The big crew
dictionary
600+ words from the world of stage building, crew and live entertainment. Collected on the shop floor, explained without detours. Missing a word? Send it in.
611 of 611 words
32A
Power & tech
The red five-pin connector you see everywhere. Crew slang measures power in connector colour.
A vista change
Theatre
A set change in full view of the audience, as part of the performance.
A-team
Roles & crew
The core group that gets the hardest jobs. Everyone wants in; few realise how many years that takes.
Accor Arena
Venues
The big Paris arena in Bercy, with the grass on its sloping walls.
Accreditation
Site & logistics
The system of passes and wristbands deciding who gets in where. Requested in advance, collected on site, and the source of ninety percent of all discussions at the crew entrance.
ACL
Lighting
Aircraft Landing Light: the aeroplane landing lamp adopted by seventies rock shows for its razor-thin beam. The ancestor of every modern beam fixture, usually rigged in bars of four or eight.
Adamson
Companies & brands
Canadian loudspeaker builder with a loyal following among festival engineers, known for the E-series arrays.
Addressing
Lighting
Giving each fixture its DMX address so the desk knows who is who.
Adjustable spanner
Tools & materials
The shifting wrench. Riggers carry it on a lanyard, and that is not fashion.
Advance
Site & logistics
Preparing a show on paper: every agreement between production and venue before a single case rolls.
AFAS Live
Venues
Amsterdam concert hall next to the Johan Cruijff ArenA, formerly the Heineken Music Hall.
Airburst
Special effects & pyro
Pyro effect that bursts high in the air in one short flash of sparks, with nothing drifting down afterwards. The indoor alternative to real fireworks.
Allen & Heath
Companies & brands
British console maker present from small club to festival stage, known for the dLive series and, among DJs, the Xone mixers.
Allen key
Tools & materials
Disappears faster than cable ties, and that says something.
Ampco Flashlight
Companies & brands
Major Dutch production partner for lighting, sound and rigging in theatre and events.
Ancienne Belgique
Venues
The AB: the Brussels pop temple with a world reputation and one of the best sounds in the country.
Antwerp City Theatre
Venues
The Stadsschouwburg: one of the widest stages in the country.
Apex
Rigging & construction
The ridge, the highest point of a stage roof. Often the first thing you see of a festival, rising above the treeline.
Apron
Theatre
The strip of stage in front of the curtain, closest to the audience.
Arf & Yes
Companies & brands
Ghent production company with decades of festival and touring history on the clock.
Artist liaison
Roles & crew
Guides artists from arrival to departure: transport, green room, schedule and the hundred small questions in between. Half host, half diplomat, always reachable.
Astera
Companies & brands
Maker of the wireless, battery-powered LED tubes and spots you can drop anywhere no power runs. Grew from gadget to standard kit on every set within a few years.
Automation operator
Roles & crew
Runs the computer-controlled motors that move stage decks, scenery and performers. Works with redundant safety systems and a dead man's button, because whatever moves above people is never trusted to software alone.
Avolites
Companies & brands
British lighting console and dimmer brand with a loyal following in clubs and fly towers.
Ayrton
Companies & brands
French lighting brand that conquered the big tours in recent years with powerful LED fixtures.
B-rig
Site & logistics
The second, usually lighter version of the show production for venues or festivals where the full A-rig does not fit or cannot make it in time. Same show in spirit, fewer trucks in practice.
Back light
Lighting
Light from behind lifting artists out of the set. The secret of every good concert photo.
Backdrop
Rigging & construction
The big cloth at the back of the stage, with artwork or just plain black.
Backing tracks
Audio
Pre-recorded layers playing along with the band live: extra vocals, synths, orchestral beds. Once a quiet taboo, now open standard practice, though the debate about them remains a campfire classic among engineers.
Backline
Audio
The band's own instruments and amplifiers. Handled by backliners like crown jewels, because that is what they are.
Backliner
Roles & crew
Builds the backline up and down: amps, drums, keyboards. Works close to the band and their most precious toys.
Backstage
Site & logistics
Everything behind the stage where the audience never goes. Less glamorous than people think, more cable ties too.
Backstage pass
Festival & terrain
The band or pass granting access behind the scenes. Impresses in-laws more than crew.
Bahco
Tools & materials
The brand name that became the word for the adjustable spanner. Swedish reliability on every rigger's belt.
Ballast
Rigging & construction
Weights (concrete, water, steel) anchoring a structure against wind and gravity.
Barco
Video & AV
The Belgian world player in projection and imaging technology, from Kortrijk. Home-grown pride.
Barco (brand)
Companies & brands
See also under video: Belgian imaging technology of world class, from Kortrijk.
Barndoor
Lighting
The four black flaps on the front of a fresnel or blinder, named after their resemblance to barn doors. Among the simplest and oldest ways to keep light out of places you do not want it.
Base jack
Rigging & construction
The adjustable foot under a tower or scaffold to level uneven floors.
Basement
Rigging & construction
The space under the stage, full of power, cables and occasionally a stray crew member with a sandwich.
Basket
Rigging & construction
Rigging technique where a sling or steel is passed under a beam so the load hangs in a kind of cradle. Distributes forces differently from a choke, and knowing the difference is precisely why riggers carry certificates.
Beam
Lighting
Fixture with a razor-thin beam cutting through haze. The sword of every festival rig.
Beam clamp
Rigging & construction
Clamp gripping the flange of a steel beam to create a rigging point where no eye or hole exists. Indispensable in older halls and exhibition centres whose roofs were never designed for shows.
Best boy
Roles & crew
The gaffer's right hand on film sets, responsible for gear, planning and crew. One of the finest anachronisms on any end credits: a woman in the role is still called best boy.
Black box
Theatre
A flat-floor studio theatre, black and flexible, where audience and playing area can be arranged differently every time.
Blacklight
Lighting
UV light that makes white and fluorescent materials glow in the dark. From theatre trick to club classic, and the reason your white T-shirt turns purple.
Blackout
Lighting
Everything dark, at once. The most dramatic button on the desk.
Blinder
Lighting
Row of warm lamps blinding the audience on the chorus. Subtlety is not the goal.
Boom
Venues
The town on the Rupel that hosts Tomorrowland in De Schorre park every summer.
Border
Rigging & construction
Horizontal cloth strip cutting off the top of the stage picture and hiding technology.
Bourla
Venues
The nineteenth-century Antwerp playhouse with the famous facade, home of Toneelhuis. One of the last theatres in Europe with historic stage machinery above and below the floor.
Bowline
Tools & materials
The knot that makes a loop which never slips shut. The king of knots: holds rock solid under load, yet unties with one motion.
Break a leg
Theatre
The English variant: wish someone a broken leg and all goes well.
Breakdown
Festival & terrain
The mirror image: everything flat and gone again, usually in a third of the time.
Bridle
Rigging & construction
A V-shaped suspension of two steel cables to land a point exactly where it is needed.
Brompton
Companies & brands
British specialist in LED processing: the boxes deciding how sharp and colour-true a video wall looks. The gold standard in the xR and touring world.
Buggy
Festival & terrain
See golf cart, but tougher and with more mud.
Build week
Festival & terrain
The days or weeks before the festival when the site rises out of the ground.
Bunk
Site & logistics
Your sleeping cabin in the nightliner, roughly the size of a generous bookshelf. Add a curtain, a reading light and earplugs and by week two it feels like a palace.
Bus pull
Site & logistics
The moment the tour bus leaves. The ultimate deadline of every load-out.
Busking
Lighting
Improvising a light show live without pre-programmed cues, fingers on the faders like a musician on an instrument. The supreme discipline of clubs and festivals where you hear the setlist only as it is being played.
Buyout
Site & logistics
Money instead of catering: when the production provides no hot meal, you get a buyout to sort your own food. The eternal debate: is good catering worth more than cash?
Cable drum
Power & tech
The extension reel. Unroll before use, unless you enjoy building a heating element.
Cable ramp
Power & tech
The yellow bump protecting cables where people drive and walk.
Cable reel
Tools & materials
See cable drum under power. Also an excellent improvised stool, which is not allowed.
Cable run
Power & tech
The route cables follow, tidy and safe. Neatly laid cables are a crew's business card.
Cable spaghetti
Sayings & crew humour
What happens when nobody lays the cables properly. The shame of any self-respecting crew.
Cable tie
Tools & materials
The tyrap: the most used and most underrated tool of the trade. Bundles cables, closes fences, saves shows. In Flanders the word tyrap stuck, after the Ty-Rap brand that invented it in 1958 for aircraft wiring. We wrote it an ode on our blog.
Call sheet
Site & logistics
The list of start times per role. Your call is sacred: being late does not exist in this trade.
Call time
Site & logistics
The hour you are expected. Five minutes early is on time.
Camera crane
Video & AV
The crane arm floating a camera over the audience for the pretty shots.
Camion
Site & logistics
Flemish crew word for the truck, used so often it deserves its own entry. The sacred centre of every load-in: everything comes out of it, everything must go back in.
Cans
Audio
Crew slang for the comms headset.
Cap off, helmet on
Sayings & crew humour
Showing respect is fine; safety comes first.
Capitole Ghent
Venues
Ghent theatre for musicals, comedy and concerts, with plush and history.
Case
Site & logistics
Short for flightcase: the armoured suitcase on wheels that all gear travels in. Built to survive airports, tours and crew.
Case tetris
Sayings & crew humour
The art of the perfect pack. The loader who nails the truckpack first time drinks for free.
Catering
Site & logistics
The production's crew canteen. Site morale rises and falls with its quality.
Catwalk
Theatre
The narrow bridge high above the stage for technicians and focus work.
CEE
Power & tech
The red and blue industrial connectors, from 16A to 125A. The standard three-phase power of every site.
Chain hoist
Rigging & construction
The electric chain hoist pulling trusses and grids up. Sounds like a swarm of metal crickets. CM Lodestar is the most famous of them all.
ChainMaster
Companies & brands
German hoist manufacturer, the European counterpart in the lifting game.
