February 5, 2007

It has been a crazy couple of days. We have been preparing for a pretty big show down at the fairgrounds over the last few days and it has been time and energy consuming. After the game on Sunday, we had to finish getting ready for the big day and did not leave the shop until about 1:45 a.m. The preparation for a show like this takes just about as much time as setting up the actual show. We arrived at the fairgrounds ready to set up at 8 am. This is what our taped off space looked like BEFORE we set up. We ended up playing hurry-up-and-wait and were not able to even start setting up until about 1:00.

The first order of business is to bolt together the truss (on the newly laid carpet) and lift them up onto the 4 corner lift stands. This part takes about an hour.


The next thing we do is hang the light bars with the par cans on the truss. Then it's time to square up the corners, stretch the cables in a x-shape across the top and then lay the "roof" over the cables and cable-tie it on.




The cable ties are dangerous to put on as they have a tendency to snap back and hit you in the face if you aren't careful. This happened to me last summer so I let Dale and Rob handle this part!!

This part of the process takes about 1 to 1.5 hours.

Next we put in the gels, run all the cabling, lay a black sheet of plastic over the top for a darkening effect, hang the intelligent lights that will spin and flash and then we crank it up. This part of the process takes about 2 more hours. Meanwhile, the company that hired us is anxiously waiting to bring in and set up the boats.

This picture was taken at about 8:30 p.m. (just over 12 hours from our arrival time) and the boats are being put into place.

The plasma looks a little different here than when we tested it on Sunday! We will have another 6 or 7 hours of set-up time tomorrow when we will "fly" the other 3 plasmas and speakers, set up the amps and mixers, plug everything in, test it, and pray for the best.

Gloria February 5, 2007

Zach February 5, 2007