[SML] What is your favorite cue number method?

[Illuminati500]

I think the whole cueing system pf central standbys and goes harks back to victorian theatre and earlier when it was safety critical to have everything under single control. There was a period when stage lighting came of age and grew from being mere illumination to being an active contributor to the art of performance, in many ways as an actor itself. A good fade can cause emotions to sweep across an audience or if mistimed, kill it stone dead - so in the days when performance of lighting was more, so much more than the pressing of a button but needed the ministrations of a practised octopus, integrating of this cue with scenery movements, sound and pyrotechnics definitely required an artist on the book to make it work. Taking ones cues oneself was occasionally  ok, but only in simple shows.
Dorian

Sent from my iPhone. Please ignore autocorrect errors if any...


> On 2 Mar 2018, at 20:31, Dougherty, Jim via Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
> 
> What I don’t understand is why the operators are getting their cues from the Stage Manager in the first place.  The operators should have their own scripts, and know the show well enough to call their own cues, without the delay and possible communications error of getting their cues from the Stage Manager, who should not have their head in a book!
> 
> This opinion, for those who don’t know, is not so much mine as a remembrance of past list member Frank Wood: a curmudgeon of the highest order and something of a troll if one agrees to use that word in the kindest way possible.  I am convinced that pushing buttons on this list was a favorite pastime of his, enough to earn him killfile status in more than one email inbox.  He was an early and long-standing contributor who sadly passed away a while back.  He was known in real life to many on this list - myself, sadly, not among them and I say that having had more than one off-list conversation in which we strongly disagreed with one another.  Those who did know him left me with the impression that he was actually quite nice in real life though some I’ve heard from are also curmudgeons, so make of that what you will.
> 
> Anyway, miss you Frank.  You made this joint interesting.
> 
> Finally:
> 
> - I don’t like point cues with more than one decimal, and prefer them to be related (internal fades, autofollows, etc.);
> - Huge or complex cue numbers seem like a recipe for oops;
> - Our SMs give Warning (wake up), Standby (be immediately ready), then Go (PUSH DA BUTTON) but don’t always include the first two if several cues are in quick succession;
> - I started out with numbers for lights and letters for sound, but there are often so many sound cues these days that both numbered is fine;
> - I’m mostly a TD, props person, and rigger so make of all this what you will.
> 
> - Jim Dougherty
> ATD, Middlebury College
> 
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