What 'dry run' and 'walk-through' mean when we train your switcher operators

Most training sessions go wrong in the first ten minutes, and not because of the equipment. One person says 'rehearsal' and means a full run with cameras live, while another hears it and expects a quiet look at the desk. When the words are loose, people arrive with different expectations and the time we have booked gets spent on sorting that out.

So before any session for your own team, we agree on a small set of terms and use them the same way all day. They are ordinary trade words, not jargon for its own sake. This article explains the ones we rely on most in rehearsal and operator training, in the order you are likely to meet them.

I work on the streaming side, so I come to these terms from the signal path rather than the vision mixing chair, but they apply to every desk we train on.

A walk-through is the slowest and calmest stage. Nobody switches anything live. We sit with your operators at the desk and go through the show on paper first: the running order, which camera covers which moment, where graphics come in and who calls each change.

The point is to let people ask questions while nothing is at stake. An operator who has never seen your venue's camera positions can learn them here without feeling watched. We often draw a simple plan of the room and mark each source on it, so the names used on talkback match the names on the desk.

A walk-through usually takes under an hour for a modest show. If your team already knows the running order well, we shorten it, but we rarely skip it, because the shared vocabulary it builds pays off later.

• Running order read aloud, line by line
• Each source named once and written down
• Questions answered before the desk is powered up

A dry run means the equipment is switched on and working, cameras are connected and the operator is cutting, but nothing is going out to an audience or a stream. It is the safest place to make mistakes, and we encourage them. A wrong button pressed in a dry run teaches more than a correct one pressed by luck.

During a dry run we may stop and restart a section as often as needed. We will pause on a transition that felt clumsy, repeat a difficult sequence of camera changes, or run the same thirty seconds five times until the timing settles. Nobody should feel they are failing when this happens; it is the normal pace of learning a desk.

If your show has pre-recorded items or graphics, we load them for the dry run so the operator sees real material rather than test bars.

A run-through is a dry run from start to finish without stopping. It tests whether the operator can hold concentration across the whole running order, not just handle the awkward bits. If something goes wrong, we note it and carry on, exactly as would happen on the day, and discuss it afterwards.

A full rehearsal adds everything else that will be present on show day: performers or presenters on stage, lighting at its final state, and any streaming chain running to a private destination so Tom's checks, and your team's, can be done on the real path. This is where problems with sound levels, lighting changes or late cues usually appear.

Not every show needs all of these stages. A short talk may need one walk-through and one run-through. A multi-act festival stage will benefit from the whole sequence. We recommend what fits, and we say so plainly when something is not worth the time.

• Run-through: no stopping, notes taken afterwards
• Full rehearsal: performers, lighting and streaming path included

Three small words carry a great deal of weight in a control room. Talkback is the intercom channel that lets the director speak to camera operators and the desk. A cue is an instruction to do something at a particular moment, such as 'cue graphic' or 'cue camera two'. Standby is the warning that comes just before it, giving the person a moment to be ready.

The pattern is always the same: standby, then cue. Operators who learn this rhythm early find the whole show easier to follow, because every action is announced twice and nothing arrives as a surprise. We practise it aloud in training, even when the team is small and could simply nod to each other.

It can feel formal at first. After one or two sessions it becomes habit, and habit is what carries a team through a long evening when attention starts to tire.

The most useful thing you can send us beforehand is the running order, even if it is only a draft, along with a list of the sources you expect to have: cameras, laptops, playback and any graphics. Knowing the desk or switcher you plan to use also helps, so we can bring or set up a matching one.

Please tell us who will actually operate on the day, and how much experience each person has. A confident volunteer and a complete beginner need different sessions, and we would rather plan for both than assume. If someone will only be covering for a colleague, say so.

On the day itself, a quiet room, a clear table and enough time without interruptions matter more than any extra equipment. We handle the rest, including bringing spare cables and keeping the session moving at the speed your team needs.

• Draft running order
• List of cameras and other sources
• Names and experience of those who will operate