6 Times I Totally Screwed Up at Shows

[@christianjackson]

Today! in just a few hours we will be starting our livestream fundraiser event, don't miss it :) Remember, even if you can't donate, just having eyeballs on the screen does wonders for the amount of good we can do for those put out of work due to the recent economic shutdown. www.UltimateLightingShootout.com

[@djrensvandeburgt1236]

What time does IT start?

[@faab007nl]

Why don't you strap a GoPro to your chest so u can record everything?

[@cassianharvey9824]

Thank you for the shootout it was so fun to watch. A little sad tho.

[@brikstik3442]

I see that toucan productions shirt you got. I'm an audio guy but I work closely with those guys alot. Cool to see you sporting them.

[@AKSKMY]

Can relate to Number 6

[@LucasWasson]

The messups that haunt me in audio is having two foh mics one to talk to artist montiors and one to talk through the main pa for pre show announcements. Grabbed the wrong one. Asked the audience how the monitors sounded. Not a fun time

[@christianjackson]

Oh mannnn. Ouch

[@lucasstory]

This is brilliant

[@imark7777777]

Hopefully you got the response back "we don't hear them?" which means you had a good monitor mix.

[@isettech]

I just use one TB mic on the console, a headset mic. For PA use an icecream mic. It is intuitive when they are vastly different.

[@pseudonimotrist6383]

@@isettech i also tape the mics with different colors

[@GothicLightingQueen]

I was a stagehand for a festival, we did a quick changeover and was done about 15 minutes before Otto Knows would start playing. I was walking on stage when I tripped over the power cable to the control desk for the pyro (they controlled the pyro from a etc smartfade at stage right. No harms done they thought, just plug it right in. The moment they plugged it in, every confetti cannon went to full for half a second. The audience started cheering and I have never seen anyone's face with more stress then the pyro guys did.

[@KolyaGuilbault]

Oh god haha

[@christianjackson]

Fuuuuuck that

[@666SFXroadie]

I bet i know what pyro company it is too. 🙄

[@XDeltaWolf]

At least the audience liked it xD

[@imark7777777]

Although that's a good way to kick off a show or end it

[@roboverholt9959]

When you had to go manual and your friends said "Oh man that's one of the coolest shows I've ever seen" There's something to be said here about "jamming" or "improvising" .. Using your mind on the spot with you're added urgency to make it the best you could so that the original production wasn't "missed" so to speak made it amazing to them. That's awesome Chris.. If you ask me, to be a Jedi, sometimes you have to turn off technology (timecode) and just fly and get the missile in the shoot like luke skywalker did (when he blew up the death star - watch that part again and see how you relate- for real watch it and think about this post).. Congrats on YOUR first taste of being a Jedi!

[@c0mmandkill]

One time I had a similar error as the one where the MA file was corrupted: It was the prom night and I was the responsible student for the whole event tech crew and at the same time LD (for the first time in such a big event). We had more equipment than normally because in the graduation class was the student who was the LD for about 4 years at the school and who brought me into stage lighting and he convinced his fellow students to put a good amount of money into the stage equipment and especially the lighting stuff. So it came and him and I went through the list of stuff we would get and think about the setup we wanted to do about 1 1/2 months before the prom night. After everything was clear I would start to program the show about 1 month before the event and because I had only worked with MA one short time before and had never done complex programing in it, I learned MA 2 on the way. It was much fun and worked greatly. Now fast-foward to the day before show: The evening before we had done the load in and we came into the venue in the morning ready to have fun hanging fixtures, building the PA system etc. It was the biggest gig of the year and we wanted it to work perfectly. So we hang all the fixtures, set up the DMX adresses and I was ready to load the showfile into the MA2 onPc we rented. I loaded it onto a USB-Stick and right at the time I thought my laptop had completly transfered it, my laptop went to a bluescreen and I was not able to boot it up again. So I thought, allright I´ve got the file on my stick and can load it in. But when I tried to load it, there was nothing but my patching and my groups, no presets, no timecode, no effects. At that time I had about 24 hours to showbegin and no lighing presets. I began reprogamming my basic presets and at the time I came home, I had to completly whipe the boot drive of my laptop and therefore the original showfile was gone (and yes, before that I tried to access it from another PC). So I had no PC where I would be able to reprogram my showfile until I came back the venue at the next morning. I took the whole day from 8 am until showbegin at 5 pm to program something and even continued to program when all the students got their certificates and stuff. Well, in the end I had a lighting show, but it was way worse than the one I put one month of nearly all my freetime into and after that I learned to always backup your boot drive as often as it´s possible and to backups of showfiles on the run while programing.

[@spyder027]

That’s horrible. At least you got some experience on the console though

[@janhumpolicek8373]

I had all timecoded show. I wass chilling and then the timecode stopped. I did the whole show manualy bur at the end almost all lights went off and they werent moving. After the show i found out that some cables were literaly chopped. We had cctv cam watching that area and guess what. One guy had an idea to chop some cables.

[@studio217]

I was doing a theatre show as a lighting programmer and operator I was also doing sound with a laptop. My laptop decides to do a forced update so I missed a cue, when it powered back on it made a pop through the speakers. Windows needs to stop with the forced updates.

[@imperialguardsman4361]

That's why when I upgraded laptops I made sure I got a computer with Windows 10 Pro so I can turn off updates and do them on my own time. It's worth every extra penny to be able to control when updates run so nothing like that ever happens to me again

[@12xx12100]

I think there is a Feature so Pause Updates for 7 days (I don’t know if this is a pro feature) You find this feature in the default windows update window

[@imperialguardsman4361]

@@12xx12100 I think that's regular Windows 10 Home but on Pro I set my Group Policies to disable updates so I can run them on my own time

[@mrl4342]

Ah yeah or change that wifi connection in settings for Metered Connection On, which will stop updates. We had your problem mid-show running Titan One on Win 8.1 - show froze, laptop was busy updating. Ok it was poor but at least we still had lights on... until the laptop rebooted. We couldn't restart Titan One while Win continued updating. Blackout for desperate couple of minutes :-(

[@Globerson]

Turn updates off

[@emmemme]

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

[@m3dr052]

I just can’t say how much I loved this intro 🤯🤯🤯🤯

[@judahbrewster]

Messing up a show and winging it is on my bucket list... first I need to get into doing shows...

