Soul Survivor part 1

Ok... time to get back to writing. And due to popular demand (well actually two requests) I'll talk a bit about Soul Survivor. If you want to know all the details of what Soul Survivor is, what it's about etc check out the link. This post won't try to explain all of that.

My role for SS was the rather dubiously important sounding "production manager". I think that meant I was supposed to look as if I knew what end of a guitar to plug the cable thingy into and that a speaker is both a person standing at the front of the marquee sharing their wisdom with us and the big black box the sound is coming out of. It's all very technikal.

Because of this rather weighty responsibility I decided to get up to the site early on the set up day. The site was at Manfield Park in Feilding. Feilding it seems has won awards for being the prettiest place in NZ or something. Not being particularly enthusiastic about pretty gardens it's not a place I have ever been before. The salient fact however is that it is about 2 hours from where I live. And so I dragged myself from bed at 5.30am and was on the road by 6.30am with the intention of being on site at 8.30 in time to watch the marquee being erected.

Everything went according to plan until Levin. I wish to speak no bad things against Levin. You may come from there and love the place for all I know. And to be fair what transpired was not actually the fault of Levin or her inhabitants. I did however think some rather dark and uncharitable things when, just as we were driving out of Levin my van shuddered, sighed and then stopped. Basically the van was knackered with the balance belt in several pieces and bent valves etc. So for me SS started with my van being loaded onto a tow truck and having to be picked up by a kind man with a trailer (many thanks Shane!). By the time I got on site the marquee was up. Good for my ego that… reinforcing the fact that no one actually needed me there!

The rest of the set up went pretty well. Except for the lights. I know next to nothing about lights except that they scorch your retina if you stare into one and that sometimes if you spend lots more money you can get lights that move and can blind more people than the silly static ones. This is the reason why I have people on my team that are lighting guru’s. Unfortunately none of them were with me at SS.

With only about an hour and a half before the first meeting in the marquee I still had no lights working. Well, to be precise, they did work… just not in any logical or useful way. Phone calls were made hastily to Wellington and with the phone clutched to my ear and with a drummer sound checking his kick drum 2 feet from my other ear I knelt on the ground in front of the dimmer pack and tried to explain to lighting guru Daniel what was going on. Finally, with barely an hour to spare and desperate I pulled the power from the lighting, waited a minute and turned it all back on… and it worked! Stupid lights.

Next time I’ll write something a little more deep and meaningful about Soul Survivor.