Building the plot

This chapter is for the account building and maintaining the plot: designer, associate, assistant or caller. It covers describing the production, importing an existing plot, writing and editing cues, the production's vocabulary, and the block editing tools.

Describing the production

Settings, Show Details holds the production's identity: title, subtitle, venue, show logo, lighting designer, associate, company, tour name, followspot caller and date. These appear on the layouts and the printed documents. Fields fixed by the licence carry a lock badge.

Number of Followspots is set here, from 1 to 20. Reducing the count preserves the removed spots' data in the show file, but no layout displays it until the count is raised again.

Settings, Spots describes each followspot: the operator's name and the position designation. Colour frames are also configured here; see Colour frames and frost below.

Importing a spreadsheet

Settings, Show Details, Import CSV imports an existing plot from a CSV file in three steps.

Choose File. The wizard reads the file, identifies the row containing the column titles, detects the per-spot column groups, and displays its analysis. Every detection can be overridden, including the header row.
Map Columns. Assign each spreadsheet column to a plot field. Cue-level fields: SQ, console cue, scene, page and trigger. Per-spot fields: frame, size, intensity, time, action, character, location and notes. The suggested mapping can be adjusted before proceeding.
Preview & Import. A preview of the mapped result, options controlling how scene break rows are recognised, and the choice between adding to the plot and replacing the plot. Replacement deletes the existing plot first and requires a typed confirmation.

Import behaviour:

Spreadsheet date conversion is detected. A beam size of 3/4 entered in a spreadsheet is frequently stored as the date 3-Apr. The wizard flags every date-formatted cell with its probable original value so the file can be corrected before import.
Values are canonicalised against the production's vocabulary. Variants that differ only in case, spacing or punctuation, such as Pickup and PICK UP, are imported as one value. Genuinely new values are added to the relevant option list in the order the file introduces them.
OFF in an action column marks that spot as parked for the cue.
Rows without a cue number retain their file position. A scene break row between two cue rows is imported between those cues.

Importing from CuePoints

CuePoints, the rehearsal-video cueing app, exports its cue list as a flat file, CSV or tab-separated, with the columns Track, Type, Position, Cue No, Label and Fade. The wizard recognises the format and offers a CuePoints button on the Choose File step; one press maps the whole file.

Type ("Spot 1", "Spot 2") routes each row to its spot.
Cue No becomes the SQ number and Fade becomes the time.
The Label is read for the details an operator packs into it: an action (a pick up, a fade out, a bump), a character name, a stage position (DSL, MSC, on C), a size (tight, head shot, 2-shot, full body) and a written level. A label that reads as an out imports with intensity 0.
The complete label is kept in that cue's Notes exactly as written, so nothing typed in the rehearsal room is lost to a guess the importer made.

The result lands in the same Preview & Import step as any spreadsheet, with the same add-or-replace choice.

Writing cues

+ Add Cue appends a cue after the last SQ. Insert Cue places a cue between existing cues, offering Insert Above and Insert Below and displaying the point number that will be used. + Scene Break inserts a banner row by the same method.

Settings, Options, Adding & inserting cues selects the entry style: a pop-up form, or an inline blank cue placed directly in the plot with the cursor in its cue reference field.

The structure of a cue

Each row is one spot cue. At cue level it carries the SQ, the console cue reference, and optionally a scene, a page number and a When: the trigger on which the cue is taken. Each spot then has four columns:

Action and intensity. The action, drawn from the production's action list, and the level. FL denotes full. A value with a slash, such as 0/90, denotes two movements in one cue, ending on the final value.
Character. The person the spot covers, drawn from the cast list.
Frame, size and time. The colour frame, the beam size, and the fade time in seconds. A time of 0 is treated and flagged as an instant move, called SNAP or BUMP as chosen in Settings, Options, Flag Options.
Location and notes. The stage position and any further instruction.

A blank cell means no change. Values are held from the last cue that stated them, and these held values are displayed ghosted, so the current state of every spot is always visible. A value is entered only when it changes.

Editing

Every cell edits in place, on the Master plot and on the operator List layout. Tab moves through the row in reading order, skipping parked spots, and continues to the next row. Dropdown fields carry the production's vocabulary; entering a new value through the Other option adds it to the corresponding list.

Goto Cue moves every view to a chosen console cue, SQ or scene.
The arrow keys step the current cue through the plot.
Find and Replace (Cmd F or Ctrl F) edits multiple cells in one operation.
The row's delete control removes a cue.

The set of spots shown on the Master layout, and their left-to-right order, is a per-screen setting: Settings, Spots, Spots on the Master layout. A wide plot can be divided across several monitors. An author can store their arrangement as the default for new screens.

Colour frames and frost

Settings, Spots defines the colour frames. Default Colour Frames apply to every spot; a spot with a different load has Use custom colour frames enabled and its own set. The Colour Frame Note appears beside the frame key on every layout.

Gel references are resolved against a built-in gel database, and the resulting swatches and names appear on the operator cards, the Spot Summary and the PDFs.

Frost is configured once and applied throughout. For fixtures with internal frost, the production default edge is set here and can be overridden per cue, with hard edge exceptions flagged on every layout. Where frost occupies a frame slot, the application is told which slot, and it flags HARD EDGE automatically on any cue whose frames exclude it. Settings, Options, Flag Options chooses whether that flag appears on every hard cue or only on the cue where the beam turns hard, and sets the words used when the frost leaves a lit beam (Drop Frost by default).

A preset row above the first cue states the frame each spot loads before the performance.

Characters

Settings, Options, Characters holds the cast list: name, photograph and description. Photographs appear on the operator tracking cards and the Spot Summary. Renaming a character to an existing name merges the two entries and rewrites every affected cue.

The production's vocabulary

Settings, Options holds the lists used throughout the application: actions, colour frame combinations, sizes with their meanings, action graphics and intensity icons. Reordering a list reorders every corresponding dropdown. Renaming a value to an existing name merges the two and rewrites every cue that used the previous name. Purge unused removes values no cue references, and lists exactly what will be removed before doing so.

Settings, Formatting contains per-user presentation settings: font, size, weight and colour per column, applied to that user's view only. PDF paper sizes are also set here; see chapter 8.

Change history

Undo holds the last twenty changes, each described in words with the account name and time. The control beside the button opens the full list; selecting an entry displays exactly what will be undone before it is undone.
The change log records every edit and every sign-in with a name and a timestamp. The Log button displays the most recent two hundred entries.

Two operations clear the undo history, because every entry behind them would refer to cues that no longer exist: Renumber SQ Numbers, and a replace-mode CSV import. Both require a typed confirmation.

The block editing tools

Settings, Advanced contains three tools for large-scale changes. Each displays a complete preview of its effect before executing, and the tab's first instruction is to take a backup first.

Move, copy or swap a spot's cues. Transfers a range of cues between two followspots. Moved ranges are blocked: values a blank cell would otherwise inherit from new neighbours are written explicitly, so every cue reads afterwards exactly as it did before.
Move a block of cues. Relocates a sequence of cues to another position in the running order, with all their contents. The operation is refused if the destination cannot accommodate the block.
Change intensities across the show. Shifts every level by a fixed amount, or replaces every instance of one level with another, optionally restricted to an SQ range or a single spot. Blank cells are never altered, and zero levels are never raised.

Renumbering

Settings, Show Details, Renumber SQ Numbers reassigns every SQ to consecutive whole numbers in running order, typically after a rehearsal period has introduced many point cues. Console cue references, labels and all spot data are unchanged. The operation cannot be undone and requires the confirmation word RENUMBER.