Sneak Time 0

By 8 commentsCategory: EOS, Film, Programming, TipTags: , , , , , ,

I’ve been working on a serial with pretty big stage rigs.  One of the things that the DP would do right before first team came in was turn everything from the truck package off one at a time so he could orient himself on what was serving what function and get an idea of how much each light was contributing to the whole image.  Often in wide setups, he would want me to flash things several times for the same reason.

In my template file, my default sneak time has been one second for a while now.  (For those who are not Eos users, Sneak is a function that releases values to their background in a pre-selected timing.  Combine Fade Changes in Hog or Program Time in MA with Clear. The default time is 5 to fade manual values, I shifted it down to 1.) But my DP hated the fact I would select the fixture, hit out, and then sneak the value back to it’s level.  He wanted to see the pop to help attune his eye to what was happening.  So I changed it to zero and he was happier.

As I programmed with it over weeks, I realized if that is the preference of the Gaffer or DP, it’s actually very rare that I need to sneak a value with time (mostly to affect changes when the cameras are rolling, and I wouldn’t do that in my default of 1 second anyway) so I lost nothing hitting extra key strokes.

Do with this what you will.  But I think this will be a change that follows me forward (except for whenever I return to Theater and other live events) as I see the benefits to the work flow.

What other little changes in preferences or settings have you seen a benefit from?  Hit me in the comments.

***

Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film, television and theater based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE Local 28 and 480, an ETC Eos trainer and an enthusiastic trainer of many other platforms and subjects.  He offers remote console coaching in 30 minute to 4 hour times as well as a full range of training in person.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.  

8 comments

  1. Greg Loebell - Reply

    Do you know about (shift)(out) and (shift)(full)? I generally use those to temporarily bring a light to zero or full and show a gaffer on off.

    • Mark LaPierre - Reply

      I did know about Shift Out and Shift Full, though I underuse them. Flashing isn’t really what this guy was doing most of the time. He would want to kill things one at a time, then in no order I could predict, bring them back. I never knew when we were going to flash something several times or just turn it off and restore everything, so this was my best overall answer.

  2. Chris Steele - Reply

    In Onyx I use “Live Time” for this. In my template file, I have function keys set up for quick access to Live Times of 0, 1, 3 and 10 seconds. When turning a light on for the first time on set, I will usually using 1 or 3 seconds, so as not to catch people by surprise. If the gaffer or DoP is having me on/off a fixture, it’s 0. 10 sec is for big guns (and I’m probably going to lose that off my function keys to make room for something else).

    • Greg Loebell - Reply

      In case you were wondering, on EOS there is a manual time fader that you can set to make things manually change at whatever time you want. You could macrotize it to do the same thing as Onyx or macrotize sneak times.

  3. Will Brodhead - Reply

    I’m strictly a live events programmer, and so I keep my default Sneak at 2 seconds. However, I came from MA2, and missed the quick Clear button, so I have a macro button for Sneak Time 0 Enter. I also have a virtual fader on one of my magic sheets that is mapped to a manual timing fader, so I can adjust fade times on the fly (another MA2 thing I missed). It doesn’t affect Sneak time, though, but it does affect Out.

    • Mark LaPierre - Reply

      Totally makes sense. I’d never have a sneak time of 0 for Live Events, since that’s not really the vibe. And I also love many of the MA2 and miss them!

  4. Jess - Reply

    I see a lot of comments about the manual time fader. I love using it especially during previews when a designer wants to sneak lights in or out. However I found a small issue with it in that if you use the +% and -% keys in rapid succession, it will snapshot the current level and +/- from that level even if it’s still moving. So if I -10% from 90 with a manual time of 2 and hit it once, then again 1 second later the value will end up being 75%. That’s caught me off guard a few times.

Leave Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *