The AV Preproduction Checklist

How to use this checklist

Preproduction is the work that turns a show from a plan into a build. Skip a phase and you don't save the time, you move it to show day, where every problem costs ten times more and gets solved in front of the client. Work the phases in order; each one feeds the next. Every item below carries a one-line why, because a checklist you can't defend against a producer's schedule is a checklist that gets cut.

The whole checklist is on this page. If you want it as a working file to adapt per show, grab the CSV version from the free template library, no email required for that either.

Phase 1, At booking: lock the scope before you spec anything

The cheapest problems to fix are the ones that never make it into the contract. Before design starts:

1. Lock the scope in writing, rooms, sessions, show dates, rehearsal time, and what "AV" actually covers on this job. *Why: scope discovered at load-in gets paid for out of your margin.*
2. Build the deliverables list, program record? ISO records? Live stream, and to how many destinations? Post-event file handoff, in what format? *Why: deliverables drive the system design, not the other way around.*
3. Agree who provides what, house rig vs. your rig, power distro, network, rigging, screens, backline. Put it in a two-column list with names attached. *Why: "the venue has a projector" is a rumor, not a spec.*
4. Request the venue tech pack and house patch documentation. *Why: it decides half your gear list before you draw a single line.*
5. Flag long-lead items now, LED wall, rigging motors, specialty subrentals, anything crossing a border. *Why: the gear you can't get is a design constraint, and you want to know it in week one, not week six.*
6. Name the decision-makers, who on the client side can approve a change order, and who on your side owns the design. *Why: shows stall on "let me check with someone" more than on gear.*

Phase 2, Site survey and venue advance

The advance is the information exchange with the venue; the survey is the physical walk that verifies it. Bring a tape measure, a camera, and a healthy distrust of floor plans dated more than a year ago.

1. Power, where company power lands, the service size and connector type, and the cable distance from there to your positions. *Why: the run you didn't measure is the feeder you didn't bring.*
2. Rigging points, locations, rated capacities, and who is allowed to rig in this building. *Why: rigging rules decide whether your wall flies or ground-stacks, which changes the whole design.*
3. Measure the load-in path, dock height, door widths *and* heights, elevator car dimensions and weight limit, every corridor turn between truck and stage. *Why: one case that doesn't fit re-plans your entire truck pack.*
4. House tie-ins, house PA feed points and formats, lighting power and DMX handoff, house network drops and any patch between them and your positions. *Why: every tie-in you confirm now is an adapter mystery you don't solve on a ladder later.*
5. Dock schedule, your load-in and load-out windows, who else shares the dock, and where trucks park between. *Why: two vendors and one dock is a scheduling problem; discovering it on the day is a labor bill.*
6. Labor rules, union jurisdiction, who touches what, minimum calls, meal penalties, and steward contact. *Why: labor rules are budget lines; learning them at load-in means learning them at penalty rates.*
7. Internet, ask for dedicated, hardwired bandwidth for any stream, with the drop location and the guaranteed rate in writing. Size the ask from your encoder's bitrate with generous headroom, and test the actual drop during the survey if you can. *Why: venue Wi-Fi is shared with a thousand phones, and "the internet was slow" is not an acceptable stream post-mortem.*
8. Photograph everything, power rooms, rigging steel, dock, FOH position, ceiling. *Why: the photo you take in five minutes settles a dozen design arguments later.*

Phase 3, System design: draw the system, derive the paperwork

Design produces the document set your crew builds from. The order matters: draw the signal flow first, then derive everything else from the drawing. Documents produced independently drift apart; documents derived from one source can't disagree.

1. Draw the signal flow port-to-port, every device, every connection landing on a named port, signal direction explicit. The method is in how to create an AV signal-flow diagram. *Why: port-level drawing is where missing converters and over-subscribed inputs surface while they're still cheap.*
2. Pull the gear list from the drawing, every device on the diagram, plus the cases, stands, and accessories that carry it. *Why: gear lists written from memory forget the glue, DAs, converters, the audio embedder nobody thinks of as equipment.*
3. Build the cable schedule from the drawn connections, every run with an ID, both endpoints, type, and length. Method: how to build a cable schedule. *Why: the cable schedule is the build instruction sheet; without it, load-in runs on tribal knowledge.*
4. Write the IP schedule for networked rigs, addresses, subnets, and VLANs for every networked device, resolved before the shop, not at FOH. Method: how to create an IP schedule. *Why: two devices shipping with the same static address will find each other on show day.*
5. Draw the rack elevations, front and rear, RU-accurate, with internal patching documented. Method: how to design an AV rack elevation. *Why: a rack built from a drawing gets built once; a rack built from vibes gets rebuilt at the venue.*
6. Assemble the tech pack, diagram, gear list, cable schedule, IP schedule, and rack views collected into one issued, versioned packet for the crew.

