<Excuse the pun in the title please.>
Well today I went in the theater to do some work... It turns out our new houselights were being tied in today... oh god. Don't even get me started on them, they look so bad, I really might shoot myself. Maybe I'll digress and rant: (They took out our incandescent sconces, and replaced them with quite ugly fluros. So our columns are now up-lit, starting from about 5 feet above the balcony level, and it basically just looks bad. These are nondims, and are circuited on our architectural controls. The other new houselights are long strings of fluros, one long string over the HL balcony, one over the HR balcony and one string (parallel to the other strings, perpendicular to the stage) over the center balcony, facing upwards towards the canopy... Now the theater feels top heavy to me, with almost all of our light going up, and no light going directly down. Well, the end result, the balconies now have a lot of even light, but the main audience is like a dim cavern, with lots of shadows. So it's basically a reverse of what we had before. Apparently this are 3,000 kAlvin bulbs, not 2,700 kAlvin. I thought the normal fluro bulbs were in the 5,000 range, not around 2,700 range. Anyways, these still don't look like the right temperature, in fact it all looks off. Plus, dimming? Oh yea this can dim... poorly. They kinda click on and off, at around 5%, not dimming all the way out, and they don't all turn on at once fading up, and again, they "click" on, they don't fade up. So it basically looks terrible. And the maintenance guys left saying "wow, big improvement!" (I think they were referring to the cost of powering fluros vs incandescents.) Anyways, these new strips of fluros are, at least so far, only controllable from the board, and are tied in to existing circuit. For instance, circuit 97, which was my house left catwalk's circuit closest to the stage, now controls a strip of fluros, but you can still plug an instrument in....? Same for a couple additional circuits. Well, they also instructed me today to unplug all of our normal house lighting, about a dozen PAR 56s, circuited to the architectural controls... </digression>
So now I have an additional 12 PAR 56s 500W MFL, as well as our half dozen PAR 64s that I managed to get all into working condition. 4/6 are Lamped as 500W MFL (or WFL, I can't remember), with two 1000W lamps, that are NSP. So It seems like these PAR 64s won't really do much, what with 500W and all. Same for these PAR 56s. To tell you the truth, I can't really think of any use for PARs. I think our issues are mainly that, especially with the 500W, are throw distances are too great, and we have ERSs on the closer AP slots that might otherwise house PARs. I really can't think of much use for this new inflation of PARs. All I can really think of is having an 18 foot tree, with 12 par 56s on it... for some reason... I mean, I suppose it's good if I ever want to create some effect with a lot of matching lights, that are in well enough condition to be put in sight of the audience (3-5 year old altmans, paint is still on, no bumps/dents. They weren't moved from the install until today.) Does anyone have any thoughts, or design tips for these? Can a singular PAR 56 MFL 500W do much? I mean, considering I could easily place an ERS in its stead? (I know its a stupid question: "what can a PAR do?", but we've not much used them before, save a couple 64s as general downlight wash, and now I have about 16 or 18 PARs to find a home for...
Edit: I'm on string of late night stupid posts, oh well.
Well today I went in the theater to do some work... It turns out our new houselights were being tied in today... oh god. Don't even get me started on them, they look so bad, I really might shoot myself. Maybe I'll digress and rant: (They took out our incandescent sconces, and replaced them with quite ugly fluros. So our columns are now up-lit, starting from about 5 feet above the balcony level, and it basically just looks bad. These are nondims, and are circuited on our architectural controls. The other new houselights are long strings of fluros, one long string over the HL balcony, one over the HR balcony and one string (parallel to the other strings, perpendicular to the stage) over the center balcony, facing upwards towards the canopy... Now the theater feels top heavy to me, with almost all of our light going up, and no light going directly down. Well, the end result, the balconies now have a lot of even light, but the main audience is like a dim cavern, with lots of shadows. So it's basically a reverse of what we had before. Apparently this are 3,000 kAlvin bulbs, not 2,700 kAlvin. I thought the normal fluro bulbs were in the 5,000 range, not around 2,700 range. Anyways, these still don't look like the right temperature, in fact it all looks off. Plus, dimming? Oh yea this can dim... poorly. They kinda click on and off, at around 5%, not dimming all the way out, and they don't all turn on at once fading up, and again, they "click" on, they don't fade up. So it basically looks terrible. And the maintenance guys left saying "wow, big improvement!" (I think they were referring to the cost of powering fluros vs incandescents.) Anyways, these new strips of fluros are, at least so far, only controllable from the board, and are tied in to existing circuit. For instance, circuit 97, which was my house left catwalk's circuit closest to the stage, now controls a strip of fluros, but you can still plug an instrument in....? Same for a couple additional circuits. Well, they also instructed me today to unplug all of our normal house lighting, about a dozen PAR 56s, circuited to the architectural controls... </digression>
So now I have an additional 12 PAR 56s 500W MFL, as well as our half dozen PAR 64s that I managed to get all into working condition. 4/6 are Lamped as 500W MFL (or WFL, I can't remember), with two 1000W lamps, that are NSP. So It seems like these PAR 64s won't really do much, what with 500W and all. Same for these PAR 56s. To tell you the truth, I can't really think of any use for PARs. I think our issues are mainly that, especially with the 500W, are throw distances are too great, and we have ERSs on the closer AP slots that might otherwise house PARs. I really can't think of much use for this new inflation of PARs. All I can really think of is having an 18 foot tree, with 12 par 56s on it... for some reason... I mean, I suppose it's good if I ever want to create some effect with a lot of matching lights, that are in well enough condition to be put in sight of the audience (3-5 year old altmans, paint is still on, no bumps/dents. They weren't moved from the install until today.) Does anyone have any thoughts, or design tips for these? Can a singular PAR 56 MFL 500W do much? I mean, considering I could easily place an ERS in its stead? (I know its a stupid question: "what can a PAR do?", but we've not much used them before, save a couple 64s as general downlight wash, and now I have about 16 or 18 PARs to find a home for...
Edit: I'm on string of late night stupid posts, oh well.
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