A new PAC

[MarshallPope]

So, today I went to the first show (The Wiz) in my old high school's brand-new PAC. A few thoughts:

There are only 1061 seats, but 1600 students. How does this make sense?

Fluorescent house lights. Again, who thought of this? The fixtures look nice. 4" tubes pointing down. But WHY are there not dimmable incandescents in them? I cringed each time the lights were turned off and the (100?) fixtures flickered off.

The video production sound board was positioned at the back of the orchestra section. For light, they had a chunky LED flashlight on a mic stand. Made me laugh.

Sound: Ugh. I'm not sure if it was the system or an idiot at the board, but it was impossible to understand a good bit of the songs. WAY too much distorted midrange.

Mics taped to faces. My new pet peeve.

Fly system: Double purchase with 5 or 6 motorized linesets. I'm assuming that they are for the electrics, but I have yet to go up to the flyrail to check it out. When the Emerald City gates came in, the batten was visible. I'm not sure if there just wasn't enough fly space or what.

Orchestra pit lift. I'm jealous. Period. I wish my university PAC had one... that would save so much work...

Lighting: Ion system with 2 fader wings. I was only able to briefly look at it. The lighting for the show was decent, but I definitely expected more flash for the premier production.

Floor Pockets: More than enough. Along the cyc line, there are 7 boxes, each with 3 stage pins, DMX on some, 2 XLR's, and 2 edisons. There are quite a few clearcom outlets backstage, at video camera positions, at auditorium entrances, etc.


-In case anyone is interested, here is the grand opening press release. I highly doubt the "115 moving light fixtures throughout the theatre space" so I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is, but anyway...
...LINK...


Anyway, just a few thoughts. I am going to see the show again tomorrow, so I'm sure I will have a few more thoughts...

 

[ajb]

I hear you on the house lights. We have a bizarre mix of incandescent and fluorescent, so you get a nice, smooth fade from 100% to about 50% then the fluorescents drop out, and another nice smooth fade as the incandescents finish. Going from 0-full is even worse. It's on our list of things to fix.

Of course the problem is the pressure from green building initiatives to cut energy usage, but there's not yet a technology that represents a good balance between output, efficiency, and controllability. Until LED fixtures come way down the $/lumen scale, I suspect we'll continue to see fluorescent house light systems.

 

[tjrobb]

Lutron makes some ballasts that dim to ~3% that should help that problem... if you can run a third wire for the ballast. The 2-wire (retrofit) ballasts only go to 10% IIRC. Either way, it sounds like 10 would be better than 50.

If a re-ballast is out of the question, I know Sensor dimmers (and maybe others, I only work with Sensor) can change the dimmer curve so you may be able to add a custom dimming range wherein the fluorescents don't cut out quite as strangely. Perhaps something a la 50 = 0.

 

[cprted]

Sound: Ugh. I'm not sure if it was the system or an idiot at the board, but it was impossible to understand a good bit of the songs. WAY too much distorted midrange.

95% of the time its the knob behind the knobs.

Mics taped to faces. My new pet peeve.

When done well, its not so bad. When done badly ... yeah, its nasty ...

 

[avkid]

Mics taped to faces. My new pet peeve.

Why is that?

 

[MarshallPope]

On some people, it looks alright, except for the occasional reflection on the tape. On other skin tones and makeup colors, however, it just really stands out to me.

On another note - this high school theatre has around 80 s4's and around 40 s4 pars, all new.

 

[GrayeKnight]

Yeah, i'm not a big fan of taping faces because no matter how many times you show the person how to do it, they always end up using too much and it stands out. Hah.

I would die to have that many lights. Our lekos and fresnels (the only lights that we actually have in our space and don't rent) are Strand from 1989.

 

[chris325]

A 1061 seat auditorium for a 1600 student school seems more than big enough. My school has a 650 seat auditorium (built in 2001) for a 2000 student school.

It's funny to think how the school board actually considered building a 2000 seat theatre for a school that had under 1000 students at the time.

 

[MNicolai]

A 1061 seat auditorium for a 1600 student school seems more than big enough. My school has a 650 seat auditorium (built in 2001) for a 2000 student school.

It's funny to think how the school board actually considered building a 2000 seat theatre for a school that had under 1000 students at the time.

The high school I went to built a 755-seat PAC for a 1500-student school. The reason behind that was so they could fit roughly half of the school in the venue at a time, so should they have wanted to have an assembly that couldn't be had in the field house, they could have done it in two sittings. This was by far the most practical way for them to go.

