Just a few random thoughts from another weekend full chocked full of graduations:
If you walk up to a lectern and the last person who spoke was about two feet shorter than you, you may need to adjust the microphone. If the foamy/grilly bit of the mic is pointed at your stomach, that's just not ideal. Consider where the sound comes out of your body. If sounds are coming from your stomach, we really don't want to hear that over the PA, do we? Please point the mic towards your head, at least.
House guy #2 had the great idea of having a scrolling letter sign attached to the front of house table so we could send the speaker messages like "please speak up!" or "Slow down and annunciate!" or "Please wrap up, for the love of God." But that would probably be inappropriate...
Please ask your students not to start their speech with "Good afternoon Faculty, Staff, Parents, Distinguished Guests, and Fellow Graduates. FWIW, nobody addressed the sound or video guys all weekend.
I wish there was some easy way of knowing how loud the stage monitor is up there. We were forty yards or so from the stage and I was riding the lectern mic pretty hard on several of those speakers. They run from soft spoken mumblers to really screaming. I wish I had someone on stage to give report, but alas, we usually don't.
It's a good idea to have "Pomp" cued-up, just in case the band isn't ready or isn't under the impression that they're playing it today (go figure).
Oh, and don't get so wrapped-up in that review of the new camera online that you fail to notice that they've switched mics and want to call the names now...(damn!)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
One Last Basketball Post
So far we've seen the before and after of basketball. I've posted about the anxiety and stress I feel when these events are on the horizon and I've posted about the sense of relief that I feel when it's over. Most of what I've written so far is pretty negative so I feel like I need to talk a little about some of the other interesting and (gasp) fun aspects of a big basketball tournament.
These tournaments are LONG. The ACC & SEC tournaments have eleven games. That's four games each for Thursday and Friday. The gates are open for almost twelve hours on those days. That's usually after having worked ten to twenty hours a day for the four preceding days so yeah, we're all very tired when we finally go home Friday night (or Saturday morning if we go a little long).
The thing is though, there are loads of people in the same boat. All the tournament staff, the TV crews, sports writers, photographers, police, and lots of building staff have been working many of these same long hours too and there's a bit of a sense of brotherhood that comes with getting through it together.
You get to know the people too because they're often the same faces year after year. The SI photographers, the local TV crews that follow the teams, the tech managers from the regional sports networks, decorators, stats crews (the KY crew is known for bringing snacks!), scoreboard operators, and the audio guys in the CBS truck, are all friends to me even if I only see them once or twice a year.
When Saturday comes, we all know that there are only two games and with any luck, we'll be home or in the hotel by 7 or 8. That extra couple hours of sleep does everybody good and Sunday, with only one game, has the promise of being a cakewalk. When it's over, everybody is getting their stuff packed-up and trying like heck to get out of town but most of the time the friends you've made will stop to say goodbye, thanks, and congratulate you or commiserate with you.
I am always impressed by the vast amount of work that is put into these events by the TV crews and the photographers. I like to talk to these guys and see how they've set themselves up to cover the event. The camera angles, lens choices, microphones placed around the court, miles and miles of cables strung around the court, and all the interesting new technology that keeps popping-up year after year intrigue me. For a keen photographer, live sound guy, and TV production hack like me, could there be a more interesting place to be in March than court side at the sweet 16 or Final Four? Probably not.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fan of the sport of basketball. I don't really like the frequent whistles. I can rarely ever see just what was done to warrant a foul. The time outs towards the end of the period can drive a person insane. But... There is a real sense that these guys playing in these tournament games, especially the really big games like the Final Four are giving everything they have and working as a team to achieve a goal. I do see the purity of sport here most of the time and I respect that. I can certainly get excited about a close game being played near the known limits of ability. The young men and women on our court can do some pretty fricken amazing things from time to time and being fifteen feet off the court is a fun thing when that's going on and the crowd is going crazy. As our COO says from time to time, "If that didn't get your heart going, you better check into the morgue."
