Today I find myself lighting Rihanna at the Avalon Ballroom in Hollywood. They have a selection of cheaper moving lights, LED fixtures and pars run from an Avo Pearl. But their biggest asset is not their system. It's Joel Huxtable, the house LD.
A good house LD in a club environment is a rarity. I'd say about 1/4 of them know what I'm talking about when I walk into their room. The others will try and understand, but take 10 times longer than Joel to program what I want. I am good on most consoles, but clubs tend to have Avo desks or other things that take me too long. If the house LD is any good, he will master the desk the owner has bought.
Schlock LDs will often come in and use whatever cues are left over in a console from the previous show. Or they will think the house LD is a genius and ask him to set some cool looking shit up for you. Joel has the console full of cool looking scenes. But I want none of them. That's because I have a punt system that seems to work for me.
First of all, I will rarely try and program a one off show cue by cue for each song. Some people can do that effectively. Wait, I mean a select few can do that. Others try to do that and their show looks like crap. I've seen big name LDs spend hours writing their show for a 30 minute segment of a radio show. I've NEVER seen one that could make it look as good as I do on a single punt page. And that includes my own partner at Visual Ventures Design.
I chronicled the method I use in the upcoming Oct. issue of PLSN. I'm not going to explain it here, but just think about it. If you can separate color bumps from position and intensity faders you can rock like a big dog. If you come in to Joel with a game plan, he is your best friend. He programmed everything I needed and focused all my lights in under 2 hours. Most club LDs can't even gel and focus their pars in that amount of time.
So if you are a house LD with some movers in a club, concentrate on how you could run an entire concert from one page of your console. Just take a couple hours and experiment on how you can get the most out of your rig in the littlest time. That way we can go and enjoy a frothy beverage in the afternoon while the band is making that terrible racket they call a sound check.l
