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Stage and Setups

Excellence in the Arts, Media - by - September 14, 2008 - 19:16 Etc/GMT+5 - 1 Comment


We recently cleared and reset the stage at High Pointe and were surprised how long it took us to get everything hooked up and running. We have done a lot to simplify cabling and keep the look cleaner, but there is an incredible amount of connections that need to be made after everything is set in place. Is there a quicker and easier way?

While we don’t clear the stage often, every once in a while we do for an event and use it as an excuse to clean up and re-lay-out our setup. I would like to make a habit of removing everything that isn’t used every service and keep the platform clear of any unnecessary clutter. This would include clearing the stage almost completely once a month for our 1st Sunday pm service. But to do this we need to figure out a way to not spend 4 hours resetting the stage for the following Sunday morning service.

To date we have been simplifying our setup where possible, but there is still so much! We have gone to using sub-snakes for each group of vocalist and instruments to avoid running long cables. We now how baskets full of 25, 35 and 50 foot cables, but run out of the short 6 and 10 foot cables. We have labeled the snakes with the instrument or vocal they are used with to speed up connections and troubleshooting. We use clamps and brackets to minimize the number of stands used on the stage. But there is still a lot to hook up. We have 30 channels of instrument inputs, 18 channels of vocal mics, 6 channels of wireless, all in use almost every Sunday Morning. Add to that the 7 monitor wedge mixes and 7 IEM mixes going back out onto stage (all from a 40 input / 8 output mixer, but that is a different story) the power requirements, music stands and lights (with their dimmers) and there are many many cables to keep straight and connected.

What else can be done to speed up setup / teardown and keep the platform looking neat and organized? We have to keep the flexiblity for easy changes. One thought is to build some power distribution cables with outlets spaced every 3-4 ft down the cable to clean up the extension cords.

What other ideas do you have? Have you seen something work well elsewhere? For those who are not from High Pointe, what do y’all do to keep your setups quick? Those of you who saw the new stage setup this weekend, any thoughts or comments?

» 1 Comments

  1. Media Arts Dad says:

    It was pointed out to me that we are doing better with what I mentioned in this POST (http://mediaartsdad.hpbcglobal.org/2007/07/why.html) – No plants hiding things on stage!

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