---

http://www.focustrack.co.uk/

FocusTrack is a new database system designed for keeping track of how lights are used in shows. Originally designed to allow the focus of automated lanterns to be comprehensively documented, it now offers similar facilities for documenting the use and focus of conventional lighting.

It can be used for productions of any type, but is perhaps of most use for theatrical productions, particularly:

touring shows, where the focus of the lighting rig (conventional and moving lights) has to be re-created at regular intervals

long running shows, where a reference is needed so that things don’t creep away from their intended focus over time.

transfers and new productions, where a reference from the original production is needed either as an aide-memoire, or because you’ve changed parts of the rig - moving to a new type of moving light, for example.
In every case, FocusTrack is particularly useful for allowing the person who programmed the lighting to leave a record of how things were - and, sometimes more importantly - why they were like that with the crew who will have to run and maintain the show.

If only they did! But this is rarely the case. Moving lights aren’t always completely consistent from unit to unit - their position, and in particular their edge focus, may vary from unit to unit. Swap a unit out and you’ve got no reference as to exactly what the light was doing unless you’ve documented it in some way. The focus of conventional lights drifts over time. And that’s just when the show’s in the same venue!

On tour, things get harder. Conventional lights will need to be re-focussed. Moving lights rigged in exactly the same relation to the set will probably be about right, but positions aren’t always consistent - particularly front-of-house. If you don’t have a record of what the light did, how can you be sure you’ve got it back to the right place?

And what if you need to change the type of lights you’re using, perhaps in a new production. Newer consoles will try to adapt the programming to older lights, older consoles will need more help. In either case, you’ll want to be able to check what you’re doing against how things used to look!

Plus, even if the lights are in the right place it’s good to have a record when the director accuses you of leaving an actor unlit: you can show that they’re standing in the wrong place!

No. WYSIWYG and other lighting visualisation tools will show you what a light is meant to be doing in an ideal world. FocusTrack is intended to let you record what a light is actually doing in a show - where it’s actually pointing, why it’s pointing there, exactly how sharp or soft the gobo is, the gobo alignment, the shutter cuts.

The two tools can complement each other, though. If you’re pre-programming a show you could take screen grabs showing how the lights were focussed in WYSIWYG and store them in FocusTrack along with descriptions of what those focuses were used for; when you got to the real rig you could check your focuses against the WYSIWYG ‘ideals’ stored in FocusTrack, adjusting as required to compensate for ‘real world’ factors (lights rigged off-level etc).

It’s up to you. If you want to use conventional ‘grid style’ focus descriptions - "6L@+6" - you can do that. If you want to use a written description - “on Fantine, down centre” - you can do that. If you want to insert a set drawing and click on it to show where the light is pointing, you can do that.

For the greatest precision, you can add a digital photograph for each focus of each light. FocusTrack can help with taking these photoraphs, generating lists of each focus that you need to photograph them importing the pictures in the right place. With certain lighting consoles - currently Strand's 500-series - it can automate this task, turning each light on in each focus in turn without you having to press a single key on the console!

FocusTrack consists of two main sections:

RigTrack: this stores information about the lighting rig - what each channel is, where it’s rigged, what it’s purpose is, where it’s patched. For conventional lights, which only have one focus, it can also store information about the focus - in grid, descriptive or other written form, and/or as a digital photograph of the focus.RigTrack can also maintain maintenance logs for lights, recording when they've been swapped in and out of the rig and the repairs that have been done ot them, and can track the number of hours that moving lamp bulbs have burned, giving warnings when lamps are due for replacement.

FocusTrack itself: this stores information about how moving lights are used. For each lamp in each position a ‘lamp-focus’ record is created. You can then add the information you need: a grid focus, a description of the position or purpose of the focus, a set plan with a cross showing the focus position, details of the scene the focus is used in or the scenery it is used to light, or a digital picture of the focus. You can also record the first cue that each focus is used in, if required, making it easy to see when you need to re-focus lights when stepping through a show.

FocusTrack can also store a cue list for the show with a cue description, cue times and a digital photograph of the cue to give a complete record of the show.

You can either enter the rig information into FocusTrack’s RigTrack information manually, or you can import it from a number of other popular lighting programs, including John McKernon’s Lightwright, and Ted Mather’s long-established lighting database.

Users of certain lighting consoles - currently Strand's 300- and 500-series consoles - can import the patch information from the console showfile; this will import channels, the dimmers they are patched to, the fixtures they are patched as and other related information such as whether the fixtures pan and/or tilt and inverted. You can then merge in other information from Lightwright to give a complete record of what each channel actually is, where it's rigged, what colour it has in it etc.

You may choose to use FocusTrack manually, adding information as you create each preset focus so that you have a complete record of the show as you go along. In this case, just create a new lamp-focus record every time you focus a light and add a description of that focus. Later on you can come back and add more information or photographs.

You may choose to program the show then come back and fill in the details later - looking through your showfile on the console and filling in details of which lights are used in which preset focus position as you do so, then adding descriptions of what each focus is used for. Once you've done that FocusTrack can list each lamp in each position so that you can photograph each focus, if required, before importing those pictures into FocusTrack for a complete record of the show.

Best of all, with certain lighting consoles - currently Strand's 300- and 500-series consoles - you can automate much of this process.