PLSN editor Nook Schoenfeld caught up with BML Blackbird crew chief Russ Felton and asked about his plan of attack for handling a gig requiring five semi-trucks of lighting gear. Felton spoke of the need for stashes of spares and gear dubbed bone yards. “I have seven distinct areas to cover, hence I will create seven different ‘bone yards’ on site,” Felton noted. “Each one will have the fixtures the LD spec’d and whatever hardware that I need…The bone yard is simply all the gear that I possibly might need to pull off lighting that area, no matter what the designer throws at me. As far as cable, there’s only one thing I can do. I bring along one 5-foot, 10-foot, 20-foot and 50-foot jumper cable for every fixture. Since I have lots of LED fixtures, I will two-fer a lot of circuits together on site. Sure, it’s a lot of cable, but better safe than sorry. I’m in a 400-acre field in Delaware; can’t just run to the shop for something.”
—Russ Felton, as interviewed by Nook Schoenfeld for “In the Trenches,” PLSN, July 2015
