I am sitting backstage at the Flynn during the first night of Green Day’s Broadway tour of ‘American Idiot’.  They have 30 TVs hanging on the set wall and four projectors on the set wall, too.

On the set of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ at the Flynn.

The TVs are all the same brand so that one remote works all of them.  Once the set is hung and wired, you use a regular remote to turn them on.  But what if you need to only turn on one of the wall of TVs?  Well, then you use this!

The laser sighted IR scope

The IR emitter has been moved from the remote to the viewing lens of a rifle scope, thus the remote IR beam is very narrowly focused.  But, you say, IR is not visible to the eye, how do you know where you are pointing the thing?

Using the IR rifle scope.

Have no fear, the small object strapped to the tube up front is a laser sight from a handgun.  Switch that on, point it at the IR receiver window of the one screen you want to use the remote on, and then hit the remote button you want!

How cool is that?

Gary, the TD at the Flynn, had a wired jumper made up for the Flynn’s video projector so you can use the remote from the stage since the IR just can’t make it the 125 feet from the stage to the booth.  I showed him this crazy rig and said he should have built one of these.

I know you want one…

Oh, and just what kind of show is this? Well, it’s a punk rock band, so here’s the top-of-show prop list for one backstage area:

Backstage prop shelf preset list.