There's also a certain sense of accomplishment to be had when you successfully move over a hundred thousand people through your building over four days. When it all goes well, it's very satisfying to know that all those people came and had a good time, even if their team didn't win. It's the whole reason our building and the staff are there, after all. And when it's done well, it's a thing of beauty.
These tournaments are LONG. The ACC & SEC tournaments have eleven games. That's four games each for Thursday and Friday. The gates are open for almost twelve hours on those days. That's usually after having worked ten to twenty hours a day for the four preceding days so yeah, we're all very tired when we finally go home Friday night (or Saturday morning if we go a little long).
The thing is though, there are loads of people in the same boat. All the tournament staff, the TV crews, sports writers, photographers, police, and lots of building staff have been working many of these same long hours too and there's a bit of a sense of brotherhood that comes with getting through it together.
You get to know the people too because they're often the same faces year after year. The SI photographers, the local TV crews that follow the teams, the tech managers from the regional sports networks, decorators, stats crews (the KY crew is known for bringing snacks!), scoreboard operators, and the audio guys in the CBS truck, are all friends to me even if I only see them once or twice a year.
When Saturday comes, we all know that there are only two games and with any luck, we'll be home or in the hotel by 7 or 8. That extra couple hours of sleep does everybody good and Sunday, with only one game, has the promise of being a cakewalk. When it's over, everybody is getting their stuff packed-up and trying like heck to get out of town but most of the time the friends you've made will stop to say goodbye, thanks, and congratulate you or commiserate with you.
I am always impressed by the vast amount of work that is put into these events by the TV crews and the photographers. I like to talk to these guys and see how they've set themselves up to cover the event. The camera angles, lens choices, microphones placed around the court, miles and miles of cables strung around the court, and all the interesting new technology that keeps popping-up year after year intrigue me. For a keen photographer, live sound guy, and TV production hack like me, could there be a more interesting place to be in March than court side at the sweet 16 or Final Four? Probably not.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fan of the sport of basketball. I don't really like the frequent whistles. I can rarely ever see just what was done to warrant a foul. The time outs towards the end of the period can drive a person insane. But... There is a real sense that these guys playing in these tournament games, especially the really big games like the Final Four are giving everything they have and working as a team to achieve a goal. I do see the purity of sport here most of the time and I respect that. I can certainly get excited about a close game being played near the known limits of ability. The young men and women on our court can do some pretty fricken amazing things from time to time and being fifteen feet off the court is a fun thing when that's going on and the crowd is going crazy. As our COO says from time to time, "If that didn't get your heart going, you better check into the morgue."
There's also a certain sense of accomplishment to be had when you successfully move over a hundred thousand people through your building over four days. When it all goes well, it's very satisfying to know that all those people came and had a good time, even if their team didn't win. It's the whole reason our building and the staff are there, after all. And when it's done well, it's a thing of beauty.
Monday, March 16, 2009
How Did It Go?
The last post was full of doom and dread.
Basketball was nigh and I had a great deal of anxiety bubbling up from the pit of my stomach. I posted some stories that have instilled these feelings inside my very fiber but trust me, there are many more of these stories going back more than a decade. I begin thinking about basketball as soon as we can see the light at the end of the football season.
Now the madness is gone from my March. Basketball is over at the Dome and we've survived.
In fact we had an almost perfect tournament.
"Almost" means we did have a couple issues during the event but we took care of them quickly, cleanly, and quietly. I'm sure that most of the attendees would never even know we had any problems. I'm certain that the client has left with a feeling that we did a very good job. I am very relieved.