The community just can't support a larger venue. Think about it, how would you feel as a performer if each time you walked out on stage, over half of the seating was empty? That's about where we are right now. Most events bring in about 200-350 people while the community gets used to the having regularly scheduled events there. (The PAC is one-year old.) Some events get into the 600's. and I think only once have I seen a full house, which was for a community choir concert that had over 150 people on stage alone as part of the opening gala.

Having too much seating has more work to it than it seems. If your area can't support the number of seats you have, events become awkward. Performers get self-conscious, patrons feel like the venue is failing, and at the end of each night, house staff have to clean the entire space because even though there were only 1000 people, they still spread out their ticket stubs and miscellaneous trash across a room built for 2000.

Also, when you increase seating capacity you also have to increase bathroom size, lobby size, the number of fire exits, the number of box office staff members, and so on. Plus you're talking about more parking, and having to have more house staff on each night. It's not as simple as having an extra 500 seats in your venue. And as long as you support walk-ups, you have to guess ahead of time how many staff members you'll need for a given night, be it enough for 500 patrons, or enough for 1600 patrons.

I'd rather have just enough seating for the events that take place and occasionally full houses rather than have a larger seating capacity with a half-filled house every night.

Also, I wouldn't be too jealous of the pit lifts. When our venue was built, they weighed the pro's and cons and chose to not go with a pit lift. The reason being, we'd only use it a couple times a year, but it would cost several hundred thousand dollars extra to build and install. Versus going with pit covers, it just wasn't practical to install a lift system. Even as is, we have a laundry list of capital projects which cost anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000, all of which are very important for the facility to function, but none of which include a pit lift system.

Some things seem a lot more important when a building is being designed and built, that actually just aren't that valuable when the building is made functional. I'll take a strong electrical infrastructure with extra dimmers and circuits all over the place over having a pit lift system. For that matter, I'd even just prefer having extra mic cables over that.

 

[museav]

I have to agree a bit with Mike, it could well be due to it being a new facility that they are still learning but some of the comments make me hope this is not a facility that is long on style and short on substance or unable to be used to its full potential. The press release is typical in that it focuses on the stuff and not the function or operation. Having a nice facility (one press release put the initial estimated cost for this new performing arts center at ten million dollars) is great but having the people who can bring out its full potential for both performance and education takes any facility to an entirely different level.

 

[SHARYNF]

I think it is a mistake to ONLY look at the size of the school when deciding the size of the PAC. This is a common mistake. Look at the size of the community and the competing venues. If the community can support it then a larger capacity makes sense. with proper management of a balcony structure, smaller attending events can be limited to the first level seating, and the balcony's closed off. Someone needs to go thru the calculations re the types of outside events that could be staged there, and the ticket price/tickets potential sold and look at it that way.

This of course assumes that the PAC will be for a community, it it will be ONLY used for school events than the School becomes the potential market, vs if the entire community is the market.

Adding the space in the initial design is far far less expensive than a future attempt to expand, which typically is impossible.

I have heard the argument re we only get 150 people for our events so why do we need a 1000 seat facility, and no one has look at WHY there are only 150 people in attendance, it is because the current facility is a gym and people are being asked to sit on bleachers or portable chairs, is it due to horrible acoustics that the only people willing to attend are those that "have to"

I guess I am saying, this is also a marketing decision, and it is important to really look at the "market"

Sharyn

 

[teqniqal]

Of course the problem is the pressure from green building initiatives to cut energy usage, but there's not yet a technology that represents a good balance between output, efficiency, and controllability. Until LED fixtures come way down the $/lumen scale, I suspect we'll continue to see fluorescent house light systems.

Shouldn't have to wait - they are available now. They only cost about 2x-3x of what a good incandescent houselight fixture costs, and when you figure you don't have to change the bulb for 20-25 years, the labor savings alone pay for the difference, not to mention the energy savings over 20-25 years. Absolutely no excuse to not do it right.

Sorry to hear that they put in switched fluorescent lights - such awful aesthetic for a theatre with a bazillion automated lights.

 

[museav]

Shouldn't have to wait - they are available now. They only cost about 2x-3x of what a good incandescent houselight fixture costs, and when you figure you don't have to change the bulb for 20-25 years, the labor savings alone pay for the difference, not to mention the energy savings over 20-25 years. Absolutely no excuse to not do it right.

Sorry to hear that they put in switched fluorescent lights - such awful aesthetic for a theatre with a bazillion automated lights.

This could be one of those "you have to have been there" situations where a policy or decision by others dictated what was done. I have worked with a number of school district's and school boards where doing things a defined way or doing what was done at existing schools overrode doing it in the manner that made the most sense for the application. For quite some time my local county school district's general school construction guidelines were also applied to any new performing arts facilities, leading to facilities that met the school district's facility standards but that were less than ideal from a users' perspective. If you deviated from the established design standards to try to make things better for the users, the reviewers would direct you to comply with the standards, that was their job.

 

[MNicolai]

I don't know; there's never really a good excuse to have fluorescent house lights, and maybe I'm just lucky to work with an awesome district electrician, but even he would readily step in and complain if someone had tried to install fluorescent lights in our new arts center.

Brad -- is there a point where in a position like you've described, you have wanted to, or maybe actually did, say "I think you're policies are going to make this an awful project and as such, I cannot have my, or my company's, name be attached to this in any way?"

That question is one I always ponder, because I know I've had a few moments where I've prepared myself to say that. I never actually have because usually the situations have been resolved other ways, but I'd like to know if anyone who works as a design consultant ever feels compelled to do that.

I was talking with one of our audio installers several months ago who told me that times are tough, but they aren't desperate for money. They won't lower their quality of design as a result of someone wanting to value engineer a project. That doesn't mean they won't reach compromises or be reasonable, but they would not allow themselves to be attached to a project if it started to look like the end product was going to be painful to the end user. That installer followed that up by saying, "I do what I do because I like it. I take pride in it. If we were to look at a project and determined it wasn't something we would be happy with afterwards, we would either modify it or drop it altogether."

 

[museav]

Brad -- is there a point where in a position like you've described, you have wanted to, or maybe actually did, say "I think you're policies are going to make this an awful project and as such, I cannot have my, or my company's, name be attached to this in any way?"

Wanted to say it, many times. Actually said it, a few. When you do say it, you can also usually say goodbye to that Client from then on as well as potentially to others, all of whom you may have been able to help in some way.

It is a difficult position. It is a fact that for a school it is the administration, school board, archdiocese, Board of Regents, etc. that are the actual Owner. Typically part of your responsibility is to follow the Owner's direction, it is their facility and they define what it is. At the same time, you have an obligation to protect the Owner and apply good judgment. The problem is that for many of the theatre and performing arts aspects of a building there are no defined Standards or industry practice to reference when the direction received conflicts with your judgment. There is NEC and NFPA and AHSRAE and other industry accepted standards that apply to some aspects but for most aspects of theatre tech systems you can't really reference any specific ANSI/ISO Standard or published industry standards. Thus most of what is offered by theatre Consultants, no matter how well based, is actually an opinion and when the Owner's directives conflict with what is simply an opinion, it is difficult to defend not following the directives. You are typically under contract to provide a scope of work when such issues arise, so there is often not much you can really offer as a legitimate basis of refusal without violating your contract (although that depends on the terms of your Contract).

If you feel that the direction provided is so ill advised then you can make the ethical decision to walk away. However, the sad fact is that not only will you then assume the effort and stigma of terminating a contract (and possibly legally considered without cause), but it also probably won't help anything while you might still be able to provide some benefit to the project. Sometimes I simply have to step back and resign myself to the fact that potentially providing some benefit is still better than nothing.

The one argument that I have used is that in regards to actual design, I am responsible for the results of my work and thus I must be able to design as I see fit. An Owner may be able to direct me to provide results that I disagree with but how I achieve those results must be in my control. If an Owner defines some expected results and then also provides direction that I feel potentially precludes achieving those results, then that's where I feel that I have to draw a line. I have more than once stated in writing to a Client that either they can design it or I can, but that I cannot take liability for what is in effect their design. So far that seems to have been enough of a wake-up call to get things back on track.

Another aspect is that I have had schools simply not proceed with my design and either modify it or ignore it completely. Not much I can do there either. Where the design relates to code, ordinances, etc. and has to be stamped, permitted and so on then the design has to be implemented but nothing makes an Owner implement what is designed in regards to many tech systems or elements of the building design. The worst case was one Owner that in response to a VE suggestion from the General Contractor revised the balcony seating in a manner that caused major sightline problems. We informed them in writing of the potential problems but that in no way prevented them from implementing the changes. Ironically, it also did not prevent them from suing us, at the General Contractor's suggestion, when they eventually encountered the very problems we had documented that we believed they would encounter. It literally became a situation of their claiming us to be at fault for damages incurred from their not following our recommendations. I've actually been in similar situations several times, none went to court and all were resolved in our favor but all of them took time and effort to resolve.

 

[chris325]

650 seats works just fine for our space. We do sell out occasionally, particularly on rentals, but certainly not often enough to warrant any new seating. We've never had too much of an issue finding box office staff as this is a high school environment and there are always students ushering, etc.