Guys like Frank Weber are hard to find.  He is the Director of Warehouse Operations and the Lead Audio Designer and Engineer for Production Plus.  A veteran audio guy and staunch iconoclast that has been at Production Plus for fifteen years, Frank brings a dedication and desire for excellence to his work that is not found on every street corner.  Few are more organized, meticulous, and passionate about their work.  Whether its tweaking a room for the best sound mix, soldering a cable, or whipping up a batch of buffalo wings for the Production Plus barbecue, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who brings more of themselves to it.  Solutions By Design sat down with Frank for a talk about the history and future of the business.

Frank Weber, at home behind the dials.

13Q: What brought you to Production Plus?

FW: Actually… (laughs) I used to work at an oil refinery.  I got into that because I was a welder.  I was also in a band, and I had my own recording studio.  The recording studio was a side job; mainly I was a supervisor at the refinery.  The EPA shut the refinery down, so I went into the sound system installation business.  I worked at a store that sold high-end audio equipment.  I did the band and the recording studio on the side.

Production Plus used to deal with the store I worked in; buying microphones, stuff like that.  A guy from Production Plus came in one day while I was working.  We started talking, and it turned out Pro Plus was looking for an audio guy.  So I gave them my resumé–which at the time included welding, pipe-fitting, electrical work, and studio recording.  Back then–and up until about 10 years ago–Production Plus had its own recording studio.  We recorded voiceovers, mostly, and assembled all the tapes for the shows.   Everything was on reel-to-reel.  (Owner) Greg Kieta needed someone to run the studio because he was getting more involved in doing slide shows, and they needed another audio guy to go out on shows.  So, I came in.

For the first six months, all I did was solder cables.  (laughs)  Everything was in need of repair.  I spent the first six months here in a very unglamorous position: back by the dock door, wide open when it was 20 below zero because shows were going out and I’m sitting there freezing my butt off soldering cables.

I slowly worked my way up into this position.  At the time I started here there were maybe only a dozen people working here.

13Q: Sounds like there was not a lot of room for division of labor.  How did it all get done?

FW: Everybody did everything back then.  That was also one of the reasons I got hired.  I could do electrical work, pipe fitting, welding, carpentry, electronics, audio and recording, installations, hanging speakers, that sort of thing.

But Production Plus has been a huge learning experience for me, too.  It’s expanded my horizons.  I’ve learned so much.  I still use all that knowledge all the time.  I did all the repairs then and I still take care of that today from a supervisory perspective.  And I still design audio for some of our shows.

13Q: What percentage of our shows do we provide sound design for?

FW: I’d say 60 to 70% of our shows.  Even if it’s not our gear, I always collaborate on the design.

13Q: Let’s talk about gear for a moment.  What can you tell me about Production Plus audio equipment?

FW: Production Plus has all the cool toys and gadgets. We just picked up two Yamaha M7-CL digital consoles.  We’ve built in Dan Dugan Series E auto-mixers to those boards.  We’ve built in CD players as well, right into the rack. So when you go on the road, everything you need is already in the box, wired together, and ready to go.  Setting up for a show is a breeze.  We call these boxes our kits.  They really work well–so well that people are starting to copy our designs.  We’re constantly getting questions: “What do you use for this?” and “How did you do this?”  We’ve got intercom kits and recording kits … all kinds of kits for any type of show.

13Q: These kits have been assembled from assorted different components that work well together?

FW: Right.  Instead of going into a show with random piles of stuff, we’ve pre-built it.  We wheel it in, plug it in, and we’re ready to go.  For example, we have an entertainment band kit.  It contains everything you’ll need to do a large show band; microphones, cables, the whole works.  This allows us to set up in a hurry–you know, be in by 8:00 am and ready for rehearsals at 1:30 pm.

13Q: All the wiring, the hooking up, is done before you even get to the venue?

FW: Right.  I think we’re the only company out there that will spend $100,000 on a piece of equipment and tear it apart as soon as it comes out of the box.  We’re always looking to solve any issues before they come up, always looking for a way to make it faster, smoother, more convenient for the client.  Budgets are tighter, time frames are tighter … you don’t get three days to set up a show anymore.  You have to be there in the morning and be ready to go by the afternoon.  That’s all driven by money.  All these little additions we do, these little tweaks–they save time and money, which is important these days.

13Q: All this technology; where do you see the new breed of equipment heading in the future?

FW: I see the technology becoming very, very simple for the operators. I think you are going to see fewer technicians doing more.  Audio technicians will be doing lighting and video.  One man will control the whole show; it’ll be a pushbutton show. There will still be a stage manager calling the show, but there will be one guy that pushes the button that makes the lighting and the audio come up and go down at the same time, the special effects go, etc.   All of these technologies are combining, you can access them all via computer. You’ll still have your lighting designer, your audio designer; but of the designers will just send out their programs and they’ll all get plugged into the same module.  You’ll just plug them all in and go.

This could hurt technicians in the future unless they are really technologically savvy.  It’s probably a ways off because everyone has all this gear now and they’ll protect their investment.  But eventually someone is going to release a master console that will run the entire operation.  Sound, lights, video, all will be integrated.  It’s all run by computer now, so there’s no reason that they can’t all be combined. 

It’s scary, in some ways, but ultimately it all comes down to the operator. 

13Q: How will that change our business?

FW: Well, the more automated we go, the more we have to be prepared to back ourselves up.  Lighting companies do it all the time, now: they send two light boards on every show.  Audio companies don’t do it as much, but they’re starting to: if you get an automated board, they’ll send two.  Video?  If you need two beta decks they’ll send out four.  So we’ll always have to be prepared to back ourselves up because we’re now depending more on the equipment than the person operating it.  And, because time is now so tight on shows, you cannot wait to fix something or get a replacement if something goes wrong; you have to have a backup on-hand. 

It used to be that audio guys could plug in their stuff and go after tweaking the room.  Now – especially with lighting guys – you’ll see people programming the whole night before the show, sometimes even right up until doors.  It’s because they’re trying to get the automated systems to do everything for them during the show.

13Q: Do you feel that Production Plus has ever set, or created, an industry standard as the company has grown over the years?

FW:  I don’t know if we’re ever set the standard.  The quality of work existed from the beginning within the people that were here, so the standard was kind of already set.  But we’ve definitely raised the industry bar a few times.

13Q: You’ve talked a lot about the people at Production Plus.  Is there anything developing in the staff?

FW: We have a lot of young guys here who want to be technicians.  They want to do video, they want to do audio, and they have the smarts and the drive to do it.  We’re grooming them to take over.  Now they work in the warehouse, so they have an idea of what it means to sling gear, to load trucks, that sort of thing.  They’re learning how to take care of the equipment.  And they get to play with it, too, to learn how to use it.  But they want to go out on the road, so they go out on small shows, learn the ropes, gain confidence.  Eventually we’ll send them out on bigger shows.  (grins)  They’re looking for that glamorous life on the road.  Little do they know.

Frank goes over a few things with John Muzyka and Matt Scowronski (seated)

13Q: Is there anything about your job that you still find really tricky?

FW: Everything about my job is tricky.  Nothing is consistent.  Yes, audio and video and lighting and sound are in every show, but every one poses a new challenge.  The design is different, the places where you hang speakers are different.  You have to fit the sound to the room and the show.

Sound in general is a challenge because for the most part it is never thought of first.  Nobody takes into account that speakers have to go in the room.  First comes the set, then video screens, then lighting-then, finally, audio.  You have to stay out of the way of all those other elements. We can’t have speakers blocking part of a screen surround or part of a set piece.  Now with some of the new line array speakers this becomes a lot easier. They give you the ability to cover more area with fewer speakers.  It used to be that you would have distributed sound; a series of boxes hanging in rows with delay lines.  You don’t see that too much anymore.  But no matter what you use, be it line array or distributed system, you still have to make it aesthetically pleasing and the audience still has to hear it.

13Q: Do you still go out on the road and do shows?

FW: Only by special request.  My new responsibilities keep me here.  I was on the road long enough.  I’m taking that experience and bringing it into the warehouse.  I know what is needed on the road, and how it’s supposed to work, from beginning to end.  I’ve loaded trucks, unloaded trucks, designed shows, TD’ed shows.  Because I have all that experience my new job here is to watch over the warehouse, and control our inventory; make it more functional, more effective, and more efficient.  A large portion of our business is now scenic: cataloguing and keeping track of it can be a real challenge.

I’ve got really strong organizational skills; this is what I’m adding to the business right now.  And prioritizing.  There is so much going on at any given moment that someone has to keep everyone focused on the most important thing: the show.  The show comes first, and any work that aims toward the show, over any maintenance or inventory task.

13Q:  Any stories from the road you’d like to share?

FW: A lot of stories … (thinks)  Tours are fun.  When you’re on the road for a long time, your life becomes the hotel and the plane.  You go out for a month, a month and a half, come home, do your laundry, pay your bills, and go off again.  It’s fun, but after a while it loses its charm.

But I have no regrets about my time on the road.  I enjoyed it.  It’s taken me all over the world.  I’ve worked with a lot of famous people.  Bill Cosby, Jeff Foxworthy.  I got to mix the Bush inauguration in 2004, which was cool.  Production Plus did scenic and audio for that.
One show I mixed the audio and ran the show with a gas mask on.  It was for Case Tractor in the FargoDome in Fargo, North Dakota.  We were there for 22 days.  They were debuting a new line of tractors; a big 200 foot cyclorama would fly up to the top of the dome and the tractors drove out from under it.  Well, they had to warm the tractors up before every show to make sure they all started up when the time came for the reveal.  My mix position was at the top of the dome, and every day those tractors would fill the top of the dome up with diesel fumes.  I could only take so much of that.  So I went into town and bought a gas mask from an army-navy surplus store and mixed the show wearing it.

The best part for me about any show is, at the end of the show, if nobody says anything to you about the audio.  That’s when I know I’ve done a great job.  When the audience is walking past the booth, they’re not saying anything to you but you can hear them saying how good it sounded, how much they enjoyed it.  Occasionally you’ll get someone who comes up and says,  “hey, great sounding show.”  And when the client walks up and says, “Great show.  You made it painless,” that’s rewarding.  When the client says that to you, you know you did your job.

As far as Production Plus goes, the greatest achievement for me is that I’ve expanded my horizons.  I’ve made some great friends.  I’ve done things I never thought I could do.  The challenges of this whole job for the past fifteen years, whether it’s personally or professionally, I’ve overcome because of what I’ve learned here.  Every day it’s still a challenge, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.