Recording a Cue

Put simply, a Cue is a saved look. Make something beautiful on stage. Save it in your light board.

But here we ought to think about it all more technically. Where a Channel is a number that stores various properties about a light (intensity, color, focus, etc); a Cue is a number that stores information about all properties for all Channels. It’s a snapshot of all the numbers in front of you at this very moment. Meaning whatever changes and alterations you’ve made, those will be saved.

Technically, there are two ways to do cues.

The first is called “Cue Only Mode”. This is how you probably think of cues. The light board is filled with a series of static looks. When I say, “Go to Cue 4”. I know exactly what I’m going to see. This is fantastic for theatre, event spaces, churches, etc and a much better option for younger designers.

The second is called “Tracking Mode”. This is how live performances such as concerts function. A cue is instead a list of changes rather than an entire look. In tracking mode, if you didn’t tell a channel to change, it just keeps doing what it was already doing. This is great for making changes on the fly and is how a lighting designer for a band can be so quick. It’s also fraught for making mistakes and unintentional adjustments. But for a seasoned lighting designer the time saved by using Tracking Mode far outweighs the time spent fixing my “opes”.

We’re going to be using Cue Only Mode since it’s a lot easier to wrap our minds around a single static look at a time. Tracking Mode takes a robust understanding of your fixtures and an awareness of where you’ve been and where you’re going. So, in order to not break your brain, I’ve already set the correct mode in your Worksheet files.

Alright, back to the conversation at hand.

Before you can record a look, you have to craft a look. So play along on your EOS system, pretend I’m your lighting designer, you’re my board operator, and I want you to …

• Take Channel 4 to 90%.    (Chan 4 @ 90 Enter)
• Put Channel 6 at 50.    (Chan 6 @ 50 Enter)

Fantastic. Looks great. To save this look we would press [Record] (or R on your computer keyboard) [Cue] (or Q on your computer keyboard) then provide a number such as 1. Press enter to finish the command.

You’ll notice a handful of things that just happened. First, the command was typed in properly because of the little gold diamond at the end of your command line; meaning it was executed.

You might also notice that the beginning of the command line changed, it now reads “LIVE: Cue 1:” rather than just “LIVE:”. Because we weren’t in any cue and just recorded our first one, EOS automatically put us unto that cue. So the look that is currently LIVE on stage, is Cue 1.

The other major thing you’ll notice is the Channels in the Live Table display. They changed color from Red to Blue, meaning they’re currently being controlled by the LIVE cue.

Let’s create another Cue. So please make the following adjustments.

• Channel 4 at 50 (Chan 4 @ 50 Enter)
• Channel 5 at 50 (Chan 5 @ 50 Enter)

There are a lot of different things we can record on this light board (Groups, Faders, Presets, etc), but the most common item is a Cue, so EOS automatically assumes “Cue” when you press record and provide a number. So this time, press [Record] [2] [Enter]. You’ll notice that Cue automatically filled in.

Wow, that was way more efficient. You just saved, I don’t know, like 50 milliseconds. And that adds up! And by the end of this entire course, you’ll have saved … I dunno … like 20, maybe 30 seconds?

Anyway … Hopefully you also notice two other things …

First that we are now currently in Cue 2, or Cue 2 is currently LIVE on stage (as seen in the command line). The second is the colors in the Live Table display. They’ve changed colors. In the screen shot below, I have Cue 2 and just pressed [7] [@] [50] [Enter]. This allows me to showcase the four more common channel colors that you’ll see.

• Purple – Such as Channel 6, means the current value is the same as the previous cue.
• Green – Such as Channel 4, means the current value is less than the previous cue (we went down from Full to 50).
• Blue – Such as Channel 5, means the current value is greater than the previous cue (we went up from 0 to 50).
• Red – Such as Channel 7, means the current value is been overridden by you and is currently in Manual mode. You’ll also note in the top left hand corner of the display that at least one channel, somewhere, is in Manual mode – meaning you’ve made an intentional adjustment to at least one channel in your list – a reminder that you might want to record this before moving on.

Now, let us say that we like the addition of Channel 7 for Cue 2. We can overwrite that Cue by pressing [Record] [Enter]. EOS assumes you mean to record overtop the cue we are currently in; however, wants to make sure you really mean to overwrite Cue 2, so we’ll see this warning …

To Confirm the recording process, simply press [Enter] one more time. The Red number will now change to Blue, since it went up from a value of 0 in Cue 1.

Finally, sometimes you want to make a change to multiple Cues or perhaps to a Cue different than the one that is currently Live. To do this, use the Update command.

The Update command will take your adjustments and apply them to the specified Cue or Cues. It’s a bit more surgical and precise than Record.

Here’s an example.

Take Channel 2 to 50%. We’re currently in Cue 2, but let’s say that we want to apply that change to Cue 1. We can press [Update] [Cue] [1] [Enter]. This action will take any channel that is currently in manual mode and update that value in the specified cues. Since we made an update in Cue 1 and Cue 2 is currently Live, Channel 2 is still Red, in Manual mode.

Now, let’s take Channel 2 to 100% (notice that it converted 100 to Full). We can update both Cues 1 and 2 by pressing [Update] [Cue] [1] [Thru] [2] [Enter]. This automatically recorded Channel 2’s value (but not 4, 5, 6 and 7) to both Cue 1 and 2. Since we did both cues, the previous cue and the current cue, you’ll now notice that Channel 2 is purple, meaning it’s the same value as the previous cue.

Record and Update are two ways to do essentially the same thing, save a look. So then …

• Use Record when you need “What I see is what I want to save”
• Use Update when you need “Save what I changed, don’t mess anything else up”
• Use Record when you need to create a new look
• Use Update when you need to alter multiple cues
• Use Record when you need to write over an existing cue
• Use Update when you need to make a small adjustment

Or really, do whatever you want, they both work! Both knowing the difference can make you a much more efficient lighting designer.