Delays
With your lesson worksheet open; go to Cue 17. I’ve switch my timing back to 3 / 7.
In the last lesson; we went back and forth and back and forth between two looks in a pattern. We’ve got two more of those in Cue 18 and 19 to help showcase another simple yet powerful tool for timing; Delays.
It’s not always the case that you want the Intensity Up and Down times to start at the same time. Perhaps you want to wait for the lights going out to wait just a few seconds, allowing an actor to move from one part of the stage to another; but the separation isn’t enough to warrant a second cue.
This the purpose of delays.
So let us use the example I just gave with Cue 17. In this case we would want to delay the down time. When you press the [Time] button and press it again (and again and again and again) you’ll actually toggle through the various columns in the PSD. So start by pressing [Cue] [17] [Time] [Time] which will list “Down Time” in the command line.
Next, press the [Delay] button, or the letter D on your keyboard, and give it a value of 5 seconds. The whole command / keystroke sequence would then be [Cue] [17] [Time] [Time] [Delay] [5] [Enter].
In the PSD, next to the down time, you’ll now see a little “5” next to the downtime, telling us that there’s a delay that will count down before that portion of the cue executes. You’ll also notice at the far right hand side of the columns, that the total duration for the cue is now 12; which is the longest summation of time between all the cue’s timings; in this case 7 second down time + 5 second delay = 12 second duration.
Go back to Cue 16 then step forward into Cue 17. You’ll see the lights on the stage that are currently on wait for 5 seconds before actually executing. But perhaps the PSD is the more telling; that you can watch the delay count down, then the down time goes. Try it out!
A quick tangent; if you didn’t want the delay any longer? Just give it a blank value; like this …
Let’s do the other direction for Cue 18. This time, rather than toggling the [Time] button, simply click on the Intensity Up time; or the number “3” in the image below.
Your command line will automatically fill in the appropriate text.
Now specify a delay of 9. And press GO. This time the lights going out will go all the way out, then we’ll sit in a blackout for 2 seconds, then the lights increasing in intensity will come up.
Just another tool in your tool belt … if you wear a tool belt … that holds intangible tools meant to control an intangible art form …
… please just go to the next lesson …