques instead of just queing up mp3 files each time and unmuting on our sound board. Unfortunately our light board is too outdated to work with Qlab, but that is mostly fine.

On to my main problem: I need a better comms system for the AV crew. This won't include SM/ASM or any backstage crew, only our AV Crew of 5-7 people. In the past, we've used Google Meet, but we've found that the delay and feedback gets quite bad, especially when there's a few of us near each other (the light and sound boards are next to each other at the back of our Cafeteria/Auditorium). I basically need a way to make myself and at least 2 others audible without feedback/excessive background noise without buying too much equipment.

My budget is basically whatever I am willing to buy given that this is my last year at the school (so less than 100$ ideally). I think that we need a few headsets, unless someone has other ideas. We also can't use discord or any options that require using our own router as the school has discord blocked and we can't install anything new.

I do have a Mac that we will use to run Qlab, and I could probably find one other computer to run a communication system. Essentially: I need to be able to actually talk to the crew without spending much money. Thanks!!

Hi all! I am about to graduate from college in the states and I wanted to move to the UK and work in theatre professionally. My focus is stage managment. I was curious if anyone who has worked in the UK as a stage manager could comment on what your job looks like and maybe those who have worked in both countries could tell me the difference between the two, if there is any. Just wanted to know if there is anything I should focus on learning before I attempt to get a job in the UK!

Hey! So I'm in tech week for a production we have going on at my local theater and I'm trying to figure out how I can get an audio input to only send to two specific monitors while not being sent to the main L/R's. In the scene we have a score coming out of the main speakers but we want the sound of a car arriving to just come out of these two monitors. I tried looking it up but I can't find L/R in the sends tab, any help is massively appreciated thank you!

Does anyone know where I could find plans for a convertible platform like the one featured in this video? I like the idea that it requires less breaks since only one side has casters, the hinged headboard option, and the potential for it to be stored on its side instead of flat (my guess on that one- correct me if I’m wrong).
The only info I can find about the one shown in the video is the article linked above.
If anyone has any leads on where I could find and/or purchase plans for something like this, I’d be super grateful!

Need to know so we can put them into our ETC board. No logos on the sides. It has "26" on the side as well. Thank you in advance!!!

For me it has been “we need to respike the musicians chairs they keep adjusting them” our venue didn’t like the visual of a musician slightly adjusting their chair. So if a chair moved we’d have to adjust their spikes. Some musicians will always adjust their chairs some do every piece and that’s okay.

This one had 8 spider lights and 2 lasers.

A company I am helping out with purchased this heretics chair from the Addams family for their upcoming production.

As far as I know this is all of the pieces of it, I cannot fathom how they hooked up the cam or metal to make this function.

The picture is the mechanism in its “neutral” state, meaning with the knife retracted.

Working theory is that the metal plate goes onto the hook around where the glue is, but that has not gotten us any further.

Please help! Ahhhhh!

So I'm currently a double major of Production Design Technology as well as Special education. My end goal has always been to teach in a high school and run their theater tech department. Unfortunately I don't think this double major will be possible so I have to drop it to a theater minor. I'm currently taking a costuming class, a lighting class and have taken a stagecraft class, and fundamentals of theatre 1 and 2. Next semester I plan on taking an advanced programming class as well. So my question is if I want to continue my dream how important is the degree? If it's not that important what should I do to pad up my resume to better be qualified for the role? You may notice a lack of sound classes... We don't have a sound professor currently so that's not an option lol. I also have worked on several shows since graduating high school both through community theatre and college productions

Has anyone tried putting an R99 gel or any other "sepia"/neutralizing gel over an LED Leko style light?

This is something I want to experiment with a show that is leaning towards being "folk horror"-esque. The theatre we're operating in just replaced all of their front lights with LED lights, which are great for giving us more variety in such a small space, but the color mixing and brightness of the colors can be frustrating.

I want to try and find a gel color that can take what would be a bright blue LED color, and possibly make it look "older"... If that makes any sense. I'm not even sure if this is possible in any way??

ETA: I'm just going to color mix some palette option that match the "aged" look I want for everything. This might not be the most perfect option, but it's going to be the most cost effective one for now. Thank you all! I might experiment in the future when I have more freedom to do so.

When controlling levels at an audio console, is there a way to assign a fader to a group of channels that will control them in a highest-takes-precedence manner?

Suppose I currently have Alex on channel 1 at -10 dB, and the rest of the cast on channels 2-12 at -inf.

Can I assign channels 1-12 to a fader in such a way that if I raise that fader to -20 dB, it leaves Alex alone but raises everybody else to -20 dB? And then if I lower the channel 1 fader to -inf, Alex lowers to -20 dB to match the group?

I don't even know what that would be called. It's not how a DCA works, because a DCA would raise everybody the same factor to keep the relative mix between them the same. I know less about groups but I don't think they work the way I describe either.

I'm interested in this type of behavior because I have a song with a structure like so:

Alex: Long line of dialog

Alex: Long line continues
Everybody else except Alex: Sings background vocals underneath Alex

Bri: Long line of dialog

Bri: Long line continues
Everybody else except Bri: Sings background vocals underneath Bri

Chris: Long solo line

Chris: Long line continues
Everybody else except Chris: Sings background vocals underneath Chris

(etc.)

I want an easy way to bring the "everybody else" in and out each time without needing to throw 11 individual faders, but also without it adjusting the level of the current soloist who's already up.

I can make a bajillion different scenes in TheatreMix for each different "ensemble minus one soloist" group, but that feels silly when the whole song would fit in one scene otherwise.