I went to a college that had a
bit of everything. A good mix of the "Gafftaper method" (which I was pushing like crazy when
Gaff made his purchasing decisions way back when) and a couple of real movers. We also had rentals for the fall dance show. So - when I got there, there were
Apollo and Chroma-Q scrollers, some
Rosco I-Cues, a couple of
gobo rotators (
DMX and non-DMX) and some
GAM Film-FX and 2
strobe caps for Source Fours. There were also 6 Intellabeams and 4
Dataflash AF1000s and the consoles were an Obsession with the moving light designers' remote in the main space and an
Express in the blackbox. I arrived with everything due for an upgrade. Over my time there and in the years time since I've left a lot has changed. There are now
Seachanger washes and profiles, more
Apollo Smart Color scrollers (up to 20 or more now I think?),
DMX irises, more I-Cues, Elation
LED bricks and
LED pars,
Selador VIVID-Rs (they're getting more of those soon), and all manner of
power supplies,
DMX optos, new cable and other stuff to go along with that. There are now 2 IONs + RPU in the main space and an
Element in the blackbox. There's a HOG PC interface as well, and the
Express exists as a backup.
Every year that I was there, the department rented 4 VL3000 Spots for the fall/winter dance production. In the past they've rented other lights - VL1000s, Cyberlights, Studio Spots, but the VL3000s were rented 5 years in a row because they provided the features we wanted for the dance productions. The
zoom range was the most important.
As to the topic at
hand: 4 moving lights is a perfectly reasonable inventory for a college to have. I don't see lots of movers being a good idea but a couple of movers are very useful. If my college hadn't had movers I wouldn't have had experience opening them up and troubleshooting them, I wouldn't have had to think about all of the move-in-black stuff that has to happen and I wouldn't have understood the real value of a true moving light
desk. I wouldn't have learned about palettes and how to set up
preset focuses and why half-colors in the color wheel are awesome and how to allow time for this function to kick in before bringing the light up to full and all that stuff. I would get 4 MAC700 Profiles. MAC700 Profiles are some of the most bulletproof fixtures on the market right now, and it's very easy to open the light up and show students what's going on. You can also easily rent more in most places if you want to expand for a show, and you can put metal gobos in them (unlike V*Ls) so you can get customs for a lot cheaper than V*Ls. The
zoom range is decent and the
stock gobos, especially the static wheel, provide some decent options for
theatre as far as breakups go. There is also the animation wheel which provides for great layering effects with the static or rotating gobos. So I'd get 4 MAC700s and immediately change out half the gobos for customs that you put on the order.
Stock the fixtures with your favorite breakups from your favorite manufacturers, since just about anyone will make gobos for a MAC700. Get extra gobos for the fixtures that you will rent to increase your inventory from time to time. The MAC700 is a true proven standard that isn't going anywhere any time soon. They are incredibly stable and have a great feature set.
You should also look at LEDs. I think that the way to go these days for theater, after seeing just about everybody and their brother bring through two or three variants of their
LED strips at the place I work now, is the
Chroma Q Color Force series. RGBA and my does the amber look lovely. The color range is mind-blowing for an RGBA
fixture and the amber and blue diodes are what make this
fixture. Anyone can have an RGBA
fixture but almost no other RGBA
fixture can touch the colors that these babies can. I love being able to hit the low 50s of
Rosco colors with just blue and amber. Makes for a gorgeous lavender.
Chroma Q Color Force is also what your students will see in the field as things turn over in rental houses. 4wall has been switching out to Color Force over the Color Kinetics range.
As far as consoles go, the
ION is a great choice. Make sure to get 2 touchscreens with the
console. The ELO 19 inch ones are the ones to get. If you want MA, get a 2port Pro
node so you have 2 universes, get a touchscreen PC, a Behringer BCF 2000, an X-Keys and a
MIDI button interface of some sort (Looks like the Akai APC-40 is nice) and use that. Set it up in a light lab and if you want to really have fun get a couple of ADJ Vio-scans (concert folks, think mini Nova Flower that's a scanner instead of a moving head and has an
LED source), some Blizzard Flurry Tri washes, some Blizzard Q6As, some Chauvet COLORrails (to learn MA
pixel mapping) and some Chauvet Q-spot 260 LEDs. Say 4 of each. BAM, concert light lab. I would have LOVED to have something like that to learn on in college.