R.A.V.E. - Episode 6 - Tools For The Trade - What's In Your Pocket?

In this, the 6th episode of R.A.V.E. the Podcast, we explore the tools we need to bring to a job site, both those we physically carry with us and others we should embody through our attitude and mindset.

Transcript

STEREO - Episode 6 - Tools For The Trade - What's In Your Pocket

Stephen: [00:00:00] Hello, my fellow humans. Welcome back to RAVE, the Podcast where we are training tomorrow's AV leaders with excellence and integrity. I'm your host, Stephen Verner, and if you are just joining us, welcome to the group. If you've been with us along the journey, although it's only been five episodes so far, thank you so much for hanging around.

As I stated before, most podcasts don't make it past three episodes, so we are well beyond that threshold and we're gonna keep mushing forward. A couple of little stats I just wanted to, uh, read to you if you're interested as we're building our audience here, is, uh, looking at my. Buzz Sprout. I was, I was quite, uh, pleased to hear that.

We've got one listener in France, which uh, was kind of cool. [00:01:00] And then I'm looking here. We've got 20 cities, folks from 20 different cities, and I believe, if I added it upright, nine different states. I see, of course, Georgia, my home state, California. I'm looking here. South Carolina, Oregon, Oklahoma, Vermont, Maryland, Florida.

So thank you very much for tuning in. I feel like we're building our audience and that that lets me know that maybe something I'm saying here has some value in your life. So thank you very much for coming by. As some of you may know, or if you do. Know me. If not, I'm gonna let you get to know me as we do this thing together.

Called a podcast. I had knee surgery three months ago, I guess, and so I'm recovering, but I have my good days and bad days. Uh, today is not so good today. So I actually have my zoom recorder in my lap and I have my boom stand sitting right by the bed. I come from a generation that doesn't know how [00:02:00] to say no to work.

So, but for me, podcasting is not work. It's fun. And so, um. As I shared in my first episode, and I'll just go back and recap very quickly the whole point of this podcast is that I'm leading up to writing a book on training AV professionals. Uh, of course it'll be called RAVE Real Audio Visual Education.

And then I hope to start a training and mentoring program. Eventually, that helps out teens and young people who want to get into this business, earn a certificate, and get a good education, um, and get out and get a great job. Uh, but right now I just wanna focus on building this podcast. The last couple episodes we've talked about the four major disciplines in av, in my mind, uh, audio, lighting, rigging, and video.

And this time I want to take a little bit of a deviation and talk about some of the soft skills. And in this episode, which I prerecorded a few weeks ago, uh, this is, uh, about [00:03:00] tools for the trade. What's in your pocket? Yeah, I borrowed that from cap one. Sorry guys. But anyway, what I want to say is I talk a little bit about actual things you need to bring with you to a job site, depending on which job you've been hired to do.

But then we talk a lot about attitude and. And professionalism and other things like that. So I think there's gonna be something of value for everybody in here, even if AV is not your focus. I think that especially stick around. It's about 20 minutes long or so, maybe 30. So anyway, I think it's gonna be a great episode.

Thank you so much for joining us, and again, this is Steven Vernon. I'm the host of Raid the Podcast. If you're interested in this kinda stuff or you have somebody in your life who think they might be interested in this. Pass the link along, and then if you have questions or you think they may have questions, connect them to me through email at rave the podcast@gmail.com.

Again, thank you so much for, uh, hanging out with us, and here comes the episode. In my career, [00:04:00] I started out learning audio. And so, uh, nobody really talked to me about the things that I might need to bring with me, to a job site. Same thing when I. Started learning how to do lighting and video projection.

I kind of had to just observe and look at the people around me, you know, the things that they had in their bag. Sometimes people who've been in the industry for a while had some really expensive tools, you know, diagnostic tools and things like that, that I just, I couldn't afford. So in no way are we gonna say that.

To even show up on the job. If you don't have these things, then you can't do the job. But these are just some things for, for you to be, aware of. So let's take, for instance, the discipline of lighting. So in [00:05:00] lighting. If you've been called in on a gig, you're gonna be a lighting technician.

Let's assume that you're gonna be putting together some truss, maybe you're gonna be hanging some lights on battens in the theater scenario you're gonna need, at the bare minimum, a sea wrench or a crescent wrench. You know, of course, you know the company that's hired you. They're, they're gonna have some.

But I would say that, you know, you showing up for the gig with at least a five, $10 c wrench that you bought from Harbor Freight or Walmart goes a long way towards showing. The company that's hired you, that you've put some thought into what you needed to have with you when you showed up for the job?

