While I certainly saw the usefulness of those radios, I figured we didn’t need them for our church. We’re not really that big, and the productions we do aren’t that involved. Then came Vacation Bible School (VBS)…
Friday, November 08, 2013
The Value Of Radios For The Tech Team
While I certainly saw the usefulness of those radios, I figured we didn’t need them for our church. We’re not really that big, and the productions we do aren’t that involved. Then came Vacation Bible School (VBS)…
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During load-in for lighting for YCTIWY, Will had us all wear radios. And at first I thought that it was pretty unnecessary, since I'd been on plenty of lighting calls in the Chosky that went well without using radios. It of course turned out that I was wrong, and they ended up being very useful, especially on the first day when a few of us went up to the steel grid to drop some cables. It would've been a nightmare to shout questions and instructions up and down the Chosky, so that was neat. Then I thought, surely, we don't need the radios any more? Wrong again. They were super useful during focus, because it allowed us to communicate with Will regarding technical issues we were having with some of the lights and cabling. If we hadn't had the radios we would've been shouting out to the tech table over the designers, and you can imagine what an awful time we would have all had.
Moral of the article AND of my story: Yay radios! I also really agree with what Sessler said about the importance of buying quality products that will last you rather than buying cheap products that won't serve you well and that you'll end up throwing away.
While I haven't worked on a production where I needed or was given a radio, I totally understand their usefulness. Quick, clear communication is a must for any sized production, and when that production happens to be larger, radios are the obvious way to go. Over the summer I was working at a middle school theatre camp and all the staff were issued radios since we were working in multiple spaces around the building and it made life so much easier. Instead of hunting around for the person we needed to talk to, they were just the push of a button away. I agree with Camille, go radios!
I've changed my mind about radios over the past year or so. The first time I was given one to use, I thought it would be unnecessary and/or excessive seeing as there were already other forms of communication in place. It turned out to be very practical, and very often the most accessible form of communication available. This continued to be the case for the other scenarios in which I was given a radio. I think they can be especially useful for situations such as pre-show. When everybody is running around, it's difficult and impractical to always go looking for who you need to talk with. Phone response can be unreliable as well. Although radios have been around for some time, it seems their usefulness is being appreciated more recently.
I was nicely surprised while working on the lighting crew for The Crucible that we had radios available to use. As Camille has pointed out, they make streamlined communication much easier to attain. Because of this increase in communication, they can contribute to a more productive and safer theater workplace. The fact that they allow discrete paths of communication per department is a huge advantage during a situation when multiple groups of people are attempting to communicate different information to each other. Now that the price of technology is more accessible, more and more theaters should have radios in their inventory.
Ah yes, radios, they annoying as they hang off of you, but are all too useful when it comes to communication. This is especially true when there are people running all around Purnell that may need to talk to one another for some reason. I don't think it is really necessary for EVERYONE on call to have radios, but it is so easy just give everyone a radio and not have to worry about reaching someone. I have actually lost my voice on several occasions because people would not or could not wear and use radios. i can honestly say, load ins and strikes are not worth loosing my voice over. I also believe that not every single person in the theatre needs to hear my voice when I am trying to talk to one person.
I haven't been part of much in the School of Drama productions yet, however, I do understand the value of the radios and how they help big time. We tried using FRS at my high school, or at least I tried, but the quality was pretty bad and people didn't really use/wear them right, so they didn't hear calls for them. As SM/PM, my director and I both had Cisco wireless phones, and does helped a little because if that rang, we knew it was production related, however, that was still dependant on people answering. I really would have loved to have actual radios with either speaker mics, bluetooth headsets, or something similar, they would have definitely helped for non-run times (Our clear-com system was good for that). I really would like to go back and try out business class radios there and see how much they helped.
I never saw a need to use walks until Convocation this year. Since all the doors were back locked, anyone without a key would be locked out of the chosky. I was frustrating trying to reach someone to let you back in. When we pulled out the walks it made everything so much better. Also, they are great for when someone goes down into the trap room to get something but the lighting designer changes his mind about something while the crew is in the trap room. It is great because the crew doesn't have to bring up the wrong lights just to bring them back down again to exchange them for the new lights.
I'm going to start off with NO DUH. The reason I say that is because in a field where communication is critical, why would a communication system as easy to use, easy to install, and functional system such as basic radios be bad? I can't see why anyone would be so against radios to begin with. And why would anyone be so surprised that hey! I can now talk to you from booth while you're on stage. It just seems so obvious. The thing that makes radios so perfect, I think, is that they rarely go down. Cell phones, Clear-Com, and all that stuff, they're so susceptible to interference and malfunction. Radios have been trued and tested, and the only time my radio has even gone down was when my stage manager rolled backwards in a wheelie chair and tore the knob off the repeater. That doesn't count.
Like everyone else is saying, radios are incredibly useful! I know I'm not the only on here who has an amateur radio operating license, and certainly not the only one who's used one for any reason. They're more convenient and easier to use than cell phones or pagers or whichever technology it is that we use. And, you don't need a paid subscription to an overpriced carrier to use them! You just list off the rules of transmission to someone, tell them which button to push to talk, and off they go. I think it would be great to teach everyone how to use the radios and have it be a regular thing to use them for shows.
Personally, I think radios are one of the most useful things to have while doing almost any kind of work in a theater setting. While on my load in and strikes for lighting we usually are given radios or at least one person in each group are given radios. They have definitely proven to be useful, when you are up in the tension grid and the ME is on stage it is much easier to talk into your radio then it is to shout to one another. It makes communication easier and more efficient therefore making the job easier and the work more efficient. I am definitely a fan of radios!
Coming to CMU, I was really excited to see the amount of radio kit available for production use. In my last year of high school, we used radios pretty heavily for production and I've come to view them as a pretty indispensable tool. Yeah, they are a pain to clip on, especially with just a t-shirt, but the pros far outweigh the cons.
The ability to quickly and quietly communicate to any member of your team is a huge timesaver. But beyond the obvious advantage that one does not need to hunt around for the person you need information from, I think the greatest advantage is that the crew head can much more efficiently task available labor. It is possible for a ME to answer load in questions or task his electricians without anyone having to move from their current position. Furthermore, radios are not only faster than cellphones, but can also communicate information to a large group of people at once.
I think good radio gear has a pretty big barrier to entry given the high cost, but they are worth every penny.
As technology develops, I think it will be interesting to see the how radios manage to persevere. If I had to guess, my guess is that within the next several years there will be an application that performs like a radio within your phone, if they don’t already have that. That being said, an expensive radio set up will be unnecessary, as instead those working will likely already have the application from previous work or can get it for a nominal fee. That being said, believe that the need to communicate is especially pertinent throughout load-ins, techs, and final performances. I often wonder why in tech the Director is not given a headset, if for no other reason than to know where the hold up is? A simple curiosity. As a director, it is not that I would be trying to invade anyone’s space, but just that again it would ease communication, and in situations such as these, communication becomes vital.
I've always had mixed feelings about radios. In theory, they are a great idea. Questions get answered quickly, there's no excessive noise, and no one loses their voices. However, I have always had a hard time listening to people over radio. Sometimes it's very hard to understand what people are saying or identifying who is speaking. I almost think it would be easier to communicate by text. I was also on load-in for YCTIWY and I found that I had a very hard time speaking into the mic when I was around other people with radios because the eco of my voice through their radios would trip me up to the point where what I was saying didn't make sense or was just said incredibly slowly. In theory, I think that radios are very helpful IF THEY WORK. I suppose this just reiterates the idea of "you get what you pay for" and that Sessler is correct in that buying a product that you know is quality is a way better solution than buying something cheap and hoping it works.
Radios are an extremely valuable asset for anyone working in show production. As everyone has been mentioning, radios make it possible for you to communicate with anyone else that is on a radio without having to disrupt the entire room. This may seem like its not a big deal, but in reality this makes a huge difference when you put multiple people in the same room at the same time, who are doing separate tasks. Radios also keep people connected who may have left the immediate area for another task. Without a radio these people would have to be reached by way of cell phone, and they may or may not have service or pickup depending on the circumstance. Altogether radios are an invaluable asset and should be used whenever possible.
This year when I was loading in the lights for the crucible I got to use the radios that the lighting department has. I enjoyed having the radios, but I can also see some disadvantages. It was very nice to be able to talk to someone down on stage from all the way up in the catwalks with out yelling. During focus it can be really hard to work when there is a lot of people yelling around the room. Another time I had to get some papers from the photocopier. When I got there it turned out they they had printed wrong. Because I had a radio on me I was able to just ask the person back on stage to reprint. This saved me a lot of time walking back and forth.
