Thursday, October 15, 2009
New Software: SpotTrack Followspot Cue Software
iSquint | Entertainment Lighting News & Review: "SpotTrack is a new program for making and managing followspot cue sheets – something that has traditionally been done in Excel or Word using ad-hoc documents created from scratch as required. SpotTrack, by contrast, has been built for the job"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
This piece of software is interesting in its usefulness for a very spot heavy show. This may be more suited for the Broadway market or other markets where shows plan on running for a long period of time. Making spot cue sheets that are very clean looking is a hard task and making changes can be very difficult. The interesting thing about this software is the licensing for it. Paying for it on a per show basis is an interesting concept that could help reduce the costs for companies that only need it once a year, but want to say updated with the current version.
I think this piece of software is definitely going to find its way into an ALD's toolbag. Spot tracking is one of the most annoying aspects of being a LD/ALD and a program that can do it simply and as flexibly as how SpotTrack seems to do it is sure to become a great addition to the lighting community. How fast it takes off I think is going to be a question of cost and ease of use. But it certainly will be something that I look at on my next show.
I think software like this will be finding its way into the hands of lighting people everywhere very soon. As annoying as spot tracking is and making the cue sheets look clean, I think what is more annoying is making changes, and still trying to keep organized and neat. This program may save you time when you are doing your cues, but come tech week, when you have to make those 20 changes the director wants, you will be very happy you have proprietary software available that will make the changes painless and quickly, while still retaining the neatness one desires.
I'm curious to see where this will go. A lot of people say "Why buy Lightwright, Excel can do the same thing!" I think the same thing will be said about SpotTrack. Seems like a great idea, and hopefully it will catch on for the sake of the writers of the software, but I'm not so sure that I've ever felt like spot tracking was SO out of control, I couldn't handle it in Excel or Omnigraffle. Granted, I've never done a touring musical with 10 spots, so...lets see what happens?
Post a Comment