So in case you didn't know, "Welcome to Six Flags!" is the customary greeting employees use with guests of the park. The customary goodbye is "Have a Six Flags Day!" This will probably be the last post I open and close with those words because this is the last megapost. That's right, after this one, I start posting on what's currently happening, as opposed to what happened a month ago.
This post is about my job. As previously stated, I'm a backstage technician at Grand Music Hall. But because the new parade opened earlier this year, before ShowStoppin', we've been spending more time on parade activities than ShowStoppin' duties. The first thing I did on the job was to help hang strobe ropes (Did you know strobes come in rope form? I didn't.) in trees in Hometown Square, where the parade pre-show takes place. I learned two important things that night:
1) The first major difference between working for Six Flags and working for ISU Theatre is that no matter how similar the tasks may be, Six Flags is not a theatre. This affects all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. For instance, I have to wear a safety harness when I climb a tree. Actually, I have to wear a safety harness when I climb a ladder. That might sound annoying, but in reality it just makes me feel like an astronaut.
2) Zip ties are really useful.
Since then I've climbed all sorts of things, like buildings, trusses (especially glad for the safety harness on that one), tall ladders, and really tall ladders. I've learned to operate the lift we use to do things on the on-stage electrics. And I've ridden a lot of rollercoasters. This is a good summer for me and heights.
Going back to the on-stage electrics, here's an interesting point: they don't move. They're deadlocked in place. You can't fly them in. How does that compare to my past experiences? At Fisher, we don't even have electrics. If you want to hang an instrument above the stage, you have to run a cable to it. At the George Daily Auditorium, where I did my high school theatre and worked theatre camp, there were, I think, three flyable electrics. All in all, I think the GDA's system was the nicest. You could bring the lines in to hang your instruments, but you didn't have to bother with running cables. I guess the single advantage to running cables is that you can have the electrics be on any line you want for any given show. And I suppose the system at GMH here isn't all bad. Once the instruments are up, they stay there for a long time, and movable electrics are extra variables, especially around untrained technicians (we're not dumb, but many of us are young).
Anyway, that was a nice tangent.
Fun fact: ShowStoppin' is a couple years old. That means the set was already built. And by the time I got there, it was already set up. There's a big false proscenium, a tall platform with an upstage entrance and two staircases, and a runway with grating and lights from below. And since it's a semi-permanent set, it's all pretty solid, with lots of steel and plastic and whatnot. There's traffic lights for one song and a big ShowStoppin' light-up sign. We've got a couple spot operators in the back of the house that do some pretty complex maneuvers, and all the performers wear wireless microphones.
And then there's the lights. Another difference between ISU and Six Flags is that Six Flags is a pretty big corporation with a pretty big budget. We've got moving lights, LEDs, circus lights, traffic lights, cybers, strobes... not to mention foggers and hazers. All in all, there's some pretty cool special effects running around, both in GMH for ShowStoppin' and outside for the parade and parade pre-show. The point of Six Flags shows is not to make you think. It's to excite and entertain you, and we've got the equipment to do that. Here's a list of instruments I've worked with that I've never touched before:
Martin MAC 250 Krypton moving lights (I'm unsure about the order of descriptors there. Also, I got to see the insides of a couple of these because they got a bit wet and we needed to dry them.)
LED Shadow boards (We use them for blacklight effects.)
Atomic somethingsomethings (Strobers, if I recall... I didn't do much but address them.)
Some crazy-bright LED heads that can light up the whole parade stage as bright as day from on top of a nearby building.
A couple of Super Trouper spots that don't diminish in power if pointed at a rollercoaster on the other side of the park.
And here's a list of some phrases I've picked up:
Intelligent lights - I think this pretty much sums up instruments that use DMX instead of dimmers.
Cybers - Lighting instruments that use a rotatable mirror to create moving light effects.
EL wire - Electroluminescent wire. The key to the Glow in the Park Parade.
Shroud - A box used to house lighting equipment.
And some skills I've learned or improved on:
Making data cable
Working with EL wire
Soldering in general
Doing fly cues
Driving a parade float
Eek. This post looks plenty long for now. I might have to have another one specifically about the parade and one about my ShowStoppin' duties too. For now, I need to stop typing.
Have a Six Flags Day!
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