Cues Out of Order

I'm designing and programming a dance show starting tomorrow on an iPC, and I have a thought that I wanted to run past everyone here.

We have four days of TECH, however more often than not, all of the 30+ dances in the show are rehearsed out of order. (Last year, I had to quickly adapt to using virtual masters with single cues and "release at end" enabled since I had no idea if I'd see a specific dance more than once). Obviously I don't want to have to do this again.

Most of the pieces will have a single "base look" with LTP / HTP elements layered on top, however there are a handful of dances with 10 or 20 cues in them. So, my thoughts are: Since I know the show order, my initial urge is to make blank "place holder" cues in a master cue list with each cue labeled as the base look for a given dance and just record them as needed during rehearsal (I'd use point cues for pieces with more than one cue).

My concern is that if the dances are rehearsed out of order, and I record out of order, I'll create all sorts of nasty tracking interactions. I know that I could just deselect "track forward" to make sure that all base cues for the dances have only hard values, but what are the implications of this (other than the obvious)? I usually only do this when I'm updating, so any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

Jason
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    One good way to approach this type of situation is to use a different PAGE for each dance. That way you can record each page (dance) in any order. You can then reorder them for the show order and just press Next Page as you move from dance to dance. You can use a Template page for masters you want to be on each page. If you find yourself having to change pages in the middle of a song/dance you can use the CP+ & CP- macros in the appropriate cue to move forward or back through the pages.

    I use pages in a few different ways. When I know the songs ahead of time I will build a page for each song. When I get the set list from the band I reorder my pages. I also have 2-3 pages that allow me to punt if I am slipped a song not on the list or if I am at full punt. In that case these 2-3 pages are setup with generic building blocks. One page may be setup for high energy fast beat songs, another may be setup for slower dramatic songs and one that has bits of both.

    --
    Kevin Montagne
    kevin (at) litkam (dot) com
    www.litkam.com
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    I thought about using pages in that manner, however I'm already breaking my LTP and HTP faders down into pages via what "section" or "theatrical location" of the show I'm in. It's kind of an odd situation having to somewhat busk a dance show but given the rehearsal period and method, it's really the only way.

    I spoke with Cat this afternoon (who was extremely helpful) and she recommended a rather brilliant solution. She said that I should place hard values for every single fixture in it's default setting for every single "place holder" cue. That way any point cues I add afterward will track, but the main "dance look" cues will always block tracking regardless of their location in the stack. Now I'm aware that there may be some undesirable things that can happen due to tracked values being forced back to their defaults, but this can be corrected with an extra point follow cue or something.

    Anyone have any other refining thoughts on this?
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