CuePoints is a brand-new software for creatives developed by TPi Breakthrough Talent Award winner, Morgan Evans and Matt Peel. Having been championed by several industry practitioners, including TPi Award winners, Tim Routledge, James Scott and Ed Warren, the software can be used to plan, timecode and programme projects as well as share timings and communicate ideas with others on the production team.
CuePoints was born through Morgan Evans’ personal working frustration with not having tailor-made software to help him break down music tracks when planning lighting designs.
Evans wanted to create something that made it simple to share ideas and precise timings with others. He joined forces with Matt Peel, an industry software developer, during the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when they both had time to devote to kick-starting and developing the project.
“Once we had a first working prototype, we worked with programmers and designers to trial it in the field to gain feedback and make improvements. As COVID-19 restrictions began to ease and more projects started happening, our Beta testers started using the CuePoints software on live events and TV productions,” Evans explained.
“This in-the-field feedback was vital to shaping the software to what it is today. CuePoints development has filled all our spare time around our industry work. Both of our day jobs have given us professional insight into how this app will be useful to creatives working in theatre, live events and television.”
Targeted feedback from high-profile industry creatives has been vital to the shaping of the app and encouraged CuePoints creators to add new features to widen its functionality.
“Lighting Programmer, Tom Young’s feedback was particularly useful to us, as he used CuePoints while lighting BBC 1’s flagship show Strictly Come Dancing in 2021, and encouraged the other creatives in the video team to use it too, so that their designs could work in perfect sync,” Evans said.
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As a design associate working on live music events, Evans harnesses CuePoints on a daily basis to quickly drop in tracks and add cue breakdowns. The software also has the option to generate timecode for pre-programming and can export the cues to MA Lighting MA2 and MA3.
Lighting Programmer, Tom Young shared his thoughts on CuePoints: “The great thing about CuePoints is that it’s a piece of software designed by industry professionals for industry professionals, so has been developed with total knowledge of what we do across a variety of genres,” he said.
“This means you can use it for very quick and simple cue breakdowns, if you just need a basic cue structure, or you can really go to town when doing a timecode show and break down every last detail and import it all as a separate event.”
Live music concerts are becoming increasingly technically advanced with greater dependence on frame accurate timecode. “CuePoints software is not just designed for lighting professionals, other specialists such as pyrotechnicians and video designers also find it difficult to communicate their timings for productions and live events,” Evans stated.
“With CuePoints, we have found a way to bring all these disciplines together and get everyone working from the same set of timings. It’s vital for creatives to have the ability to sync their work with everyone else.”
This article originally appeared in issue #268 of TPi, which you can read here.