Phase 4, Crew and logistics

1. Write the positions list first, then name the people, engineer, A1, A2, V1, LED tech, stagehands, with call times per day. *Why: hiring positions keeps coverage honest; hiring "three techs" keeps it vague.*
2. Issue per-position paperwork, each chair gets the documents for that chair: the A1 gets the audio paths and patch, the LED tech gets the wall plan, everyone gets the contact sheet. *Why: a 40-page packet nobody reads protects nobody; five relevant pages get read.*
3. Book travel, hotels, and per diems against the call sheet, not against the show dates. *Why: the crew call starts before the show does, and the flight that lands mid-load-in helps no one.*
4. Coordinate local labor with the venue steward, call sizes, start times, and skills, confirmed in writing. *Why: the steward heard "four hands at eight" differently than you said it.*
5. Publish the contact sheet, every name, role, and cell number, on one page. *Why: on show day, the person who can fix it is only useful if you can reach them in thirty seconds.*

Phase 5, The week before: bench-test, freeze, pack

1. Bench-test the full signal path in the shop, real devices, real cables, patched per the cable schedule, signal verified end to end. *Why: a rack that first powers up at the venue is a rack you're troubleshooting at the venue.*
2. Declare a firmware freeze, update everything now or update nothing, but decide, record versions, and stop. *Why: show week is not update week; new firmware means new behavior, and you want zero new behavior.*
3. Label every case, contents and destination position, readable from ten feet. *Why: load-in speed is mostly cases arriving at the right spot without anyone asking.*
4. Build the spares kit against failure impact, not gear count, the single-point-of-failure converter earns a spare before the fifth identical camera does. *Why: spares exist to keep the show on, not to duplicate the inventory.*
5. Pack the truck in reverse load-in order, first thing needed on site goes in last. *Why: power and rigging can't wait politely behind forty cases of drape.*
6. Issue the tech pack to the crew, final revision, before anyone travels. *Why: paperwork handed out at load-in gets skimmed; paperwork sent early gets read, and the questions arrive while you can still act on them.*

Phase 6, Show day: sequence, check, record

1. Load in against the sequence, power and rigging first, then racks and positions, then cable runs, then devices, in the order the plan says. *Why: sequence is what stops sixty tasks from becoming one traffic jam.*
2. Line-check every path from the cable schedule, signal at every destination, checked off run by run, not "looks good from here." *Why: the schedule is only a safety net if someone actually walks it.*
3. Verify backups by failing over to them, kill the primary stream encoder, pull the main feed, and watch the backup take it. *Why: a backup you've never failed over to is a rumor with a power cable.*
4. Mark up the as-built as changes happen, every re-patch, swap, and venue surprise recorded on the drawing while it's fresh. *Why: tomorrow's troubleshooting and the next show at this venue both start from this markup.*
5. Strike against the gear list, every line checked back onto the truck. *Why: gear doesn't get lost at shows; it gets lost at strikes.*

That's the full loop: the as-built markups from phase six become the starting truth for the next event, and the checklist starts again at phase one, with better numbers than last time. For the document set this checklist keeps referring to, see the tech pack guide in the related articles below, and the preproduction workflow guide for how the phases map onto a WireFlow project.

Frequently asked questions

How far in advance should AV preproduction start?

Scale sets the clock. Small corporate one-dayers commonly get a few weeks; multi-room conferences and anything with an LED wall or significant rigging commonly need a couple of months, mostly for long-lead gear and venue coordination. The honest answer is that preproduction starts at booking, phase one is contract-time work no matter the show size.

What should an AV site survey checklist include?

Power (location, service, distance), rigging points and rules, the measured load-in path including door and elevator dimensions, house tie-ins for PA, lighting, and network, the dock schedule, labor rules, and the internet drop for any stream. Photograph all of it, the survey's value is the arguments it settles later.

What's the difference between a production advance and a site survey?

The advance is the whole information exchange with the venue, tech packs, schedules, labor rules, dock windows, usually over calls and email. The site survey is the physical walk that verifies the advance told you the truth. Small shows sometimes run on advance alone; you're trading certainty for convenience, and the trade goes bad exactly once per venue.

Can I skip the bench test if the gear worked on the last show?

The gear didn't change; the system did. A bench test verifies this show's signal path, this patch, these formats, this firmware set, not the general health of the inventory. If the system is genuinely identical to the last show, the bench test is fast, which is the best argument for still doing it.

Where can I get this checklist as a file?

The CSV version is in the free template library at /templates, alongside the cable schedule and IP schedule templates. No email address required, adapt it per show and make it yours.

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