Training Your Crew Before the Winter Season Begins
Priya Nandra explains how written guides and short workshops can prepare crews for the busy months ahead, from handover notes to rig safety refreshers before the first big shows.
6 minutes to read
Why the autumn weeks suit training
Mid autumn is when many venues and production teams catch their breath between the festival summer and the crowded run of winter shows. Rigs come down, vans are unpacked, and for a short while the diary has gaps. I have found that these gaps are the most useful time of the year to teach people properly, because nobody is trying to learn a patch or a cue stack with a doors time looming over them.
Technical Guides and Training at newsymph covers written guides and workshops that teach crews practical audiovisual production methods. From a lighting designer's seat, the part that matters most is repetition without pressure. A crew member who has walked through a rig plan twice in a quiet hall will make fewer hesitant calls when the schedule is tight in December.
So the first piece of advice for these months is simple: book the learning before the diary fills, and treat it as part of the production calendar rather than something squeezed in when a spare hour appears.
- Use the lull between summer events for hands-on sessions
- Schedule training before winter bookings fill the diary
- Keep sessions short enough to hold attention
Start with what your crew already knows
Before writing or choosing any guide, ask the people who will use it what they find unclear. In my experience the answers are rarely dramatic. Someone is unsure which dimmer channels feed which truss, another has never seen the power distribution drawn on paper, a third learned the desk on a different layout and still translates in their head.
A short conversation, or even a one-page questionnaire handed round at a get-in, tells you far more than guessing. It also stops you teaching the parts everyone has mastered, which is the quickest way to lose a room.
Once you have the gaps, sort them into those that suit a written reference and those that need someone beside the person with the kit in front of them. Colour mixing and rig safety checks often belong in both.
- Ask crew members to name three things they double-check
- Separate reference material from hands-on skills
- Note which questions come up at every get-in
What a useful written guide looks like
A good guide is short, specific to your own equipment, and written in the order a job actually happens. I like to begin with the arrival at the venue, move through rigging, power, focus and programming, and finish with the strike. Each step gets a plain sentence about what to do and a plain sentence about what to look for.
Photographs of your own rig help far more than generic diagrams, and so does a note of the mistakes people have really made. Telling a new technician that a certain connector is often seated half-way saves a cold start to the evening.
Keep the language ordinary. If a term has to be used, explain it once where it first appears. A guide that reads like a manual for specialists will stay in a drawer, whereas one that reads like a colleague talking will be opened at the get-in.
- Follow the order of a real get-in and strike
- Use photographs of your own equipment
- Define each trade term once, in plain words
Running a workshop that people remember
Workshops work best small. Six to eight people around a real rig, with a mix of newer and more experienced crew, tend to produce better questions than a lecture hall ever does. I start by letting people touch the equipment rather than telling them about it, because hands remember what slides do not.
Plan a single theme for each session. One morning on safe rigging and power loads, another on building a look for a camera rather than for the room. When a session tries to cover everything, people leave with a blur and no habits changed.
End each workshop by asking every attendee to write down one thing they will do differently on the next job. It takes five minutes and it turns a pleasant morning into a commitment that someone can follow up.
- Keep groups small and mixed in experience
- One theme per session
- Finish with a personal action for the next job
Keeping the learning alive through winter
The danger after any training day is that it fades by the second week. Counter this by giving the written guide a home where the crew can find it, and by naming one person who keeps it up to date. Guides decay quickly when equipment changes and nobody owns the pages.
Add a short note after each event, even three lines, recording what worked and what was awkward. Over a season those notes become the best material for the next round of training, because they come from your own shows rather than from theory.
If you can, pair a newer technician with a steadier colleague on the first two winter jobs. A named buddy, a clear role and a guide in the case will do more than any amount of good intentions.
- Name one owner for each written guide
- Record three-line notes after each event
- Pair newer crew with a steady colleague
A simple plan for the next few weeks
If you want something practical to act on, here is how I would use the coming weeks. In the first, collect questions from the crew and pick two themes. In the second, draft a short guide for each, using your own photographs and your own rig.
In the third, run a small workshop for each theme, keeping notes on where people hesitated. In the fourth, revise the guides with what you learned and put them where everyone can reach them before the winter work starts.
Training does not need a large budget or a long course. It needs a quiet moment in the calendar, an honest look at what your crew finds unclear, and guides written in plain language about your own equipment. Use these autumn weeks to do that, and the winter schedule will feel steadier for everyone. If a second pair of eyes would help, we are glad to talk it through.
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