Chalk marker
Tools & materials
For marking cases, positions and truss sections. Wipes off; the arguments do not.
ChamSys
Companies & brands
British maker of the MagicQ lighting consoles, the affordable and versatile alternative in a world dominated by grandMA.
Changeover
Site & logistics
The switch between two acts on the same stage. Organised chaos with a stopwatch next to it.
Chauvet
Companies & brands
American lighting brand, from entry level to professional touring fixtures.
Check one two
Sayings & crew humour
The universal microphone test, the same three words in every language on earth. Why one and two and rarely three? Because by then the gain is set.
Choke
Rigging & construction
Slinging technique where the round sling or steel tightens around the beam or truss under its own load. Fast and firm, but the kink in the sling reduces the working load limit, and a rigger always calculates that in.
Cirque Royal
Venues
The round Brussels hall that once really was a circus. Today concerts, comedy and dance in an amphitheatre with history.
Clair Global
Companies & brands
American family business that grew into the biggest audio supplier of the touring world. Visit a stadium tour of a global star and odds are you are hearing their systems and networks.
Clamps
Rigging & construction
Couplers and clamps joining truss, tubes and fixtures. A bagful each, never enough.
Clay Paky
Companies & brands
Italian lighting brand that unleashed the beam revolution with the Sharpy.
ClearCom
Companies & brands
American intercom brand; together with Riedel, the voice in every crew ear.
Click track
Audio
The metronome in the band's in-ears keeping everything locked to tempo, essential once video, lights or pyro run on timecode. The audience never hears it; the drummer hears nothing else.
Climber
Roles & crew
Crew member certified to climb at height, in the steel or on towers.
Close enough for rock 'n' roll
Sayings & crew humour
Not perfect, but it works and the show can go on. Born among guitarists about tuning, grown into the universal crew phrase for charming imperfection. Nazareth even named a 1976 album after it.
Closing night
Theatre
The very last performance of a run. Traditionally with jokes that were never allowed before.
Clove hitch
Tools & materials
The knot that fixes a rope quickly and firmly around a bar or pipe. The first knot every theatre technician learns, and still in daily use forty years later.
CO2 jet
Special effects & pyro
The cannon blasting a white plume of freezing CO2 into the air, that signature hissing shot on every drop. Spectacular, relatively safe and instantly gone again, which is why dance shows love it.
Coachella
Venues
The festival in the Californian desert where fashion, pop and influencers meet. Two identical weekends back to back, so the whole production stands for a week: a luxury crews rarely know elsewhere.
Cold spark
Special effects & pyro
Machine producing a fountain of cool sparks without an open flame, also known by the brand name Sparkular. Noticeably less hot than classic pyro and therefore allowed in more venues, but still not a toy.
Colour temperature
Lighting
How warm or cold white light looks, in kelvin. Candlelight 2700K, daylight 5600K.
Columbus McKinnon
Companies & brands
American manufacturer of the CM Lodestar, the most famous chain hoist in the industry.
Comet
Special effects & pyro
Pyro effect that shoots upward like a fiery comet and burns out mid-air. Usually fired in volleys on the climax of a song.
Coming in
Sayings & crew humour
The announcement that something heavy is about to move. Two words that prevent accidents.
Comms
Audio
The crew's communication system during the show. ClearCom and Riedel are the familiar names.
Compound
Festival & terrain
The fenced-off working area of the site: production, storage, crew catering.
Compressor
Audio
Makes loud passages quieter and keeps the mix under control.
Concertgebouw Brugge
Venues
The stark red concert hall on 't Zand, built in 2002 when Bruges was cultural capital. World-class acoustics in a city mostly famous for its Middle Ages.
Confetti cannon
Special effects & pyro
Fires kilos of confetti over the crowd, driven by compressed air or CO2. Sounds festive, and it is, right up until the load-out starts and somebody has to sweep it all up. Biodegradable versions exist for festivals nowadays.
Confidence monitor
Video & AV
The screen at the front of the stage showing the artist lyrics or cues. Many a singer's best-kept secret.
Content
Video & AV
Everything playing on the screens: animations, camera feeds, logos. Without content an LED wall is an expensive brick wall.
Control room
Theatre
The technical booth at the back of the house. In Flanders known as the régie.
Cour et jardin
Theatre
The French stage directions for left and right, seen from the house. The French remember it by Jesus (jardin) on the left of the crucifix (cour).
Crew call
Site & logistics
The gathering moment of the crew for the briefing. Miss the crew call, miss everything.
Crew camping
Festival & terrain
Where the festival crew sleeps. The word sleeps is flexible.
Crew chief
Roles & crew
The gang boss on the floor. One point of contact for production, eyes in the back of the head for the crew.
Crew coffee
Sayings & crew humour
Strong, black, and at thermos temperature. Quality rises with the depth of the night shift.
Crew tracking
Roles & crew
How a crew chief divides and follows up the team during a shift. At H4E: digital, via the job sheet.
Crowd surfing
Festival & terrain
Rolling forward on the hands of the crowd until security catches you at the barrier. A sport for the audience, a conveyor belt of arms for the barrier crew.
Cryo
Special effects & pyro
Umbrella term for all effects using liquid CO2 or nitrogen: jets, low fog and ice-cold curtains of vapour. Named after the Greek word for cold.
Cue
Lighting
A programmed lighting state or transition. The show is a chain of cues, called by the show caller.
Cue-to-cue
Theatre
Rehearsal format running only the technical transitions and skipping the scenes in between. Jumping from cue to cue: dull for actors, gold for technicians.
Curfew
Site & logistics
The legal hour the music must stop. After that, the crew's real work begins.
Curtain
Theatre
The house curtain. Curtain up means begin, curtain down means bow.
Curtain call
Theatre
The final bows, with the cast greeting in fixed order. Rehearsed to the second, because bowing is direction too.
Cyclorama
Theatre
The huge seamless cloth at the back of the stage, lit as sky or infinite space, cyc for short. Lit well, it makes the stage look ten times deeper than it is.
d&b audiotechnik
Companies & brands
German loudspeaker manufacturer with cult status among system engineers.
Dance floor
Theatre
The roll-out floor laid and taped over the stage for dance. The taping is a craft in itself.
Dante
Audio
The network standard sending dozens of audio channels down a single network cable. Where a multicore as thick as an arm once lay, there is now one thin line, and the system tech gained a networking diploma along the way.
Dark day
Sayings & crew humour
A day without a performance during a tour or run. For crew: laundry day.
Day captain
Roles & crew
The crew chief on duty for that specific day or shift.
Day sheet
Site & logistics
A touring production's daily schedule: who does what, where and when, from load-in to bus pull.
dB
Audio
Decibel: the measure of sound pressure. Also the reason noise limits and earplugs exist.
De Oosterpoort
Venues
Groningen's concert house, sometimes called the AB of the north. Debate at your own risk.
De Roma
Venues
The restored Borgerhout cinema that grew into a beloved concert hall, carried by volunteers.
De Schorre
Venues
The provincial park in Boom where Tomorrowland builds its scenery.
Deadhang
Rigging & construction
A load hanging straight down from a single point, no bridle.
Delay
Audio
As an effect: echo. As a system: the timing that makes distant speakers run in step with the stage.
Delay tower
Rigging & construction
Tower halfway into the crowd with extra speakers, so the last row hears the kick on time too.
DI box
Audio
Converts an instrument signal into a microphone line. Small box, daily saviour.
DiGiCo
Companies & brands
British maker of digital mixing consoles seen at almost every big FOH position.
Dimmer
Lighting
Controls the voltage to conventional lamps. Once whole racks full, now largely replaced by LED.
Dimmer city
Lighting
The backstage gathering spot of dimmers and power distribution. Warm, humming, and strictly no coffee.
Disguise
Companies & brands
Maker of the media servers driving complex video shows and xR studios.
Distro
Power & tech
The distribution box splitting main power into smaller circuits.
DMX
Lighting
The control signal lighting desks use to drive fixtures. 512 channels per line, arguments free of charge.
Dock
Site & logistics
The loading dock. Where trucks, cases and crew meet, and where there is always a draught.
Dolly
Site & logistics
Low wheeled platform for moving heavy or awkward pieces.
Dolly track
Video & AV
The rails a camera glides along.
Doors
Site & logistics
The moment the audience is let in. Anything not ready by then gets finished nervously.
Doughty
Companies & brands
See also under tools: British manufacturer of clamps, hooks and stands.
Doughty clamp
Tools & materials
Well-known British maker of clamps and hooks for lighting and rigging.
Dour
Venues
The festival in the Walloon hills that grew into one of Europe's biggest alternative and electronic gatherings. Seven stages, a week of work, and dust or mud depending on what the sky decides.
Down-rigger
Roles & crew
The rigger preparing points on the ground and attaching the hoists.
Dress rehearsal
Theatre
The final run before opening night, in principle without stopping. In principle.
Dresser
Roles & crew
Helps artists with quick costume changes. Seconds count, zips never jam twice.
Drone show
Special effects & pyro
Hundreds of illuminated drones forming figures in the night sky, the silent alternative to fireworks. Behind every fluid movement sits a pilot, a back-up pilot and a mountain of aviation paperwork.
Drum tech
Roles & crew
The technician who builds, tunes and maintains the drum kit. Knows every wing nut by name.
Drumfill
Audio
The monitor stack next to the drummer, often with its own sub. Drummers like to feel.
Eager beaver
Roles & crew
The wagging crew member who wants to help everywhere at once. Meant affectionately, mostly.
Early is on time, on time is late, late is a no show
Sayings & crew humour
The time philosophy of this trade in one line: arrive early and you are on time; arrive on time and you are already late; arrive late and nobody calls you again. Descended from the famous Lombardi Time of the sports world, but nowhere as strictly enforced as at a dock at six in the morning.
Earplugs
Tools & materials
See hearing protection. The cheapest insurance contract of your career.
Earthing
Power & tech
The connection to the ground safely draining faults away. Invisible until it matters.
Easy, coming through
Sayings & crew humour
How you get a full cart through a corridor of people without harvesting toes.