The Cobra Net that we've been using for a whole football season was experiencing some intermittent drop-outs. It sounded like the announcer was stuttering a little mid-word and the tournament director noticed it just as we were deciding what to do about it. We have a different configuration for basketball since we're mixing from just off the court instead of up in the booth. To do this, we're using the Dome's regular network backbone so I asked the IT guys if they could snoop into the VLAN but they didn't see anything wrong. We simply waited until half time to switch our feed to the system from the network to the regular old copper tie-lines we have used since for ever and it was "fixed". It's always good when you can go to the client and tell them "It's all better now." It's much better than "Well, it stopped but we don't know why it happened or if it'll crop up again." Trust me on this.
I want to investigate this a little more because we couldn't pin the problem on any one piece of the chain and I'd like to know that we can use the Cobra Net with confidence. It's more convenient and we get more tie-lines to the booth that way. I'll post about the search for truth soon.
The other snag on the weekend was TV related. We have a very (overly) complex cable TV infrastructure that feeds something north of 700 LCD TVs with a custom feed from Comcast, some channels produced by Dome Productions in-house, and the DirecTV Sunday Ticket NFL games. There are commercial HD sets in the suites with their own custom channel line-up, HD LCDs all over the concourses, clubs, restaurants, and bathrooms (yep, all the public restrooms), and a few SD sets around the building in various areas.
I got a call on Thursday morning that the people in the suites couldn't find the channel that was supposed to have the SEC basketball tournament games. When I checked, sure enough, the channel wasn't there. Later in the weekend we found that ESPN-U was in the slot where ESPN2 had been for two years. Our patrons wanted to watch basketball and we had Lacrosse on the sets...
Comcast feeds us a custom line-up with some channels in the clear that would normally require a cable box. They did this for us so we wouldn't have to have hundreds of boxes all over the building. The trade for this is our having to type in a silly-long channel number like 83.846 to see ESPN. Unfortunatly, if they seem to move channels fairly often and with no notice so I get these calls on event day. "Hey, what happened to NFL Network?" I don't know where it is now and I haven't heard from anyone at Comcast about what I'm supposed to do about it so... uhhh punt.
What I DID was call DirecTV, order whatever sports package gave me the games I needed, paid for that, and used our Sunday Ticket receivers to transpose Fox Sport South onto two of our in-house channels. It took me all of about fifteen minutes once I thought-up the plan to get the SEC games up in HD in the suites.
That crisis solved, I mostly spent the tournament sitting next to Dan, our A1 at our court side FOH table, chatting with fans, updating my Facebook status via Twitter, and eating Twizzlers (the official snack food of the Dome Audio Crew at Basketball Events). That's a view from my seat at the head of this post.
If you watched the games on TV, you'd have been very lucky to see me and that's just how I like it.
Monday, March 2, 2009
The Nemesis Show
Nem·e·sis
1capitalized : the Greek goddess of retributive justice
Of all the shows we do and especially of the ones we do annually, the only one I dread is basketball. It's the most work. It's got the most set-up. I put in the most hours. And of all our events, it the most likely to kick my ass.
If I'm on TV, it's almost never a good thing.
A couple years ago we were doing the NCAA regionals. LSU was playing someone and midway through the first half the bloody horn stuck on. This isn't all that uncommon in basketball and most people who watch the sport have seen it on TV before. How many of you have considered though the poor schmuck who is responsible for that system?
I don't know which of my sins earned it for me but somehow, I'm that guy.
I'm the one who's on TV looking rattled and checking wires while the TV announcers fill time with unflattering comments about how "Georgia Tech is just up the road and maybe they have some engineers up there who can sort this out."
We'd just gotten a new HDTV at home and when my wife called me to console me after seeing this on TV she quipped "In HD, you look a lot more stressed."
This is what I think about when people say "Oh, that's COOL! Do you get to go to all the games?" after hearing where I work. I think of the national championship women's basketball game being in an unscheduled break because system I'm responsible for has just gone totally off the deep end with all the boards blinking and buzzing away for no reason and I don't have a clue why or if I can fix it. There was 1:46 left on the clock. Why couldn't it just have run out?
SEC Men's basketball championship tournament, right after we let the people in on Thursday morning we had a failure in green digital audio processing box (know the one?). It decided it was done working and left us with a very nice ear-splitting high-pitched audio shriek throughout the PA system. Fantastic. I'd just said out loud how things were going fine so far (mistake #1).
I ran to Front Of House but my A1 had already left for the control room to mute the amps. I was getting hounded on the house radio about what was going on and when it would be fixed. I didn't know the answers so I left the radio at FOH and ran up the six flights of stairs to the amp room. Out of breath but full of adrenalin, I did a quick survey and left the room to call the A1 on the "show" radio I was still carrying. See, the radio dosen't work in the amp room for some reason.
Right back to the room to see what's going on now but...I locked the keys inside. (mistake #2)
The full volume shrieking still painfully audible, even way up here, I kicked the door in frustration.
It bent.
"Hmmm" I thought "I can kick the door in! just a couple more kicks and I'm in. We can deal with the door later, it's MUCH more important to stop this racket and fix the PA system..."
There were many lessons that day:
I can not kick-in a 3-hour rated fire door.
If you don't have your house radio with you, it's much harder to call for help when you're in trouble.
If a door bends enough you won't be able to open it when the key finally arrives.
Carpenters on staff are often a Godsend.
Repeatedly kicking virtually immovable objects really hard is not good for your body.
In an emergency, you are likely to forget about the one amplifier whose computer control card isn't on the network properly.
It's a good idea to use the building's computer network infrastructure to port the amplifier control network to your FOH position so you can mute quickly if you have to.
I could go on and on telling stories about unfortunate events that have occurred to us during basketball shows. Hell, I didn't even mention the tornado we had last year or the time I got booed by 20,000 people on my birthday. But you get the point.
It's with a certain sense of doom and a weary eye that I view the approach of March Madness each year. It's precisely these events though that have taught me some very good lessons about how to approach the job we do so as not to get burned next time.
After that fiasco at the SEC tournament, once the panic had worn off and the juices simmered down, I got to thinking. We've been doing these events for years and years now and we learn lessons almost every time. Some times they're hard earned war wounds and some times they're little things we might have to learn again next year. What I'd like to know though is how the heck we ever got through one of these things years ago BEFORE we got so much "Experience"...
Anyway, I better get to bed. Basketball is on the horizon again and I'm going to need my rest.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Getting Hit By a Bus
It's been a couple months since the last post. No excuses, but we've been busy and some fairly big things have happened.
On a Sunday night towards the end of November, I got the call that my father was in a hospital in Erie, PA and it was very grim. Things took their course and it came to pass that I was on my way out of town heading up to the hospital when we got the news that he had passed.
The decision to go meant that I would miss a NFL football game at work. This was to be the first big football game I'd miss in several years. I think I've missed two Falcons games in twelve years and the last one was at least six years ago. The "show life" doesn't really allow for one to take off during events.
Fortunately for me, I've got a pretty competent crew this year. Overall, our crew doesn't change that much season-to-season and we were fully staffed. All but one of the crew members had more than one season under their belts and the one newby is a full-time guy so I had some time to fill him in on all the important stuff. I was confident that everything was going to go alright unless something bad happened and we lost some important system. In that case, they'd miss my years of experience with the building, but they'd get by.
Of course, there were some here who needed a little convincing that everything was taken care of. But what are you gonna do if a guy's got a family emergency?
Our General manager used to have an unseemly habit of asking "The Bus Question". In sports terms, he was asking about his team's depth at your position. "Who else knows how to work this if you get hit by a bus?"
I can't tell you how many times I've been hit by Carl's bus but I can say that it has changed the way I think about training my guys. I try to let all of them in on every aspect of the event day requirements. Our crew is small and our building is big. If one guy is out for a day, we're ok because everybody knows what needs to be done to get set-up for the game and everybody can do most every job. Down two guys is a little tight, especially if things don't go right but we can do it.
