Hey everyone! Just getting started programming a light show in beam for a band that I’m playing with. We’re already running tracks in Ableton so this works great. Apologies if this has been covered already but I was wondering if there is a streamlined way to go about transitioning a show to a new venue each night.
If I receive a list of lights from the stage manager would the process be to look up their respective manuals and try to fit them into my setup with the fixture editor?
I was also wondering if the only way to mockup a small stage lighting setup after receiving the light list for each venue was to buy the full version of capture and build out each setup?
If there’s a section for beginner questions I likely missed it! Apologies and thanks in advance!
I’m in the same situation - the way we deal with it is requesting that the promotor provide lights we already know are compatible with our beam profile (same or similar channel configuration) in our technical rider. If they’re a venue with good productional facilities they usually just rent what we need from a rental company, if they’re a DIY/underground venue and have no production budget then they send us a list of exactly what they have in house and then we update our beam profile with what we want to use - looking up manuals and creating fixture profiles ourselves etc
Adding unfamiliar fixtures to your beam profile when you get into the venue for soundcheck is very stressful and time consuming - there’s usually very little time for troubleshooting and that time should be used for sound checking. Lighting specs must be 90% sorted out in pre-production imo.
It’s a good idea to make a list of your first preferences of lighting fixtures, then a second list of all acceptable substitutions - particularly fixtures with the same channel configuration. Then you can be really fast with communication with the venue.
Hey! This is super helpful insight, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond!
Do you mock up the placement in Capture or another visualizer in order to calibrate or dial-in any moving head fixtures? Is fixture placement part of that initial discussion as well as channel settings for the in-house fixtures?