Eat when you can, sleep when you can
Sayings & crew humour
Touring wisdom with army roots: meals and sleep arrive not when you want them but when the schedule allows. So eat when food appears and sleep when nothing is expected of you, because soon you cannot.
Elation
Companies & brands
American lighting brand gaining serious ground on tours and TV shows in recent years, sibling of the Obsidian consoles.
Elbphilharmonie
Venues
The Hamburg concert hall on top of the old warehouse. Acoustic wonder, logistical challenge.
EML Productions
Companies & brands
Belgian production house for lighting, sound and video on festivals and events.
End-on
Theatre
The classic layout where the audience faces the stage through the proscenium frame.
EQ
Audio
The tone control per channel or system: adjusting frequencies until it sits right.
ETC
Companies & brands
American maker of theatre lighting and the Source Four profile, the classic in every playhouse.
Evacuation plan
Festival & terrain
The plan to empty the site safely in case of severe weather or an incident. Always exists, rarely used, always rehearsed.
Everything is heavier at 3am
Sayings & crew humour
Unproven by physics, confirmed by every crew on earth: the same case that felt light at nine in the morning weighs double at three at night. Fatigue is the heaviest load of the shift.
Fall arrester
Tools & materials
The element in the lanyard that catches a fall and absorbs the shock.
False proscenium
Theatre
The fixed framing at the front of the stage, often in black or red velvet. Known in Flanders as the manteau.
Feedback
Audio
The howl between microphone and speaker. The monitor engineer's sworn enemy.
Festival feet
Sayings & crew humour
The state of your feet after three days of field. See also: our safety shoe guide.
Festival wristband
Festival & terrain
See wristband. Collectors wear them until they fall off by themselves.
Fibre
Video & AV
The cable carrying signals as light: thin, feather-light and immune to interference. Modern productions send entire video walls and dozens of camera feeds down it, where a trench full of copper once lay.
First in, last out
Sayings & crew humour
The shortest description of crew life: first on site, last off it. The audience sees two hours of show; the crew lives the eighteen around it.
Fix it in post
Sayings & crew humour
The video version of the same postponement: we will solve it in post-production. The edit suite as the confession booth of everything that went wrong on set.
Fixture
Lighting
The English catch-all word for a lighting instrument.
Fixture prep
Lighting
Unpacking, addressing and testing moving heads before they go in the truss. Sounds dull, is crucial.
Flame jet
Special effects & pyro
The flame thrower of the show world: a controlled gas flame shooting metres into the air. You feel the heat deep into the audience, and that is exactly the point.
Flanders Expo
Venues
The Ghent exhibition complex where halls turn into concert venues or trade fairs in a matter of days.
Flat floor
Theatre
A hall without fixed stage or seating. The playground of contemporary theatre and dance.
Flat iron
Site & logistics
Crew name for a low transport cart or pallet truck, because the thing looks exactly how it sounds.
Flies
Theatre
The technical zone above the stage where lines, pulleys and catwalks meet.
Floor package
Lighting
The fixtures standing on the floor instead of hanging in the truss. Quickly placed, quickly knocked over.
Fly system
Theatre
The wall of flying lines raising and lowering scenery and cloths. Once hemp and muscle, now often automated. In Dutch: the trekkenwand.
Fly tower
Theatre
The tall space above the stage that scenery disappears into.
Flyman
Roles & crew
The technician operating the fly lines in a theatre, sending scenery up and down at speed. A craft of timing and feel: a cloth too early is exactly as bad as a cloth too late.
Focus
Lighting
Aiming every spot exactly at its target. Done from the ladder, the MEWP or the desk.
FOH
Audio
Front of house: the mix position in the middle of the room, and by extension the engineer standing there.
FOH engineer
Roles & crew
The sound engineer at the front of house desk, in the middle of the crowd. Mixes what the audience hears.
FOH tower
Festival & terrain
The tower in the middle of the crowd holding sound, lighting and video control.
Followspot
Lighting
The spot following the artist. Big cannon, small seat, serious responsibility.
Followspot call
Lighting
The comms line where the operator hears who to follow and in which colour.
Followspot operator
Roles & crew
Operates the followspot and keeps the artist literally in the light. High up in the venue, focused for hours.
Forest National
Venues
The Brussels concert classic, in Dutch Vorst Nationaal. Round hall, rich history.
Forklift driver
Roles & crew
Certified forklift operator, known on Flemish sites as the forker. King of the dock.
Four corners
Sayings & crew humour
The call to lift a case or deck with four people. One corner short, your back finds out.
Fourth wall
Theatre
The imaginary wall between performers and audience. Breaking it is allowed, but on purpose.
Foyer
Theatre
The audience space before and after the show. Where the reviews are written out loud.
Freelancer
Roles & crew
Self-employed technician or crew working per production. Half this industry runs on them.
Fresnel
Lighting
Spot with a stepped lens and a soft edge. Named after the French engineer of the lighthouse lens.
Front fill
Audio
The small speakers on the stage lip covering the first rows, who sit too close to hear the big flown PA properly. Without front fill row one mostly hears drums and guitar amps; with it, they hear the show.
Front light
Lighting
Light from the front making faces readable. Without it, no expression, however pretty the rest.
Front truss
Rigging & construction
The truss at the front of the stage carrying the key front light.
Funktion-One
Companies & brands
British cult loudspeakers by Tony Andrews, built for clubs and dance festivals. Recognisable by the enormous horns and worshipped by bass lovers worldwide.
Gaffa fixes everything
Sayings & crew humour
Except what cable ties fix. Together they are the duct tape diplomacy of the trade.
Gaffa tape
Tools & materials
The cloth tape that makes everything temporarily permanent. Black for stage, fluo for marking, silver for the brave. Tears straight, leaves no residue, solves arguments.
Gaffer
Roles & crew
In film and television the chief electrician, responsible for all the light on set. The word crosses into the event world more and more. And yes, the tape is named after this trade, not the other way round.
Gain
Audio
The input amplification of a channel. Set well it is the foundation; set badly, everyone hears it.
Gauze
Rigging & construction
See-through scrim cloth for projections or to hide scenery until the right moment.
Gel
Lighting
The colour filter for conventional spots. Always creased in the bag.
Genie
Companies & brands
American manufacturer of aerial work platforms and material lifts whose name went generic on site: fetching the genie rarely involves an actual spirit.
Genlock
Video & AV
Locking all cameras and screens to the same clock so nothing drifts out of sync.
Genny
Power & tech
The generator. On festivals the heartbeat of the whole site, literally audible.
Gerb
Special effects & pyro
The classic pyro effect: a fountain of sparks shooting straight up from the stage edge or the truss. Available in different heights and burn times, and the exact moment every photographer in the pit hits the shutter.
Gerriets
Companies & brands
German theatre drapery giant: from molton to cycloramas and projection cloth by the kilometre. Court supplier to playhouses worldwide since 1946.
Get-in / get-out
Site & logistics
The British terms for load-in and load-out. Same sweat, different accent.
Ghost light
Theatre
The single lamp burning on an empty stage when everyone has gone. Tradition, safety, and a little superstition.
Glastonbury
Venues
The legendary British festival on the Eavis family farm in Somerset: a temporary city of two hundred thousand people, mud included. The Pyramid Stage may be the most famous festival stage on earth.
GLP
Companies & brands
German Light Products: German fixture builder whose X4 series and JDC strobe became fixtures of the festival stage in every sense.
Gobo
Lighting
The metal or glass stencil projecting a pattern in the beam. From logo to forest canopy.
Golden circle
Festival & terrain
The fenced zone right in front of the stage with the pricier tickets. To the crew it mostly means one more fence to build and one more wristband colour to check.
Golf cart
Festival & terrain
The fastest vehicle on site. Officially for gear, unofficially for anyone who manages to claim one.
Graspop
Venues
The Metal Meeting in Dessel: every year the blackest and warmest-hearted festival in the country.
Green room
Site & logistics
Where artists wait and unwind. Rarely green.
Green screen
Video & AV
The evenly green cloth replaced in the control room by any image you like, also known as chroma key. Green because it sits furthest from skin tones. Do not wear a green jumper on set, unless you fancy appearing on TV as a floating head.
Greenhouse Talent
Companies & brands
Belgian promoter of concerts and theatre tours, from club show to arena.
Grid
Rigging & construction
The framework of truss or steel above the stage that everything hangs from.
Ground support
Rigging & construction
A free-standing structure of towers and truss for when nothing may or can hang from the roof.
Guest list
Site & logistics
The list of names at the door. If you are not on it, you do not exist.
Guitar tech
Roles & crew
String changes, tuners, and handing over guitars to the millisecond. The guitarist's shadow.
Hand truck
Site & logistics
Two wheels, one plate, a thousand uses. The diamond of rolling stock.
Hands!
Sayings & crew humour
The call for extra help: two more hands here! Everyone who hears it comes. That simple, a good crew.
Hard hat
Tools & materials
Mandatory when work happens above your head. Colours often give away the role.
Harness
Tools & materials
The fall arrest harness for working at height. Inspected yearly, worn correctly or not at all.
Haze
Lighting
The fine mist making light beams visible. No haze, no beams; no hazer, panic.
Head carpenter
Roles & crew
The boss of scenery and stage floor on big productions and musicals, traditionally called the carpenter because theatre sets were once pure woodwork. Nowadays just as much steel and automation, but the title stayed.
Head rigger
Roles & crew
Boss of the rigging team. Decides what hangs where and how heavy it may be.
Head torch
Tools & materials
The lamp on your forehead during overnight load-outs. Those without one never borrow one for long.
Headliner
Festival & terrain
The main act of the night. Biggest production, last load-out.
Heads!
Sayings & crew humour
The warning shout when something moves or drops above people. Hear it, look up first, discuss later.
Hearing protection
Audio
Earplugs or moulded plugs. If you stand next to a PA every week, you wear them. Full stop.
Hellfest
Venues
The French metal stronghold in Clisson near Nantes, with a site built out as a permanent metal village, steel cathedral included. Sold out before the line-up is even announced.
