Doug Lowthian
Active Member
New and learning fast. Question summarized. Have some money to spend and looikng to add lights.
The venue; A community center used by many groups for many purposes. Building itself is a three story WPA built structure from 1935. Auditorium seats 1000 with 400 of those seats in the balcony. Town used to be a lot larger; lucky if we can get 300 people for any given show.
Stage is a basketball court. Seriously, it is! Most of the time it is used as a gym for basketball, open gym etc. When we have a show we pull around an enormous background curtain and side curtains that creates an acting area 50 feet wide by 25 feet deep. Our back stage area is twice that size; lots of room for sets and actors!
Lights currently consist of 8 ancient 750 watt ellipsoidal, mounted on balcony front in four sets of two; 3 electrics over the stage with 20 ChauvetDJ Pars LED on each bar for a total of 60.
Occasionally we flip things around, close the front curtain, open the background curtain and put the audience on the stage, using risers to create flexible sized and configured stages. We can seat 200 for a dinner theater at tables or 350 in rows of folding chairs like this.
We have a ETC Element light board with all lights set up for wireless control allowing us to move the light board anywhere we want it.
We have typically about 5-6000 to spend a year on gear and I'd like to add to our light inventory.
Thinking a couple of Source 4 ellipsoidal that we can mount on the stage (behind the audience) for when we configure that way. Other ideas: a number of white fresnels (I don't think the LED PARs really do a bright white) some side lighting from ladders or other from the wings (would have to be set up for shows and removed for basketball)
Any other ideas? I realize this might be better with photos. Will post some tomorrow.
Thanks in advance
The venue; A community center used by many groups for many purposes. Building itself is a three story WPA built structure from 1935. Auditorium seats 1000 with 400 of those seats in the balcony. Town used to be a lot larger; lucky if we can get 300 people for any given show.
Stage is a basketball court. Seriously, it is! Most of the time it is used as a gym for basketball, open gym etc. When we have a show we pull around an enormous background curtain and side curtains that creates an acting area 50 feet wide by 25 feet deep. Our back stage area is twice that size; lots of room for sets and actors!
Lights currently consist of 8 ancient 750 watt ellipsoidal, mounted on balcony front in four sets of two; 3 electrics over the stage with 20 ChauvetDJ Pars LED on each bar for a total of 60.
Occasionally we flip things around, close the front curtain, open the background curtain and put the audience on the stage, using risers to create flexible sized and configured stages. We can seat 200 for a dinner theater at tables or 350 in rows of folding chairs like this.
We have a ETC Element light board with all lights set up for wireless control allowing us to move the light board anywhere we want it.
We have typically about 5-6000 to spend a year on gear and I'd like to add to our light inventory.
Thinking a couple of Source 4 ellipsoidal that we can mount on the stage (behind the audience) for when we configure that way. Other ideas: a number of white fresnels (I don't think the LED PARs really do a bright white) some side lighting from ladders or other from the wings (would have to be set up for shows and removed for basketball)
Any other ideas? I realize this might be better with photos. Will post some tomorrow.
Thanks in advance