Post by blufindr on Aug 8, 2008 23:41:49 GMT -5
*Long rant, has swearing. Parental advisory is recommended for younger viewers 
*
As some of you know, my boyfriend and I often do backstage crew and tech work for school productions.
This year, our school held a massive Tattoo (concert), composed of all 4 campuses. It only happens once every two years, but this year was the last year it was going to be like this because there are now about 4000 students all up, and it's just too big. Ben and I signed up for sound crew literally months ago, when they were recruiting people.
Since then, we didn't really hear anything more about it. Showed up for bump-in, did some stuff, and didn't hear anything else from anyone else. No rehearsals or anything.
So Paul, the other Music Tech Captain (I'm the girls' one, he's the boys' one) was given the job of organising people on the night for the crew. And instead of checking with the list or anyone else, who does he give the job to? His friends, of course. And the people who only showed up because it was a convenient way to cut class.
Yesterday, I figured I might as well show up and see if it was any good. It was night 4 of 6, means there are only two nights left before the show closes. And the sound was... The lighting was awesome, the performance was as good as could be expected from small children... but the sound was absolutely terrible! We had feedback coming through the system, EQ was tweaked so that it was all high-mids and telephone-y, and sometimes the mics were turned down so low that we couldn't hear anything at all.
Apparently, that was one of the better nights too.
What the bloody fuck?
Turned out, half the people who were given jobs were 1/2 students, meaning they're only doing the first year of the diploma for Music Tech. Fair enough. But seriously, they had the cues. Would it fucking kill them to put monitor headphones on and change the faders? Would it kill them to pay attention to the mix?
Even Paul admitted it was a mistake to have them in the crew.
What the fuck.
We would have given up classes too. We would have gone on all the nights. But nooo...
The really great part about this is, Ben's brother was on the list, and was put on the crew. And he didn't even say anything about keeping us on.
No, that wasn't it. The even better part is, there were about 6 Old Boys (ex-students) at the desk, taking over jobs. Uhm, what the hell? You've done this, GTFO and let someone else have a shot. Most of these Old Boys also have jobs in the industry, so fair enough that they would have experience and so forth. But taking over the desk on the nights so that no-one else could have a shot is really quite unfair.
*As some of you know, my boyfriend and I often do backstage crew and tech work for school productions.
This year, our school held a massive Tattoo (concert), composed of all 4 campuses. It only happens once every two years, but this year was the last year it was going to be like this because there are now about 4000 students all up, and it's just too big. Ben and I signed up for sound crew literally months ago, when they were recruiting people.
Since then, we didn't really hear anything more about it. Showed up for bump-in, did some stuff, and didn't hear anything else from anyone else. No rehearsals or anything.
So Paul, the other Music Tech Captain (I'm the girls' one, he's the boys' one) was given the job of organising people on the night for the crew. And instead of checking with the list or anyone else, who does he give the job to? His friends, of course. And the people who only showed up because it was a convenient way to cut class.
Yesterday, I figured I might as well show up and see if it was any good. It was night 4 of 6, means there are only two nights left before the show closes. And the sound was... The lighting was awesome, the performance was as good as could be expected from small children... but the sound was absolutely terrible! We had feedback coming through the system, EQ was tweaked so that it was all high-mids and telephone-y, and sometimes the mics were turned down so low that we couldn't hear anything at all.
Apparently, that was one of the better nights too.
What the bloody fuck?
Turned out, half the people who were given jobs were 1/2 students, meaning they're only doing the first year of the diploma for Music Tech. Fair enough. But seriously, they had the cues. Would it fucking kill them to put monitor headphones on and change the faders? Would it kill them to pay attention to the mix?
Even Paul admitted it was a mistake to have them in the crew.
What the fuck.
We would have given up classes too. We would have gone on all the nights. But nooo...
The really great part about this is, Ben's brother was on the list, and was put on the crew. And he didn't even say anything about keeping us on.
No, that wasn't it. The even better part is, there were about 6 Old Boys (ex-students) at the desk, taking over jobs. Uhm, what the hell? You've done this, GTFO and let someone else have a shot. Most of these Old Boys also have jobs in the industry, so fair enough that they would have experience and so forth. But taking over the desk on the nights so that no-one else could have a shot is really quite unfair.
That's way worse than ours.