Hemp
Tools & materials
The classic natural fibre rope of the old fly systems, which is why old theatres are called hemp houses. Largely replaced by steel and motors, but the word and the romance stayed.
Heras (company)
Companies & brands
The fence manufacturer whose name every mobile construction fence in the Low Countries carries.
Heras fence
Rigging & construction
The mobile construction fence surrounding every festival site. Named after the manufacturer, like hoover and biro.
Hi-vis vest
Tools & materials
Mandatory on sites with traffic and machines. Unflattering and indispensable.
High End Systems
Companies & brands
American lighting pioneer that wrote history with the Hog consoles and early moving heads, today part of ETC.
Holding is working too
Sayings & crew humour
Comfort for whoever has to keep a baseplate upright for fifteen minutes.
Hollywood Bowl
Venues
The iconic Los Angeles open-air amphitheatre with the shell.
Hospitality crew
Roles & crew
The team steering catering, green rooms and guests in the right direction.
Hot power
Power & tech
Power that must never go off, for media servers and consoles for example.
House
Theatre
Theatre word for the auditorium and its audience. A good house laughs louder.
House lights
Lighting
The venue lighting. Goes off when it starts, comes on when it is truly over.
House technician
Roles & crew
The venue's resident technician. Knows every socket and every shortcut.
Hurry up and wait
Sayings & crew humour
The official rhythm of every production: you rush to be ready, then nothing happens for an hour. Blew over from the American military of the nineteen-forties and has been the unofficial motto of film, TV and touring ever since.
If in doubt, don't
Sayings & crew humour
From aviation and the rigging world, where doubt is not an opinion but a signal. Be certain first, hoist second.
If it moves and it shouldn't: gaffa
Sayings & crew humour
The full engineering law reads: if it moves and should not, use gaffa; if it does not move and should, use WD-40. All the technology in the world summed up in two products.
If it's not on the truck...
Sayings & crew humour
...it's not at the show. The iron logic of every production: forgotten means not playing.
IMAG
Video & AV
Image magnification: the artist live on big screens so row 80 sees emotions too.
In-ears
Audio
Earpieces giving artists their monitor mix wirelessly. Quieter stage, tighter mix.
ING Arena
Venues
The biggest hall on the Heysel, formerly Palais 12. Brussels arena for the big names.
Iris
Lighting
The diaphragm inside a spot that shrinks and grows the beam steplessly. The same principle as in a camera, just with more degrees Celsius.
It'll buff out
Sayings & crew humour
The standard joke at every scratch, dent or broken corner, however unrepairable. The bigger the damage, the drier the delivery.
Jack
Audio
The 6.3mm instrument connector. Lives in every guitar cable and every lost pocket.
Jib
Video & AV
The crane arm carrying a camera in floating moves across stage and crowd. The operator stands metres away, steering with counterweights and fingertip feel.
Johan Cruijff ArenA
Venues
The Amsterdam stadium hosting stadium tours in summer. Roof closed, sound loud.
Jumper
Power & tech
Short extension cable to bridge that one last gap. Always one short.
Junk bunk
Site & logistics
The one bunk on the bus assigned to nobody, which therefore collects everything: coats, bags, laundry and that one box of merch. Every tour bus has one.
Kabuki
Rigging & construction
A system dropping a curtain in one hit for a reveal. Named after Japanese theatre.
Kentledge
Rigging & construction
The formal British word for ballast weights. Use it once and riggers will look at you differently.
Kinesys
Companies & brands
British specialist in stage automation: the motors and control moving trusses and scenery live and safely. When the lighting rig breathes with the music, Kinesys is often turning underneath.
Kursaal Oostende
Venues
The iconic venue complex on the Ostend seafront, built in the fifties. Concerts, comedy and congresses with a sea view for anyone who slips outside backstage.
L-Acoustics
Companies & brands
French pioneer of the modern line array. Their K series hangs at practically every major festival.
Laminate
Site & logistics
The laminated pass of the permanent touring party. The holy grail of backstage access.
Lamp
Lighting
What the outside world calls every lighting fixture, to the quiet sorrow of every lighting tech.
Laser safety officer
Special effects & pyro
The person who calculates and verifies that no laser beam can ever reach anywhere eyes might be. Without this role and the accompanying paperwork, no laser gets switched on.
Laser show
Special effects & pyro
Light show with laser beams drawing patterns and planes through the haze. Beautiful and dangerous at once: lasers above an audience are bound by strict standards.
Layher
Companies & brands
German scaffolding manufacturer. On festivals, building a layher has become a verb.
Le Maitre
Companies & brands
British specialist in pyrotechnics and smoke. When it flames on cue, chances are they are behind it.
Leapfrog
Site & logistics
Tour system with two identical crews or rigs jumping over each other: while team A runs tonight's show, team B is already building tomorrow's city. Reserved for the very biggest productions.
Leave your litter...
Sayings & crew humour
...and tomorrow you clear everyone's. Site rules write themselves.
LED tech
Roles & crew
Builds, calibrates and repairs LED walls. Can spot a dead pixel from fifty metres and swaps a module faster than you restart your phone.
LED wall
Video & AV
The video screen built from panels. Assembled tile by tile, checked pixel by pixel.
Lee Filters
Companies & brands
British counterpart of Rosco in colour filters, with legendary numbers of its own such as Lee 201. Together they make up the colour vocabulary of an entire profession.
Leg
Rigging & construction
Vertical cloth strip at the side of the stage. Together with borders it frames the picture.
Lighting desk
Lighting
The console the operator runs the show from. GrandMA is the most famous of them.
Lighting operator
Roles & crew
Runs the lighting desk during the show. Thinks in cues and colours.
Lighting plot
Lighting
The technical drawing of all fixtures, positions and circuits. The lighting crew's bible.
Limiter
Audio
The electronic guard capping the sound level, often legally required under noise regulations. A safety net for the engineer, hearing protection for the visitor, a night's sleep for the neighbours.
Line array
Audio
The curved row of speakers hanging like a banana beside the stage. Calculates sound evenly into the room.
Line check
Audio
The quick check that every channel arrives, without a full soundcheck. Festival standard.
Line set
Theatre
One flying line of the system, with its own number. Line 12 coming in, heads up.
Line-up
Festival & terrain
The festival's full programme. For crew it mainly means: the order of the changeovers.
Live Nation
Companies & brands
The biggest concert and festival promoter in the world, in Belgium behind Rock Werchter among others. Also a valued client of ours.
Load bank
Power & tech
Test resistor to check generators under load before the show.
Load cell
Rigging & construction
Sensor measuring the live weight on a rigging point. Modern rigging is measuring, not guessing.
Load in for the load out
Sayings & crew humour
Build with the strike already in your head: run cables so they pull free, stack cases in the order they return, think ahead. The difference between a two-hour load-out and a four-hour one.
Load list
Site & logistics
The inventory of what is in the truck. The truth on paper, until the first case goes missing.
Load-in
Site & logistics
Everything from the truck into the venue. The starting gun of every production, and the reason crew drink coffee on a loading dock at 6am. A good load-in sets the tone for the whole day: the right case in the right place, first time.
Load-out
Site & logistics
Everything back into the truck. Usually at night, always faster than the load-in, and only finished when the last trailer door clicks shut.
Load-out legs
Sayings & crew humour
The special energy released at 2am the moment the last note sounds.
Loader
Roles & crew
The crew member inside the truck guarding the truckpack. The tetris grandmaster of the team.
Local crew
Roles & crew
The local crew reinforcing the touring party. That is us: a different show every night, the same hands.
Look Solutions
Companies & brands
German builder of smoke and haze machines, with the Unique and the Viper as fixtures in almost every lighting rig.
Lotto Arena
Venues
The little brother next to the Sportpaleis, ideal for shows of a few thousand.
Low fog
Lighting
Low-hanging fog crawling over the floor, made with CO2 or ice. The Swan Lake effect.
MA Lighting
Companies & brands
German maker of the grandMA lighting consoles, the de facto standard on big shows.
Madison Square Garden
Venues
The most famous arena in the world, in the middle of Manhattan. Playing The Garden is a career milestone.
MagicFX
Companies & brands
Dutch specialist in confetti, CO2 jets and special effects. When it bangs and flutters, it often comes out of their tubes.
Main stage
Festival & terrain
The headline stage. The biggest steel, the longest load-in, the most eyes.
Manfrotto
Companies & brands
Italian brand of stands and clamps that rolled from photography into the event world.
Manitou
Festival & terrain
The brand name that became the generic word for the telehandler, like heras for the fence.
Mapping
Video & AV
Fitting content exactly onto a shape or building. From church tower to stage set.
Marshalling
Site & logistics
Directing and parking trucks on a tight site so the right trailer hits the dock at the right moment.
Martin
Companies & brands
Danish lighting brand with a rich moving-head history, nowadays part of Harman.
Matinee
Theatre
The afternoon performance. Same show, different body clock.
MDG
Companies & brands
Canadian specialist in professional CO2-based haze and fog, beloved in theatre and television because the mist hangs evenly without smell or splutter.
Media server
Video & AV
The computer sending video content to screens. Disguise and Resolume are familiar names.
Merch
Site & logistics
The merchandise: shirts, hoodies, records and everything else with a band logo on it. For many artists more important to the income than the ticket sales themselves, and at the end of the night somebody counts every box.
Merde
Theatre
The French and dance-world version of the same wish. Short and powerful.
MEWP operator
Roles & crew
Drives the aerial work platform (cherry picker or scissor lift), certified. Works where others prefer not to look.
Meyer Sound
Companies & brands
American audio manufacturer, beloved in theatres and by artists who want audible detail.
Midas
Companies & brands
Legendary console brand, from analogue classics to digital workhorses.
Minimum call
Site & logistics
The minimum number of hours a shift gets paid, even if the work finishes early. Four hours is the classic: come in for one case, the clock still counts four. Protection against half-hour shifts.
Mixing desk
Audio
The console where all channels meet. DiGiCo, Midas, Yamaha and Avid are the big names.
