I work in the entertainment sector, and if anything we’re hiring right now. Yet this article is saying there’s massive layoffs because they lump film in with live events. The skill sets are not transferable and you can’t lump them together. The film industry is really struggling. The live event industry is doing just fine. Every recession the live event and gaming industries have surged because of escapism. The only time live events have struggled is when pandemics happen.

I work in events. That is a very temporary structure. The frame is aluminum trussing, and although it would hold up fairly well, all of the fabric will start bleaching within 3-4 weeks, the metal chains holding everything up will start rusting pretty quickly being exposed to the elements. The lights themselves aren’t IP rated and are relying on the fabric for protection so those will fail pretty quickly. Finally the stage itself has a wood underlayment that will rot within a single season if left outside.

Lastly it’s all rented and the rental company will continue to charge the client until it’s returned.

And people wonder why I still play Factorio, Parkitect, ATS, or RCT. People suck and being able to ignore them is great.

Only for very specific games, and only because I don’t have a high refresh rate monitor.

If I’m in Forza driving 200 km/h I shouldn’t be able to see the bricks I’m flying past. With my low refresh rate monitor I can, so adding just a hint of motion blur really helps add that flourish of immersion that I can’t get with my setup. But that’s again very specific games and only because I cap out at 60fps.

I do events, one of the events was a medical conference. We had an exec for a pharmaceutical company presenting and he wanted the entire stage layout changed 45 minutes before the presentation. Like completely different projectors, screens, mics, that sort of thing. Not a quick fix by any means. We told him it wasn’t possible, his response,

“Anything is possible if money and physics allow it, and I have money.”

Their pharmaceutical company wasn’t invited back to the next years event. We were.

According to the patent (US465588A) it should be over.

If it sounds like a duck and looks like a duck, I’m calling it a duck.

Once it stops being slop, I’ll stop calling it what it is.

Merica

Let me guess. Boeing

Edit: yep Boeing 737-800

My entire career path.

I knew I liked concerts, and knew that people had to run that equipment, so I decided to get a job in an event company warehouse to learn what was happening. About 2 months in a sales guy apparently oversold a job and came running downstairs asking if anyone knew how to do video. No one did. So I said “have you got the manuals? I’ll learn.” He said, “Great! You’re going out on a North American arena tour in 6 weeks, good luck.”

Talk about getting thrown into it. I was the projector tech for a show that was running 10 screens and I had never touched a projector before then. I thankfully had a director who realized the crap I was in and helped me out.

That was almost 15 years ago now, I’m no longer on the road, but I’m still in it. Every show is different and every show is a learning experience.

They do have a pitch, however because it is percussive as opposed to sustained, we don’t register the pitch as easily. Many will also purposely obfuscate the pitch, such as cymbals, they don’t hold a tone, but rather multiple tones at once, making a washing sound and working for any key. If you ever look at a cymbal you will see the rings and divots around the cymbal, because if they weren’t there it would ring like a bell which definitely has a pitch.

As for the drums themselves they definitely do a have a pitch and it is common for to tune them in fifths, or octaves. Think of a drumline, those drums all have pitches and tones, they also function identically to a traditional drum kit. You can very similarly to the cymbals obfuscate this tone by doing an offset tuning so your drum head resonates unevenly across the head creating multiple tonalities at once.

You can achieve this by being lazy and not tuning.

I’m a professional sound engineer and ex-professional drummer BTW.

Several years ago my family and I went to an improve murder mystery dinner theater, and my family being the goofballs they are decided to cheer for the bumbling idiot character anytime he accomplished anything, regardless of how menial. So as the night went on the bumbling idiot character would start to cheer for himself followed by all of us, and eventually the whole crowd anytime he did anything.

So now if anyone in my family does something super menial but it was still a big task because circumstances, like mowing the lawn after a long hard day at work, we cheer “Yay, Eric!!!” After the name of the bumbling idiot, from an improve murder mystery dinner theater performance, from 12 years ago.

The fair housing act doesn’t stop age discrimination, it protects “familial status” meaning they can’t discriminate based on a family having children, or being in a gay or lesbian relationship. It does have three exceptions to the law and they all center around senior communities.

1. Every occupant is 62 or older. (Why 62 I have no idea.)
2. Every household has 1 person who is 55 or older.
3. The community is part of a state or federal housing program that assists elderly people.

Concerts, the rooms are always tuned visually and sonically for about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way back on the floor. If you care about audio or visuals this is where you go. If you can’t afford the floor, anywhere in the center will still be a good experience, avoid the sides unless you don’t care about visuals or audio. We literally call those the bone seats, because they have no substance to them.

Voicemeeter

Overwolf

Reaper

VLC

PCPartpicker

Ninite

There’s probably some others I’m missing.

I fell off a stage while holding an HD broadcast camera in the early 00’s. Those were really expensive back then. Ruined about $160k worth of gear.

I will never always trust a brand, there are some brands that have good trust, but I’ve seen too many brands screw people over for money.

I will say currently, Darn Tough Socks, Keen Shoes, EVGA, Milwaukee Tools, if you are in the cinema / live production world Teradek, and Yamaha.

They could have run the actual orange fruit and I would have voted for that over the orange cry baby.

We need more than 2 parties. fml.

I used to tune the speakers in movie theaters.

If it’s a Dolby certified theater there will be a chair that has a placard on it, that’s where the mic was placed to tune the theater. It will always be center, about 2/3rds of the way back. Most other certifications mirror this in some way.

We did THX certification and that was a little bit more broad, we wanted the “sweet spot” to be an area, not a single seat. This is why a THX certified room will look different than most other theater rooms, because it’s designed for maximum coverage. This also means we are sacrificing sound quality for sound consistency, making sure every seat sounds the same. With that being said we completely ignored the margins, they were called quarter margins and anything within 25% of the edge was disqualified from primary readings. We would take secondary readings from the edge, but that was just to verify that there were no glaring problems, not for actual certifications.

In short… central-ish is good for any movie theater.

I always say everyone should see requiem for a dream, but no one should watch it. That film does more for stopping drug abuse than any government program ever did.