Another tool that I think that is more or less kind of across the board. But I [00:06:00] felt like I didn't really get introduced to this tool until I got more into lighting because I was having to rewire things on the fly. Or learn how to rewire things on the fly. And I didn't want to carry a lot of tools in my pocket is, a multi-tool, good multi-tool or leatherman, um, something like that where you've got different tools all packed into one.

A lot of times you can hang this off your belt or. Stuff it in your pocket. Some people, you know, bring a, a backpack or whatever to the job site. You can get one of these, you know, if, if you buy the the brand name, of course you're gonna spend more. But I've also had success buying these off Amazon and Walmart, places like that.

Of course. The more you put into it, the better tool it's gonna be, and the more devices that it's gonna have built into the multitool. But at least you'll have like some needle nose pliers, a knife and, you know, [00:07:00] maybe a, a file or things like that. Uh, you'd be surprised like how many. Opportunities come up for you to just do a quick fix on something.

And if you've gotten that tool in your pocket, um, you can just get it done right then and there. You don't have to walk over to a a tool rig and, or ask around the job site. People get pretty tired of you borrowing the tools. And most people will not lend them out. Not because they're not nice people, but, 'cause you gotta think about it.

They've showed up to the job prepared, and they've had what they, they needed on their person and you didn't. So if they hand away their tool, maybe they don't get it back from you. That kind of thing. So just showing up with those kind of things. So again, with lighting, I think, you know, bare minimum, get yourself like a, an eight inch crescent wrench.

I say, you know, six is a little small. The tens and twelves tend to be a little heavy. If you're gonna be doing [00:08:00] lighting all day, get you about a eight inch crescent wrench. And again, you don't have to put a whole lot of money. Into this to start with. At least you can always upgrade your tools later and then, you know, take you some timeline, put that through the, um, the hole at the end.

And then that way you've kind of got a handle, especially if you're gonna be working over your head. Yeah, just to tip is, if that ramp slips off of even a square bolt, it can, um, that you find on most lighting, sea clamps and things like that. It'll slip. And the likelihood of that tool falling and hitting somebody in the head goes down.

If you've got, something around your wrist that's gonna keep that that tool on you it's a good idea. And then the multi-tool, I think that's just good for everyone across, across the board. And, you know, you get a decent multi-tool for, you know, maybe 25, $30. You know, of course if you go up 50, a hundred dollars, you're gonna get much better quality again, much more.

Features [00:09:00] on that multi-tool, but I think those are two really good things for you to have. Things that are more specific to, uh, disciplines, with audio I've seen, you know, especially if you're the front of house person where it's your task to actually run the board is I'll see people come in with, you know, an RTA mic or real time.

Analyzer, Mike, that carry in a case. You know, they've brought it on their own. That's part of their. A tool package, and it's something that they can hook up to the board. A lot of boards now will have, uh, white noise or ping noise generators built in, oscillators, built into the boards. Sometimes, you know, you, you're hooking it up to a phone or an iPad or something like that.

But just having something like that where you can. Pump some white noise through the pa, put your RTA mic out in the room and then you can, [00:10:00] adjust your EQs and really balance, balance the system out to and tune the system to, to the room. So having an RTA mic a lot of RTA mics, you can get some, you know, in the a hundred dollars range, you can get them in the several hundred dollars range.

And you can even find some of these used. I know. You know, uh, gear Exchange on Sweetwater dot com. You can also go to like Guitar Center, so use gear as well. So if somebody has, traded up to, a, a better mic and there's different brands out there, but you know, having an RTA mic in your pack to pull out and to test your system is a good idea.

And again, uh, some people prefer to have certain softwares on their phone or on their iPad. Again, even having an iPad that you could use. A lot of boards now, especially digital consoles, they're all capable of either [00:11:00] being connected to, a wifi signal or they produce their own and set up your own little private network to connect your iPad to being able to walk around that room and tune things from different perspectives.

And not just from where your console is located is a huge advantage. I think having that iPad, you can get one now for a little over $300 some, you know, again, you can always go the used option too, and if you're just gonna use it for this one task, you don't need all the bells and whistles, of course you want to maximize, you know, and get the best processor that you can for the money that you're able to spend.

But, uh, I think that's that's important is, uh, you know, have some sort of iPad or, uh, pad device that you can connect your console to. And I referenced the wifi thing. I've seen a lot of audio engineers now that will have their own little. Wifi, uh, [00:12:00] router that they travel with, they're not dependent on the venues that they're going to to produce wifi for them.

