I'm "double-posting" a tip here that I posted over on the Vegas Pro forum, because a lot of you probably don't check the Pro forum, and because there are probably a lot of "moms and dads" here that tape school plays, musicals, concerts, etc.

Once a year, I tape our high school's musical production. I have a camera on each side of the main aisle at the back of the auditorium -- wide shot and close-up -- and I tend both. Entry to the auditorium is from the back, with a center aisle and an aisle along the back wall and the perimeter. People constantly entering or exiting the darkened auditorium always made be nervous about a tripod being bumped.

A couple years ago I hit upon the idea of clamping a battery powered LED book light (reading light) on the tripod legs or spreader, pointing down at the floor about 2ft up. It creates a pool of light on the floor, clearly "marking your territory", without really lighting up anything else. It also provides convenient lighting to kneel down to during scene changes to check the program and see what scene is coming up next.

I don't know if using LED book lights this way is already standard practice -- maybe lots of people already do this -- but I've never seen it mentioned here so I figured I'd share it.