Advertisement
Published: November 6th 2007
Edit Blog Post
House
This is one of the first places I saw when I got here. Just what I was picturing. Sidenote: For those of you getting Africa updates, these are not nearly as exciting. But there’s pictures!
Early day. Well, not too early, plus we got to bed early last night. Breakfast at the hotel was awesome! More food than I could’ve imagined. Salami and turkey and other meat cuts, something pasta, cereal, a zillion types of yogurt, fruit, sausage, things I haven’t seen before. Pam (my roommate) and I ate with our nice German-boy chauffeurs and met more team members who showed up during the night. I asked them where the best place to get chocolate in Germany is. They didn’t have to think for a moment. “Starbucks. Starbucks has the best chocolate.” Oh brother! After breakfast, off to the venue!
It’s a nice little arena. The crew is interesting; no one has quite figured out who’s in charge or who really knows what. Chris, my department head, (the weekend LD from Willow) kept asking me during the load in, “Jami, you got that?” I’m thinking, if I couldn’t carry it, I wouldn’t. It took him the usual 2ish hours to realize I sometimes know what’s going on. Our team is a good mix of experience, and we
Dome
This is the dome of the unfinished church. have two German guys. The trucks all came in backwards, so we got started kind of late. We got a bunch of random cases, then some lights, some PA, and the motors and truss were in the last truck. And late. While we were waiting, all of us met and our fearless leaders gave us a pep talk. One guy, who’s kind of in charge said, “I’ve done much bigger shows with much smaller crews in this amount of time or less. I’d love to see lights and sound in the air and on when we leave.” (We were strictly limited to 9-5 in the venue.) Later, the head guy told us, “I think he’s expecting a little much. That probably won’t happen.” I thought we were capable of getting it up, but not sure if we would as I didn’t know the team well yet. As we were building truss, I was thankful for my experiences. Questions were asked like, “with triangle truss, does it matter if the pattern of the bars continues in a V? What about with box truss?” Yes. Seeing as no one else really knew what that meant, I went up and down all the
My favorite new tool!
Yep! It's what it looks like... a tool for removing PAR lenses. Germany is sweet! truss and made sure they were properly in tension and compression. Thanks, Dale.
After this, Chris started giving me the benefit of the doubt that I knew what was going on. That was nice. He’d give me little random jobs that you needed some about of know-how to do. He had me get out a bunch of Studio PARs, basically Source 4 PARs, and set them where they were going to be hung. I got them out and started looking at them. First of all, all the lenses were in backwards from how we do it. And they were all different. I asked Chris what the plan was and he said they needed the same lenses, so I spend a while changing those out. Cool thing though- they have this tool made for taking lenses out (see pic)! That made my day. Those lenses are crazy to try and get out w/o it. I wonder where to find them in the States.
Lunch was amazing. Basically, every meal is comprised of meat and potatoes. I love this country! Schnitzel, something like potato dumplings, regular potatoes… and the pastries! Whoa! All the water is in big glass bottles and the only things they have to drink other than beer are Coca-Cola and Sprite and Fanta. All of the water has gas in it.
Load in went pretty well. My official job is keeping tabs on the boys, which, I told them is my job at home too. Supervising. I found a few mistakes they made on the hang today, which they were glad I pointed out before it all went into the air. We all get along pretty well; lots of laughing.
The whole metre thing is screwing with our heads a bit. Last night, at our meeting in the bar, Chris told us the screens were 4x3. We’re all thinking, that’s wicked small… After a few minutes, we remembered that it’s metres, not feet. Still small, but not nearly what we were thinking. All the cables are in metres, so it’s harder to guess what lengths we need for runs. I’d love to say we’re getting the hang of it, but I’m not so sure.
I’d also love to tell you I’m picking up German. Also not true. I know that ‘ausgang’ is exit and ‘strom’ has something to do with power. There was a 9 letter word written on a box of hardware; I asked one of our German guys how to say it. It’s a one-syllable word meaning “screws.” That’s a lot of superfluous letters! Some things on menus are getting more familiar.
When we left the venue, everything was unpacked, the truss was floating with fixtures and we really just need to fly it out. A few minor details to work out, so overall, we were happy with where we ended.
Dinner was fantastic. Steak and potatoes! They even made mashed potatoes for me (I had a German ask for me.) Everyone here drinks water with gas in it, and there are never free refills on anything. One German guy asked for a pitcher of water for me, and it was pretty culturally odd that I was drinking “water from the pipe.” It’s good though, and clean. But that’s what you give to your dog and shower in, why would you drink it? It’s the only think you can get free refills on.
Conversations were great. We talked about working in mega-churches, art, ministry. Our table was mainly video and lighting people, so we talked a lot about the hmmm battle hmmm of lighting for video or lighting for stage. It’s nice to know everyone else has the same issues. I’ve been getting art ideas, video ideas, backdrop ideas… I can’t wait to bring them back!
One thing that’s odd to me is the separation. There’s the tech team, and then there’s the music and drama teams. We mostly ate at different tables at dinner, and we even have separate green rooms in the venue. I don’t know if they did that because there’s so many people from all over and it’s easier, or what. I’m glad we don’t. I like knowing and hanging out with the… artists. It’s just sort of an odd thing to me. Oh well.
Well, it’s closing in on midnight here, so midafternoon for you. Long day tomorrow again! Hopefully I’ll find myself some good German chocolate.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
-There are 10 10 degree Sc. 4s and 4 19s for front light. 4 6-bars for backlight. Some 19s for side band and some of the Studio PARs for band back and set fill. 5 Mac 250s, 6 Amp Towns, 6 Mack 300s as far a movers. The console is the GrandMA, the big one.
-The sound console is a Yamaha PM3500? Something like that. The mains (line arrays) are EAWs.
-There are several people who came to work without a wrench…
-That’s all I have for now, and I’m sure I forgot some things.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.263s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 63; dbt: 0.1347s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
dave
non-member comment
Great Pictures
Smith, nice pics and good commentary. We miss you and sre praying for you. Have fun and stay away from the German Boys! Dave