athletics director

jobot37

Member
he's out to get us! every show that has been done in my school (since i started working on them) has involved the athletics director screwing with our sound gear, he either moves it or dismatles it and we have to put it all back together in the precious few hours in between when school gets out and when the show starts, one time, he had moved the cart that contained the sound board and the amps and CD player, not a big surprise, but then when we find him and ask him where he put it, he claims he "can't because he has to go watch the soccer game" so we ask him if he can just TELL us where he put it, he still claims to be utterly pressed for time because he needs to watch the soccer game, hes not coaching it or anything, he just feels he needs to watch or else he will shrivel up and die unless he gets to the game in the next 2 and a half seconds, so he runs away, and it takes two hours to finally find the bloody thing, and it gets set up and working in an hour, but we still had to do mic checks right before the curtain went up, but hey, another victory for the drama kids....(this post was written with he collective "we")
 
Does he have any part in the productions at all? Essentially, if he is not involved, then he should not be touching the equipment without approval from someone who is responsible for the equipment.

Sounds like your teacher/supervisor needs to have a quiet word with him and if need be, the principle.

Unfortunately, there is very little that you can do yourself, other than in bringing it to the attention of your teacher.
 
Mayhem said:
Does he have any part in the productions at all? Essentially, if he is not involved, then he should not be touching the equipment without approval from someone who is responsible for the equipment.

Sounds like your teacher/supervisor needs to have a quiet word with him and if need be, the principle.

Unfortunately, there is very little that you can do yourself, other than in bringing it to the attention of your teacher.
o trust me, he wil NEVER be involved in any productiions, he has no right to be touching the sound equipment, the director has had words with him on several occasions, and the principal just looks the other way
 
jobot37 said:
the principal just looks the other way

Then it needs to be documented every time it happens and a formal submission made to the principal. If this continues to be ignored, then perhaps the director needs to suggest to the principal that he (the director) takes it to the district super if nothing is done.
 
The problem is with most schools there is a big fight between athletics and drama. At my school it is a quiet fight. Even though we take up half of their gym, we still try to keep them with space to play (try, sometimes we just can't, like when I need to hang lights on the basket ball hoops, which are very nice positions). At my school the rubbing shoulders are just quiet words whispered to others of the same department(I was standing next to 2 gym people, and they were talking about how we should just do all of our shows in room 15, the room with a stage thats about 8x10 feet, I tried to point this out to them, but they wouldn't listen). We are not notified when there is an out-of-school group coming in to use the gym at the same time that we are in a rehearsal for example. We (drama department) told the athletic department to get us his schedule, and they never did. The incident I am thinking about was when a guy came in twice a week with a small basketball group. After attempting to get word through to the athletic department, we just talked to him ourselves. He was very nice, and we worked it out by ourselves.

If your athletic department is doing something to blatantly hurt your shows, such as moving equipment and taking apart stuff, and your principle doesn't know, I would say threaten him to go to the district. Of corse, I don't mean you, but get your tech guy, or your director, who ever happens to be in-charge of the shows to threaten to take the problem to the district. That should wake up your principle. If he still doesn't do anything, then go to the district.

The hard part about high school theater is all of the politics around everything, which is the thing that drives me crazy. You need to be careful about everything you do, and everything you say. You can not do anything to 'out there' like do something to hurt another department. What your athletic director did was just that, but respond with something carefully planed. However, I would suggest going to the district.

That, and whenever they have there big athletic awards ceremony at the end of the year, don't do anything for them at all. Don't give them lights, don't turn on the sound, and (if you have one) don't raise the front curtain. That should give them reason to respect you. Just say 'oh, i'm sorry, I don't know where the amps, dimmers, and ropes are, sorry, i've gotta go watch a play" and walk away. (of corse, lock all of your stuff up, so they don't break it trying to make it work)

I don't know if this made any sense or helped at all, but, I'd say go to your district or the board of directors for your school if your principle isn't doing anything. But before you do that, make it known that your ready go to to them--it may scare your principle into doing something.

Good luck, and remember, a c-wrench "accidently" dropped on someone's head hurts ;-)
 
This is the same thing that my drama club and I experience with every show. To make matters worse we don't even get a choice as to our production dates. The AD schedules all extra-curricular activity.

Here is what I did. I worked my rear off with my students and made sure that even though we're only a high school of 385 students, we would have productions on par with large schools... or even better. After a time and after many dedicated students busted rump to put on great shows, we created a drama program that is better known for qualitly than any athletic team we have. For example... our football team has 35 members and went 2-10 this year, and our thespian troupe has 75 and produced five high quality productions that sold out.

I then went to the principal and told him that I will leave the district, noisily, if this bickering didn't stop. He sat all parties down and things are actually better. Our AD talks with us and guarantees us more (not enough, but more) time to put on our shows.