In fact, it's probably not a good idea to put your console on an open source, uh, wifi network anyway. You want to have a closed network. We're the only devices that are connected to that network. Are the devices that you want to control. So I'd say, you know, having a, a small wifi router that you bring with you and that you've preset it to where you know what the passwords are and that only your gear connects to it is, is a good idea and I've seen people, spend hundreds to, 25, $50 for the cheaper ones. Uh, some people will put these where they mount 'em up on a pole so you can get 'em, or a mic sand or something where you can get it up a little higher. Above the audience. 'cause sometimes, again when you're [00:13:00] doing a test in an open room where there are no other beings, no other humans with, uh, their phones and watches and other devices active it makes a difference.

So, uh, something like that. And I think to a lesser degree I've seen, LDS that travel, uh, with, uh, an iPad or something like that as well. Some of the more high-end, uh, lighting designers will even travel with, compact versions of some of the more used consoles out on the market.

You know, the. The Grand MAs or you know, the Hogs or Camsys, ETC, something like that. Something other the specific, excuse me to, uh, the lighting discipline is I've, I've seen people carry their own you know, USB to DMX nodes. There are many different manufacturers of those. Sometimes they're.

Board specific or they're brand [00:14:00] specific. So they build in their own certain protocols with their software. So a lot of these companies will give away their software more or less but to really enjoy the benefit, the full benefits of the console, you have to have a USB to DMX, uh, node. Uh, or relay.

And those can basically, it just takes the USB straight out of your computer and into this node, and it turns it into a DMX signal that you can then send onto, you know, dimmer packs or LED lights or movers or things like that. So, not the preferred way for me. I'll any day put a console in front of me.

Uh, but you know. As you're, when you're first starting out, you may not have those capabilities, so you may be running lights from your laptop. So something like that. And to a lesser degree in the lining world, I've seen people, everything is more [00:15:00] app based now than it, it, it used to be. But we used to have, you know, a photometric, uh, meter to where we could, you know, stand on the stage and somebody would, aim the light in a certain.

Spot and you could make sure that you get the right amount of, uh, foot candles so that it's even across. Sometimes these things can be done with a a phone app as well. And this is becoming lesser important, but many of the early LED lights, instead of having a digital punch in where you would assign the DMX address, would have actual binary dip switches.

Having an app on your phone that. Say, I need to put this light at the starting address, uh, 2 46. Where do I need to move these dip switches to? And it would show you, you know, the picture of which ones are up and which ones are down so that that light receives that DMX and it parks it at the right DMX [00:16:00] address so that the console can find it and control it.

So le lesser of lesser importance. But still, I think it's, it's, uh, important. Jumping back over into the audio world, I think a good cable tester. Um, most of these cable testers you're gonna find for, under a hundred dollars a good one. You know, they're all battery operated and you'll want one that, you know, and the, a lot of them are built this way where they can test.

A multitude of audio cables. So it's not just gonna test your XLRs, but it'll test, you know, your quarter inch cables. Uh, a lot of times it'll test your 3.5 or your one eighth size cables. It's gonna test your RCA cables as well. Uh, so, having a cable tester on hand is always a good idea. Show me back into the lighting world, and I know I'm kind of going.

Back and forth, but I'm doing this [00:17:00] very much stream of consciousness. But they do make cable testers as well for lighting. So you can test your DMX cables, but also in lighting we have lots of different types of connectors for AC or for power. Having testers that say, you know, you can test stage pin cables, uh, is helpful I think.

And, um. I'd say for for rigging, you know, some of the things, and this is an area of discipline that is, is not as, I'm not as competent in this area as I would like to be, but I'm, I'm growing in this area is, traveling with your own harness. Uh, a lot of venues I've heard from. From friends who are in more on the rigging side of the business, you know, they will have harnesses, but do you really want to trust your life to somebody [00:18:00] else's harness?

So that is something that I think that you automatically have to go by yourself, and that requires some research that requires, asking. People in the industry and looking and observing what they already have. 'cause there's different types of harnesses out there for different types of rigging.

You know, we're talking about rigging specifically in the entertainment industry, but rigging happens, in all kind of industries, construction and different things like that. And believe it or not, every harness is not built. The same. So you wanna make sure that you know it has all the, the proper stuff on it, and that's gonna cost you a little bit, it's gonna cost you several hundred dollars.