[@nickblyth166]

Happened to me a few times. I’ve had blackouts in theatre rigs where a single light doesn’t shut off. I just do an all active set to 0 really quick to fix it.

[@joerunge3915]

One time I almost fell off the back of a riser into a giant LED wall. Another mess up I had was I was at front of house when the dj asked for a family photo and I had to sprint through the crowd to get on stage in time.

[@jerrardbeasley4247]

I was doing a show for an "affluent family". This was for like 10 people and had custom choreography and music. We loaded in at the begining of the week. Had like a a day of rehersals (which included programing the show). We did a dress rehersal and everything went fine. So we start the show with the actual family. The first half goes fine. During intermission I make one small change. The console I was using (Vista) has the ability to expand your playlist across multiple faders. I did this in order to better see the cue names above the fade. We start the second half and I hit one of the play buttons. Every light in the room turns off. Other than the tensor lights, it is total darkness. I have no idea what happened. I am checking things like blackouts, GMs I truely had no idea what happened. Finally I decided to release everything and reload the cuelist and jump to where we were supposed to be in the show and that worked. It felt like maybe 5 minutes in my head, it was probably only like 30 -45 seconds but OMG. Afterwards I looked into it more. It turns out that when you expand the playlist across multiple faders, one of the play buttons becomes an inhibit button by defult. So I must of hit the second play button and inhibited the cue, hince the blackout. Man to this day, I still think about that cue....

[@tablesauce5578]

If there is one thing I've learned doing show its that no matter how much you test equipment, it will inevitably fail you when you need it the most. It's always good to know your troubleshooting procedures!

[@sgtsunburn117]

Honestly its the shows where i have to scramble to fix something last minute that I've learned the most about how to creatively solve issues. Most importantly, having backups and redundancy is just second nature now; I don't go to a lighting gig with my MA node without my old single universe enttec interface for example. Haven't needed it once, but the day I don't have that backup plan is the day I'll need it.

[@discoverdevlin2289]

The worst feeling in the world: messing audio/lighting up at a gig. The best feeling in the world: realizing absolutely no one pick up on the mess up! Great content!

[@spyder027]

Whenever I mess something up in lighting it makes me mad just because I know what I had intended for it was so much better than the mistake even if no one knows that there was a mistake

[@Lukemccarthy2011]

We need more of "Subconscious Christian" 🤣

[@christianjackson]

He might make some more appearances

[@christianjackson]

I call him nega-Christian though

[@motamanify]

Man I can totally relate to your Groupmaster situation! I nearly fucked up a show with the exact problem. I used a groupmaster on the first 12 frontlight channels in reharsel for a theatre piece. When we loaded in and I programmed, I only used the first 12 channels in Highlite for Focusing on the truss. When I got back to the console, nothing worked in the cuelist or in the programmer. Only in highlite. I called MA, (in Europe we can call them 24/7) and immediately told them the problem, what I was seeing, what I wasn't seeing and that it was Show critical, since we were 4 minutes before dress rehersal, which also was 3 hours before the actual show. Together with MA Support figured it out in like 3 minutes. Dress and show went well. We detected it by looking at the channel sheet, which displayed the affected channels in purple background. Same solution: Hold Group and see what all masters are doing. What happened was that I used a Groupmaster in reharsal and from that moment on stopped thinking about it, because I didn't need the anymore until the show. Therefore it got deleted from my executer page but remained active in the background. My troubleshooting mistake was that I dind't know that groupmasters are by default above the programmer but highlight works. that was also my most stressful show ever, especially becaise it was a 100 % user error on my side.

[@christianjackson]

Yeah those ones are so bad. It was my first time using that technique cuz I had never been on a tour where I needed to use a group master to completely mute a large selection of lights. So I thought it was a genius plan and then I forgot that I had done it to begin with

[@motamanify]

Yeah it was my first time too. Definitely taught me not to use technology inside any desk bevore I understand it.

[@Lugges]

My heaviest screw-up was on a conference where i was hired at the audio mixing console. It all was quite normal. We checked all the mics and everything and tweaked everything till it was perfect. Then maybe 30 mins before the conference starts the client told us, that they needed an audio-recording of a few talks. Nothing special so far. The recorder was checked again but to have a backup i wanted to record via the Yamaha QL5 Mixing Console on a USB drive as well. So i just connected my USB-Stick to the Yamaha and then the problems appeared. The display showed some kind of fatal error and the console wasnt reacting on anything. So i had to restart it and after bootup every single adjustment was gone. Not only that but also all the routing to the rio-Stagebox and so on. It was like a factory reset. There was one older backup avaliable on another flash drive. I loaded that one but we could not get the rio connected again. So we ran 20-30 XLR-cables to the patch-room and pretty much on point everything worked again. Not perfect and definitely not the way we set everything up the last hours, but good enough that the audience could hear everything in good quality. So be aware when plugging in USB drives in mixing consoles...

[@christianjackson]

Wow. That is scary. I’ve definitely heard of that warning with usbs and sound consoles before lol

[@irritablysavvy]

The unpredictability of being human is half of the value in the live show. Good stuff.

[@jamanak6457]

Thanks for keeping up with livestreams and videos during this time, much appreciated.

