Single Shot Pre Flight Times

[Pyro_37110000]

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My question relates to pft’s of simulation vs. real world firing of single shots. Since “Prefire < 0.5 defines delay before simulation,” in the animation of a ss with a pft of 0.2, for instance, we don’t see anything happening until the effect time. I believe that most firing systems fire instantaneously, so in the real world, we are going to see the item before we see it in the sim.

 

My question then to those of you who may have studied this is, is it better to use a small pft for single shots and align the blip exactly where you want it, or, for a better visual idea of what one can expect to see, to set the pft to 0.0, and back up the item on the timeline?

 

The reason for this: in many shows I’ve designed, I wonder why some shots just don’t seem to be timed as well as I expected. They looked great in simulation but not at the show.

 

Thanks

[DrewFinale]

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Great question, and one that I know will garner different opinions from designer to designer because the preferred approach depends as much on artistic preference as it does on other factors.

 

For my part, I’m a firm believer in aligning single shot effect times (represented by “blips” on the timeline) with the points in the music where you want the effects to visually appear. If there is a delay between the firing system ignition and the appearance of an effect in real life, then I would account for this time as Prefire (PFT). My reasoning is that this is both the most efficient approach based on Finale 3D’s effect-time-centric scripting paradigm, and because I’ve found it yields good real-world results.

 

To get the best real-world results, I think there’s absolutely no substitute for testing. If you want accurate timing, you just have to know your product and your firing system. So, then the question becomes, how do you conduct a test? One way to do this is by creating a beep track, scripting single shots with 0 PFT perfectly aligned with the beeps, then shooting the show with time code just like as if it were any other pyromusical. To measure the timing, record a video that captures the single shots at launch and the audible beeps from a close-by sound system.

 

The logic is that since the single shots were aligned precisely with the beeps in the script, any delay between the deeps and appearance of the single shots in the video can be accurately measured. This delay is the prefire time.

 

If you do a test like this, you might be surprised to find that even though firing systems apply power to e-matches instantaneously, it still takes a little time for an effect to be ignited and visible above the tube. In real life, you might even find that it “feels” better if the item appears slightly early which simply means you would want to use a slightly longer prefire. In Finale 3D, there is no delay, effects appear truly instantaneously, and it doesn’t “feel” good when they appear early, that’s why any single shot prefire less than 0.5s is treated as a delay before simulation.

[Pyro_37110000]

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Thanks Drew. I thought many others might weigh in on the subject as well. I think you are right about testing, so that’s what I’ll do this year and then try to provide some information. Another design element involves sound. There is nothing like the rhythmic pulse of single shots in a center out series or across a front. But sound takes a moment to get to the audience. On a summer night, a google search says it would take about .3s to travel 100m. Something to think about.

[Neil]

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Pyro_37110000 wrote:

But sound takes a moment to get to the audience. On a summer night, a google search says it would take about .3s to travel 100m. Something to think about.

That’s a great point to keep in mind — you’ll probably be happy to hear that Finale 3D already factors in the the speed of sound, making it much easier to account for details like that. Simulation views have realistically modeled sound delays and falloff so you can use Finale 3D to model not only the visual experience, but auditory experience as well. As with all these things, there’s no 100% substitute for real-world testing, but Finale 3D gives a close approximation of those audio factors without any extra work.

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