I never worked with a programmable board. I had sheets with the "X" and "Y" circuits adjacent so I'd write in each scene for the preset. Worst was directors who kept changing the levels at every rehearsal. At the start of rehearsals I'd do a rough hang, and add specials as the blocking was developed and scenery was built, but I could usually get the general lighting nailed down early on. It got so bad that at one rehearsal every time the director would want the lights changed I'd wait a bit, and without moving a thing I'd say "How's that?" Five times out of ten he'd say "Looks good!" :roll:
I once worked with a director once on a production of Hamlet where he wanted 37 distinctively different thunder sound cues. I reused a couple of them, thinking with all the rest of what was going on on stage, he'd never know. I was wrong.
There were two types of directors I really disliked working with.
There were the ones who gave me such specific instructions that I had great difficulties satisfying them with the sound effects recordings I could find. This got better with the advent of the internet and DAW software (ProTools).
And then there were the ones who didn't really know what they wanted and gave me virtually no instructions; they would just tell me what they didn't like after I put a design together, which often was pretty much my whole design.
