Product of the Month: FocusTrack

Aug 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Michael S. Eddy

As lighting for shows gets larger and more complex, there is a lot of data to manage. Assistants have always kept track of this data, and with the introduction of the FocusTrack program, their lives have gotten a lot easier. With Version 1.3 about to be released, we thought it was a good time to take a look at the program that many designers, programmers, and electricians have been embracing.

Created by lighting designer and programmer Rob Halliday, FocusTrack is already in use on a range of productions, including Mary Poppins, Guys and Dolls, Billy Elliot, Miss Saigon, Frost/Nixon, Evita, Edward Scissorhands, and Les Misérables. It made its Broadway debut with The Woman In White. If you deal with large productions — and the associated data — download the demo of FocusTrack at http://www.focustrack.co.uk/download/index.html.

FocusTrack main screen showing one light in one focus position along with the cues where that light is on in that position, and the other attributes used with that position. This also shows a view of the overall wash of lights as well as the individual light's focus. My Fair Lady, directed by Trevor Nunn, designed by Anthony Ward, lighting by David Hersey adapted for the UK tour by Rob Halliday and Oliver Fenwick.

What It Does

“FocusTrack provides a method of documenting the lighting and of analyzing how equipment is used,” explains Halliday. “Its main uses are in productions where the lighting needs to be maintained over a long run, recreated for transfers or tours, or recreated on a regular basis, like for repertory companies. Unlike pre-visualization tools, it is intended to provide a record of what the lights are actually doing in the real world so you have a way of correcting back to that, whether you swap out one light and discover its position doesn't quite match up or you have to switch to a whole new type of light. That means you can remember precisely what each light was doing at each moment in the show for recreating or maintaining the show accurately.” FocusTrack can also show actual photos of each cue for a detailed visual reference.

FocusTrack can be used manually — with the programmer or a tracker filling in details of focuses as they are created — but “it works best when used with a compatible lighting console, which, at the moment, is Strand's 300/500-series,” says Halliday. There are plans to have FocusTrack read files from MA Lighting's grandMA, as well as the ETC Eos. “With the Strand consoles, you can import a show file into FocusTrack, which will figure out which lights are used when and for what. It will present you with a list of preset focus positions that are actually used in the cue range you specify.”

For each light, in each position — what FocusTrack calls a “lamp-focus” — it will tell you which cues use that light and what else is stored in that focus — for example, beam edge or shutter shape. At the same time, RigTrack, the rig-management module, imports the show patch, including important, but often overlooked, details such as whether pan or tilt are inverted and dimmer profiles. RigTrack can also import information from Lightwright, VectorWorks Spotlight, and other sources, or you can add information manually to create a complete, accurate, and detailed record of the rig. The program is available in versions for Mac OS 9 and X, and Windows.

How It Came To Be

“When I first started programming lighting for musicals, I was convinced I could remember everything about every light in every cue,” says Halliday. “While this might once have been true, it's become less so as shows have become more complex with more moving lights, as I've had more than one show running at the same time, and as my memory's gotten poorer with age! Even if I knew what a light was meant to be doing, I wouldn't be at the show every night and so I needed some way of conveying that information to the crew.”

For years, Halliday created custom databases to record this information. “I'd have to gather the information by hand — always really dull and tedious — first adapting the database to each show, then trawling through the lighting desk and figuring out what was used where, and then focus-plotting the show with pencil and paper,” he remembers. “I thought, ‘This is crazy; there must be a way of getting the computers to do all this.’ I kept trying to persuade manufacturers that they should provide the tools to do this since the console already had all of that information.”