The first big gotcha I ran into as the gaffer was the missing power adapter for our lighting control board.  I have to say that this was a bit of a butt clencher at first, but we’re in good shape now.  The original power adapter was lost after wrapping the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show; this was not discovered until a week before the start of photography for Banshee.

My first thought was to call Stansifer Radio here in Bloomington and check with them for a replacement, they were closed and I wanted to get the board up and running NOW so I could test the instruments and take some guidline meter readings of their light output.  I ended up at the mall and procuring a replacement power supply from (redacted), but it just didn’t work properly at all.

Plan B was to use a slightly underpowered, 300mA rather than the 500mA that the board wanted (yes I know, EPIC FAIL on my part, mea culpa), but it worked pretty well.  That is, it worked well until I had to leave the set before wrapping on Tuesday morning at the Irish Lion and our production manager wasn’t getting any photonic love from the board and pipsqueak power adapter.

That got all fixored up this morning with a quick trip to Stansifer Radio; we got a nice, beefy, power adapter and the board is happy once again!

So, the moral of this lesson is to get the right damn  components, even if you have to wait until the next day because the proper business is closed when you call.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Lighting: Technical Gotchas and Solutions