This month’s LD-at-Large is Stosh Rickenbach, longtime house LD at the original Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. He’s glad to help, but you have to give him a fighting chance. He has some guidelines that each club band should follow to ensure a well lit show. Good luck with that, Stosh. —ed.
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Welcome to the world famous original Fillmore. Congratulations if your career is taking off and this is your first visit. If you’re on a return trip from the big time, welcome back, and I suppose condolences are in order. I’m Stosh, and I’ll be your photon flinger this evening. I eagerly await any lighting notes you may have, with one caveat: ALL NOTES DUE BY 5 P.M. |
The typical call time at the Fillmore is noon-ish, with doors around 7. That’s a lot of time in which to make your lighting needs known. I’ve decided that 5 pm is a reasonable deadline to at least make yourself known to the house LD. Yet time and again, the tour guy charged with relaying lighting notes to the house LD thinks the proper time is when there’s already another band on stage. I cannot concentrate on lighting the support act because you insist I stop and listen to these important life or death cues now. I will have zero chance of executing these without the crowded club witnessing my programming in between acts. No chance to rehearse them. I can only assume you want me to show your band the same respect you’re showing this opener.
One regular visitor to the Fillmore lighting booth who invariably shows up during the opener’s set is the main act’s video guy. He shows me a projector meant to fit in a briefcase and says; “They told me I could put this here.” Since I’m the only one in a position to tell him that, and I didn’t, we’re already off to a bad start. I happened to overhear him ask the house manager if there was somewhere he could place his projector and distinctly heard her say, “Not really, but maybe if you ask the lighting guy really nicely…”
“Can I put it there in the window, in front of you?” Sorry, but I like to see the band I’m lighting. By the way, all in, my lighting rig puts out just north of half a mega-lumen. How many of those does your projector have? “Uh…” Let’s be generous and call it a 2k. I recommend a bare minimum 8k at this distance. You can put it in the crow’s nest with the followspots or, if you want anyone to be able to see your undoubtedly awesome content, you can put it somewhere on stage.
He leaves, but no sooner has he left than someone involved with something called ‘sponsorship’ turns up. “I have a gobo!” Gosh, me too. Small world. “The client wants it to go on that wall.” Client? There’s a band on stage, the house is full and I suspect this is the only job you had to do here today. I think your client needs a new gobo monkey.
“But Your Guy…”
Some folks aren’t content just to ruin another act’s lights. They’ll insist on ruining their own. Once there was a DJ opener who got a very nice look to start and was about to get a lovely light show befitting an opener. Someone from the tour showed up in the booth to say the DJ doesn’t want any light on him. Good time for that note. I slowly faded him out until the tour guy said, “That’s good.” I left him with a dim back wash, just enough so no one would fall off the stage. After his set he came up to booth spoiling for a fight. “Where was the big Fillmore light show I was entitled to,” would have been a more articulate way of saying what he actually conveyed. I replied that he got exactly what his guy demanded. I believe his guy, whose position on the tour was never clear to me, ceased to be employed.
Phoning It In
There is a once-prominent hip hop artist, now a prominent film actor, who still tours the nightclub circuit. He does not have an LD. He does, however, have “a guy.” This guy does not appear at load-in or soundcheck. He doesn’t even show up during the openers’ set. Only after the house lights go down and his artist walks on stage does he appear, talking on the phone and shuffling papers. He does not introduce himself or even look at me. He finds the bit of paper he’s looking for and in the midst of his phone conversation says, “First cue yellow.”
You talking to me? “Spots in yellow!” Hey followspots, I got a guy here who would like you in frame, uh, yellow. There’s no yellow. “What colors you got?” Whatever the last guy wanted when he had me load them sometime well before his artist walked on stage. “Well this is how I do things.” Yeah, and you make it look so easy. He continues talking on the phone through the entire set. By the end I can actually tell whether he’s talking to me or the phone, but the show would have certainly looked better if he had stayed on the bus.
Show Us Your Face!
Occasionally notes do arrive in a timely fashion. Another artist, wanting a dim stage, had the foresight to request it beforehand. She got eight GLP impressions 90s from above and behind, in blue at the minimum output available. Requested no front light. Someone came to the booth during the first song to say there was too much light on stage, so I turned half of them off. A different someone came up during the second song to say there it was still too bright, so I turned off two more. Third song, third someone, complete blackout. So when a fourth someone showed up in the booth, what could I do? I apologized profusely for my inability to turn the dark up any higher. They left to consult with the artist and returned a song later. Meanwhile the crowd, rather unnervingly, is screaming, “Why can’t we see you? Show us your face!”
A tech returns. “Her issue is with the red light.” Red light? Pointing, “That one there.” Ah, that would be a backline issue, as it is the power indicator on her amplifier.
In a Perfect World
So what’s the proper way to convey your lighting hopes and dreams to your house LD du jour? I prefer an annotated set list, with two simple pieces of information for each song: color, and an arrow indicating tempo. Most any house rig you encounter will feature color and tempo, but may not be capable of movement or beam effects. You may include up to three specific cues, and I’ll try my best to nail them, but any more and you might consider hiring your very own LD. Avoid adjectives, and if you don’t speak lighting, maybe avoid words altogether. I might accurately guess what you mean by moody, but when you tell me a song is fluffy or itchy, results may vary. Does “they don’t like green” mean no solid green wash, or not even a hint of green? Is “not too much haze” your timid way of implying no haze whatsoever? Be specific.
And please, pretty please, deliver your notes no later than 5 pm.
Any other notes for Stosh can be sent to stosh1@mindspring.com.
