Whenever someone uses our cabling they must learn how to properly handle it, or already know how. We will charge for the full replacement costs of any cables that are damaged, and multicore cable can be extremely expensive.
This means properly winding and unwinding cables. Handling them properly during use, as well as returning them properly stowed. Not twisting, kinking, stretching, straining, knotting them, or otherwise mangling them. To stop cables unravelling during transport, strap them with tie-ropes or tape, do not tie knots in the cable.
If wrangling a cable for someone who's currently using it, such as microphone leads and camera cables, as they move about, you must leave them slack so they don't get snagged, you must take up the excess slack so they don't get caught up in it as they move back towards you. Do not coil it, do not wrap it around your arm. Figure-eight it on the floor, or into one hand.
A coiled wire is virtually the same as if you'd removed a cable drum and left the wiring in place, as if it were still wrapped around the drum (like a coiled spring). It's usually the first way people learn to wind up a short microphone lead without turning it in tangled up mess (twisting the cable into a loop, as you coil on top of itself, so the cable lays in it's natural shape). But this method will turn any cable longer than a few metres into a tangled mess, as every time you twist the cable, it travels along the wire. And the more you wind, the more twists you put on top of twists. To unwind this cable, you have to untangle it as you unwind it, or it needs to be unspooled from a drum. This technique should only done with short cables (e.g. cables that are under five metres long), longer cables should be over-and-undered, or figure-eighted.
To compactly wind up any cable, and not leave it in a tangled condition, it should be over-and-undered, and both ends should be completely disconnected while doing this. It is sort-of similar to coiling a wire, but every second loop has the cable turned around the other way, so that the cable has no twists in it, over-all, when unwound.
This is the simplest, and quickest, method to stow a cable. It can be done while still connected, at both ends, as no twisting is done to the cable. It's simply picked up and piled on top of itself, in a figure-eight fashion. And can be unstowed, from either end, by just pulling the cable off the pile, in the same direction that it orginally came from. For these reasons, you'll find the excess lengths of (in-use) camera cables stashed in a figure-eight fashion around studio floors.
If a camera or floor assistant has to keep cables tidy in a middle of a production, so that equipment can be moved around without cables getting in the way, it'll usually be done by figure-eighting the cable.