You know, you're gonna have, uh, rope and certain things like that you'll want to carry with you as well. And again, the best source for those types of things is to talk to somebody who's already doing that. A lot of times if you can't get near somebody like [00:19:00] that is find out, where your nearest local I os E Union is, and maybe try to get on their referral list and let them know, you know, if they're multidiscipline that you're interested in rigging and maybe you can attend a lot of these IOC. Groups I know the IOC in my local town will, uh, from time to time each quarter roughly will host some sort of training class.

And they'll have different focuses. Sometimes it's on basic stagehand stuff. Sometimes it's specifically on lighting or audio or rigging. So, uh, definitely consult and take avail yourself to those resources if you have them in the city where you live. In this case, you know, that's some of the tools and, and in no way is that an exhaustive list of tools, but I just think that, you know, having an idea of some of the [00:20:00] tools that you should be bringing to a job, and if you're a person like me who has an interest in various disciplines, I think that, just knowing what to carry with you on which day makes a difference. The team leader looks at you and says, Hey, this is a person that's prepared,

uh, and in this and in this case, and tools for the trade one. One of the things I want, I want to talk about is, is, uh, putting yourself in the perspective. If you're a technician, on freelance crew or you're a technician that works for a company, is. Putting yourself in the position of the team leader, uh, and I'll come back to this often throughout the book, is the need to continue to build your leadership skills.

One of the, one of the things that I think about a lot when I'm putting together [00:21:00] crews for the events that happened in the, the venue where I'm the, the TV is that I'm looking for people who are prepared and one of those. Things about preparedness is I look is do, did they have the look of the job, right?

Did they bring the right things with them? And in my case, I'm working in a university town. I'm working with people of various skill levels and so we've kind of created a system. To where, you know, we think about, you know, you start out as a novice you work yourself up to a journeyman level and then onto kind of an expert level.

And that may be a very rudimentary way of, of looking at, professional development but it helps us. And so, yeah, I have lesser expectations of those who are first coming in to the industry. But if you've been around for even a year or two years, or five years, there's certain things that I'm gonna look at and go, you should know this by now, or You should be bringing these things with you by [00:22:00] now.

And of course, as a venue, I feel like I'm, as a venue leader, I feel like I'm obligated to have those things. You know, those extra tools on tap so that those who show up that are new are not excluded from the workforce, so on and so forth. But it is nice to see when people do show up and have their their own things.

One of these things that I think about is, putting yourself in the role of a team leader is, you know, let's say for for a moment that you're me, or you're a technical director or production manager, and you're tasked with building a team and you've got two. Available texts that could fill a particular role.

And they each have their own traits. They're good and bad traits as far as their professionalism and, and their skillset and everything. Knowing why you would choose one, one person over another makes a difference. [00:23:00] That kind of segues into, so we've talked about the hardware tools that we bring with us when we come to a job site, but here, what I feel like are the mental tools that we also need to show up to the job site with.

And some of this may sound, I don't know, a bit hokey but. I'm kind of old school on these things and I, I think it does matter in the long run. And one of those things I think you need to obviously bring with you when you come to the job site is a good attitude. You know, if you, if you show up grumpy and look I've shown up in a, with a bad attitude, bad attitudes spread like wildfires and there's nothing worse than showing up.

To a job site, maybe you didn't sleep well the night before, you haven't had coffee. Find a way to get yourself into a positive mindset before that junk starts to spread to the team. 'cause if you [00:24:00] start out a long day with a bad attitude, it's gonna feel like an even longer day.

The second mental tool I think that we can, uh, bring with us is to prepare and to to plan. Part of this is like if you're, the technician is asking good questions of the per person that's booked you, you know, knowing what your role is, that helps you decide what tools you need to bring with you.

If you're gonna be in a place where, you know, say food is not readily available, there's not a re a lot of restaurants around, maybe you need to. Bring some granola, some breakfast bars with you. So maybe you go a bottle to a Gatorade or water or things like that. You know. If you have certain health conditions, I know I used to travel with my little survival pack.

You know, I'd have some ibuprofen and Tylenol, maybe I'd throw in, you know, some Pepto or, um, some Tums tablets or just anything that was gonna slow me down and not allow me to [00:25:00] get my work done or to. Be a distraction to me being available on the job site. Those were things, um, that I, I would prepare for myself.

Um. I think the other thing that we can bring to the job site is having a big picture view. I know I've been super guilty of, you know, if I'm coming in on a crew, maybe I'm part of a, a lighting team or part of an audio team that, you know, you can have a, you know, I don't give it. Crap attitude about what's going on in audio world.

