Sometimes I think I’m too old to learn new tricks. But that’s just an excuse for being set in my old ways. What I really need to do is practice what I preach now, and start making lists. I’m thinking that if everybody made little lists we would probably save on a lot of things besides aggravation. Things like gasoline, overtime and shipping bills. I’ve done a lot of gigs with a crew chief named Tommy Green. Whenever I mention something to him he always stops me from talking for a second while he pulls something out of his back pocket — a mini notepad and a pen. He instinctively knows that I’m about to mention yet another item I forgot to include on the plot. And so he doesn’t forget, he writes it down. At the end of the day he combines all his scratches into a master list for the next day so he can start checking things off.
Making an ASS of U and ME
For the last few months, I’ve been working on several projects simultaneously. This makes it easy for things to fall between the cracks. Items I need for different shows can easily be forgotten. But I screwed up and never made separate lists for the crew chiefs of the individual shows. I just kept forwarding them emails with client requests, plot revisions, and my own notes attached. Things like 100-foot ropes, miscellaneous soft goods and hanging hardware were briefly mentioned but never emphasized because I assumed someone else was making a list of all my demands as they came in.
The number one rule in the music biz is to never assume. I broke it. I’m now on site looking for the box that has my two black velour legs. It didn’t make it here. I move over to counting pipes. I’m missing the two 12-foot pieces necessary to fly some sponsor banners. Now I’m putting together the rear rag truss. I’m missing one section of 20-inch truss. How do you forget a stick of truss? I know I mentioned all of this stuff to the crew chief. It’s on the plot. But I should’ve counted up every section of truss myself and submitted a list.
I didn’t check my list against anyone else’s. Now the production company has to pay a large amount of cash in shipping fees. I pride myself in never forgetting anything for a gig — not a single cable, truss bolt or spare anything. I dread the thought of calling the shop for anything unless the client has added something and I can bill them for it. You can’t bill someone back for shipping something you forgot. And you can’t ask for a raise if you forget stuff and cost your company money.
Beaucoups of Blues
Speaking of forgetting stuff, everyone here has heard a story about a box of cable, or something heavy and vital to the show, being left back at the shop. It was packed and ready to go. It just inadvertently got pushed behind a black curtain while the truck was being loaded. This usually requires some counter-to-counter airfreight shipping the next day and beaucoup bucks spent that nobody recoups.
This is easily preventable. Nowadays I believe most professional equipment vendors use some computer program to calculate truck packs and space. In order to do that, the program needs to have a list of all road cases and truss going into it. It seems to me that if you had someone stand at the truck with this same list and check off all the items as they enter the truck, they would notice that the cable box was never packed before the driver pulled away.
Life-Saving Lists
Lists are good for other stuff. Every night that I am behind a console I think up a few more cues I can hit, or ones I need to edit. I always try and keep a pen and paper at the console to jot this stuff down. Since my cues are often fast and furious and I write quickly, I can’t always read my chicken scratch the next day. But I will activate whatever cue I wrote down last night and remember that I wanted to change something about it.
For a lot of theatre and awards shows I light, I run off of one giant cue list — one fader with 500 different sequential lighting cues in order. This works swell 99 percent of the time, especially if you have plenty of mark cues and know the show order. But what happens when the show director gets on headset two minutes before a performer is scheduled and tells you that act three and act six are swapping positions in the running order? You may be lost and temporarily not know where to go in your cue list to get to the right place. I’ve had this happen many times on live TV shows and situations where you just can’t black out.
Normally I would panic slightly, and then put the console in blind mode. This way I could scroll through all my cues until I find the place in the lighting cue order where I need to be for the next act. Once I know the lighting cue number I can switch back to live mode and easily jump around in the cue order to execute commands. But those two minutes of searching for cues while your heart is stopped can take hours off your life. So now for every show like this I have a cheat sheet taped to the side of my console. It lists every segment of the evening’s performance with the first preset (mark) cue for the lighting of that piece. This little list has saved my butt many times.
Friend-Saving Lists
I’ve been known to preach about staying in contact with people over the years. But often I travel through a town and I’m too busy to call and catch up. This is not good for friendships or rekindling business ties. So I’ve got an itinerary of everywhere I will be for the next eight weeks. I know people in over half the towns I will visit. I started jotting down names next to the towns, and a few days before I get there, I’ll send out an email. It’s been nice to catch up with old friends. I probably wouldn’t have done it without the advance list.
When I am in charge of the lighting department I want a game plan before load-in. I want to make sure that everyone on my crew has a sequence of jobs and times in which to accomplish them. I make a list of jobs and place the names of crew members next to them. I can also calculate how many local crew help I will need based on this list. The important thing at a load-in is that you always keep everyone busy. If you have to stop to wait for something like rigging points, look at your list. There will be other items like running intercom and setting up consoles that can take up this idle time.
If there is one thing that can help organize your professional and social life, it would be to (1) make a list, (2) double check it, and (3) use it faithfully. Okay, that’s three. I really need to add “study math” to my list.
