Dave and I were talking about theater. Surprise. We were discussing how technology was changing theater. From a technology standpoint it has gotten much more detailed.
When I started lighting, just after the invention of the candle, I had a 12-channel-2-scene-
preset. I was so happy when I got a 24-channel-2-scene-preset. For those of you who did not grow up doing lighting, that all that means is that I had a light board that could control 12 channels. Each channel typically had 2 lights. The total was 24 lights, unless you needed some lights for “specials.” Specials are lights that were used for a special moment during the play. That might be just one light, or two specials per show. But once set aside as a special, you could not use the light during the rest of the show. For a 24 channel board, the same rules applied but there were 24 channels, so up to 48 lights.
The pre-set, meant there were 2 rows of 12 or 24 channels and second row of 12 or 24 channels. While one set of 12 or 24 were operating the lights you could set the second row up for the next cue. When the time came for the next cue, you used a cross fader to fade into the light cue you had set up on the row of channels that were not in use. At that point you could set up the first row of channels for the next cue and when the time was right cross fade back into that. Then set up the row of channels you had just cross faded out of for the the next cue. Back and forth, from one row of channels to the other for all of the cues in the show. This had to be done for every cue for every show.
There was no way to set up all of the cues in advance. So, there was some limit to the number of cues that could be done, just because there had to be time to set up the next cue, before crossfading into it.
