Wildish Theater 

Internal Video Distribution and Routing.

During Rhodec's tenure as TD at the Wildish Theater he designed, installed, and continually upgraded the theater's video distribution systems.

Primary Projector: The Wildish Theater stands in the footprint of the McKenzie theater which was primarily used as a single screen movie house. A key aspect to project stakeholders was retaining a community movie house. The theater was originally equipped with a Sony home cinema projector suspended from the second catwalk. After a few years this location proved to be unsuitable and a new projector from InFocus was suspended above the house seating.

When the cabling was moved to the new location only VGA and power were included. Shortly after Rhodec's promotion to TD the signal integrity of the VGA cable became compromised, unfortunately the conduit pathway from the booth the projector was poorly designed and included numerous 90 degree elbows. It quickly proved impractical to remove/replace/re-run VGA. With help from his team Rhodec ran shielded category six wiring

Back stage monitoring: When the theater was originally outfitted the green and dressing rooms were equipped with audio monitoring. The theater was home to children's performing arts groups during this time and the young performers would often miss cues, parent supervisors also wished to be able to watch the show. With the request from clients becoming evermore frequent Rhodec began researching the most cost effective method to add capability to the theatre. Using the theaters Category 5e wiring, an HDMI converter, a used computer monitor, and his childhood camcorder visual monitor was added to the green room.

The monitor in the green room was received positively and clients requested the system  be expanded into the dressing rooms. A dedicated network switch was added in the telephone room allowing the video signal to be duplicated and repeated.

Front of house monitoring: In addition to the back stage monitors theater management agreed that adding video monitoring to the lobby would positively impact the patrons, allowing young family's to take breaks from the auditorium when necessary and provide opportunities for late comers to enjoy their show without being disruptfull.

Originally the FOH and backstage monitors shared a "channel" however eventually they were separated allowing for pre-roll slides to be shown in the lobby while the stage was visible backstage prior to the house doors opening. This separation also allowed for the lobby chime to be customized to each performance, with some performance groups recording custom "Please Take Your Seats" messages.

As part of the transition from house lights to performance lights the FOH monitors were programmed to automatically switch to the show feed..

Matrix Integration: An eight input, eight output HDMI matrix was added to the system allowing any input to be routed to any output in any combination. The J-Tech matix chosen was able to receive commands from Qlab allowing switching to be automated into show control. As an example, during a dance show there were often video interludes between live performances. In this scenario the matrix would be commanded to route the input from the playback computer to the FOH and backstage monitors instead of the camera.