The financial temptation to have as few
people on the tour as possible and have one
person controlling multiple items (in this case
it would be lighting control and motion con-
trol) was something that was quickly elimi-
nated from the production and it was clearly
understood that safety came first. Our tour-
ing Rigger and motion control operator was
brought in for all of the shows to ensure that
there was one person in control of the rig
and one in control of the operation of the
lighting.
ESI to SM: What were a/some safety con-
cern(s) that came up preliminarily? How
did your team specifically address it/
them?
SM: The selection of fixtures used was not
purely one of how well the gear would rec-
reate the design concepts, but reliability
of the fixtures was also a primary concern.
When the rig is put together it was import-
22
ant for us to test every element before the
truss was lifted into the upright position. This
is the point that you need to swap out any
fixtures or cabling that may be problematic
as the only other option is working at height
which using a moving light rig can eliminate
the need for, so ensuring that the equipment
selected is reliable and well maintained is as
important as what they can actually provide
in terms of lighting effects.
Having pre-rig truss with bases resolved a
numbers of safety concerns that we over-
came on a daily basis, from manual han-
dling to unnecessary working at height. This
solution did leave underlying potential prob-
lems with regards to stability and height con-
straints of the vertical truss. With the height
of the upright truss it was impossible to have
it loaded in the trucks in its entirety so the de-
cision was taken to connect two lengths of
truss when in the horizontal position and the
point was added to the top of the truss. With