Match night production

For those that didn't already know (you mean you didn't see the photo linked from the forum?), for the last couple of weeks I've helped out on match nights with the production. My "job" has been to look after the output to the plasma screens, so that's putting up the flash screens during the game, running videos and all other stuff like that.

So the first week I helped we were down at ground level, and things went fairly badly. In particular we had a problem with the Mike's mics, the wired mic didn't work properly, and the radio mic kept picking up interference.

So last week the crew from Comtec did some work re-wiring, thanks to their hard work the technical problems (bar a problem with a speaker or two) were pretty much fixed, leaving us to concentrate on what we had to do.

However in my mind the biggest improvement was moving us to the back of Block 6. Being at the higher level we could see the ice better, you can spot stoppages in play, and why play has stopped. It makes it easier to pick the right music, get any on-screen stuff ready and run it all at the right time. The other big advantage of being up in the blocks is that we can hear the audio output, so keep the sound levels balanced (sound at ground level was particularly awful) and actually see what's on the plasma screens!

So all in all I think everybody was much happier with last weeks match night. We know we've still got things that aren't quite right and areas to improve. Some of that will come with a little more experience, and as the basics become routine I'm sure we'll try new things.

Oh yes, and for now at least, my job is going to be running the screens every game.