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Safety is now cool
We were shellacked relentlessly in previous years whenever CX wrote of stage safety and associated dark arts. So the risky passing of a 12 page forensic report on the Indiana disaster of August 2011 in the May CX mag was eagerly monitored by the Facebook and CX Mail Monitor. Amazingly we received only direct praise…
Read MorePrince Lighting errors – defined
This month’s CX carries a tale of lights done wrong, at least according to the writer. Unsure whether the lighting states we complained of were in the script, we emailed the lighting designer a draft, hoping to put the correct inflection. The show has been seen by a hundred thousand of us in Australia, and…
Read MoreMedia upheaval accelerates
Reports today have most Australian newspaper journalists concerned, as News Limited are rumoured to have 400 reporters facing the chop. Fairfax’s board last week actually discussed terminating the Monday to Friday editions of all their print newspapers; although they officially denied it will happen anytime soon. Facebook is not such a turn on either, according…
Read MoreCUA13: Some good, Some bad
MELBOURNE: Monday 28th May 2012 The proposed new entertainment training package (see previous blog) has some interesting components. Thankfully the Certificate IV has an ELECTIVE in soldering, but it is our informed guess no TAFE or college will put this unit into the qualification. Sadly the Certificate II and Certificate III remain in the province…
Read MoreCUA13 is firming up. New training package in formulation
MELBOURNE, MONDAY 28 MAY 2012 What is now the Entertainment Training Package CUE03 is headed towards CUA13, as the IBSA (Innovation and Skills Australia) review winds through a NPRG (national project reference group) meeting today in Melbourne. The training package dictates the composition of industry training for some years to come, and sometimes these packages…
Read MoreAt CX the biggest complaint: BAD LIVE SOUND!
GREAT live sound – for Jon English. Read the mag, link below. We invite Secret Listener reports at CX Mag, and wow – we get a lot of them! Very rarely do we directly run negative audio reports in the pages of CX. A recent report surrounded the live sound of Rod Stewart. Read…
Read MoreInsecure. Who me?
By John Maizels Most people who work in the gigging industry are freelance. That’s a polite way of saying not-employed-by-anyone-permanently. Is this you? Read on. There are other terms, like “casual”, “part-time”, “itinerant”, “on-demand”, “self-employed” and sometimes “consultant” which can be a way of saying you’re not sure if you’re employed or not. At their…
Read MoreBig Co Management, Big balls?
CX is a sucker for disaster tales, and the theatre of the daily business news is always fertile. Exit the guy in charge of Boral, the building conglomerate in Australia. He (Mark Selway, lawyers please direct communications to our new law firm, Sue Grabbit and Runn) was slayed in the media today for ‘micro managing’…
Read MoreSydney V Melbourne. The theatre comparison
Today’s SMH has a great article by theatre director Julian Meyrick, on how new plans to expand the State Theatre (2,000 seats) fall well short of what is required for Sydney. Instead of a proposed rebuild to supply a proper backstage area and loading facilities, the owners (Amalgamated Holdings) will do what public companies do…
Read MoreBah! CX Media Newsbreak….
Welcome to Friday, and today’s breakfast was interrupted by unwrapping the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. They have gone big with a promotion for their Airlink, which we just tried and can now consign to the trashcan of failure. As you probably know, CX is a media network and today we debut our…
Read MoreCheap stage? How about FREE!
While it is probable that Mortlake (western Victoria) farmer Ray Anderson is a very capable stage builder, his gesture in providing a free stage for Leighfest (Lawson’s Park, Inverleigh) amplifies concerns at a lack of standards for outdoor events. Local press in Geelong have lauded the donation of the stage, reported to be worth $300,000.…
Read MoreVideoplus – where is my SUPER?
I have continuously enjoyed the stories in your magazine, the website and your blog. Though I’m no longer working in Australia, your insights are still valuable for my work in the events industry in Europe. So thanks for that! I wanted to share with you a story that concerns Videoplus. Since I left Australia in…
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