This is a photo taken by the lighting designer of Love Love Love Paul Keegan, as the crew had a little chat. Jet looks worried and I yet again tried to retune the bloody TV! So, what was going on?
As PSE on this show, it was my job to ensure the TV was showing footage of the 1980's poll tax riot. Easy enough with a standard TV: just send video out from QLAB, down a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) device and into the TV. Not quite so easy, however, into a prop TV that only has a coaxial antenna input!
So with much scratching of my head and chatting to my amazing colleagues, Shuan and Parry (Chief LX) and George Ogilve (Head of Studio Theatre) we came up with the solution, to use an RF Modulator of course! But the only affordable Rf modulator we could find, only had a phono input. The other end of the KVM comes out on VGA..ahhh...more head scratching, then George kindly rooted through his oldest box of old junk and found an active VGA to phono signal splitter box. So we go from VGA, into this device, then out on PHONO into RF modulator, which spits out signal on TV aerial cable..JOB DONE.. or was it.
The problem then was that we had to unplug the RF modulator rig from power, as ACT II set is completely different from act I, and has to be rolled onto stage..And every time we plugged it in, it lots its tuning! What a nightmare. Well long story short after a lot of stress and it not working, I found an old RF modulator in a dusty old drawer - and hey presto, it worked perfectly!
Such as shame that we only did 2 shows, and then had to go dark because of Corona Virus. It was a cracking show and Simon Slater, the Sound Designer and Jet Sharp, the Sound Operator and deputy head of Sound, were doing such a fine job!
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