[@eliotmiller7791]

I remember I was doing lights for a musical and right at the climax of the show someone tripped over in the booth as they came up the stairs. woops. the confetti cannons meant for the end of the show got triggered as well as a ten-second strobe trigger. not my smoothest show ever

[@michaelowens4241]

The huge mess up for me was a small local theatre show of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Theatre was a small hall, no dimmers, held about 300. I decide to set-up dimmer beach SR next to the major distro power just behind the curtains. All sweet, everything is rigged, rehearsals done. Told the stage manager whatever you do, don't store anything near the dimmer set-up as its going to get really bloody warm. He agrees, no worries it will be fine, I will look after it (or not) Opening act, I am at FOH all going well I start to smell smoke. WTF, something smells like it is on fire. Gets worse over the course of about a minute, and I say, man something really is on fire. Stage Manager gets on comms, BLACKOUT NOW, FIRE, get up here now. I kill everything mid act, race to SR. What is going on? Idiot Stage Manager decided the dimmer stack was a prefect height for his script to call the show. Nice standing table height. We now have a major fire of his script, part of the curtain (not flame proof) and part of the set. No bloody CO2 extinguisher and we now need to try and put out a fire with a fire hose across a stack of dimmers on 3 phase. When all was said and done, ruined the top two dimmers, lost all FOH, no script or cues, and nice burn mark on two of the set pieces. On the upside, Audio was complete fine and slightly amused. Never again.......

[@TonyFogle]

Thank you for this incredibly stressful video. I'm a self taught designer for a couple community theaters. Thankfully the errors I've had over the years have been small but they stick with me.

[@krystianlenc4004]

Hi Christian! Maybe the solution to one of your stories is the sd card inserted into your laptop and the option to save the show every 15 minutes? Have a nice day!

[@luc5580]

My biggest screw up: i was hired to do visuals for a really big festival. i pre programmed everything in resolume and i was ready to go to the show. i arrived at the festival and i put in my resolume showfile in the apple imac. (terrible computer for visuals i know) i tested the showfile and it worked fine! i programmed some more little elements and things to polish the show. i went to go eat and eventually came back and tested everything again (resolume was being a bitch so i was a bit scared) it worked just fine. 1 hour before the show i wanted to put a still image on the screen, i clicked on the picture but my screens stayed black... i quickly tested my showfile and nothing worked! i checked everything but couldnt find it. 5 minutes before doors opend i found it. the master was at 0% (even though it said it was at 100%) i had to remap the master to a different fader on my midi controller and i was able to get the screens working again. show started and everything was fine, i started the show and did some visuals. but at some point the master just kept turning on and off. i though it might had been my controller so i re mapped the master to a different fader but that didnt solve it. i kept on doing the show but everytime the master would go to 0% i would just wiggle the master fader and it would go back to 100% after the show i updated resolume and never got the problem again. im a sound engineer and this was one of my first times doing visuals for a big festival i was pretty stressed out. pretty bummed about what happend but hey shit happens right? end of the story the client was happy and the guests had a pretty freaking amazing night.

[@christianjackson]

Sounds scary lol

[@chiilthenkt6680]

Yea I once mapped a master speed in resolume to a midi controller, I lock the Windows and left for cup of water while midi devices will still take affects, might be sombody accidently messed up the master speed knob and when the show is on everything plays laggy. couldn't find the problem until the show almost ends, terrible experience.

[@JoboLS]

2019, Explosion of Joy. So I had underestimated how busy the Year of Return would be and i was trying so hard to get moving lights from different rental companies. I finally got a good number but they didn't come with signal cables so around 10am on show day we had to go to town to get two rolls of xlr cables and had the soldered. Left my electrician to sort that out with the guy soldering and they switched pins(of course i didn't know). So we pick signal from the artnet node and only the 3 movers in the groups of 3's were working. So i start troubleshooting, i change the sequence, make the 2nd the 3rd and then that works so its not the movers, i check the network settings and that good, then i check the pins and i find that its soldered wrongly. 1 hour to show time, so we quickly re solder, fix and just before curtain goes up we are set to go. Was just horrible. Show worked well was live on DSTV and all. But the stress before did impact on my energy and creativity. I really prefer busking and it was tough.

[@nickblyth166]

I program lighting for theatre productions at my old school. Sometimes we have a blackout cue where a single light is still turned on due to not programming it properly. I’m running ETC nomad with a gadget 2 with a couple pars and beams.

[@soundshopvlogs]

Haha. Classic Guitar center run. There's been a handful of times, if a guitar center is closer to the gig than our shop, we'd run to guitar center to buy (usually a DJ gear incident) because time is of the essence. At least you avoided buying.

[@djsomeguy]

Long long time ago I was the lighting tech in a smallish theatre (500 seat). Had a judged festival weekend with 3 short plays per night back to back with 10 minute changeovers. House rig was an ETC Express 72/144 and a Lee Colortran dimmer rack with a variety of typical stage lights, pars, leko's, source 4's, fresnels, cyc's, etc. Part way through the first play, a couple lights start flickering off. Check the board, everything looks good. Assume it's cable issue or bulbs or something simple...but then others start flickering as well, every 10-30 seconds a part of the stage would go completely dark for a split second. This continued as we tried to hunt down the issue and felt like it kept getting worse. First play done, grand drape is closed and we're back on worklights, and of course, flickering is gone as we check a few fixtures. So on with the next play, same thing, flickering starts mid way through the show and gets progressively worse until the end. Next changeover, power cycle the dimmer racks which are boiling hot. Limped through the last show of the night with less trouble. Turns out, a bunch of dimmers are basically cooked and we swap out a few critical ones with the couple spares on hand and move a few lights around to other dimmers and make a few changes to max output levels to get us through the weekend. That damn dimmer rack gave us trouble for the next year or so I was still working in that theatre and of course there was no budget to replace it all, nor would the problem happen consistently except during big/long shows. Of course, sitting in the back watching these lights flicker distracting the actors and audience and possibly affecting their judging but not able to fix it was just the worst feeling in the world.

