Hard values lurk around every corner. They hide in the dark recesses of the mainframe. They are always there, and they always seem to attack at the most inopportune times. I know that we try to avoid putting hard values into the program, but sometimes they are just too convenient. To flush them out, it is time to revisit some basics. I find that we need to remind ourselves why the basics are so crucial. When the pressure pot is cooking it’s easy to try and cut corners only to cost us vital time when we least expect it. The notion that “This show is just a one-off” is often enough incentive to bypass the few necessary steps to make sure that we create repeatable palettes. Here are some war stories of when hard values have attacked me and the people I love.
When Dimmer Values Attack
I recently assumed a show file that has been 15 years in the making. The show file has been touched by several programmers and has evolved through numerous software versions. Somewhere along the way, a d3 media server was added to the show. When the d3 was added, the d3 must have had a dimmer value of 0-1, 0 being black and 1 being full intensity. When a programmer input the values, they did not use presets. That is not uncommon with dimmer values because 0-1 is relatively rare. 0-100 is exponentially more common. This would have been a completely benign programming technique and would have worked just fine for that tour. But, between tours, there were several mini-tours and one-offs that didn’t utilize the video server. The d3 programming sat dormant for quite some time. When we started rehearsing the new tour, we could not get any output from the new server. We could see that the server was in the correct clip and that it was playing so we would bring the intensity to full, and no image reached the screen. This led the entire video department on a goose chase through the disguise settings, cabling, and a myriad of potential causes. Eventually we realized that the disguise server was looking for an intensity value of 0-100 now. What was 100% is now 1%. I went in and changed the fixture profile, and we realized the issue. We solved the issue on our end, but now we had to update the intensity values through the whole show. For instance, 0.5 had to be reprogrammed to 50% everywhere we found it. Over time we found ways to search for certain values, replace them with a new value and then put them into presets.
When Position Values Bite
In 2011, I took a new position as the Lighting Designer at The Joint in Las Vegas. I inherited the maintenance and overseeing of a long running residency. Between resident shows, many other artists would come through and want to make changes to the room and the rig. Each new touring designer wants to make the rig work for them. On a Thursday, we had a corporate event that required us to rotate all the VL 3000s 90° to put on truss borders. In my head, that shouldn’t affect the resident show because of course the programmer used position presets. My assumption was wrong. When we loaded the resident show back in and started running through the first cues, the VLs all shot off into the wings. I explained the situation to the programmer and let him know that he would need to update his position presets. He told me that he didn’t use many position presets because this was a resident show. He hadn’t needed to update these positions for over a year. Because the set was already in place, we couldn’t bring down the trusses to reorient the fixtures. Out of a mixture of embarrassment and pity, I offered to update his positions and put them into presets for him.
When Beams Values Strike
Beam attributes are more of a catchall term. They can refer to irises, internal macros, shutters, and anything that isn’t color, position, or intensity. On one fixture, the beam category might only mean shutter and on another fixture, beam might include lens rotation. In the world of custom fixture profiles, we can all categorize these attributes as we please. When we find the exact value that we are looking for when it comes to specific fixtures, it is easy to forget to put these values into a preset. This can become a major problem when using older fixtures. In the past, beam also included what are now control channels. Fixtures like Martin MAC 2000s put the lamp on and lamp off features on the same channel as the shutter. If a programmer was browsing through the beam palettes, they could easily lamp off the MAC 2000s without realizing what they had inputted. While I was the LD at the Hard Rock Hotel, we were still using 12 MAC 2000s at the pool stage. On several occasions, I watched programmers clone their modern rigs into the MACs. I would remind them to update their beam palettes first. Even if they updated their palettes, the MACs would inevitably find the random hard values that told them to lamp off. This meant that the show would go dark minus the followspots and the LED blinders. Waiting for MACs to lamp on during a show seemed like an eternity.
Cloning Aggression
This is the perfect time to mention cloning. Cloning from fixture to fixture is the primary reason to use presets. We use presets so that we can take the information from a fixture that we had on a festival on Thursday and apply that information to a fixture that we have inside a theater on Saturday without having to reprogram the entire show. This saves us hours of time if we have used our presets properly. Sometimes a deep blue in one fixture is a barely a medium cyan in another. If we have used presets, we can update the color preset and it will fix itself through the entire show. If we relied on hard values, we will be updating that color in every song. Presets are designed as important tools to help the programmer work quickly and more efficiently. We need to take the time to use them properly.
A New Weapon in the Battle
If you haven’t played with grandMA3 yet, we have a new tool to aid in our fight against hard values. There is a new feature called ‘Recast.’ Recasting allows the programmer to add new values into a preset and apply them throughout the show. For instance, if the bass player already has a position preset, but halfway through programming the show, I realize that every time I go to the BASS preset, I also want the zoom value to go to 20%, I can add that value to the preset and recast that preset. Now everywhere that I used the position preset BASS, the zoom value will also be affected. If you are still using an MA2, Giaffo Designs has a plugin that can do the work for you.