I guess I'd like for you to think about what you might do if you can't make it to your gig. What's your back-up plan? Do you know another guy who you could recommend in your place? If you're the main guy, can your guys do it without you? If you don't have any guys, do you have a decent relationship with another operator/provider who can take on your gig so your client isn't left in a lurch? Think about it.
It took me a while to make sure my plans were in place and, as it turned-out, my new #2 didn't really have all the contact information he'd need in case he needed help while I was gone. I'd neglected to make certain he had all that.
In the end, I was able to work that game and left for home a couple days afterward. The bus missed me, but I was pretty much prepared for it anyway. I let the guys work the game while I mostly hung around watching. It was good practice for the future.
Be careful out there and remember to look both ways before crossing the street.
On a Sunday night towards the end of November, I got the call that my father was in a hospital in Erie, PA and it was very grim. Things took their course and it came to pass that I was on my way out of town heading up to the hospital when we got the news that he had passed.
The decision to go meant that I would miss a NFL football game at work. This was to be the first big football game I'd miss in several years. I think I've missed two Falcons games in twelve years and the last one was at least six years ago. The "show life" doesn't really allow for one to take off during events.
Fortunately for me, I've got a pretty competent crew this year. Overall, our crew doesn't change that much season-to-season and we were fully staffed. All but one of the crew members had more than one season under their belts and the one newby is a full-time guy so I had some time to fill him in on all the important stuff. I was confident that everything was going to go alright unless something bad happened and we lost some important system. In that case, they'd miss my years of experience with the building, but they'd get by.
Of course, there were some here who needed a little convincing that everything was taken care of. But what are you gonna do if a guy's got a family emergency?
Our General manager used to have an unseemly habit of asking "The Bus Question". In sports terms, he was asking about his team's depth at your position. "Who else knows how to work this if you get hit by a bus?"
I can't tell you how many times I've been hit by Carl's bus but I can say that it has changed the way I think about training my guys. I try to let all of them in on every aspect of the event day requirements. Our crew is small and our building is big. If one guy is out for a day, we're ok because everybody knows what needs to be done to get set-up for the game and everybody can do most every job. Down two guys is a little tight, especially if things don't go right but we can do it.
I guess I'd like for you to think about what you might do if you can't make it to your gig. What's your back-up plan? Do you know another guy who you could recommend in your place? If you're the main guy, can your guys do it without you? If you don't have any guys, do you have a decent relationship with another operator/provider who can take on your gig so your client isn't left in a lurch? Think about it.
It took me a while to make sure my plans were in place and, as it turned-out, my new #2 didn't really have all the contact information he'd need in case he needed help while I was gone. I'd neglected to make certain he had all that.
In the end, I was able to work that game and left for home a couple days afterward. The bus missed me, but I was pretty much prepared for it anyway. I let the guys work the game while I mostly hung around watching. It was good practice for the future.
Be careful out there and remember to look both ways before crossing the street.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Sharpie
The Sharpie.
Incredible tool. Nothing else compares.
It's a must-have product for sound and video guys. Combined with some low-tac white tape, you can use the Sharpie to label damn near anything.
Audio guys *need* labels. Which group did I patch to those front fills? These three 1/3 octave EQs in the rack... which one is the drummer's monitor? Ok, he dropped three lines here. Which one is the intercom?
Sharpie to the rescue!
Sharpie use is a privilege though. It is not a right.
A long time ago, one of the riggers wrote "Bad Motor!" on the chain hoist that didn't work. It was a good thing to know which one we needed to fix but... we fixed it. Nobody used that motor for like three years because it still said "bad" on the case. Who would ever knowingly hang a motor that *might* be bad? I mean, look... It says it's bad right there. Having a bad motor on the ground is a bummer but have you ever had a motor that seemed fine going up decide that it doesn't like coming down? Trust me, it's a huge pain in the ass. I finally painted the case and now nobody knows which one it was.