[@NoSchwarz]

My biggest screw was: i was LD and operator, and that was my first show with that band. I was operating on a Chamsys desk, that was not an issue, i know it very well. That day was during an heat wave, it was a very very very hot day. So, i was programming stuffs, checking my beams and positions, and suddenly, the Chamsys gone mad, the screen turned totally weird, like all white with very stranges red lines, arabics and chineses letters, and after a short moment, the desk died. It was still on, but totally crashed. I tried to off it, on it, nothing happened, and it was not responding at any command. So, I tried to do an hard reset, which on Chamsys is a tiny button a the back of the desk. The time to find a little tool to make that, i dit the hard reset, and.. nothing, same shit. For sure the desk was totally overheated, so I tried to find more fans, and also plastic ice pack, to cool it down, emergency way. It took me a moment to find all that, ask to the crew, find a freezer etc. After all that time, I get my ice pack, I finally succeed to cool down the desk, i did the hard reset, and, miracle, the desk returned to life. BUT, during all that looong time, i was so concentrated on the desk to find a solution, that I didn't noticed that some of my fixtures remained actives on stage. And one of my spot was focused straight to the back of the cello of my artist (and friend), and it was in a narrow beam, at full, in white. The cello started to "burn"... Actually, there was no hole in the wood, but the varnish was blistering, and the back of the cello was quite... black. For the first show with them.... I felt so... miserable !! (but we are still touring together, and the insurance paid for the cello repairs ;) ) (Excuse my poor english, I'm french)

[@ashwafc9]

Great Vid, actually felt super tense when you described the Showfile/laptop issue. Incorrect power connectors, leaving fixtures parked after support bands (sorry Avolites user), Definitely been through most of them. I wouldn't trade any of the screw ups/failures they are way more valuable in terms of learning that everything going smoothly all the time, learnt a lot of lessons the hard way but it makes you a better engineer. I've found i've become much calmer in difficult situations where before i used to panic, now i can work the problem using stuff i've learnt from previous. Everyone makes mistakes but as long as you don't repeat them its all good. Yeah but some i look back on and cringe.

[@christianjackson]

Yep! It is super cringe but endlessly valuable

[@megumind9939]

The thing that I will never forget was setting up that band at a school (audio). We ran all of the subwoofers on aux outs at that time. I turned up all of the knobs while the band was setting up, I talked to the mic and asked the singer, can you hear me?, the subs went on, the audience was cheering they thought it was the singer, cause the singer had this type of voice which is deep and round (he was a jazz singer) and the monitors were loud enough that it can fill up the whole stage, and even reaches the front. I was so embarrassed, and I tried to figure out how the hell it sent the signal to the sub amps, I realized that the fourth knob was on, only three knobs were supposed to be turned up for my talkback mic. From that day I was nervous of talking to mu talkback mic and, I am always aware of the knobs I turn up....

[@imark7777777]

I do sound an open mic night coffee house thing. I patch in my mixer because I've spoiled myself with wireless control. Each musician gets 2 songs and then they go on to the next one. Two musicians in I realize I miss patched my cables which is why I'm not finding things in the right spot. Once I realized it wasn't a big deal I literally Hot Patch between the next group. I finally thought of one but they don't keep me up at night anymore I've learned to learn from it and move on. I've had some really terrible ones which in the moment I just feel horrible then a couple days later I go well nobody died.

[@Spyx07]

There is that one festival that I always have to think back to because there was just so much going wrong. But there was one thing in that really stuck out: For every DJ they had a 30-45 second intro with one of those narrator voiceovers and a lot of sound effects. The lights and video for the intro were driven by timecode. The main/headlining act also had that intro but also wanted to do their own intro in addition to that. But this time the timecode was not coming from FOH but from the DJ booth. So we run the first into from FOH and everything seems fine. Then they take over and start their performance and for some reason, the audio from the first intro starts playing again over their intro. And the tour-managers of the main act loose their shit and start causing total chaos at FOH screaming at every single person there, if we knew where that sound was coming from, keeping everyone from actually finding the cause. It must have looped at least 2.5 times on full volume until the audio engineer figured out what was going on and pulled the right fader down.

[@billschnake6378]

Great video and we have all be there at least a dozen times. I'm FoH audio for a band that spent most of the summer opening for REO. So we get to our last show of the tour with them, which is only 90 miles from my shop. I make all of the calls and arrange to bring my own FoH mixer for sound. I am a Midas Pro guy. The venue has Ethernet ran for me and life is good. It comes out of the wall 10' behind my console (this will be important). Anyway, sound check if fabulous we are on a really solid PA and I have been having a great time. So, one other opener before we hit the stage 15 minute change over. First opener finishes and we are doing change over, at 9 minutes until show time I notice that I am only getting signal from 1/2 of my stage box. We have no Vocal signal. So like all rational people I brought my own Ethersnake 20' tails. I call to the stage and have a hand get in my trunk, dig them out as I head to the stage. We change the stage set...same problem. Re-hookup the stage set and take my tails back to the mixer. I replace the mixer to wall set that they had provided with mine...mixer locks with 1 minute 30 seconds until down beat. Everything was great from there on out. Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear get's you...as I always like to say...let's do a little bear hunting and see where we end up. One more thing. I know just about as much about lighting as you know in you pinky fingernail / 200,000. I do enjoy your videos. I especially enjoyed your review of the ONYX NX4. Be safe and enjoy.

[@MakaniGames]

Listening to these stories made my stomach turn and brought back memories of the biggest screw-ups I've made... makes me feel a little better that the best mess up once in a while aswell with the same things :) Best of luck and hope you get to have a show soon again!

[@gsck5499]

Not so much a mistake, but a story none the less. Me and a few other people were doing lighting for my school's yearly music concert, it was going well until about half way through. We were changing everything over for the rock section of the show, setting mics up for each of the bands and what not, and one of the guitarists bring out this IBM super computer pedal board, they plug it in and then all of the power on the stage is gone. I had to go and run to get some extension leads so we could at least power the amps and sound equipment and run it all of another circuit seeing as the one on the stage was kaput. I finish running the extension leads and was plugging in the amps, the amp on stage left was plugged in, and started working, I then go to the stage right amp to plug it in. I plug it in to the extension lead and then a huge spark comes out of the plug for the amp. Amps dead. I then have to run across the stage, with an amp that was as useful as a paper weight, in front of near 200 people. Was not a fun night. This was my first proper show I had done outside of running lights with someone else's lighting showfile.