There were also some downsides to using radios. The first problem is that they can get caught on things as you work. This might just be inconvenient on stage, but up in the grid it could be very dangerous. Another problem that we faced was that sometimes people didn't know the right ways to talk on the radios and thus a lot of air space was taken up by people explaining how to use the radio.
Overall I think that the radios are a really great tool, but they are not perfect for every group of people or every task.
Radios are okay... but a radio with a headset is GREAT! The headset cancels out the obnoxious issues that people have with them, because everyone can hear what is being said. That is a problem that I have experienced working on concerts with crews back home. We have radios, but no headset, so you always hear everything and sometimes it can be very distracting. The ones that we got at school seem to work really well and as others have mentioned have been a great addition to load-in and strike. However, as he mentioned good quality radios are so expensive and unfortunately that is the determining factor for many people. However I know my church is also looking into radios and I will push that topic!
I never really used radios in high school for load-ins and strikes, but from every load-in/strike I've seen since coming here I see just how useful they can be. For Crucible load-in I was on the steel grid with Albert while Keith was shooting a laser up to us so we could mark where to tie the trees, and after we started using a radio things became so much easier. Later on though, when we were up in the steel grid actually hanging the trees we didn't have radios on us. Shouting was good enough communication for what we were doing, but it wasn't ideal. Unfortunately though, we couldn't have ben using radios because they would have gotten in the way while we were pulling the trees up. Radios are great for load-ins, but they would be so much better if there was a way to do it that didn't hinder things as much.
As everyone above me has said, the radios that CMU purchased have been pretty helpful during load-ins, especially in the Chosky where there can be someone in steel grid, someone else in the tension grid, and a third on stage that all have to communicate. Of course, there are some times in the theatre when it might be dangerous to have a radio attached to your belt, since it's not permanently attached there and can easily fall off, and if you're in the steel grid, that's a long drop with people far far below you. I haven't looked very closely if ours have this, but I think if the radios are going to continue to be used frequently (which is a good thing), some hook or loop should be attached to them so that they can be taken up to the steel grid safely and there's no chance of them slipping off of a belt.
I am an advocate for the use of radios especially for industries like ours where spread so far apart. They are great way to ease the miss communication and save ourselves from unnecessarily straining our voices. however I do feel that in our facility what we need to do is institute a radio protocol. Without a set of protocols for how to act on radio that element of clear communication quickly becomes loss.
While working on a stagecraft lighting call, I noticed that the work crew were all given radios. I saw this as quite unnecessary at first, however once everyone got to work I noticed all of work crew constantly using their radios. Even more so, I began noticing my lack of one. When having to ask a question or communicate something during focus I found my self shouting across the theatre or waiting for another group of people to finish shouting so I could get my turn. The people with radios quite obviously had a large advantage over everyone else.
I think radios are an integral part of any production call. Having worked a few calls at 2 large amphitheaters on Long Island I can say that they are one thing that I personally do not see myself ever going without. Trying not to get too much into depth of the gigs I can tell you that at the first call at the Penny-saver Amphitheater was for a large country music festival, the company I was interning for at the time was the house audio company for the space and gave us all radios to communicate with each other on our load in. These came in handy more than I could've ever thought (especially when setting up the delay stacks). After the gig was over some of us were dealt out to the road crew to help tear their gear down and get it into the truck so they could get out as soon as possible. The biggest issue was there were no radios to help us communicate with our crew heads for the gig. It ended up taking us much longer than we had hoped but we got them on the road eventually.
I think that radios are the best form of communication for shows. My high school had radios for a long time before we started using wired com to combat outside radio traffic and I felt like communicating on crew was a lot easier before then. THe biggest reason for that being that people didn't have to be stationary for you to remain in contact with them. There are a lot of instances were people leave the theater for one reason or another and radios make it possible to call for them without anyone else having to leave their own post.
Radios are a boon to any production load in or strike. Working with AB Tech, many of the members (myself included) are licensed Amateur Radio Technicians. The use of radios speeds up communication and allows time to be saved by coordinating activities across a large venue more immediately, such as the Chosky or the whole of Purnell
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