Mojo barrier
Rigging & construction
The linkable crowd barrier at the front of the stage. Named after the company that made it famous. We wrote a blog post about it.
Mojo Barriers
Companies & brands
The Dutch company that developed the modern crowd barrier and gave it its name.
Molefay
Lighting
The classic audience blinder of four or eight warm lamps in one housing, named after manufacturer Mole-Richardson. The word went so generic that almost any blinder occasionally gets called a molefay.
Molton
Tools & materials
The black cloth used to mask and finish everything. The little black dress of stagecraft.
Monitor
Audio
The speaker artists hear themselves through. On stage called a wedge.
Monitor engineer
Roles & crew
Mixes what the artists hear on stage. The most important person the audience never sees.
More me
Sayings & crew humour
What every musician asks the monitor engineer: more of myself in my monitor. When everyone on stage asks for more me, and everyone does, you understand why monitor mixing is a profession of its own.
Mosh pit
Festival & terrain
The churning circle in the crowd where heavy music turns into jumping and shoving. Looks violent, runs on its own code of honour: whoever falls gets pulled straight back up.
Mother grid
Rigging & construction
An extra grid hung under the venue roof, from which the actual show grid is suspended.
Moving head
Lighting
The moving light that pans, tilts and changes colour. The workhorses are called Robe, Martin, Clay Paky or Ayrton.
Multicam
Video & AV
Recording with several cameras at once, mixed live in the control room. Every camera has a number, every operator gets instructions over comms, and the director glues it all into one story.
Multicore
Audio
The thick cable (nowadays often a network line) connecting stage and mix position.
Multitool
Tools & materials
The folding tool on every crew belt. Leatherman is the most famous of them.
Multitrack
Audio
The recording that captures every channel separately, all microphones and lines side by side. Raw material for live albums, virtual soundchecks and arguments about who sang flat.
Mute
Audio
The button that silences a channel. The difference between a blooper and a career.
Network power
Power & tech
More and more technology runs over network cable: audio (Dante), lighting (sACN) and video. The future is a switch.
Never put your hands where you wouldn't put your dick
Sayings & crew humour
The bluntest and best-remembered safety rule in the trade: keep your hands out of moving and pinching parts. Crude on purpose, because you never forget this one, and that is exactly the point.
Nexo
Companies & brands
French loudspeaker manufacturer, a Yamaha subsidiary, strongly represented on festivals and in fixed venue installations.
Night crew
Roles & crew
The shift that starts when everyone else goes to sleep. Load-outs are their natural habitat.
Night shift
Festival & terrain
The crew building and repairing during festival nights while the site sleeps.
Nightliner
Site & logistics
The sleeper bus touring crews travel in from city to city: a lounge downstairs, rows of bunks upstairs. You climb in after the load-out in Berlin and wake up at the dock in Paris. Home is where your bunk is.
No crew, no show
Sayings & crew humour
Our motto, and the shortest summary of this trade. No hands, no miracle.
No toi toi toi here
Sayings & crew humour
On site nobody wishes you luck. They say: see you at the truck.
OB truck
Video & AV
The outside broadcast truck packed with control room equipment that TV networks use to capture shows and sport live. A complete studio on wheels, coffee machine included.
Olio
Rigging & construction
A drop curtain lowered between scenes so changes can happen behind it. Theatre heritage still on duty.
OLT Rivierenhof
Venues
The open-air theatre in Antwerp's Rivierenhof park, good for a summer-long run of concerts between the trees. One of the finest workplaces in the country, until it starts raining on the mixing desk.
Olympia Paris
Venues
The legendary Paris music hall with the red letters. Small stage, huge past.
One truck is never one truck
Sayings & crew humour
Site wisdom: there is always one more coming. And after that, one more.
Opening night
Theatre
The first official performance. Flowers, nerves, and only then a real exhale.
Orchestra pit
Theatre
The lowered space for the orchestra between stage and house. Often liftable to stage level.
Outfill
Audio
Extra speakers covering the sides of the room or grandstand, beyond the reach of the main hangs. Everyone paid for a ticket, so everyone gets the same mix.
Outrigger
Rigging & construction
The extending support leg keeping a MEWP or tower stable. Always fully out, always on a pad.
Over-under
Sayings & crew humour
The only correct way to coil a cable. You can tell who masters it by their reels. And who does not, too.
PA
Audio
Public Address: the sound system the audience hears. From two tops on sticks to tonnes of line array.
PA wing
Rigging & construction
The side structure next to the stage where the audio arrays hang.
Pallet
Site & logistics
Wooden load board. Combined with a forklift, the fastest way to empty a truck.
Par
Lighting
The classic can throwing a solid beam. Nowadays mostly LED, nostalgia included.
Patch bay
Power & tech
The panel where signals are crossed and routed.
Patching
Lighting
Linking desk channels to fixtures. Half administration, half magic.
Per diem
Site & logistics
Latin for per day: the daily allowance crew and band receive in cash or on account for food and small expenses on the road. Saved up or spent differently on every tour, from launderettes to record shops.
Percussive maintenance
Sayings & crew humour
Official-sounding term for an ancient technique: hitting a faulty device until it works again. Succeeds surprisingly often, is recommended by no manufacturer, and appears on no worksheet.
PFL
Audio
Pre-fade listen: the button letting an engineer solo one channel in the headphones, before the fader. You hear exactly what comes in without the room noticing a thing.
Phantom power
Audio
The 48 volts feeding condenser microphones through the cable. Invisible, indispensable.
Phase
Power & tech
One of the three conductors of three-phase power. Balancing phases evenly is quiet craftsmanship.
Phlippo
Companies & brands
The production group from Lier: lighting, sound, video and rigging for shows at home and abroad. Neighbours in the trade.
Photo pit
Festival & terrain
The narrow strip between stage and barrier where photographers may shoot the first three songs, after which everyone leaves. First three songs, no flash: the most famous house rule in concert photography.
Pin
Rigging & construction
The conical pin connecting truss sections, secured with an R-clip. Drop the pins, buy the coffee.
Pixel mapping
Lighting
Driving individual LEDs as image points, so fixtures together form a picture.
Pixel pitch
Video & AV
The distance between two LEDs on a panel, in millimetres. The smaller, the sharper, the pricier.
Places
Theatre
The final call before the performance: everyone to their opening position. In many houses the stage manager simply calls places, please, and the building holds its breath.
Ploeg
Roles & crew
Flemish for crew or gang, and the word we prefer over team. A ploeg carries together, even in the rain.
Positioning lanyard
Tools & materials
The line a climber uses to lock in and work with both hands.
Powerlock
Power & tech
The heavy single-pole connectors for main power. Colour-coded per phase; connecting them is qualified work.
Press box
Audio
The distribution box for press feeds: journalists plug in and get the mix directly.
Previz
Lighting
Short for previsualisation: programming the light show in advance on a 3D computer model of the stage, before a single truss is up. Saves entire nights of programming in the venue itself.
PRG
Companies & brands
Production Resource Group: the international rental giant supplying lighting, audio, video and rigging for the largest shows and TV productions.
Processor
Video & AV
The processing unit distributing the signal across the LED panels.
Production manager
Roles & crew
The person ultimately responsible for the production. Calls everyone, sleeps the least.
Production office
Site & logistics
The nerve centre of the production on site. Home of the printers, the stress and the good coffee.
Profile
Lighting
Spot with a sharply shuttered beam, ideal for gobos and clean framing. Americans say leko, theatres say Source Four.
Projection screen
Video & AV
The surface being projected on, front or rear.
Projector
Video & AV
On paper it is projection; on site everyone says the beamer.
Prolyte
Companies & brands
Dutch truss manufacturer whose name became close to a synonym for truss itself.
Promoter
Roles & crew
The organiser who books the show and carries the financial risk. Think Live Nation or Greenhouse Talent.
Promoter rep
Roles & crew
The promoter's representative on site. The bridge between venue, production and tour.
Prompter
Theatre
Whispers forgotten lines from a box or the wings. Rare now, never entirely gone.
Prop
Theatre
Any object performed with. Sacred in every stage manager's cupboard.
Proscenium
Theatre
The stage opening itself: the frame the audience looks through.
Pukkelpop
Venues
The festival of Kiewit near Hasselt, the alternative closing act of the Belgian festival summer every late August. For crews a familiar end-of-year exam: four days, dozens of changeovers.
Pusher
Roles & crew
Pushes cases from truck to stage and back. Sounds simple, is a craft: the right case at the right moment.
PVC tape
Tools & materials
The smooth electrical tape. For colour codes and cables, not for stage floors.
Pyro
Special effects & pyro
Collective name for pyrotechnics: every firework and flame effect in a show. Strictly regulated work that only certified pyrotechnicians may rig and fire, complete with permits, safety distances and a fire brigade watching along.
Pyrotechnician
Special effects & pyro
The certified specialist allowed to rig, wire and fire pyro. Works with the calm of a watchmaker and the checklist of a pilot, because in this trade almost right does not exist.
Queen Elisabeth Hall
Venues
Antwerp concert hall next to the zoo, an acoustic gem since its rebuild.
Quick change
Theatre
A costume change at record speed, just offstage, with a dresser as pit crew.
R-clip
Rigging & construction
The spring clip securing the truss pin. Weighs nothing, holds everything together.
Rain plan
Festival & terrain
The scenario for when the weather turns. In Belgium: the main plan.
Ramp
Site & logistics
The loading ramp between dock and truck or between levels. Rain plus ramp equals extra care.
Ratchet
Tools & materials
The tensioning mechanism of the ratchet strap, and the clicking sound that closes every load-out.
Ratchet strap
Rigging & construction
See tools: the strap that keeps loads in place in the truck. Its clicking is site music.
Rear projection
Video & AV
Projecting from behind the screen, so nobody walks through the beam.
Recall
Site & logistics
Crew returning after a break of several hours for the next shift, for instance between build and load-out. In union territory a separate pay category with its own minimum hours.
Recce
Festival & terrain
British army slang for reconnaissance, in the event world the advance site visit. Whoever says recce has worked with British productions.
