Here are two typical courtrooms: A Supreme on the left, and a Hearing Room/ Upfront courtroom on the right. The court recorder gets everything on a multitrack cassette deck; one track for each microphone. Most of the Supremes have two 42" plasmas for presenting graphics and video to the audience, and there are a few cameras w/pan/tilt/zoom, controlled remotely from the judge's touchpanel. There are also LCD projectors hidden in the ceiling, like the one shown at right...push a button on the touchpanel, and the Revelations unit (which uses mirrors to bounce the projected image from inside the ceiling) opens up, the screen comes down, and the projector powers up. As you can see, this setup is not aligned yet- good thing I'm not dealing with that today, as it's a major pain.Things are pretty quiet here now, as most of the other trades have pulled off the site. However, they're still testing the fire alarm system; it goes off a few times every day... sometimes for hours!
Left: main equipment rack (one per courtroom- there are about 80 of them), in its ridiculously small closet in a back corridor... local union electricians pulled the cable and even built the racks in our shop; us non-union "rats" supervised, and now are doing some final setup stuff as per the agreement between client, our company, and the union shops. These guys did a pretty good job, and there's a small crew on hand to fix the few things they screwed up, as well as hundreds of non-A/V electrical punchlist items.This was an enormous job, and there are always errors and conflicts. These racks have Cat 5 patchbays,DSPs, and A/V switchers and VGA scalers. The control system processor resides here as well... Right: a "Media Cart"; there's one of these in each courtroom. Each houses a DVD player,LCD, VCR, video printer, touchpanel, graphics tablet and document camera.All the audio and video is converted to Cat5-compatible signals, then re-converted at the main racks for switching or amplification.
Two things I hate about these media carts: first, the very tight squeeze between the cabinet and the A/V floor plate (normally, the cabinet is rolled over the plate pictured on the left), and second, the fact that if you have to troubleshoot anything inside these racks, you have to disassemble about half of it, it's packed so tight. Architects do not acknowledge the existence of A/V techs: they seem to think this stuff is made by elves...we just have to make our stuff fit.
Why, look- it's the project manager, Bruce, and Jay, who's lead tech on this job because he lives in the neighborhood... they're programming a DSP in one of the lovely storeroom/A/V closets allotted for our gear...Bruce used to do front-of-house sound on the road for acts like Biohazard and Pantera; got tired of it, but now he's middle-management with a wife and kid, and gets wistful for the old days.
And here I am in one of the holding cells between courtrooms: "Honest, she said she was eighteen!"
The union guys have a saying around here: "Friday is for the men!", which I guess means: "let's not get too serious today". That philosophy has sort of rubbed off on us.It's also payday, and since Bruce had to leave early, it's off to Kevin Barry's for a good lunch and some libations. It's a nice little Irish-ey neighborhood bar, with a very pretty West Indian bartender (not pictured, alas) who can really pour a pint.Not that Bruce would really mind, but he usually doesn't want to go to the pub, and we'd hate to leave him on his own for lunch. Here 's Jay again, along with Stephen, another of our field techs. These two aliens make an interesting pair: Jay's mother is from Venezuela, his father's from Germany, but he was born and raised in England. The only thing he's more proud of than his UK citizenship is the fact that he married (and knocked up) a fiery redhead from Ireland, much to the (double) dismay of her family. His folks weren't too crazy about it, either, but that's love for you. He also enjoys being seen fondling her in Irish pubs while wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. Anybody gives him a hard time, he usually shuts 'em up with: "Eh, shut yer hole, you've probably never even been to Ireland!" Which, around here, is usually the case...
Stephen, on the other hand, is from Kells, and as Irish as they come (another Euro-wetback!). His hobbies include riding his motorcycle too fast and getting arrested every St. Patrick's Day. Needless to say there's always some friendly barbs exchanged between these two, especially when the beer starts flowing. I'll never go out on a real bender with them, because I'll either have to take them to the hospital or post bail for what's left after they nearly kill each other! But what a team we make! These guys are awesome techs, and we work well together.
My second and last pint of Bass, after a hearty meal... ah well, guess we'd better go try to salvage the rest of this afternoon. And leave early, of course- Friday is For the Men!!
NEXT: The Journey Home
