CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 14, 2017

Eye On Efficiency: What I Learned Running A PA Company

ProSoundWeb: In October of 1991, I left my job as a maintenance technician in a large recording studio complex for a position as senior manager of a large sound, lighting and staging company.

It wasn’t a total leap as I’d worked for the same company in the early 1980s both as a sound tech and manager of the manufacturing department.

It didn’t take long to figure out that there were some significant challenges in the operation.

1 comment:

Marisa Rinchiuso said...

Reading this article was a bit foreign to my knowledge but very interesting to hear about the transition of duties. Cable management is one of the perfect situations for discussion of organization. We often hear that it's good to be organized, but usually that doesn't manifest in a tangible item/process. Cable management, especially identification, is a great example. In the first situation the writer mentioned, where cable lengths were so varied it was hard to identify them, by simplifying the lengths to logical, industry standard increments rather than 45' or 60, tasks can be achieved faster. I think that is one of the reasons why we often have seemingly arbitrary industry standards because it allows tasks to be done in a faster manner. For example, it would be extremely hard to learn the throw ratio of all the degrees of lighting instruments, but by only, typically, using 19, 26, 50, 70, it allows us to know a lot more in depth information on each instrument.