That story is kinda fun to tell but it's a good illustration of why idiots should not be granted the right to use a permanent marker.
I think of Sharpie usage kinda like the Boy Scouts think of using pocket knives. We were instructed in the proper ways to handle knives, and why other ways are dangerous. We were given no quarter. If you were observed not treating the knife with respect (horsing around), you lost your knife. And that was that.
It's a bit more difficult to take a marker away from a so-called grown-up though. That can be socially embarrassing.
If you're in the sound biz, you need to have a Sharpie close by but for God's sake, be careful with that thing!
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Press Conference
The house audio guy in a multi-purpose stadium works a lot of press conferences. I've done hundreds of them and I've found that there is a certain amount of art in a well produced press event. There is a balance that's present in a good press conference and it's apparently pretty hard for the novice to achieve. That's not to say it's out of the reach of part-timers, but there are several things that one needs to get right for a press event to be really successful and I have a few tips for people involved in producing these things.
Please take just a few moments and teach your presenters a few things about microphones. Which part to talk into is a good start. Tell them not to touch the microphone any more than absolutely necessary. If the speaker is two feet taller than the kid who introduced him, it's probably going to be necessary to adjust the angle of the microphone. Try pointing it at your face, if at all possible. Do not try to switch the mic on. If you try talking but the sound doesn't come out, it's probably because the sound guy didn't know you were about to start. Get his attention and try again. It's pretty unlikely that any even mostly bad sound guy would put a mic on a lectern and leave it switched off. So think about it... If you switch the switch, you're probably going to turn the mic OFF and that will prolong your embarrassment.
This should go without saying but my experience tell me it needs to be said. TURN OFF YOUR RADIOS AND PHONES. I have heard many phones ringing during press events. I'll even admit that MY radio has chirped during a post-game once or twice. It happens and it's mostly forgivable. But I've seen reporters answer their phones and have short conversations (one was talking to his "baby" on SPEAKERPHONE no less). That's just not cool.
If you're a sound guy, you should have a few tools with you so you can get it set-up and verify that it's working. Keep your set-up simple though. If something comes unplugged during the event, it's much easier to figure out what's happened if you have a minimal rig. Do you really need a huge rack of crap anyway?
I've been doing a lot of my post-games with nothing more than a sm58, Whirlwind MD-1 mic-to-line driver, Whirlwind Medusa press mult, and a JBL EON powered speaker. That's about as minimal as it gets. If I need more, it's probably because there are more mics or I really want to have some meters.
I like using our Yamaha 01V but I just got a A&H Mixwizard and it's pretty trick for this application. One thing I like about that mixer is it's internal tone/noise generator. It's pretty nice to have the ability to feed tone to the mult-box so you don't have to do constant mic checks as the camera guys come in. You'll still want to do a couple checks for the camera guys. It makes them feel better when they know the sound they're hearing is really coming from the mics on the stage. It's nice to have a compressor on the line you're feeding to the mult. It can give you a little protection and a more even level for the cameras.
On the topic of mic checks, remember that you're talking to TV camera guys and they could be rolling tape at any moment. You might also be feeding live back to the TV station or even to the whole internet, or at least the guys in the TV truck. So, you know, don't talk out of your ass or say anything you'll regret later when your boss shows you a tape somebody mailed him.
If you're holding a press conference, think about the lighting in the location. If it's a dark place and your presenters are going to be dark-skinned black guys in dark suits, it's probably a good idea to get some lights. That's an exaggeration, I know, but it's a reality that cameras need more light than your eyes to make pretty pictures.
Take two seconds to think about how many chairs you're asking for. Reporters don't mind standing and too many empty chairs looks bad so go with your low estimate on seating. That doesn't mean that you should choose the small room though. What happens when you get a good turn-out and there's no way to get them all in the room?
