Some high school theatre upgrades

[x450rider156]

So i graduated from hs last year and was greatly involved with our lighting. We had just upgraded and got a whole new dimmer rack with i believe 192 dimmers. we have an etc 74/144. we also got all new source 4's and pars. we have dmx outputs all over now too. Since we just upgraded and also did sound for this spring show i am trying to get a budget of around 500$. For their fall show we got 2 led uv panels controllable through dmx. I was wondering what some other upgrades we could get on a budget of around 500$. I was looking into led lighting such as led strobes, and pars. I was just wondering some ideas people had that would improve our theater. Any ideas would be great, and sorry for such along post, im new here so i figured i could give some background.

[gcpsoundlight]

Hi There!

For $500, you probably won't be able to get much in the way of LED's, as these are expensive. One option you could try is to go to your local hire company and ask if they have any ex-hire gear for sale. I've seen Mac500's for $250 at these sales. If your school uses the hire company a lot, then you may be able to get a discount. Things like scanners, colour changers, PAR cans and desk's seem to be in endless supply.

Regards,

Gerard Hook
GCP Sound & Lighting
GCP Sound & Lighting

[Les]

How is it that though you graduated last year it's still 'your' theatre? Are you on staff there now, or are you one of those people who just never leaves?

Usually one full rack has 48 modules, or 96 dimmers. Two of these racks would equal 192 dimmers.

For upgrades see the Gafftaper Method.

Welcome to CB!

[x450rider156]

basically one of those kids who never leaves. I was going to work my fall show but im in college right now and were doing our own show. I'm not staff there, but I basically ran anything with lighting while i was there. I want to try and get some dmx lighting just not sure what would be a good upgrade that is useable for more than one show.

[Les]

Originally Posted by x450rider156

basically one of those kids who never leaves. I was going to work my fall show but im in college right now and were doing our own show. I'm not staff there, but I basically ran anything with lighting while i was there. I want to try and get some dmx lighting just not sure what would be a good upgrade that is useable for more than one show.

Gafftaper Method:
Gobo Rotators
Color Scrollers
SeaChangers
Apollo Right Arm
etc...
etc...

For a high school, components like these will be much more useful on a regular basis and will hold up way better than any intelligent light which would require constant care and feeding.

[Footer]

The good old meteor elipscan costs a little over 400. Its not a bad way to go if you want an intro to moving lights. I have programmed these on an express and it is about as much of an automated fixture I that console can easily handle. Having a handful of these things is great thing.

....and yes.... the Rosco icue is a better mirror. Its faster and much quieter. However, it costs 150-200 more per unit and you have to buy a power supply and cable on top of that. If you have the cash to buy the icue, do it... if you don't... the elipscan will suffice.

[x450rider156]

well i was looking into strobes, only becasue we do two battle of the bands a year and few other concerts, the college im at now, we have color scrollers but they are a pita and loud as ever, it may be jsut becasue they are so old but it has given us a head ache. For this show based on my budget i may only be able to buy one or two things.

[rochem]

$500 is a relatively small budget for a purchase. You likely won't be able to find any high-quality LED fixtures for a budget like that. You said you just got a pretty big upgrade, but often (especially in high schools) a full upgrade or install is missing a lot of really useful things. Just basics like tophats, barndoors, cable, and spare lamps. If you want to build a boom or even just put a unit on a floor mount, you don't want to be running orange extension cords thoughout your theatre to wire them up. I've worked in over a dozen high school theatres that had recently gotten upgrades, and toured at least twice that many, and I've never seen a school that had enough cable. A school where I'm doing a show now has over 100 Source Fours, but there are only 13 circuits on each raceway and they don't have a single twofer or stage cable. I'm inclined to recommend that you invest in this very basic stuff: twofers, cable, tophats, barndoors, gobo holders, and so on. It's not as exciting as DMX gear, but you'll get more use out of it.

If you already have a decent inventory of all that, you might want to look into renting instead of purchasing. Since this a budget for this specific show, rather than buying one or two things, it might make more sense to rent a bunch of devices that will provide a specific effect for this show, then return them after the run. Some would say that it's better to slowly invest in new devices until you have a workable number of units, but with a $500/show budget, it would take you many years before you actually had a working number of units that you could build a system with.

[x450rider156]

well we have plenty of cable i know that haha, all our source fours come with gel frames and gobo holders, at the end of my year last year i knew we ordered a bunch of lamps and they were going to order more this fall too,im not exactly how many source fours and pars we have but it is a decent amount, not exactly the amount of citcurts on each elc. i can find out next time im over ther. we have a bunch of trees that we have jsut layin in storage. i want to say we have over a 100 instruments, just becuase i know when we have everything put up it gets tight and circuits become more scarce. i can find a full inventory next time im there. thanks for the help. keep some ideas comming