Week 2: Light Strikes Back

My relationship with programming prior to this week was virtually non-existent, and having only worked with horizon before (not as a designer, but as a stage manager). I'd picked up a few things during techs (helping a light designer fix a cue, so I knew how to take lights out and bring them to full, but that was pretty much it).

Retaining it for seven weeks is going to be another matter, but I think that I got most of the basics (although I'm also bookmarking the user manual online, just in case.)  At the very least, the undo button will be my friend.

Tracking was easily the most confusing thing, but I can see the benefits of it in making adjustments to cues that are recurring/consistent (sunlight, for example). (Soft blocking, on the other hand, not so much). It was actually kind of nice to realize how many things I had remembered (from tech, or 50C, or even Composition in the Fall). If nothing else, know that acronyms work(W=VA!)! A great deal more of the programming is intuitive, I guess, but it's a matter of tuning into the logic of the board. That sound like sci-fi. Oh, well.

Hard patching and soft patching were something that I was stressing about before, and while they're still a little daunting I now understand what everyone was telling me when they said I would be fine as long as I documented everything well.

I guess my summary is that I hope to be able to retain all that information, but even if I don't it's nice to have the background and ~sort of understand what's going on.