The true bummer is that I still have to tear down all lighting and sound after each tech rehearsal because the stage doubles as a classroom, and I admit that we have a long way to go. At least the lines of communication are open bi-directionally.

Good luck!

Tenor.
 
I got through half of your post before I realized that AD was Athletic Director, not Assistant Director.

I was a little confused where the problem was if it was all in the drama department.

Oh well, makes sense now.
 
cant go to the district, private school, ya, it sucks
but we can deal with it, he just pisses everybody off
 
I feel bad for you guyz that have to be in the gym with the athletes. It was like that then the year i went to the school a new school was built with an auditiorum so i got luckey. We really dont have problums with the athletics except they get A LOT more funding, and thats about it. Maybe there will be a few people that are on sports and helping theater too. but its cool.
 
I know that athletic people (Directors) seem like terrible people when it comes to theatre, but there are always going to be people like that where ever you work in theatre. Your best bet is to try to talk to him or her and tell them why you need the equipment not to be touched. Leave a little note of the equpimnet saying, " Equipment set for [ your production]. DO NOT MOVE ". Be willing to work with him or her, if the athletics department needs to use the equipment, offer to run sound for there event, then the athletic department owes you one. It may seem likea good idea to complain now, but being civilized and talking to the person will likly have a better and less bitter result by both sides.
 
we don't fight with the atheltic group at my school much..(private school) but, one kid got kicked off of soccer because he had to miss a few practices to be in a play. We rent the property and bulidings from a church, and we use their stage in their fellowship hall...good sized stage, ok lighting...but, this is the fight, our drama director thinks I'm some idiot who doesn't know diddly squat about sound or lights. The lighting is all pars, some 64's and some 56s, well some bulbs were blown. She was getting on a ladder and I remakred "oh, we need par bulbs" and she was like "yeah" and then later, after she got back with the bulbs (I never saw her take them out or antyhing, I just saw her climbing on the latdder) she remakrs to me "oh, they aren't par bulbs, they are """"" she siaid something or other...turns out, they had that DYS kit in the lights, sot hey use those little halogen bulbs instead of the Par bulbs...but she said it in a tone like "gee, you're an idiot, you don't even know what type of light bulbs these use!" Then, she was setting up lights (she hasn't run lighting that much at this school, this was one of our first bigger productions) (oh, and the booth is like portable) and I was there and she said she couldn't figure out how to do something and the tap light was blinking and a chase was on and she was pushing programand couldn't find how to turn it off of chase program mode...it's an NSI board, pretty normal, right? she siad she couldn't figure it out and all the lighting she'd run was on a comptuer and something like that...all I could do was laugh as I pushed blackout and it went back to 2x16 mode. For small productions like for our history festival, we use another room, without ighting. All it has are flourescent ilghts. I pleaded with her (I was AD, yeah I do acting as well as techie work...) to let me rent lights, atleast 8 pars. She mulled it over, and decided not to....the play was alright, it was Treaasure Island, we had a nice ship built, ,a good cave and stuff, nice set....but no lighting. For blackouts, they had someone by the door turning on and off the flourescent lights. SO stupid!! And, at the talent show this year, my band played...we were there early practicing with our equipment (just set up for monitors, not for FOH) and they kept remakring how they couldn't hear us, we kept telling them "it's only for monitors, come up here and you can hear great!" and then, an hour before the runthrough/rehearsel, they tell me that they don't have a soundsystem....so, I had to haul my butt around to get them a soundsystem...luckily, I had a friend who lived close by who I managed to borrow some stuff from.

So, in our school, the fight isn't between athletics and drama, it's between drama and drama....(but, we do have good productions. Nothing gets moved or antying, it's just I want them to be better, and for them to admit I know what I'md oing with sound and lights, and they are willing to let their plays not ever get better, and to think I'm an idiot. go figure. ) thank God we don't have to fight with the athletic department!
 
Source4Spike said:
Par LAMP. Get it right foo'
-Nick

Actually it's PAR lamp, get it also right fool, or do I need to get into what PAR stands for?

DYS ray light kits are easily replaced by the standard PAR lamp. The teacher could have installed the lamp into the fixture by removing the "Ray Light" kit from the fixture. Most modern ray light kits use the same lamp base (GX-16d) as the PAR lamp they replace thus it's an easy lamp swap.

A bulb is the glass, the Lamp is the machine. Both are acceptable in certain situations. On Ray Lights, there is a 300w version usable in the fixtures, the proper DYS 600w version and the 800w version being used by the Kid Rock tour as probably the first use of such even higher output Ray Light lamp I specificified for use in their show. Ray Lights are nice and it has the future in technology in them given they as opposed to your HPL lamps actually do have a dichroic coating to them in making the filament burn hotter thus a more efficient lamp for a given wattage.