Red Rocks
Venues
The open-air amphitheatre between rock walls in Colorado. For many artists and crew the most beautiful workplace on earth.
Rent-All
Companies & brands
Dutch rental player for lighting, sound and video on festivals across the Benelux.
Resolume
Companies & brands
Dutch software for live visuals, beloved by VJs and club shows.
Reusable cup
Festival & terrain
The deposit festival cup that replaced the cup carpet of the old days.
Revolve
Theatre
The round disc in the stage floor that changes scenery while turning, mid-scene. Made famous by musicals like Les Miserables, feared by anyone who ever lost a cable underneath one.
RF coordination
Audio
Planning and policing every wireless frequency on a production so microphones, in-ears and comms never clash. Ever since radio spectrum was auctioned off to telecom companies the puzzle keeps shrinking, and on big festivals it is a full-time job.
RF tech
Roles & crew
The frequency coordinator: manages every wireless microphone, in-ear and comms channel so nothing interferes. On a festival with five stages this invisible puzzle work is the difference between show and chaos.
Rider
Site & logistics
The document listing an artist's or production's technical and practical demands. From power requirements to the colour of the towels.
Riedel
Companies & brands
German specialist in comms and signal transport for shows, sport and broadcast.
Rig it like your family is underneath
Sayings & crew humour
The golden rule of every rigger: hang everything so you would happily let your own family walk under the load. Above people's heads, almost right does not exist.
Rigger
Roles & crew
Specialist who hangs gear safely above people's heads. Calculates, climbs, and trusts their shackles.
Rigging point
Rigging & construction
The spot at the roof where a hoist or cable attaches. Every point has a maximum load, and you respect it.
Riser
Rigging & construction
A platform on stage, for instance for the drums. Often on wheels for fast changeovers.
Riser mics
Audio
Microphones hard-wired on a rolling riser, so the changeover takes seconds.
Roadie
Roles & crew
The romantic word for everything crew. On site almost nobody says it; in the newspapers everybody does.
Rock-n-roll cart
Site & logistics
Wide flat cart for stage decks and scenery. Rolls itself, except uphill.
Rolling riser
Rigging & construction
A riser on wheels rolled on and off stage in one piece during a changeover.
Roof
Rigging & construction
The roof of an open-air stage: its own structure of towers, truss and canvas built to face wind and rain. Comes with its own wind ratings, its own calculations and the final say when weather turns.
Rosco
Companies & brands
American manufacturer of colour filters, gobos and scenic paint. Their filter numbers are global trade language: ask a lighting tech about R60 and they see the colour in their head.
Roskilde
Venues
The great Danish festival run entirely by a charitable foundation that gives its profits away. Proof since 1971 that a mega festival can also be a good cause.
Rostra
Rigging & construction
The British theatre word for stage platforms and risers, from the Latin for speakers' platform. What Flemish crews call praktikabels, or prakkes for short.
Round sling
Rigging & construction
The endless woven lifting sling (spanset) used to wrap around truss or steel.
Routing
Site & logistics
The order of cities on a tour schedule. Good routing strings venues together logically; bad routing zigzags you from Lisbon to Warsaw to Madrid. Crews discuss routing the way other people discuss weather.
Run-through
Theatre
A rehearsal playing the whole show in one go.
Runner (logistics)
Site & logistics
See also under roles: the fixer who fetches, delivers and solves. Often armed with a golf cart or a van.
Safety (steel)
Rigging & construction
The wire rope looped around a fixture or truss as extra insurance. Small thing, big difference.
Safety boots
Tools & materials
Minimum S3 on our sites. Everything you need to know is in our big safety shoe guide.
Safety curtain
Theatre
The heavy curtain separating stage and house in case of fire. Tested every show day, hopefully never used.
Safety knife
Tools & materials
The stage knife for tape, foil and cable ties. With retracting blade, because fingers are not replaceable.
Safety officer
Roles & crew
The health and safety specialist who analyses risks and makes the workfloor safer, in Belgium a legally required role called preventieadviseur, trained in three levels. At H4E not a paper function: our founder holds the certificate himself.
Safety perimeter
Special effects & pyro
The zone around every effect where nobody may stand during firing, calculated per effect and checked before every show. The invisible line between spectacle and incident.
Sandbag
Tools & materials
The bag of sand holding cloths, stands and small structures in place, the oldest ballast system in theatre. Simple, cheap and indestructible, which is exactly why it never went away.
Scaff
Rigging & construction
Short for scaffolding. Layher is the best-known name in it.
Scaff tag
Rigging & construction
The inspection label on a scaffold or structure showing who built and checked it, and until when it is approved. Green tag means build away; no tag means hands off.
Scene change
Theatre
The set change between scenes. In the dark, in silence, at a jog.
Second stage
Festival & terrain
The second stage, where changeovers often have to be even tighter.
Secondary
Rigging & construction
The independent back-up that catches a load if the primary suspension fails.
Security
Roles & crew
Guards the safety of audience, artist and crew. Our founder's father was once head of security at the Antwerp Sportpaleis.
Sennheiser
Companies & brands
German microphone and in-ear brand, the other half of the eternal duopoly with Shure.
Settlement
Site & logistics
The financial reckoning between promoter and production after the show, usually in the production office while the load-out is already running. Numbers, receipts and a handshake.
Shackle
Rigging & construction
The D-shaped bow connecting steels and slings. The rigger's safest friend. Moused or captive-pinned above people's heads.
Shading
Video & AV
Live-adjusting iris and colour of every camera so each shot cuts seamlessly to the next. The most invisible job in the video crew: you only notice shading when it is missing.
Sharpie
Tools & materials
The marker that labels everything from multicores to catering cups. Guard yours.
Shout speaker
Audio
The small speaker at the monitor or FOH position through which engineers call out to each other during soundcheck. Named after what happens through it: shouting.
Show caller
Roles & crew
Calls every cue over comms during the show. The conductor nobody hears except the crew.
Show stop
Festival & terrain
The procedure for halting a show in a controlled way when danger appears: music off, lights up, a calm announcement. Agreed and rehearsed in advance, because the decision must fall in seconds without spreading panic.
ShowTex
Companies & brands
Belgian world player in theatre drapes, curtains and projection screens. Antwerp roots.
Showtime adrenaline
Sayings & crew humour
The moment fatigue evaporates because the doors open. Scientifically unexplained, universally recognised.
Shure
Companies & brands
American microphone brand. The SM58 is the indestructible folk hero of the trade: it falls, rolls, and keeps on singing.
Shutters
Lighting
The four metal blades in a profile spot used to cut the beam razor sharp, for instance exactly on the edge of the set. Framing, it is called, and framing well is a craft.
Shuttle
Site & logistics
Running gear back and forth between storage and site, or between dock and stage.
Shuttle bus
Festival & terrain
The bus between station, campsite and site.
Side light
Lighting
Light from the side, beloved in dance because it sculpts bodies.
Sidefill
Audio
Large monitors at the side of the stage covering the whole deck in sound.
Site
Festival & terrain
The complete festival terrain, campsites, car parks and compounds included.
Site latin
Sayings & crew humour
The mix of Flemish, English and hand signals with which international crews understand each other perfectly.
Site survey
Site & logistics
The advance visit: measuring, spotting risks, and checking whether that truck really fits through that gate.
Sitzprobe
Theatre
The first rehearsal where singers and orchestra go through the full score together, seated, without staging. A German loanword that stuck in musical theatre and opera worldwide.
Skotch
Tools & materials
What some Flemish crew call any tape, to the irritation of purists and the confusion of interns.
Sleeper
Rigging & construction
Wooden beam under ballast or steel to spread the load and spare floors.
Sleeve block
Rigging & construction
The guide block that wraps around a ground support tower and carries the truss as it is hoisted upward. The quiet hero of every tower build.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast
Sayings & crew humour
Work calmly and deliberately and you finish sooner than the one who rushes and redoes. The paradox every good crew chief teaches their team.
Smoke machine
Lighting
Throws thick smoke instead of fine mist. For effects, not for beams.
Snake
Audio
The nickname for the multicore, because the thing crawls from stage to mix position like a serpent. Anyone who has ever coiled a fifty-metre snake understands the name completely.
Snow machine
Special effects & pyro
Blows foam flakes that look like snow across stage or crowd. Essential at Christmas shows, slippery when overdone.
Solotech
Companies & brands
Canadian production giant in audio, video and lighting that bought up half of Europe in recent years and runs on the biggest tours and residencies.
Sound design
Audio
The design of the complete sound picture of a show or performance.
Soundcheck
Audio
The test with the artists before the show: setting sounds, tuning monitors, reading moods.
Soundscape
Audio
Immersive audio arriving from all around. Increasingly common in theatres and shows.
Speakon
Audio
The twist-and-click connector for speaker cables. Designed never to come loose by accident.
Spirit level
Tools & materials
Proves whether the stage is actually level, or only looks it.
Splitter van
Site & logistics
The van with a dividing wall: seats for band and crew up front, backline in the back. The vehicle almost every touring career starts in.
Sportpaleis
Venues
Antwerp's home of the big shows and our second home: our founder wandered its corridors as an eight-year-old. Over 20,000 souls when full.
Sportpaleis Group
Companies & brands
The group behind the Sportpaleis, the Lotto Arena and several Flemish venues. Our second home since the nineties.
Stage box
Audio
The connection box on stage where all microphones and lines come in.
Stage cart
Tools & materials
Collective name for everything on wheels that takes over the dragging. The crew's backs thank you.
Stage deck
Rigging & construction
The standard stage floor element, usually 2 by 1 metres. Lifted a thousand times, counted never.
Stage door
Theatre
The performers' entrance of the theatre, where fans wait after the show for autographs. Also the place where the doorkeeper has known everyone by name for forty years.
Stage left / right
Theatre
Always seen from the performer's point of view, which is why visitors point the wrong way.
Stage manager
Roles & crew
Runs the stage floor: who goes on, what stands ready, when the curtain moves.
Stage manager (theatre)
Theatre
In Dutch theatre called the inspiciënt: runs the performance technically from the prompt corner.
