PRG Production Tips 1

Production Tip #1 – Reset Defaults On Your Gear Before You Do Anything Else!

by Chris Conti

Providing technical advice and assistance to clients and colleagues in our industry is a big part of what I do. It’s a labor of love…mostly labor, but I actually do love it. A common inquiry that I receive is about control issues with their lighting systems. Often the problem or problems they have can be attributed to some esoteric setting that a previous user buried deep somewhere in a menu. So, here’s my tip: Reset Defaults on all your gear before you do anything else. Whether it’s a dimmer, a moving light, an Ethernet switch, a node, or a console, by resetting the defaults you are restoring the device and all other similar devices in your rig to their factory settings. This does three things: (1) Restores the device to a known state by wiping out any odd settings a previous user may have used; (2) Generally restores the device to its most basic configuration; (3) Gives you a fighting chance that everything in your rig will behave the same way, since they will all be configured similarly.