I've got lightning to do, so bump you fellas over there. I'm gonna get my job done. I don't care if anything else gets done. And I, I just think that this, this is a very terrible attitude to bring to a job site, is everybody that's in the room, you're all working you're working on your individual tasks for the same client, and the goal is to present a.

[00:26:00] Professional event, right? And but then drilling down into what your particular role is. Maybe you're on the front of house audio team and your job is to get the speakers up in the air, get 'em wired, and get 'em working. Well, you can't do that to the exclusion of everybody else. You know, you're gonna need to be able to work with, for instance, the rigging team.

You know, in respecting what they know and what they bring to the job, and you being prepared with your part and noticing what's going on in the room so that you can get your part done so that it times out perfectly with when they're available to come do the part that you can't do. So just having that big picture view and just being an easygoing person, to work with goes a long way.

I think the other thing that we can mentally bring to a job site is our prioritization and critical thinking. Being able to [00:27:00] look at a big task. If you're on a a lighting team and you've got to put together, you know, hundreds of feet of truss plus hang all these lights and run all these cables, is realizing that like you're part of a team.

You know, that's not just. Your job alone, you're part of a team, but then realizing how you can prioritize certain tasks and you can begin to, take a mental leadership role, let's say. You know, one of the things I would do when I would be one of a lighting tech on a big job, maybe there's 15 lighting techs in the room, you know, for a corporate job is as the truss started to go up and all the fixtures started to get on there, and all the cable started.

To get on there is I would just go through and I'd start looking for little things like did the c clamp get adjusted down? And so I'd just go yank down on all of them, or I'd just my go down the line and just eyeball and make sure every fixture had a safety gable around [00:28:00] it. Things like that.

I think if you can begin to prioritize and think critically about what are the important things. Within the task that I'm doing or the team that I'm a part of it makes a difference in the overall, how quickly it gets done, how well it gets done, how safe it gets done. And then I think, just being analytical, questioning things appropriately, you know, not being antagonistic in your, in your questioning, but you know, if you see something that doesn't look safe, you know, say something about it.

I know that there's been some gigs that I've been on where some tasks that I've been asked to do, I knew right off the bat they were not safe. And so I would say something, but you have to be creative. You have to be smart in the way you bring it up, to maybe avoid conflict. And the last thing, and I've, I've kind of been [00:29:00] seeding this throughout the whole talk about the tools for the trade and what's in your pocket is to think like a leader and work as a team player.

I know this sounds kind of cliche, but if you're always thinking like a leader, how can I make my leader's life a their job a little bit easier? And this sounds self-serving, but it, but in, in some ways maybe it is, but it's not meant to be. But you're working as a, a team player. Like if I'm always looking for opportunities where I can step forward and be.

More helpful to my team to get my tasks done so that maybe we're more available to do other things. It goes a long way, and those things, if you're, I don't know, maybe, maybe not everybody who's listening or gonna listen to this book is wired up like me. I think that I definitely wanted to climb the ladder.

[00:30:00] Not that I didn't like working art, come from a, you know, blue collar background. I love to work with my hands. I love that feeling of. Getting into the minutia of putting together a sound system or a lighting system and building a rig and, you know, seeing it all come together and then you step back at the end of the day and go, oh, I had a hand in that.

That feels good, but I wanted to climb the ladder. So to speak, I wanted to work myself up to a leadership position, you know, in order to a, make more money spoken, like a true capitalist. But also just I was curious, and so I think if you approach every task that you've been asked to do, to think like a leader, but to work as a team player, if you're, if you.

Juxtapose those two things together and kind of work those two things in balance that, and you bring all these other mental things with you and the, the tools with you to a job site, you're gonna make yourself [00:31:00] invaluable to an employer, whether you, it's to. A place where you're freelancing or whether it's to, you know, the company that you've been hired in part-time or full-time.

And so to me, these are the tools for the trade. The, these are the things you need to bring in your pocket when you come, uh, to a job site or when you come to work every day. Is this good attitude? Pre preparatory thinking and planning. Big picture view, asking analytical questions, prioritizing and critical thinking.

Having a positive attitude, but thinking like a leader and working like a team player. I think at the end of the day, if you do all those things, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna be on a lot of job sites and you're gonna be asked to uh. Be a part of a lot of work teams. So I think that's all, uh, here for the tools for the trade.

What's in your pocket? Of course, there's more things that we could talk about here, but I think that, uh, we've, we've [00:32:00] pontificated quite enough. The RAVE podcast has been brought to you by rave Real Audio Visual Education Training. Tomorrow's AV professionals with excellence and Integrity.