My experience with riggers: total dickheads when the gear is still up. 30 seconds after the last support tower is firmly on the ground, they are the best guys in the world. First i thought, "nah, it's just my boss" but it turns out, it's a lot of them and i think i know why: the stress is tremendous, you got people lives on your hands. There simply is no room for mistakes. When the responsibility stops, then you see the real person and turns out, they are the best bunch. My hats to all of you guys, utmost respect.
SquidCaps very true, i'm still gaining hours but find myself in a mental position of no messing about. You are setting up lifts for tonnes of equipment, do it wrong, something will break or stress.
If you only work on one crew what you say may be true, but you're only getting a micro snapshot of a much larger field. Overall its not that way. While there is a great deal of stress it stays undercover because once you allow it to get to you its time to leave the biz. I work alongside many and run a crew of some pretty awesome men and women riggers. Granted a few have abit of attitude. BUT all of them are some of the nicest people you'll meet on a gig. Just remember: the quiet ones are the good ones. The one's who boast alot ? stay away from them.
I think he's just saying the riggers are focused and keeping a sterile environment, which I have also seen working as a production manager. He may have had his eyes opened when he started doing this work. You're both saying the same thing. Amazing work you guys do! Not for the faint of heart.
I do often question whether in some instances it would be easier on the rigger to abseil down that distance as I feel from the rigging that I have done it is often the nicer way of doing it. Grated I have not done big arena rigs only large tent rigs.
Stagehands are piss boys that forget to adjust the mic height for the different guests because that and fetching coffee is too much multitasking. Way to insult a professional.
Yup. Saves a few thousand feet of multi-cable. Two feeder runs drop out of the catwalk feeding two transformers on the floating platform. No need to drop 40 to 95 cables out of the sky. And the platform allows building the rack land on the ground first.
+Geoff Smith I have to admit, while watching the video I absolutely had no idea what you were doing. But how come you could not set up everything on the ground and then just lift it up?
+Raffaele Sansone Some things can not be turned on until other connections have been made and depending on the rig configuration of the whole show you might have to do what he did. Plus IF FOR ANY REASON there is a change once things are up. etc
Wow wow wow i can't even begin to know wth all the shit even is. But i will say this, this guy definitely knows wtf he's doing, plus some. That's so badass ,u don't see stuff like this every day. Awesome video brother thanks a ton,god bless & be safe.
And the crazy thing is there’s tens maybe hundreds of thousands of techs just like this guy that do it every single day with most of the world not having a clue what we do, and if we do it right they’ll never know.😉
kvong615 if it's a anything like the things I've helped out on (I'm only an amateur, only a few small events) then even though it looks a mess each cable is very organised and - relatively - easy to pull out. may look like a mess but it almost certainly isn't especially at this level!
When you first started rigging/training, how afraid of heights were you? I imagine that more exposure made you less afraid, but what else did you/do you do to be more calm? Was there a point where you started to not get afraid? Do you have any tips or rituals that you do so you don't get tired quickly, or freak out? I guess a major thing too is not dropping pins. Thanks for any tips and advice you might have.
inalavalamp helps to not rush, focus on the near item rather than the horizon, do not cut corners or ever have no arrest connection at any time. You have a minimum of two anchors so you can swap directions of travel on the grid, i think Geoff's had four. I'm still gaining experience. Last tip never work solo in a venue.
I've been climbing stuff since I was a small child. No rituals or secret breathing exercises needed. I just make sure to stop by the restroom before going up. I've never been phased by heights. I trust my safety gear and I make sure that I'm ALWAYS attached to something, always. I've climbed truss as high as 280 feet at The Lions stadium in Detroit. At that height the ground is really irrelevant and not even in my field of view.
Never knew back then rigging can be so complex 7:21 What are those? it looks like a server rack just for moving heads? *technology really changed from back then. Now theirs palm sized dmx interfaces.*
Yes those are fiber cables. We run three redundant data streams to all of our 7 different rack lands. There are two lighting board oops that control different lights within the same area of the rig. One data stream for each operator and one spare line that can run either data stream. We could run the whole show on one fiber but we like to break it up a bit in case there is a problem. The fiber lines are being plugged into 3 separate switches which each have their own node and a portion of our S-400 racks.
Might be tight on space for a future production.. floating dimmer beach could be a real possibility. Anyone know who manufactures the platform? I've seen some around, but this one looks awesome.
Its not really a specific purpose designed plat, it can be 12" or 20" truss with decks/handrails securely mounted on top. This is more than likely a Kish Rig where they have specific hardware to do this setup .its been done this way for decades as needed.
Ha! My first wire ladder climb was a 60 foot climb from the bottom going up. I didn't know to not pull yourself up with your arms. I got about 40 feet up and my arms locked up. Yes, I was scared. What did I learn? 1st, have a carabiner on your chest to clip yourself to the wire ladder if you need to rest. 2ed, use your legs to push yourself up or down the ladder. Don't use your arms for pulling or lowering. Your arms should only hold you to the ladder. Let your legs do all the work.
Geoff Smith Me too i got serious arm pump. My first was 70' down. A bit scary the first 3 to 5 steps then i said to myself "you idiot you can do 15 20 chin ups, pull ups what are you worried about...trust your self plus a yoyo was hooked to my harness D...My biggest mistake was i went down it the normal ladder climbing way instead of from the side as you did climbing. Big difference. Great vid brother
Very impressive, not a job for the faint hearted that's for sure! We've featured you on our site! www.acupofreal.com/1/post/2014/02/a-terrifying-job.html#.UvE-9PldWSo