[@imark7777777]

Ouch you have to watch for bad wiring issues etc with those "well maintained" amps.

[@gsck5499]

@@imark7777777 They were some Berhinger EP2000 that the school had owned long before I joined and long before the school moved to the new building. The main issue was, we had no option but to use those amps too, the main amps were all hard wired in and stuck in the sound booth on the other side of the auditorium.

[@GothicLightingQueen]

I can enjoy a good timecoded show as anyone else. But I still think that it doesn't make it a better show just because it´s timecoded, or that timecode is the ultimate ending. There is just something extra juicy with a good show where I know that everything that is happening, happens live, just like watching musician, I´m watching an artist (the LD) making a performance with his own hands. Just like Cosmo Wilson did for ACDC

[@KolyaGuilbault]

You didn't go full emberasment when you go on a blackout cue in a theather stage in the freaking middle of a dance number, with full of little girls and boys doing gimnastics. I still dream of it at night, and I get chills.

[@Theatrewolf]

i was getting anxiety just from listening to this haha. Been there man 🤘🏻

[@cpo98]

I was doing a gig for the touring Mid America Air Force band and spent the day recording cues for everything. A couple of minutes before the house was set to open I went to save the show and was not paying enough attention and instead opened a show file for a different concert and lost everything and ended up having to busk the show.. I will never forget to save often again..

[@RaquelFoster]

3:20 And now you obsessively triple-check that little cloud with the checkmark on it that you get after the "All changes saved to Drive" message. 🙂

[@finnrowden3341]

Why didn’t you use your USB backup instead of use the house LD’s show file??

[@daniellecompte5550]

So weird to hear about the timecode issue with Zomboys set last year! I wasn't at BC but saw lots of videos and was like "Woah, trippy stuttery visuals" -- not thinking that it was an issue. Now that I now, its much more obvious: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qnKym5Rjgc6rfs0 Still looks sick from a non-LD person perspective! :)

[@SilentGloves]

I just recently found your channel, and I'm enjoying it. I've never been involved with... let's call it contemporary festival lighting and video, but I was in involved with many, many warehouse raves back in the 90s and 2000s. Take your stories, subtract any meaningful budget, and I've been there before. Scrambling trying to find this cable or that, generators running out of fuel halfway through a set, equipment just dying, breakers being thrown, water cooling for lasers failing (back then we didn't have diode lasers... We had gigantic ion lasers that were the size of a surfboard and hotter than the sun). But the best stories come from the most stressful shows, and 99% of the time, as long as you can manage to keep the PA powered, and some lights... ya know, on, people will be having a good time. Ultimately, all that matters is *the nod.* 😊

[@christianjackson]

Ha, love this comment. The more things change the more they stay the same

[@davideberle4552]

I once managed to turn of the power for the whole backstage video, LED Wall, Playback and Streaming department. We were about 1 minute before start and had to delay it quiet a bit since all the computers and gear needed their time to re-boot. And sadly, the video mixing desk didn't save its settings, so the first quarter hour was getting layouts, media players, labels and everything fixed while doing the stream. Quiet stressful moment for many techs.

[@vjbattle]

As long as the lights change the punters don’t notice the screw ups

[@christianjackson]

Facts.

[@vrzn]

I have an IT career in controlling all different kind of devices (i guess smart home lighting comes closest to this) and i can truely imagine the stress these mess-ups can cause. And i love the story telling, maybe you have time to do more show stories that are remarkable.

[@giglight]

Worst I have done was for a whole year had some package and no issues, because of a layout of a venue had to split some fixtures off to a different universe straight from the desk because of cabling constraints (the rest were off the node at stage like normal) Anyway all went well no problem. next event forgot i did the above and couldn’t understand why 1/4 of the rig were not behaving - was moments before doors noted in my patch they were set to a universe straight out the console.

[@ApexScorpio]

Halloween 2017. I was programing for a friends band. Been programing until 9am. Finished, left house and start setting up the stage. No sleep for me. We were supossed to get Phantom 140 spots. We got Phantom 140 beams. I programmed everything using visualizer on avolites. When i got there, all the fixtures were 45º panned to the right. I didnt knew i could go on patch window and give it a 45º offset, so i pannicked, and started to redo all my position pallets on the spot blindly, while the 1st act was on. (it was one of those gigs you finish the setup and the show starts. No lighttest...) After 1/2 hour rewriting every pan and tilt value of every position i had, my worse nightmare happened.... Every position was blank... 5 mins for the gig to start. That version of titan had a specific way to do it. If you didnt do by that especific way, it would just erase every data stored on that button. I had to re lunch my old file with the 45º offset and everytime i swtiched possision, i had to re send all my moving heads to the front. Here is the result XD kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqOrZJKtgtZkjLM

[@samabrehart8842]

I relate so much to this, I’ve had my fare share of mistakes on gigs. But I always have one thing in the back of my head and that is, the show always goes on and gets done.

[@PatrickKCompton]

Man, your stories gave me nightmares! I got caught with the Powerkon adapters on rented Maverick MK2 Spots before. Also had several times running software based control where the computer freezes and/or crashes. That sucks!

[@stropinel1234]

Bro, i feel your pain, i messed up a cople of times really bad as a VJ, so i have a show that keeps me up at night.

[@jessecoonen7881]

Your story about the show files gave me anxiety just listening to it!

[@ashtsang6599]

Hey bro, thanks for your video. We have all stuffed up many times in our career. In the current situation am definitely missing spending time planning and designing shows for Ax and Lx and livr events and excitement as a whole. Hope you're doing well and see you in Asia soon.

