OOC # 39
Okay, I've gotta say it again...our contractors are AWESOME. We were scheduled to do a fine-tuning light focus tonight (at the lighting designer's suggestion, for the date...) When I tried to find out earlier today what time to tell the contractors to show up, I got some evasion that ended up being, "Well, I haven't really had a chance to see the lights when it's not full daylight, and I'd like that, and a little time to think about it, before I finalize any focus points." (Which is fair, and I'd rather go that route than have a 'final' focus and then have him ask to change five or six things a couple of days later...)
So I told the contractors, 'If you get here around 8:30, everyone will be back from dinner. I'm not sure how much focusing we'll actually do tonight, but I know we need to reconfigure the LED wall display for sure...hopefully, that won't be the only thing we need you to do...'
Well, they were working on something else up in the area earlier in the day, so by the time they got my text, they were already done with that and already in the area...so they came early. And promptly solved a problem that I'd all but given up on (we had already changed our video wall layout, due to slowly dwindling numbers of operational LED panels...we bought the hardware to change it even more...from a 6 wide by 5 high array to 7 wide by 4 high, but the mounting bars that we had on hand all had eye bolts threaded and then welded to the top, so we couldn't use them. They cut through the welds and got the eyebolts unscrewed, so we could mount the correct hardware). Jumped right in without a second of "Well, that's not really what we're here to do" or anything like that. Got that done, got the seventh 'stick' of LED panels assembled and wired in, and started looking at how to reconfigure the controller to send the signal correctly. Found out the software we needed only runs on a Windows system--everything there, including all of the laptops people had for whatever they were doing, were all Macs...so I left the park, ran to the theater, grabbed my laptop and headed back, and they got the software downloaded and figured out how to get it to do what we needed it to do, we spent a bunch of time fiddling with settings to get it looking right...
The director had earlier said, "If you can't get that carrier for the LED panels taken care of, let's just skip it for this year and we'll figure it out later." Now, he's got his seventh column of LED panels, everything checked out okay with the lights (aside from two lights that...well, one randomly reset itself, somehow...one of the contractors helped me wrestle a ladder out into the house and set it up so I could climb up and check them and that light just suddenly started working again after I bumped a couple of controls. I don't even remember changing any settings on it, but suddenly, it was doing what it was supposed to. The other light was just plain old dead...I disconnected the power cord from one of his neighbors that was working and hooked that up to the light, and got a whole lotta nuthin'...so, we'll have to take that one down and swap another in its place (I think I actually have one or two of those that didn't get used in the plot...I'll have to check on that tomorrow!)
But they came in, as they always do, and busted their butts to make me look like I can accomplish damn near anything the director puts on my list. And they never make a big deal about it. And when I said that we'd likely actually be doing focusing tomorrow night, one guy was like, "Well, I'm booked..." and the other one immediately said, "I'm not..." Just, truly, great people to work with. Still remember the first day I found out we'd hired them, specifically--my boss had told me they'd found new contractors (because the guys we used the year before had been a MASSIVE disappointment--they'd hung lights for a couple of things for us, for Halloween, and we had to go back through and do a LOT of clean-up to get things really presentable...), but didn't say who they were. When I saw their vehicle parked in front of the theater, I recognized the name--they have done a lot of rigging work for various events that I've worked on through the years, and while I never got to know them there, the company name definitely had a reputation for giving you quality work, no matter how large or small the job...and they do some BIG jobs (the head of the company has worked on the Superbowl halftime show for, like, the better part of a decade, now.) Unlike some guys we've hired in the past, they didn't come in and say, 'Oh, you need to upgrade this, and this, and you should buy a bunch more of these, and that equipment is crap..." They came in and said, "Okay...what have you got? Let's figure out how to make it work the best way we can..."
And any time they come lend a hand, I walk away feeling really great about what we've accomplished in the time they were there.