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The fly rail is often just reduced to 'rail'or 'fly'. I prefer Rail. It is the stage managers responsibility to manage and create the rail cues and the rail cue sheets. This process begins when you meet with the scenic designer. It becomes more refined when you work through the production during rehearsals. By the time you reach run thru's of your production part of your brain in all this process has to start thinking of the rail cues.
I have mentioned earlier that the rehearsal process is never passive or reactive. You have to be proactive in all aspects of the production and rail cue preparation is part of that process. The first thing you will create will be the Line Set Schedule.
On either the left or right hand side of the floor plan plate and at the top of the section you will see the line sets laid out. These come from the scenic designer and are part of the process. If there has been time the electrics have been added in as well. These get transferred to a document called the line set schedule. Your line set schedule should include the line set number, the distance from the plaster line, the name of the item on the line set, a section for notes, and a column for the weight.
It might look something like this:
NOTE: There are two tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. You should be looking at the tab labelled "Line Set".
Notice there is a section for notes and a section for weight. In truth, you don't know the weight going into the load in. You only know the weight of the show after it has been hung. This was added at my request as the show was being considered to tour. Touring meant we needed to know how much weight was required to hang the show in other theatres. Separate from the lighting rig which had not been installed to tour we weighed the show to see what was needed. Had we toured that production we would have had to weigh the electrics as well. A theatre package should include the weight of the show if you plan on being the presenter.
RAIL CUE SHEETS:
From the line set schedule you also begin to layout the cue sheet. If you click on the second tab in the spreadsheet you will note I have laid out the fly cues in order of groups. What happens in what order and on what light. If you remember under the cue light section that you have a primary light, a secondary light, and a tertiary light then this will make sense to you. You can see that whenever anything moves it is first cued by the red light. If there are two things moving it is cued by the red and then the yellow light. If there are three then red, yellow, blue. You can see that in a couple of shifts I have had to rewarn the red light as there were more things moving than I had lights for. It is rare that you will have a show with this many fly cues in it anymore. That is a shame. Calling a show this size is a real delight and for all my years as a stage manager this remains my favorite show to call.
Terminology; you will note that in the Rail Cue Sheet you will see the initials CFD. That stands for "Clear From Deck". In other words, at the TOS (Top OF Show) the drops are cleared in for the top of the show. We normally fly all the drops and legs out at the end of the show to make mopping and presetting the top of the show easier the next day. Once the stage is set and moped and the mop water on stage dry we clear in the drops and legs to their preset positions. This keeps the bottoms of the drops and legs clean of mop water, they last longer, and won't rot. During the show there are many scenes that take place downstage while the stage is shifting upstage to the new scene. The stage manager calling the show will concentrate on the action taking place downstage while the deck stage managers are overseeing the stage set up up stage. They will 'clear' in the drops and legs as needed to complete the shift and radio back to the stage manager calling the show that the stage is set.
One of your jobs in rehearsal is to begin to build this cue list. Based on the actions of the show, and armed with your knowledge of the production, you begin laying out the rail cue sheet. You bring in the scenic designer to confirm any questions you may have regarding the shifting of the various flying units. Play these in your mind as your run through your show. Imagine the production taking place. Look for areas that may need further planning or thought. When that happens get your ASM's together and talk through that section. Remember the deck stage managers are supposed to be watching those flies taking place. Theatres have weather patterns. When doors are opened it may create a draft one way or the other. This affects flying scrims. The Grand Drape at Radio City can drift as much as four feet upstage when the house is being seated. Also think about the timings. Should the drop be flying in fast or slow? If you noted there is a cue called the 'eyelash sneak'. It was a very tight scene shift. I 'snuck' in the eyelash drop just out of sight of the audience but right behind the Austrian Curtain. Once the Austrian hit the deck and the Rockette's were out of the way we barreled the drop in the rest of the way. The Austrian only stayed on the floor for seconds before it started out again. I had to get the drop in, get the actors, set, get the children set, and the light cues in. It was very very tight.
It is ever true that things change and that is true with fly cues so don't get exasperated if the what you start with is not what you end with. I like to take my rail cue sheet and print it as large as I can. I then hand this to the head flyman as we start tech along with a black sharpie. This they can post on the wall by the fly floor as a ready reference as we tech through the show. As we change the show I make changes in my script and the flyman makes changes on their wall. Once the show opens and we are set with the cues I will update my paperwork and print out a new one for the flyman.
For a test I gave my students the following instructions to create a rail cue sheet. "You have a play with two acts. There is a main curtain and two drops, one for each act. I then ask them to create a cue sheet. Let's say for the sake of an example that the main curtain is on line set 1 and the drops are on line sets 37 and 38 respectively. The answer would look something like this.
CFD stand for "Clear from deck". As you can see from the above example, what looks like a fairly simple and straight forward operation of a 3 line sets actually created a cue sheet of 4 cues and 10 actions.
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