[@subarusensei3685]

12:02 in some what the same way I was doing sound for a church the main mic wasn't working but the rest of the mics were working, I could also see we had signal(I could also hear it in the headphones) , so I ran a handheld mic on a stand as a plan b. Afterword I discovered on our mixer (behringer x32 compact) the Main L/R output button (to mains) was not pressed for that mic.

[@kylejames7040]

I can relate to this... Here's one from a crew chief's experience(mine haha). Going over the change over time holy fuck I remember vividly thinking I was going to be sent packing after a festival... The band I was with(and still am even after all of this haha) rolled into a festival with a new floor package that had been prepped and show ready. The package was designed to cover 6 points of a stage simple shit... My usual approach for a festival change over is simple have all my cables staged and ready to plug in once the floor package is set in place, again simple.... Well I had one local with me who did a good job when we went in, in the morning and loaded our floor package... The one thing I didn't pay attention to after everything was said and done was where he placed all of the upstage data and power cables which the upstage package was half of our ground package haha.... Anyway I fucked up completely by NOT double checking where everything was... All of the upstage cables were buried in what had become a mess and chaos by the time we were set to change over(took me about 25 minutes after we were done to find them), at this point it's just me for the change over and all that's going through my head with the LD screaming in the radio that he's not seeing anything upstage... Is holy fuck I'm an idiot!! Why?? I deserve to get fired for not double checking this!! To conclude the local stage manager comes up to me and says my friend you're running over by 2 minutes... 2 minutes might not seem like much but in production it's a lot especially when you're behind on shit... The show went on just with no upstage ground package, by that point it was fuck it we're going without it... Well the camp I'm with was cool as shit... Their response ehh don't sweat it kid it's rock n roll.... One time that happened that was in 2014 never ever ever again will that happen.... I still curse myself for this.... Sorry this was so long but well this shit is real and it happens haha cheers

[@RadINation]

I run sound and lights for a local cover band, and I was stressed out before a gig (personal stuff going on) and left my lighting interface at the f***ing house.

[@realgemzbond]

Thanks for sharing these experiences

[@bendugan465]

I am a theater techie so I don't do major events like this, but I have had my share of screw ups. The biggest one was this: The person that designed our theater did a bad job and they decided that it would be a great idea to plug the power for the lighting console and audio mixer into the type of power strips with a switch on it. It was opening day for the show and everything was going perfectly. I was feeling a little far away from the desk so nudged my chair a little closer. When I did this, everything in the theater went out. Me and the other techies at the table dropped several curses and then tried to troubleshoot what was going on. Little did we know that as I had nudged my chair, my foot had hit the switch on the power strip causing the boards, LAV receivers, etc to lose power. Since then, we have put a plastic cover over the power strip so that it never happens again.

[@imark7777777]

At the end of the day we are all humans and none of us are perfect, relying on technology built by humans that isn't perfect. I have had a few occasions but I'm not immediately bringing to mind any but I always come back to the saying that I heard at a training session. "If at the end of the day nobody died and the show went on, nobody will remember what happened" sadly it's true. We just have to live with the knowledge that we will have to discover what happened to fix it so it doesn't happen in the future. So if you're facing a problem take a deep breath and try and figure it out to the best of your ability and don't hesitate to ask for help. Adam Savage gave a talk about failure, definitely worth watching. >link< Although I do remember a church service where we had somebody wheeled out on a gurney during worship, not sure to many people realize that happened. I mean I was in the tech Booth running slides only ten feet away and we barely realize what happened until the paramedics came through the door.

[@glennmolnar]

No body in the audience knew anything was off. They are all trippin balls! Don't sweat it! You are the MASTER of what you do!!!

[@dyllpickle8890]

as someone who watches these videos in awe and feels like ill never be able to do this, hearing one of the best LD's around say that its never flawless and that screwups really do happen, for the fct its obvious, is so reassuring. makes me feel like my screwups in my high schools lighting dont mean im gonna be a complete failiure in the real world.

[@iuliantataru4431]

Awesome video and information ! Thank you Christian!

[@calmsoul852]

I fucked up a patch during an event trying to show someothing to someone and as everyone was dining all lights went out I loaded my saved show 😢

[@jonathancook4022]

My main screw up was audio based at an outdoor event even though at heart I'm really a lampie. I instructed a freelancer to setup foh, run dmx video and audio cables etc and various other jobs. Fast forward 3 or 4 hours to when the lighting, pa and video system was powered up and a horrible buzz sounded through the pa at the (thankfully drunken) public. I was convinced of a dodgy xlr cable or issue with the amps being plugged into a 3 phase distro which was also powering a dimmer rack. Lots of cable swapping, sweating and swearing later I realised the freelancer has connected the entire foh setup to the end of an (unearthed) festoon harness as a posed to running in a new power feed! Literally hours wasted trying to solve that problem when I should have been sound checking. The screw up was overestimating the ability of others and not being aware of their knowledge/ experience.

[@mikey38632]

As far as the Bonus show you discussed, I wonder if the audio signal to the video computer was noisy with interference or affected by dirty power or something like that. Just a big shot in the dark that you probably thought of. Great video man and definitely some things to learn from. I just watched your crash course on MA2 and thought it was Great! I've used some lighting software but not a full fledged console software. Except dabbling in Onyx a little. I still followed pretty well, I think. My next best software experience is Lightkey and ShowXPress. I'm wanting to learn much more!

[@chiilthenkt6680]

Audio guy here, also left a DCA way down and figuring out why the sound is not coming out through the PA.🤣

[@StikyIckie]

The detail in the red/blue difference is insane. Even the lysol label changes color!

[@SlineFXIntros]

Great looking shot. Love the practical lighting and the Lysol :)

[@gogogord]

Brave post, I love some of these stories, thank you for sharing!

[@jamesrbrindle]

Thanksfor sharing, i’ve got some corkers of my own to share

[@nathanmckeogh]

Big fan Christian!!!!

