Multiple Cue Lists for Dummies

Among a myriad of other things, I do live/corporate events.  I'll attempt to explain how multiple cue lists work for me.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario, consisting of a stage, a cyc upstage, a podium downstage, and miscellaneous spandex-covered set pieces on the stage itself. Now imagine a lighting rig consisting of an upstage truss, a FOH truss, and miscellaneous other fixtures hung about this ballroom/arena/tent/etc (note that I'm using automated fixtures exclusively)...

The "areas" I need to light consist of the following:

1) front and back light for the stage wash

2) special for podium

3) cyc (color changing and gobo effects)

4) walls (custom gobos around the room for the corporate sponsors)

5) spandex-covered set pieces (gobo and color changing effects)

This particular setup, which is pretty common for me, would consist of 5 separate cue lists, each loaded into their own playback, with the intensity control enabled for eack of those playbacks.  This allows me to manipulate the look of any, all, and various combinations of these areas, and also allows me to fade them in and out without necessarily executing another cue.  In this situation, I likely don't have the luxury to be able to program the entire show cue by cue, and I'm usually lucky if I get some sort of script or even a rehearsal.  Having this separation allows for many different combinations of looks and keeps things flexible.  I program different combinations of palletes into presets, and place those into all the separate cue lists corresponding to the areas you see above, and I'm free to layer them on top of each other and change the looks of each area without affecting those areas I do not want changed.  I can just change one area at a time, or three, or all five, and I can go back and forth within those cue lists independently of each other, and without affecting the others (provided the cue lists don't share the same fixtures- which would be a scenario where you could use the assert command).

To simplify it even further, and put it in a different context, perhaps you have one cue list for your play or musical, one for your houselights (full, half, flash, off), and one for your worklights (full, half, blues only, flourescents, etc).

 As far as assert goes, I'll explain how I commonly use it in the above situation.  Imagine the above scenario.  We're in the middle of the show, and  my client steps up and whispers in my ear "in two minutes, we're having a surprise guest enter from the center house left door, and I'd like to spot that area".  I would proceed to take one of my automated fixtures that was being used for the custom gobos around the room, manually fade it out, and refocus it on the door for the entry.  Once the grand entrance is complete, I need to get my fixture back into its previous position and listening to that cue list again that it came from, without actually executing another cue.  The best way to do this is to call up that fixture, and assert it back into the cue list/playback that it came from.  The desk will look (trace) back to the last move information that fixture had from that cue list, and place the fixture back where it was prior to me manually moving it. 

Was any of this explanation beneficial to you?

 -Abby

"Was any of this explanation beneficial to you?"

Excellant description.

Question now is, can you do multiple cue lists on submasters on an Ion ?.

Steve B.

"Was any of this explanation beneficial to you?"

Excellant description.

Question now is, can you do multiple cue lists on submasters on an Ion ?.

Steve B.