Parking Lights
This lesson is less about artistry and more about practicality.
Let’s say you’re in a theatre, working on your lighting design, but people are regularly coming and going – preparing for tonight’s dress rehearsal. They need the space lit. You need the space dark. They don’t want to trip over seats or cables or personal items – so want the house lights up a little. You don’t want to record the house lights into all your cues.
That’s okay. We can have it both ways using Park. The Park feature takes a Channel or Address and tells it to stay at a value – no – matter – what. This means we can set the house lights at a dim 20% so that your co-workers can see, but they never get recorded into your cues. I repeat, these values will not be recorded into a cue or sub or palette.
Let’s try it out in your EOS worksheet. Park doesn’t really work in Augment3d, so I’ll show you the technique and you’ll have to just use your imaginations.
Okay. So looking at our Dance Concert magic sheet, we can see that the House Lights are split into a few different channels.
We certainly want the Aisle and Circulation lights up so people can come in and out before dress; so we’re going to type [401] [+] [402] [@] [50] [Park] [Enter]; or Alt+K on your keyboard.
This will take these two channels and set them to 50%. Period. No matter what. Let’s pretend though that the amount of light for 401 is a little much. We could re-park it to be 25 percent by repeating the command; [401] [@] [25] [Park] [Enter].
No need for a confirmation. It’s just like setting a level, except that it’s parked, frozen, stuck, static.
If we look up at our Live Table display; you’ll notice that 401 and 402 don’t have any values next to them; but they do have a little P in their corner.
We could now set 401 at Full which would show up in this display; but the Circulation lights would stay at 25 percent. Because Park overrides everything.
Addresses can also be Parked; not just channels. For example, I know that the house lights directly above my tech table are wired into Dimmer / Address number 172. So I’m going to give myself a little table light by typing [Address] [172] [@] [30] [Park] [Enter]. Nice. Now I have enough light to work by, and this is way better than bringing up all of Channel 400, the Audience lights.
The Live Table view won’t show that Address 172 is parked, because it’s a display of Channels, not Addresses. But in the top right corner, you’ll now see an alert that some Channels and Addresses are parked.
Let’s look to see what they are by opening a new tab and selecting Park or by double tapping [Park] [Park].
You’ll now see a table view similar to Blind Table display; except that it shows both Channels and Addresses that are parked. Notice that you could Park any value; intensities, focus, color, etc.
Let’s say that we’re finished programming and are moving into rehearsal; so we’ll want to keep our circulation lights but take out our fancy tech table light. To Unpark a light, we need to give it a blank value; so type [Address] [172] [Park] [Enter]. This will clear out the park of that address.
Now do the same to the two channels; [401] [+] [402] [Park] [Enter] [Enter] – twice to confirm. Now there are no more Parked channels or addresses and because of this, our little flag in the top right corner has disappeared.
Park can be a powerful tool beyond circulation lights. I’ve used Park to permanently set a Hazer’s fan speed, or to set an LED to only one color, or to disable a light that had fallen out of focus but I couldn’t fix it and didn’t want the distracting light to shine on the director the entire rehearsal. It’s a tool; ready for you when you need it.