[@b25550]

Oh god the iConnectivity audio interfaces. When I discovered the touchscreen after an hour of no audio I got so angry.

[@christianjackson]

So we’re not alone!

[@sophiajulia7830]

I once had a similar problem with the MA show file. I was doing the system design and some of the acts for a bigger indie festival. As I was to get there one day late there was no time to check the stage myself. Everything was up and running by the time I arrived, double checked my showfile and made shure I was up to date regarding software and all other stuff. Even asked my project manager about the versions and his reply was "Yeah we´re up to date with the latest software release done by MA Lighting, make sure you use the latest version." That's where things started to go wrong. Guess who arrived with a showfile in a newer software version than the console had... Oh so entertaining to see an empty file with just your patch and some saved views. Ended up redoing all my stuff (luckily had time for that) and nearly killing that fucking idiot of a PM. Lesson learned here... Not to speak of the many times I had clients who decided to ditch their plans on "I won't leave the stage" in company events, the grand fuckups working at a tradefair center gives you (overheating HDMI cables... Who takes into account they might produce dropouts above a certain temperature?) and other entertaining shit.

[@DjRapter]

Oh man. #4 has happened to me a few times. Forgetting to bring up the group masters. I laugh at myself every time. It's the easiest thing to forget. And you only do it about once per year. It has become a part of my changeover checklist as well. The worst though is when I was operating both lasers and lighting for the last tour. I had lasers timecoded, but the cue list for the lasers were not syncing correctly, so I had to manually click over to the timeline of each track. Sometimes when I was busking, I would forget to click to the next track, and it was always the same one. It was added in mid tour, so for about 3 shows, I kept forgetting to swap the timeline show on the laptop. Man, it's embarrassing when you hear your artist over coms go hey! There's supposed to be lasers on this part. But hey, for every bad show, there's 20 great ones.

[@oddjobkia]

Yeah I plugged six led lustres (source 4)into an alpha pack…..thankfully I forgot to plug the rack in….I was employed by the lighting designer for a artistic dance and Ariel gig that was being filmed he couldn’t make the dates.The lustres and profiles were rigged in rig by the climbing rigger, he hadn’t done much lighting before all the drops for the power we’re behind a curtain blacks I rigged earlier in the day. I plugged all plugs into the alpha packs.. I go to lighting desk turn it all on and nothing…. I them around and realise the alphas didn’t have any power.. move the curtain to find the wall sockets and see a load of power drops just hanging there.. climb up the rig and realise they were to the profiles…. The rigger had helpfully put 13-15 amp jumpers on the ends for me….. I now always check every lamp and every power drop…. Second one was I designed and operated the AV for a theatre show… it used 5 projectors linked through 4 older MAcBooks…. Anyway halfway through the the 2 week run I am setting up on auto drive chatting to sound op as he and I are only ones in the theatre at the time… I walk around turn on all projectors.. yeah I forgot to turn one on… thankfully it was used for two images only… first one was just a background piece … second was was writing that followed the actor pretending to write down and reads it of the wall as he goes…… DSM and SM says as over cans that no projection on wall…. I then frantically find the file and program it into Qlab on the fly on another projector that had an image mapped window near where the original one was meant to be… Say to SM where writing is going to appear so the actor can shift their gaze….. The actor was the only one who go the truth… everyone else believed that when I took the projector home that nought it was to repair it.. last one was a snow machine that was meant to give a gentle fluttering of snow at the close of the show…. Must have knocked the switch… cue 30+ 2-4 year olds getting a blizzard of snow to close the show…..

[@CaeSharp]

This feels like more than I deserve without paying you! I'm a audio engineer and have no idea what a good show is, like you said at 22:49. Quite different from music. Please show us some good shows. I used to be happy if I got some lights on, but then I got older and now it's awkward.

[@julianmeyer549]

Well my biggest screw up was on a show that was just before lockdown: We had several LEDs hanging on a truss with some dimmer controlled halogen lights. Well it turned out that the LEDs started to flicker if we wouldnt have the halogen lights either at 0% or 100%. Well those halogen lights where 2kW Fresnels and Front light for the Band. Under normal conditions i would run them at max. 40% to get the warm light out of them. But running them dimmed srewed up the LEDs. So i go and select the LEDs, turn the Dimmer Value to 0% and park them. Later in the show i needed to use the hazer but it wouldnt come on. I could not turn it on what ever i was doing. Even overwriting the cue with programmer values didnt help. I see the lights that are connected to the hazer via DMX are working so the universe is working fine. I let someone on stage check the hazer. It even gets a signal to turn on the fan. Sure enough i managed to select the hazer when parking the LEDs in dimmer 0%. The hazer is controlled via 2 channels, dimmer for Haze and fan for fan. So my srew up is somewhat similar to your one with the opening act. Btw im using the GLP Impression 2 1024 and i hate the philosophy that programmer values dont overwrite parked ones. Another example for a screw up is on my timecode. Right before the timecoded song started we wanted to check if the signal flow works. So Sound puts on timecode and i recieve the signal. Everything working fine. Sound stops Timecode. I need to turn off timecode and turn it on again in order to be synced when it restarts. Somehow i missed the button to turn the timecode on and the dancers where dancing in comlete darkness for arround 1 second. I skip the troubleshooting and go directly to play the cue manually. When there is some light on stage i went into troubleshooting and turned on the timecode again. Yeah this is never ever going to happen to me again

[@pauposts]

this is the gold. thanks for sharing these.

[@mauritsjacobse3179]

So, after the last zomboy event you talked about, what was the problem? What made it happen that you didnt get timecode singal or get a corrupted singal

[@christianjackson]

That resolume version had problems with the sound card I was using

[@PepijnHazelhof]

I had a show that was completely manual, no digital settings. And one of the musicians was getting another instrument, and i was shocked, it wassn't placed on his monitor. So i switched it on, and feedback allnover the place. Ahh that was why. And they had a lot of instrument changes. And i was fooled time after time

[@stevez6693]

Random question wasn’t sure where to ask... I just wanted to know about when you first start doing gig work. Were you a stage hand? Just loading stuff in, helping out where needed, maybe just running power and dmx to lights? Or were you experienced enough and started working on the console right away?