Stage plot
Site & logistics
The map of the stage: who stands where, what sits where, and where the cables run.
Stage skirt
Tools & materials
The black finish around the base of the stage. Hides the mess, completes the picture.
Stage stairs
Tools & materials
The steps connecting stage and floor level, finished in black with anti-slip. Sounds trivial until someone misses one in a blackout, which is why marking and lighting belong on them.
Stage wagon
Theatre
A rolling platform carrying a complete set that drives on and off stage in one move. Big musical houses slide entire streets and living rooms together in seconds this way.
Stage weight
Tools & materials
The cast-iron weight with a handle that anchors scenery and stands, usually ten or fifteen kilos apiece. The handle is not decoration: carrying it right is the difference with a back injury.
Stageco
Companies & brands
The Belgian staging company from Tildonk that grew into a world player. Started on the meadow of Werchter, now building full stadiums across the globe.
Stagehand
Roles & crew
The backbone of every build: hands, brains and proper work boots. Doing steel today, backline tomorrow, barricade the day after. The word goes back to the theatre, where the hands did everything the audience never saw.
Steadicam
Video & AV
The body-mounted spring rig letting a camera operator walk without the image shaking. The operator dances backwards through the wings while the picture floats as if hung from a cloud.
Steel
Rigging & construction
The load-bearing structure of stage and towers. Building steel is the heaviest and most beautiful work of the build.
Steel crew
Roles & crew
The team building the steel structure: stage, towers and grid. First in, last out.
Steel sling
Rigging & construction
Wire rope with eyes for slinging loads. Heavier than a round sling, indestructible.
Steward
Roles & crew
Keeps audience flows safe and friendly. Not to be confused with security.
Stitcher
Roles & crew
The wardrobe technician who sews, repairs and alters costumes, right up to the entrance cue. American union term that perfectly sums up what happens backstage with needle and thread while the house fills up.
Straw
Festival & terrain
What appears on the field when the rain plan fails. Scent included.
Streamer
Special effects & pyro
The long paper ribbons shot from cannons across the audience. They hang in the air for seconds and turn every closing photo into a painting.
Strike
Theatre
The theatre word for the complete take-down after the final performance. Everything built over weeks comes down in one night, and still nobody calls it demolition: it is the strike.
Strobe
Lighting
Machine-gun flash light. Use with care, always announce.
Studio 100
Companies & brands
The Flemish entertainment company behind musicals and family shows. A firm fixture on our client list.
Sub
Audio
The bass speaker you feel in your chest. Stacked, flown or set in a cardioid pattern.
Swing
Theatre
The all-rounder of the musical ensemble who holds not one but several ensemble tracks ready and can drop in anywhere on any night. The hardest and least visible craft on the bill.
Swivel coupler
Rigging & construction
The rotating double clamp joining two tubes at any angle. Known on many sites as a cheeseborough; pronounce it however you like, everyone understands.
Sydney Opera House
Venues
The most famous roof in the world, and inside simply a house full of lines, drapes and crew.
System engineer
Audio
Tunes the PA to the room. Measures, calculates and walks kilometres with a tablet.
Sziget
Venues
The festival on a Danube island in the middle of Budapest, a self-declared republic of hundreds of thousands for one week. A logistical brain-teaser for crews: everything crosses two bridges onto the island.
TAIT
Companies & brands
World market leader in stage automation and spectacle engineering. If a stage moves, flies or rotates on a mega tour, chances are TAIT is behind it. Grew from a Pennsylvania workshop into the builder of the biggest shows on earth.
Talkback
Audio
The microphone line technicians use to talk to the stage or each other.
Tape and hope
Sayings & crew humour
The emergency fix under time pressure. Officially it does not exist; unofficially it keeps shows standing.
Tape measure
Tools & materials
Measure twice, build once.
Teaser
Theatre
The horizontal cloths above the stage hiding the rig. Theatre sibling of the border.
Tech week
Theatre
The week when set, light, sound and performance meet in the theatre for the first time. Long days, short nights and the famous sigh: it will be fine by opening night.
Technical rider
Site & logistics
The technical part of the rider: stage, audio, lighting, power, and how much local crew is needed.
Telehandler
Festival & terrain
The telescopic forklift that reaches high and far. Indispensable on festival builds.
The field
Festival & terrain
The festival grounds, in Flanders lovingly called de weide. Paradise in sunshine, a fitness programme for crew in rain.
The golden hour
Sayings & crew humour
Not the photographers' one: the first hour of the load-out, when everything comes down at once and the crew flies.
The half
Audio
Theatre's sacred 35-minutes-before-curtain call. On concert sites the countdown is louder and less polite.
The lost allen key
Sayings & crew humour
The mythical key every site swallows. There is always exactly one too few.
The O2
Venues
The London arena that was the world's best-selling venue for years. Built under a dome made for the millennium.
The quickdraw
Sayings & crew humour
The crew member who releases ratchet straps faster than their own shadow. Every crew has one.
The show must go on
Sayings & crew humour
The oldest law of entertainment: whatever happens, the curtain goes up.
The site forgets nothing
Sayings & crew humour
Build sloppy and you strike twice as long. Old wisdom, confirmed daily.
The truck doesn't lie
Sayings & crew humour
At the end of the load-out the truck delivers its honest verdict: if everything fits as planned, the work was good; if something is left on the dock, somebody cheated somewhere. There is no arguing with the truckpack.
Think first, then lift
Sayings & crew humour
Every safety training summarised in four words.
Tie line
Tools & materials
The thin black cord theatres use to tie cables and drapes, reusable where a cable tie lives only once. American theatres buy it by the kilometre.
Tile
Video & AV
One LED panel. Carrying a hundred of them counts as arm day.
Timecode
Lighting
The timing signal locking light, video and pyro to the music second by second. Everything runs perfectly in sync by itself, until the band decides to stretch a song and the operator ends up driving manually after all.
Toi toi toi
Theatre
The theatre wish for success, three times, never thanked afterwards. Wishing luck brings bad luck; this does not.
Toilet attendant
Roles & crew
Keeps the sanitary block clean and the queue humane. Essential and underrated, hence our sister company Toiletdames.be.
Tomorrowland bridge
Festival & terrain
The iconic entrance bridge of Tomorrowland in Boom. Even those who rarely work there know it.
Top
Audio
The speaker for mid and high, on or next to the subs.
Top hat
Lighting
The black cylinder on the front of a spot that limits stray light and lens glare. Named after the hat it plainly is, and usually extended a little further with gaffa.
Torch
Tools & materials
See head torch, minus one hand.
Tour manager
Roles & crew
Handles everything around the artist on tour: travel, hotels, money and moods.
Tower
Rigging & construction
Vertical structure for PA, lighting or delay speakers. Climbed by people with certificates and nerves of steel.
Trackway
Rigging & construction
Steel or plastic road plates making soft ground drivable for trucks and cranes.
Trailer
Site & logistics
The truck's semi-trailer. A well-packed trailer is a jigsaw puzzle on wheels.
Transport
Site & logistics
The logistical artery of this trade: no transport, no show; no crew, no transport unloaded.
Trap door
Theatre
The hatch in the stage floor through which performers and scenery appear or vanish. For centuries the favourite exit of devils, ghosts and magicians.
Travel day
Site & logistics
A day without a show spent entirely on the road. A day off to the outside world; a day of traffic jams, petrol stations and ferry queues to the crew.
Trix
Venues
Antwerp concert venue and music workshop, springboard for guitars and sweaty club shows.
Trixxo Arena
Venues
The big hall in Hasselt, home of arena shows in Limburg.
Trucker's hitch
Tools & materials
The knot that works like a pulley, letting you tension a rope or tarp drum-tight. Named after the truck drivers who lashed loads with it before the ratchet strap existed.
Truckpack
Site & logistics
The fixed order in which a truck is packed. Break the truckpack and the driver will let you know, immediately and in detail.
Truss
Rigging & construction
Aluminium lattice beams carrying light, sound and video. The spine above every stage. Prolyte and Eurotruss made the word almost generic.
Truss protector
Tools & materials
Protective sleeve or corner piece sparing truss and slings when rigging.
Truss warmer
Lighting
Fixture lighting the truss itself as a design element.
Tungsten
Lighting
The classic filament lamp with its warm, rich light. Largely replaced by LED, but lighting designers keep swearing by the glow only a real filament gives, especially in theatre and on camera.
Turnbuckle
Rigging & construction
The threaded tensioner that brings steel cables and guy wires to exact tension. Millimetre work on structures weighing tonnes.
Two able-bodied, sober loaders
Sayings & crew humour
The most famous line from thousands of American contract riders: the promoter must provide two able-bodied and sober loaders. That sober had to be spelled out tells you plenty about the glory years of rock and roll.
Two is one, one is none
Sayings & crew humour
Owning one of anything critical means owning none: everything that can break will break eventually. Which is why spare lamps, spare cables and spare microphones sit ready. Borrowed from the military, proven daily on site.
Understudy
Theatre
The replacement who learns a role completely in order to step in at illness. Sometimes never performs for months, then has to save the evening on one phone call.
Universe
Lighting
One DMX line of 512 channels. Big shows count dozens.
Up to eleven
Sayings & crew humour
That one notch louder than loudest, after the legendary scene in This Is Spinal Tap where the amp goes to eleven instead of ten. The film is fiction; the phrase became living trade jargon.
Up-rigger
Roles & crew
The rigger working up in the steel or at the roof.
UPS
Power & tech
The battery back-up keeping critical equipment alive through a power dip.
Vandeputte Safety
Companies & brands
Belgian safety specialist from the Antwerp region: from safety boots to complete PPE programmes.
Venue first, sofa later
Sayings & crew humour
Home time only starts when the site is clean and the truck is closed.
Video control
Video & AV
Where camera feeds are mixed into what appears on the screens.
Video director
Roles & crew
Chooses live which camera images reach the screens and directs the camera operators over comms. Thinks shots ahead the way a chess player thinks moves.
Video wall support
Video & AV
The structure an LED wall hangs from or stands on.
Viernulvier
Venues
The Ghent arts centre in the Vooruit building, a century-old festival palace of the socialist movement. The name changed; the address and the ballroom stayed.
Virtual soundcheck
Audio
Playing back the multitrack recording of a previous show through the desk, so the engineer can mix without the band on stage. The band is still asleep on the bus while the mix quietly gets better.
Wacken
Venues
The metal festival in a north German village of eighteen hundred inhabitants that multiplies seventy-fold every summer. Farmers tow stuck campers out of the mud with tractors: service included in the ticket.
Walk-in music
Audio
The music while the audience comes in. Carefully chosen, rarely noticed.
Wash
Lighting
Fixture or beam covering an area evenly in colour. The paint of the lighting plot.
Water bar
Festival & terrain
The free water point, the norm at big festivals for some years now.
Water screen
Special effects & pyro
A thin curtain of water droplets used as a projection surface, making images appear to float in mid-air. Big effect, big drainage gutter.
We'll fix it in the mix
Sayings & crew humour
The eternal studio promise that a mistake will be repaired later in the mix. Half joke, half procrastination, and everyone knows: what is played badly rarely gets mixed well.
Weather hold
Festival & terrain
The pause button of an open-air show: with a storm approaching, everything stops and everyone shelters until it passes. On that day the weather forecaster is the most important person on site.
Wedge
Audio
The wedge-shaped floor monitor at the artist's feet.
WeFact / OnSinch
Companies & brands
Not show technology, but the engine behind our administration: invoicing and crew planning. A site needs invoicing too.
Wellies
Festival & terrain
Rubber boots, the official festival footwear of the Low Countries the moment it rains. Anyone working the field keeps a pair in the truck, right next to the safety boots.
Wembley Stadium
Venues
The London stadium where stadium tours write history. You can see the arch from miles away.
Werchter
Venues
The festival village that becomes the world capital of rock every summer. Familiar ground for us.
WIcreations
Companies & brands
Belgian specialist in motion and custom structures from Heist-op-den-Berg: rotating stages, flying performers and scenery nobody else manages to build. A world player from our own soil.
Wind bracing
Rigging & construction
The diagonal braces that stiffen a structure against sideways forces. Without bracing, a tower is a domino waiting for its turn.
Wind monitoring
Festival & terrain
Continuous wind speed measurement on towers and stages. Above set values everything comes down or closes, no discussion.
Wings
Theatre
The sides of the stage where people wait, change and whisper. In Dutch: the coulissen.
WLL
Rigging & construction
Working Load Limit: the maximum working load of lifting gear. Stamped on it, never exceeded.
Work gloves
Tools & materials
Standard kit. Grip, protection, and the reason you still have fingerprints after ten years.
Worklight
Lighting
The white working light during build and strike. The least sexy and most used lighting state in the trade.
Worksheet
Site & logistics
The paper (in our case: the screen) recording the hours worked. At H4E it is a digital job sheet, signed on site with a finger.
Wristband
Site & logistics
The bracelet deciding where you may and may not go. Colour codes are law.
XLR
Audio
The three-pin audio connector with a latch. The handshake of the audio world.
xR
Video & AV
Extended reality: a studio where LED walls display the environment and the camera tracks perfectly with it, making the virtual world look real. The technology behind modern TV shows and streamed concerts, born when the pandemic closed the venues.
Yamaha
Companies & brands
Builds everything from recorders to mixing desks. In the live circuit known above all for reliable consoles.
Yellow card
Site & logistics
American union term for a touring production that travels and works entirely with IATSE crew. If the yellow card is on the show, the crew agreements are fixed to the minute.
Photo credits+
Photos via Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences listed below. Thanks to the makers.
- Ancienne Belgique: Babymetal performing at Ancienne Belgique December 4, 2023.jpg | DragonFury | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babymetal_performing_at_Ancienne_Belgique_December_4,_2023.jpg
- Cable tie: Kabelbinder -- 2024 -- 6911.jpg | Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kabelbinder_--_2024_--_6911.jpg
- Case: Nuit Boréale 2013 011.jpg | Lionel Allorge | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nuit_Bor%C3%A9ale_2013_011.jpg
- CEE: CEE 400V 16A 6h IP67 Stecker und Kupplung 2012 01 27.jpg | Bahntech | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CEE_400V_16A_6h_IP67_Stecker_und_Kupplung_2012_01_27.jpg
- Chain hoist: Hitachi Electric Chain Hoist (16276717289).jpg | halfrain | CC BY-SA 2.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%97%A5%E7%AB%8B%E3%83%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E3%83%AB%E3%83%96%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF_(Hitachi_Electric_Chain_Hoist)_(16276717289).jpg
- Elbphilharmonie: Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie -- 2023 -- 6610 (bw).jpg | Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hamburg,_Elbphilharmonie_--_2023_--_6610_(bw).jpg
- Fly system: Graticcia vista dall'alto.JPG | Manuelarosi | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graticcia_vista_dall%27alto.JPG
- FOH: FOH - Ruhrpott Metal Meeting 2015 - 0002 - Leonhard Kreissig - Canon EOS 5D Mark II.jpg | Leonhard Kreissig // LeoDE | CC BY 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FOH_-_Ruhrpott_Metal_Meeting_2015_-_0002_-_Leonhard_Kreissig_-_Canon_EOS_5D_Mark_II.jpg
- Forklift driver: Hyser forklift on truck. Dnipro.jpg | Alex Blokha | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyser_forklift_on_truck._Dnipro.jpg
- Fresnel: Phare de Goulphar-Lentilles de Fresnel (2).jpg | Ji-Elle | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phare_de_Goulphar-Lentilles_de_Fresnel_(2).jpg
- Gaffa tape: Black gaffer tape.jpg | Marie-Lan Nguyen | CC BY 2.5 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_gaffer_tape.jpg
- Ghost light: Ghost Light on Stage.JPG | Ellwood jon | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ghost_Light_on_Stage.JPG
- Hard hat: US Navy 101013-N-3013W-247 A Seabee assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 26, drags his injured shipmate to safety during a simula.jpg | U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Charles White | Public domain | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_101013-N-3013W-247_A_Seabee_assigned_to_Naval_Mobile_Construction_Battalion_(NMCB)_26,_drags_his_injured_shipmate_to_safety_during_a_simula.jpg
- Haze: Haze-beams.jpg | Lumenbuddha | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haze-beams.jpg
- Hollywood Bowl: Hollywood bowl and sign.jpg | Matthew Field, http://www.photography.mattfield.com | CC BY-SA 2.5 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hollywood_bowl_and_sign.jpg
- LED wall: 2008 Concordia Christmas Concert.jpg | JWGreen | CC BY 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2008_Concordia_Christmas_Concert.jpg
- Line array: Dülmen, Dülmener Sommer, Open-Air-Konzert -- 2018 -- 9655.jpg | Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%BClmen,_D%C3%BClmener_Sommer,_Open-Air-Konzert_--_2018_--_9655.jpg
- Madison Square Garden: Madison Square Garden (MSG) - Full (48124330357).jpg | Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA | CC BY 2.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madison_Square_Garden_(MSG)_-_Full_(48124330357).jpg
- Main stage: Detroit Electronic Music Festival 2002 main stage and crowd after dark.jpg | Myself248 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detroit_Electronic_Music_Festival_2002_main_stage_and_crowd_after_dark.jpg
- MEWP operator: JCB S1930E Scissor Lift at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, hyderabad.jpg | Wasiul Bahar | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JCB_S1930E_Scissor_Lift_at_Rajiv_Gandhi_International_Airport,_hyderabad.jpg
- Mixing desk: Audio mixer close up.jpg | Lchader | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Audio_mixer_close_up.jpg
- Mojo barrier: Mojo Barrier im Einsatz in Rock Werchter.jpg | Goran Marincic | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mojo_Barrier_im_Einsatz_in_Rock_Werchter.jpg
- Paradiso: Alela Diane in Paradiso, Amsterdam (3425183020).jpg | Martijn vdS from The Netherlands | CC BY 2.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alela_Diane_in_Paradiso,_Amsterdam_(3425183020).jpg
- Ratchet strap: Custom made tie down strap.jpg | DustinMoving | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Custom_made_tie_down_strap.jpg
- Red Rocks: Red Rocks Amphitheatre 1941.jpg | onbekend | Public domain | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Rocks_Amphitheatre_1941.jpg
- Royal Albert Hall: Royal Albert Hall - Gallery Central View.jpg | Colin | CC BY-SA 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Albert_Hall_-_Gallery_Central_View.jpg
- Safety boots: S3 safety footwear.jpg | Francis Flinch | CC BY 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S3_safety_footwear.jpg
- Sportpaleis: Sportpaleis 2011.jpg | Ziyalistix | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sportpaleis_2011.jpg
- Sydney Opera House: Sydney Opera House - Dec 2008.jpg | Diliff | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sydney_Opera_House_-_Dec_2008.jpg
- Telehandler: Telehandler transporting whisky barrels.jpg | QueenBarenziah | CC BY 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Telehandler_transporting_whisky_barrels.jpg
- Truss: Lighting truss 1.JPG | KeepOnTruckin | CC BY 2.5 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lighting_truss_1.JPG
- Wedge: Monitor Mixing Setup.jpg | Sonicvibesolutions | CC BY 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monitor_Mixing_Setup.jpg
- Wembley Stadium: London , Wembley - Stadium Arch - geograph.org.uk - 2112449.jpg | Lewis Clarke | CC BY-SA 2.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_,_Wembley_-_Stadium_Arch_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2112449.jpg
- Werchter: Plaine de Werchter.jpg | No machine-readable author provided. Matriochka~commonswiki assumed (based on co | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plaine_de_Werchter.jpg
- XLR: Dual XLR TRS connectors on Zoom H5.jpg | SkywalkerPL | CC BY 4.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dual_XLR_TRS_connectors_on_Zoom_H5.jpg
- Ziggo Dome: Ziggo Dome.JPG | Shirley de Jong | CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ziggo_Dome.JPG