Preparing for an event of any size requires coming up with a plan: input lists, building lyric graphics, stage layouts for the volunteers to follow, etc. Developing a plan is why we have production meetings and send out emails to our team letting them know what to expect.
Going after Plan A is what we are in the business of doing.
Coming up with Plan A is necessary to helping to create a distraction free environment for our congregations. However, it isn't quite enough. For Plan A to succeed, there needs to be a Plan B.
The Unknown
Lately, we've been talking quite a bit about the idea of live production and how different it is from production done in a studio or any other controlled environment. Stuff happens in a live setting that is outside of our control and Plan A isn't designed to handle those things. That doesn't mean we shouldn't plan like crazy to make Plan A as solid as possible, but at a certain point Plan A can only take care of the things we can plan for. What about the unplanned for things? Plan B.
Years ago, I took my first real vacation and needed to find someone to replace me for two weekends in a row. In those days, it was just my amazing volunteer team and me. I had identified one person who would be my substitute for those weekends, so I compiled an exhaustive check list for him to follow, filled with every small detail that was in my head. Things to check on, things to look out for, people to talk to. I left for vacation feeling great.
When I got back from vacation, I got an earful from the music director about some things that had gone wrong while I was out. At the time, we were a portable church and we were hauling gear all over the place. We had a pretty amazing system for getting stuff up and running quickly, and it generally functioned like clockwork. On one of the weekends I was gone, an equipment case that usually stayed on the trailer during the week had been taken off. This had never happened before.
The statement from the music director went something like: “This can never happen again!” (emphasis added). I think he also suggested that I should never take time off again. I remember thinking, “How can I prevent something from happening that has never happened before?”
It is impossible to plan for a situation that has never come up before. The only thing you can do moving forward is to develop a way to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again.
Mistakes are painful. Learning from them is easy. Use your past experiences to develop your Plan B's. And make sure the people you work with also know that in order to avoid something similar from happening in the future, there is a new Plan B in place.
When these moments are happening, learn to stay calm, so that you can think clearly and fix the problem. Worrying about Plan B for next time can happen later. For now extend grace to yourself and your volunteers. Problem-solve now and figure out a better process when the dust settles.
Knowing Plan A, means you've thought through Plan B
When I think about sitting through a production meeting, they can be some of the most boring meetings I go to. Why? It is difficult to stay focused on the things that matter when you can get buried by the sheer volume of minutiae…and I'm a TD, so I care a lot about most of that stuff. If you are an audio guy, you don't give a rip about video or lighting, and the same goes for those people about audio.
We used to have a joke (maybe still do) about the audio guy only listening when they hear their name or the word “audio”. The whole production meeting sounds like the adults in a Charlie Brown holiday special: “blah, blah, blah, Audio.”
Executing a service, however complex, means that we need figure out what we want to happen. Along the way, we'll come up with a few things we don't want to happen. Working out the kinks is necessary to create the best experience possible for the people attending our events. The added benefit is that we can think about scenarios that might happen and figure out how we'd solve them in a more relaxed setting than the heat of the moment during the event.
Without thinking about possible bad scenarios, you can't develop the best Plan A possible. This same journey will help lead you to a great Plan B.
Agree on Plan B
After digging through all the things that might happen and finally landing on the preferred plan, it is important that the team has a good sense of what we are going to do when Plan A goes down in flames. In every situation, each person will react in a different way. Everyone will have their own idea of what to do, unless it is very clear what Plan B is going to be.
I've noticed for big events like Christmas and Easter, we usually use more technology than normal, which means we have more points of failure than normal. Once you start making things more complicated, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong.
This is one of those “we've learned the hard way”. Because we've been burnt so many times, we've made it a habit to sit down and have a Plan B meeting. If the video/ProTools sync goes down, what do we do? Do we run a back up tape? Do we create breaks in the video that we can go back to if it fails in the middle?
We've done some events that are so complicated, our Plan B has been to reboot the computer and wait for it to get back online. While this doesn't sound like a great option, it is important to agree on what Plan B is before going into an event. Everyone needs to understand the plan, so that when something goes down and we have to wait five minutes for the computer to reboot, we all knew that it was a possibility.
If we haven't talked about it and agreed on Plan B, chances are the expectation is that we flick switch and everything is back up and running. Plan B can be almost anything, as long as everyone knows and understands what it is.
Everyday Plan B's
Since each service can be slightly different, working through potential Plan B's in a meeting is key to developing a successful Plan A. However, there are some Plan B's that exist regardless of the specifics of each service.
For Willow Production, we've learned a few things a long time ago that need to be included in Plan B. For example, wireless mics can fail, so have a couple wired mics in the front row to hand up at a moments notice. Or, have a lock down wide shot that we can always cut to in case things get crazy. Or, put a general stage wash on a manual fader…trust me, just do it.
These are all simple solutions that keep the service moving forward. They aren't expensive Plan B's and they aren't complicated, but they are simple and easy for people to remember. For us, they have become second nature and things we don't event think twice about. With every event, you do these things, just in case.
I was talking to a friend who runs a live video production company, and they have an XLR cable taped to all their camera fiber cables for intercom, even though intercom travels down the fiber. There have been enough times, on enough events where the com has gone down on the camera, and this is their Plan B. Instead of waiting for it to happen, they pre-set Plan B and have it ready to go.
Understanding where your common failures occur is important in figuring out where your everyday Plan B's are hiding.
Not Plan C, D, E…
Once you start thinking about what could go wrong, it can be easy to come up with a contingency plan for every possible scenario. There are a couple problems with too many solutions.
When we are in the moment, and something stops working, we shouldn't have to get out a chart to figure out which plan we are going with. It should be something that we can all know and all execute.
In our example of a video that is sending time code to ProTools, if it stops working we shouldn't have a plan for each of the nine possible scenarios. We should eliminate as much trouble shooting in the moment as possible and just go to the back up.
Especially working on teams like most of us do, we need to make the backup plan as simple as possible. In the heat of the moment, trying to agree if we are going with Plan C or D is the exact wrong place to be. We need to jump to the solution as soon as possible…Plan B.
I suppose this goes for Plan A also…keeping things simple eliminates the possibility of failure. When something has tons a moving parts, we are opening ourselves up to those moving parts ceasing to move. I've lost track of how many times I've gone to the copy machine and something is jammed or broken. Considering how sophisticated they are, it isn't a huge surprise that is seems like it is broken more than it is working.
Are you creating a collating, stapling, whole punching, folding copy machine plan or are your plans simpler, eliminating the potential for failure?
When you look at the complexity of your Plan A, where is the point of failure?
How Far Should Plan B Go?
When you begin to think about all that could happen, Plan B's can start getting expensive. When you think about all the redundancy that exists for a regular NFL broadcast, you can spend a ton of money on the back up: redundant power, an extra projector, another media server in standby mode, two of everything.
This is where agreeing on what Plan B should be really matters. How much time should you spend on Plan B? How much money should we invest in our backup plan? How much mental energy should we be expending on what if scenarios?
My kids and I make fun of my wife, who spends quite a bit of time developing worst-case scenarios for just about every situation. It can sometimes keep her up at night. In the world of live production, it is easy to get worked up about what might happen.
If we aren't careful, we can spend a majority of our capacity on the whether or not something bad is going to happen. Pretty soon, trying to do our best is based in not screwing up, instead of being free to do our best.
Plan B is an important part of Plan A's success. Use your history to develop a list of everyday Plan B's. Take advantage of your production meetings to figure out ways that things might fail, and develop a back up plan from there. Don't make Plan B so complicated that you are using resources of time, money or mental capacity, that could be used to make Plan A better.