[@christianjackson]

Yep, did stagehand and lighting tech work first for 5-6 years prior.

[@JoseHoliday]

Thanks for sharing this was insightful

[@bowenmoss5613]

I remember how excited you were about the Seattle LTC show, my heart was bleeding for you.

[@jamesh9744]

Man, I really think home shows are bad luck. Every time my tour does a show in my home city, something goes wrong. Last time my tour came to town I woke up the morning of the show with a fever and clogged sinuses. Not ideal when you're FOH. Might've been a slightly louder than normal show...

[@mayajones5021]

So i'm still a baby LD still in school learning things and I had a project where I had to pick a song and create a lightshow to it from scracth using the GrandMA3. During this specific class month tho was the first time our school used the Ma3 for this project, usually we used the GrandMa2 and so everyone including instructor was trying to figure out how to work the GrandMa3 , how to transfer files over, how to get it to sync with Lightvison , everyone had to deal Long story short when it was time for me to perform my lightshow I realized only half my cue list was there and i was programming to an EDM song and my lights cut out right before the beat drop , i tried to do some stuff on the fly but it just looked absolutely terrible. I ended up just stopping my show and explaining to my instructor and the two classes that sat in to watch that my file corrupted and I just don't have enough experience to finish on the fly. I'm the only person wanting to do lighting design after graduation so i know everyone was looking to see what I was going to come up with and i was so embarrassed that I couldnt finish my show ugh worse thing ever.

[@anshh113]

What school? :)

[@mayajones5021]

@@anshh113 Full Sail University!

[@harrythompson6977]

mixing audio on a digico sd8 hit the master mute instead of fader bank change halfway through a set with 1200 crowd still haunts me

[@antoinevanhille8460]

How do you guys handle the fact to screw up ? I did a conference recently and video team were streaming live on internet. All was okay but first, my spot on the ground started to strob and turn for no reason at all. Handled it quick and that was okay. But they did once more like 30 minutes after, for no reason once more ( Dmx card dead ). After this problem, I just wanted to check the fade time of a cue ( Another guy created it for the audience entrance and it was " fast call button ", things that i didn't knew ). I just click on the top of the sequence to check out and all went on the new position as well, with gobo, color and stuff. Handled it in 15 seconds to set it all back on track. But video operator goes really angry then. I know this is not so bad at all but finally I'm saying to myself, " during conference, don't touch anything at all " ^^.

[@Bart134]

Thank you for this! It is a fair video. LD is hard work!

[@maxi-g]

this video made me nervous

[@aaronallender6117]

Thanks for sharing!

[@leonardoherasme4410]

Amazing bro! basically, i ' m in the console testing everything was ok, all lights working property and the whole show works good, so i m like, ok i m good, drink some water waiting to start and the event start so im running the show and one of my client ask me if i notes that the lights are a little down or its him thinking like crazy. so i told him, NO what, all the lights are good, do u see?. so he say, Okey good do your work fine. After that im in the chair thinking about what he told me and i really see that maybe some lights are a little be down so i started thinking that maybe he was right, so i ' m checking all my playbacks and cue and i see that everyting is ok so i just forgot. at the end of the show im like ok go home and something im my mind told me that check everything once again and i stard looking all in the console when i saw that the master fader in the right of the consoole (ma2) was a little down like a 60%. in that moment i knew it that i really I screwed it up

[@ronniephipps1338]

On number 6 I thought you were going to say the version of MA on your laptop was later than the festival console!

[@gcahbm]

Dude these are the moments when your heart starts pumpin like shit and you start running through the venue, sweating like a fucking idiot

[@christianjackson]

The best!

[@juweinert]

11:35 maybe it's the human element :) If you do a really good job it can be better than perfectly timecoded and preprogrammed. It's like with musicians. You hear the difference between overdubbing productions and good musicians playing in a perfect vibe :)

[@OPBagels]

the hardest part about lighting for me was that disheartening feeling where you know the crowd knows no difference between a good and bad lighting job. You either didn't get enough prog time and work with bare minimums, or you got the programming in but ran it in a way you weren't expecting.

[@imark7777777]

Windows write caching! it's where windows will cash the files that need to be written to a drive and then not write it until a time Or before you hit eject.... yeah. Always eject your thumb drives and removable media, I've even heard of people corrupting there's for not doing it.

[@deniselias5405]

I think I need to share my worst F up. So there is this show I used to do as audio FOH. Around 700 peolple. The show is with the same act every friday every week for 10 years, of which I have done 3. The Pa company who I work for and the venue are in the same town. So I load the van to be 30 minutes earlier at the venue as I should have been. As I start to unload the van I see that I forgot the FOH case with the mixing desk at the pa company...I raced back, got the case and was back at the venue in time..I have never feld that ammount of panic..

[@666SFXroadie]

I think i speak for anyone in this industry is when the word "Timecode" is mentioned...it makes you cringe! hahaha! great stories man!

[@chrisclose7793]

i remember doing lighting for a panto on a MA1 ultralight desk and programmed the lighting which were robe 1200at spots and washes with martin atomic 3k strobes, and when show started and wanted low level to start off with to build up the atomic 3ks came on full pelt nearly blinding the audience the robe 1200ats were moving and doing their thing but no light output so i was going through the desk trying to figure out what was going on why i couldnt get light output from the moving lights but giving the audience onslaught of strobe then i looked back and realised i hadnt selected the fixtures i needed as first time using a MA and i mainly do sound and at the interval the stage manager and my colleagues thought it was hillarious the first 10 mins of strobe nothing else i laughed it off and said im not sure this panto was meant to be rock and roll