mood: creative
music: Mute Math – Clockwork
I have vague dreams of this becoming a blog relevant to the world of concert lighting, which seems to me to be one the more untapped blogospheres out there. I picture articles on getting into the industry, reviews of lights, gadgets for the lighting professional, discussions of electricity, etc. Hopefully at some point, I’ll attract other, better, writers here and this will become a point for beginning lighting guys to find relevant information. Time shall tell.
Today’s tip is a programming trick that will work on any console that allows you to directly edit fade and delay times for individual fixtures within cues. My examples will be shown on the GrandMA, but if someone requests a walkthrough for the Hog software, I will provide it as well. (Both the GrandMA and the Hog III software lets you do this.)
Let’s say you need a precisely-timed cue with fixture delay in your show, say to make a row of ten lights move upward but you also want the cue to be finished within the time you set? Align (fan) your fade time opposite your delay time. It looks something like this on a MA:
When choosing your delay times, add the smallest time of one time “function” (fade or delay) to the largest time of the other one – this will be the total time your cue will take. For instance, in the example above, the total cue time will be 10 seconds because the largest fade time is 9 seconds and the smallest fade time is 1 second.
Another handy trick on the MA when editing things like individual fade and delay times is to hold down the “Store” button and change the default setting of “Store unchanged individual timings and modulators” to “No”, which will prevent the individual timings you’ve set from being applied to every new cue you write.
I should probably come up with a creative URL (URI for you fancy-pants programmers types) for my lighting blog. I need ideas! Post your favorite lighting-related blog name! Come up with something quirky and neat and maybe there will be a little prize in there for you. 😉
PS – Sorry about forcing the browser to resize the images. I’m lazy, and they’re small, anyway.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks