In this section, I am going to cover using block and assert on the Eos console.
And concepts of why you would use them, and the scenarios that each is best suited for.
So let's take a look at an example to best illustrate the difference between those two.
First, we have a look up on stage, and we have a sequence of cues.
The first one is to do a slow fade to silhouette, and then we bump to black.
So let's look at that.
So here we have our slow, ten-second fade leaving our performer in silhouette.
And then we get a call to go to black, and we bump to black. Perfect, right?
Now occasionally, and only occasionally,
things don't always go the way they're supposed to in the theatre.
So maybe in this scenario, we have to take the black out a little early
because we have a forgetful actor, or maybe a stand-in forgot a line.
Who knows what happens.
But in any case, our fade starts to take us into silhouette.
And we now get the call to go to black. We don't quite go to black.
We have a move instruction to take our LED wall out.
So that went out, and the other lights continue to fade.
So my first instinct would be to put a block on my cue number five, which is my zero count blackout.
So let's do that. Cue five. Block. Enter. That should have fixed it, right? Let's take a look.
Again, fading and, yet again, we have a forgetful actor.
And despite this cue being a block, we still did not get the blackout that we were looking for.
So what happened here? Let's try to dig into this.
Let's do a little CSI work on this cue and go into Blind and verify that, yes indeed,
I can see that I have blocked values. They're indicated in white.
I'm looking at my cue flags and I can see that I have a full block indicated by the captial "B".
If I modify a level, let's say "cue one," I take channel 29 and make some changes.
You can see that, yes indeed, my values are tracking but the block is holding.
And everything looks good at that point. So what's happening here?
Well, this is where we want the make the distinction between block and assert.
What block is going to do is exactly what we're looking at here in channel 29.
When I'm making edits, a block prevents those values from inadvertently tracking beyond the block.
That's how you would normally use block in tracking mode.
You want to set a point in your cue list where changes do not get past. That is a block.
What an assert will do is something similar to that, but an assert is really designed for playback.
What an assert does, is it says, "This key will play back every level in that cue, even a tracked zero."
So it treats every value as a move instruction.
So if I make cue five and assert cue, I should get the desired result. So let's take a look at that.
I am just going back out to live. I will hit cue five.
Assert, which is conveniently located right next to block. Enter.
And looking at my cue flags on my cue list, I can see that there is an "a" for assert.
And now let's see if that took care of the issue. We start our slow fade. We get our early call.
And yes, the assert cue took care of the problem, because it treated all values,
even tracked zeros, as a move instruction.
Now assert will work even if that cue wasn't a block.
So, I will go ahead and remove the block on cue number five.
And just for fun, let's go look at it in Spreadsheet.
We can see that cue five has a bunch of tracked zeros.
And the tracked zero is indicated by the dash in a cell.
The assert will still play back that dash as a move instruction to go to zero.
So let's take a look at that one final time.
Remember, cue five is not a block, but it is an assert. When I take that cue, we get our blackout.
Now the nice thing about assert, is that I can assign it to a cue like we've done here.
I can assign it to a channel.
I can assign it to an individual parameter of a channel, or an entire cue list.
And we cover the uses of that in a different section.
But this is what we wanted to draw your attention to - the difference between block and assert.
And something we want you to remember is to always assert your blackouts.