It's probably contrary to the usual thinking of at a live show, but considering that the TV cameras are potentially going to broadcast the images to a much bigger audience than the few reporters in the room. This means that the feed coming out of your mult-box is actually more important the speakers in the room. It's important that you pay attention to that feed, making sure the levels are consistent and even. You'll know pretty quickly if there's something wrong with your feed because the camera guys won't hesitate to give you a dirty look or even stop the event if it's really bad.
All-in-all, it's not hard to do these shows. There are certainly some things to think about and you can do a bad job, but it's probably a good place to start in the live audio game.
Please take just a few moments and teach your presenters a few things about microphones. Which part to talk into is a good start. Tell them not to touch the microphone any more than absolutely necessary. If the speaker is two feet taller than the kid who introduced him, it's probably going to be necessary to adjust the angle of the microphone. Try pointing it at your face, if at all possible. Do not try to switch the mic on. If you try talking but the sound doesn't come out, it's probably because the sound guy didn't know you were about to start. Get his attention and try again. It's pretty unlikely that any even mostly bad sound guy would put a mic on a lectern and leave it switched off. So think about it... If you switch the switch, you're probably going to turn the mic OFF and that will prolong your embarrassment.
This should go without saying but my experience tell me it needs to be said. TURN OFF YOUR RADIOS AND PHONES. I have heard many phones ringing during press events. I'll even admit that MY radio has chirped during a post-game once or twice. It happens and it's mostly forgivable. But I've seen reporters answer their phones and have short conversations (one was talking to his "baby" on SPEAKERPHONE no less). That's just not cool.
If you're a sound guy, you should have a few tools with you so you can get it set-up and verify that it's working. Keep your set-up simple though. If something comes unplugged during the event, it's much easier to figure out what's happened if you have a minimal rig. Do you really need a huge rack of crap anyway?
I've been doing a lot of my post-games with nothing more than a sm58, Whirlwind MD-1 mic-to-line driver, Whirlwind Medusa press mult, and a JBL EON powered speaker. That's about as minimal as it gets. If I need more, it's probably because there are more mics or I really want to have some meters.
I like using our Yamaha 01V but I just got a A&H Mixwizard and it's pretty trick for this application. One thing I like about that mixer is it's internal tone/noise generator. It's pretty nice to have the ability to feed tone to the mult-box so you don't have to do constant mic checks as the camera guys come in. You'll still want to do a couple checks for the camera guys. It makes them feel better when they know the sound they're hearing is really coming from the mics on the stage. It's nice to have a compressor on the line you're feeding to the mult. It can give you a little protection and a more even level for the cameras.
On the topic of mic checks, remember that you're talking to TV camera guys and they could be rolling tape at any moment. You might also be feeding live back to the TV station or even to the whole internet, or at least the guys in the TV truck. So, you know, don't talk out of your ass or say anything you'll regret later when your boss shows you a tape somebody mailed him.
If you're holding a press conference, think about the lighting in the location. If it's a dark place and your presenters are going to be dark-skinned black guys in dark suits, it's probably a good idea to get some lights. That's an exaggeration, I know, but it's a reality that cameras need more light than your eyes to make pretty pictures.
Take two seconds to think about how many chairs you're asking for. Reporters don't mind standing and too many empty chairs looks bad so go with your low estimate on seating. That doesn't mean that you should choose the small room though. What happens when you get a good turn-out and there's no way to get them all in the room?
It's probably contrary to the usual thinking of at a live show, but considering that the TV cameras are potentially going to broadcast the images to a much bigger audience than the few reporters in the room. This means that the feed coming out of your mult-box is actually more important the speakers in the room. It's important that you pay attention to that feed, making sure the levels are consistent and even. You'll know pretty quickly if there's something wrong with your feed because the camera guys won't hesitate to give you a dirty look or even stop the event if it's really bad.
All-in-all, it's not hard to do these shows. There are certainly some things to think about and you can do a bad job, but it's probably a good place to start in the live audio game.
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