Challenging or Traumatic?
By the time I am writing this blog post I have completed my 100 hours of work placement with my chosen placement company NIAVAC Limited. Since then, I have been working for them as a freelancer engineer within their “Hire” department. Once I began working for them, they recognised that my hard work ethic and offered me to work within their “Install” department also. “Hire” is everything event related, from working as a backline technician at the Custom House Square St Patrick’s Eve concert to operating sound consoles such as the Yamaha CL5 and CL1 at Conference events. “Install” is more of an electrician and joiner job, which combines with my joinery experience I gained during the second Lockdown of Covid-19. Therefore, this module has been massively beneficial for me for expanding my knowledge in many industries.
There have been many challenging experiences whilst completing my work placement with NIAVAC, the first experience I would like to highlight would be whilst operating the sound console at the Titanic Exhibition Centre for a large business awards conference. I was the sound engineer that day meaning that I had crew to help assist me with patching inputs and setting up the PA system. In my first blog post for this module, I used Schon’s Model to reflect upon my experience however for this blog I am going to use “Borton’s Model (1970)”. I have chosen this method of reflection as it suits this type of event.
At the start of the event, I began to ring out the lectern microphone to apply a graphic EQ across the channel to eliminate any feedback from the room when I am pushing the gain or dB of the microphone. This is step one of prevention for an event like this as the guests and organisers of the event do not want to experience any high-pitched ringing from feedback whilst a speaker is addressing the participants. The morning time conference ran very smoothly audio wise. Once the conference was complete, we had to then set up for the evening entertainment section, this required setting up for an Irish Traditional Band and for a Cover Band. The “What” in Borton’s model signifies what happened, to apply it to this event, the traditional band arrived late and so did the cover band. The cover band came to the event with a lot more equipment and members than we initially expected which created panic within my team. Miscommunication within the industry of live performances can be massively disruptive, I kept a calm head and reacted accordingly, delegating tasks for my crew to complete to assist my job of patching the Traditional Band and the Cover Band to my RIO patching unit. Once I talked to the leader of the cover band, I outlined what instruments I am going to provide amplification to, and this calmed my crew. We did not believe we had enough microphone stands to provide all the singers with a microphone, therefore I repurposed a stand that was holding one of the Radio Frequency Panels to extend the range of the Handheld microphones. Once I had done this, we had enough microphone stands for the band. I then began to line check both the Irish Traditional Band and the Cover Band, which was successful.
This took a lot of self-awareness as I had never been the leader of an event of like this with crew to listen to me. It was a truly learning experience that I thoroughly enjoyed and was more prepared for it than I thought when stepping onto the job. Upon reflection (the so what?) I found that keeping a level head during a stressful occasion can bring the team/crew together. If I were to have also been stressing out my crew would not have clear instructions from me, leading to them feeling highly under pressure to get a job done they have direction for.
To prevent such outcome to occur again, it will be important to ensure we have a tech spec file sent through from any performers of the event to know exactly what equipment we will need to put on our pull sheet before leaving the warehouse. This will result in a less stressful working environment for the crew and ensure we can talk to the performers with full confidence that we will have them up and running perfectly. In the future I will ensure that any event that I am running sound on that I have had a look over the pull sheet and know if the band have sent over a tech spec file outlining their needs for the event.
I am glad that I was able to experience this as it as highlighted how well I work under pressure and has given me a big confidence boost in my abilities as a sound technician. I have always believed in self-reflection as it is very important to ensure that things like this do not occur again. The title of this blog post is “Challenging or Traumatic?” as it could have been a very traumatic event that our client could have not been happy with. In the end our client was very happy with how it sounded and I was given a congratulations from my team and boss Steven Woods for how I combated the situation.
Conor Jones – 40269524
