Jen Simmons

Since the late 1990s, I’ve been experimenting with a number of different techniques for using computers to feed videos to projectors during a live performance. We’d all been using VCRs and tapes for years to run video cues, but, well, the image quality of VHS was horrible, and it was almost impossible to cue up the video to start exactly where you wanted it to. People began to use DVDs instead of VHS tape, but I remained convinced that running video from any linear, fixed-in-time format was always going to stink. 

I wanted to be able to play a whole bunch of very short cues, with split-second, trigger-finger accuracy, not one long video that just played for 5 or 10 minutes according to it’s own pre-edited sense of timing.

I’ve run control boards for hundreds of live performances, and there’s a certain beautiful satisfaction that comes with controlling the light and sound. You can play with the energy in the room, heighten the feelings that people are feeling. Great timing will encourage people to clap, or slam punctuation on the end of an actor’s line. Really, the people running the stage technology are musicians, playing instruments of light and sound, fog and furniture. Except for analog video. Trying to control analog video in a performance is like trying to play a great jazz riff on an instrument that refuses to get in tune. No matter what I did, the VHS tapes refused to play along. The audience, the live people on stage, the elements of design all collaborated to create an experience you could feel — and the video was pouting in a corner, rejecting the play of energy. It was frustrating.

I became obsessed with the idea that this energetic could be shifted, and the video could be made to play along. I theorized that by using lots of short clips, run by a computer, the timing of the video could be adjusted to match the timing and energy of the performance. So I embarked on what has become a 10 year experiment to see if that’s true.

In the late 90’s, Michael Verdi and I used iMovie to see what that would do. It’s super tricky to use a program designed to edit and change video to instead not change the video, and to careful play the right clip at the right moment… but we were able to do it. It was just nerve-racking as hell, since it was very easy to make a mistake and project the wrong image. And you had to have a separate computer (and person to operate) for each projector. There were several software packages out there that would do the kinds of things we wanted, but most of those packages cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The productions I was working on at that time never had that kind of budget.

In 2004, when working on the first workshop of Violet Fire, Sarah Drury and I checked out several of the newer softwares that had come out. We settled on Production Designer Studio. It worked pretty well, but still required one computer for each projector plus one to control the group, so we needed 5 machines. With Mac System 9. And an ethernet network of wires changing all the machines together. The software was tricky, and did not play each frame of video at exactly the same time, so things stuttered and flickered. At least the software was more affordable (around a grand), and not in the tens of thousands of dollars like previous packages.

When completing Violet Fire for the premiere in Belgrade, Serbia, we knew we needed a more compact solution. Since OSX had really taken over by 2005, and since videocard technology had significantly improved, we knew we could for the first time run multiple projectors from one machine — in our case, we’d again be running four projectors. The hardware has arrived, but the question was software. There still wasn’t a solid package in existence in our price range. The interactive sequences for Violet Fire were all driven by Max/MSP/Jitter, an object-oriented programming environment that you can use to make the machines do whatever you want. So we decided to design and program our own controller in Max/MSP/Jitter as well. It took over a year, and two programmers, to write the software. Plus buying the Max/MSP/Jitter licenses was almost $1,000.

This approach is what most other early projection designers have been doing. Troika Ranch created Isadora to control their shows. You can buy Isadora, and take a workshop to learn how to use it — which, it looks like, you will need. 

After Violet Fire, I wondered what I would do for the next show I created. Could I reuse the controller we’d made for Violet Fire? I figured it would take me at least six months to learn Max/MSP Jitter well enough to make the changes. And I knew most shows I work on don’t even have the $1k budget to buy those licenses. 

Then I heard about QLab. And I fell in love.

QLab was originally designed for running sound cues, and sometime 2006-ish, Chris AAANAME added video control features to it as well. It does everything I’ve always wanted — allowing me to line up a series of video clips, and program in the details of how I want each video to play, without having to write any software myself. Since it’s designed for theater, it can be locked after tech is done, keeping the operator for accidently messing things up during the show. It’s really pretty awesome, and the needed licenses are less than $200. (QLab is free; you pay to add the Pro Video and Pro Control licenses to unlock the coolest parts). Best of all, the interface and easy of use allows me to put all my focus on creating the projections and planning the cues, not on the computer or the software. It just works, and helps me do what matters. I learned the software by myself, in about four hours (geek hours, mind you, so it may take someone else a couple days or a week, but still, it’s way easier!)

To be fair, Isadora and Max/MSP/Jitter do things that QLab will never do. So if you are designing your own crazy interactive magic box, you need what these other programs do. But if you are looking for a way to play projection cues through a projector as if they were theatrical light or sound cues — then QLab is the bomb.