Cue lights and the panic button

Two calls that go to people rather than to a channel. A cue light is the silent standby and GO a stage manager gives a pyro operator, a CO2 op, a walk-on or playback when the stage is too loud to talk. The panic button is the other direction: somebody working alone holds it, and every phone on site rings.

Calling a cue

Cue lights in the sidebar. Choose Who, type the Cue ("Pyro 1", "Walk-on", "VT"), and, if the running order has stages, pick one. Then Call standby.

The operator's whole screen turns amber and says Standby, with your name and the cue, whatever they were looking at. Their phone buzzes twice. When they press Standing by, your lamp says so, and GO is one press. Their screen turns green and says GO.

• GO before they answer asks first. The button turns red and says GO without standby?; press it again within three seconds to send it. An operator who hasn't answered may not have seen it.
• Stand down calls a cue off. The operator's screen clears and their notification goes.
• Can't stand by is the operator's way of saying no. Your lamp says they couldn't.
• Anybody can press GO or stand a cue down, not only whoever called it, because the caller's phone is the one that dies at the wrong moment. The history says who did.

Picking a stage puts what is on it now beside the cue ("Main Stage, during The Hollows"), and that stays in the history after the running order moves.

Below the live cues, Earlier lists the night's cues: when each went and how long the operator took to answer.

On a locked phone

A standby reaches a locked phone as a notification, and GO replaces it, so there's only ever one. On Android it's on its own Cue lights channel, which vibrates and makes no sound, because a phone that rings in a wing is the wrong noise. You can give it a sound in Android's settings for the app. On an iPhone it is Time Sensitive and makes the usual sound. Either way, open the app to answer: there's no answer button on the notification yet.

A phone that comes back onto the Wi-Fi while a standby is waiting for it rings then. A standby nobody finishes is stood down after 30 minutes.

Without the box

A cue needs the box. With no connection, Call standby is greyed out and says so: a standby is never queued to arrive late, because a cue that turns up late is worse than one that never came. Use your radio.

The panic button

Hold for help is at the bottom of the sidebar, above your name. Hold it for two seconds. The red fill shows the hold counting; let go early and nothing is sent.

Then:

• Every other phone signed in to the box rings, through silent and Do Not Disturb on Android (the Calls for help channel, on the alarm stream, as show stops are), and as a Time Sensitive alert on an iPhone.
• A red bar at the top of every screen says who needs help and asks everyone else I'm going. Each person who says so is shown to everyone, so three people don't all run and nobody assumes someone else went.
• Your phone records five seconds of what you say next and posts it in #general. Say where you are. If the microphone isn't allowed, the call still goes, without the recording.
• #general gets a line for the call, for each person who goes, and for when it ends, so the record is there for anyone who missed it.

I'm OK (yours) or Stand down (anyone's) ends it, after a second press within three seconds, and takes it off every phone. A call nobody stands down lapses after two hours.

Until departments exist, a call for help rings everyone on the box. It is not narrowed to a channel, because a muted channel must never swallow one.

Things to know

• Both need the box to be on crewbox 1.5 or later. On an older box the pane says so and the panic button isn't shown.
• Both are live, not kept: a box that restarts loses a standby the way a cue light loses power, visibly, and the caller calls it again. The record of a call for help is in #general and survives.
• The panic button is not a replacement for the site's emergency plan or for calling the emergency services. It gets the crew around you moving.