Dimming a halogen lamp is just fine at 120v. The caution specifically is about low voltage such as 12v halogen lamps when under dimming conditions. The 120v lamp will have sufficient voltage present for the halogen effect to take place as will all Stage and Studio - for the most part ANSI coded lamps have this correction/improvement applied to them. Also it's still in question about operation in series such as in a Cyc light on the effects of halogen gas in making them hot enough in general. Given series operation of a number of lamps as opposed to a single one such as in the kitchen lights at home directly controlled by the transformer. After that, a theater wave form chopping of the voltage verses a variable resistance dimmer would not matter much in low voltage lamps. Both will not get hot enough by specification to activate the halogen gas given the low voltage.

Stage and Studio lamps specifically are noise resistant and under line voltage will have the same and boosted extended life. Low voltalge stage and studio lamps even if low voltage are also in general supposted to worl properly. This is more a household dimming problem than one of the stage in general.

Hope that educates and allievates the fears some. Unless the lamp you replace has problems, normally you won't have to replace the lamp soon no matter what the voltage. Given repat visits to the same fixture this than is something suspect.
 
Actually, these whatever kinda lamp they were lamps, for the DYS kit, didn't have that two prong end on them ilke a PAR lamp. They had two rounded prongs. I wouldn't mind someday comparing them to the PAR 64 bulbs...one thing I've noticed about the PAR's and Leko's at my youth gruop is that they don't dim...they can be dimmed by the crossfaders, but the individual channel seems to either be full on or full off....but, Fresnels will dim just fine! (and, i've moved the fresnels' around a little, it doens'tmatter what channelt hey are in,t hey always dim, and the pars or leko's in that same channel won't...)

And, thanks for helping clear the whole bulb/lamp/Par/PAR issue up...:D I'm learning here!!
 
A halogen lamp is a tungsten filament incandescent lamp with Halogen gasses such as Iodine or Bromine in addition to others including the Argon and other gasses normally associated as noble elements with resisting the burn out of the filament due to a heavy atomosphere resistant to burning. This allows the filament to be operated at higher temperatures and efficiencies in that the spent/burned off tungsten from the filament instead of depositing itself on the side of the bulb instead gets intercepted by the halogen "effect" gasses within the mixture, than is re-deposited upon the hottest source in the lamp - the filament. It's thus a circle effect with the lamp burning hot, burning off it's filament, but that spent filament being replentished upon the same when it's run the "halogen effect" course of cooling and re-deposting. For the most part at least. Given the gas deposits the spent tungsten particles on the hottest source of heat, what wears away from the cooler parts of the filament such as at the ends of the filament, does not get as much re-stocked thus they often will burn up at the same rate.

More specifically, a halogen lamp is a lamp with this filler material as opposed to that and Krypton or Xenon added also to the filler which have their own advantages but expense when used in combination with the halogen gasses will boost performance more yet. The halogen lamp in burning hotter but being replentished does not care much about the shape of lamp given it's sized to stay hot enough for the effect to take place, thus it's in used in many forms of bulb either by way of a bulb small enough to retain heat sufficient for the effect to take place, or within a inner capsule of heat retention but also within a larger bulb assembly thus PAR lamp. Many PAR lamps and similar larger lamps use a inner halogen filament area capsule in retaining the heat around the filament but also being within an outer bulb assembly that performs as needed including if it has a reflector around the light source.

Halogen as a statement is not a differentuation as opposed to PAR lamp. A PAR shape is a globe type, a Halogen lamp is a statement of what's within that shape and going on with burning brighter in re-plentishing the otherwise normal incandescent filament as it gets hot and burns up.

The length of time it takes any fixture to come to full depends upon the resistance of the filament and to some degree it's convection properties as a whole as reflected in that lamps's general size and proximity of one part of the filament to another wrap of it's coil in gaining extra heat to make the whole of the bulb warm up faster, but the more metal necessary to heat up, the longer it will take to heat up. It's thus also a factor of filament length or size in relation to wattage thus resistance necessary for a certain filament size. In any case given the same wattage of lamp, a linear filament such as both on your PAR ane Cyc lamps will warm up micro seconds slower than a filament grid type assembly such as on a Leko where one length of filament is twisted and folded to be right next to another part of the filament thus warming each other.

The length of the wire thus in part resistance or wattage also plays a factor. The shorter the wire, the sooner it heats up due to resistance. Resistance is sort of a complex formula but remember that the higher the wattage of lamp, the less resistance to the flow of current within it such a filament has. Should you short a wire, it's going to burn much brighter for an instance than a high resistance 15w lamp. On the other hand, given filaments provide light due to that wire within them getting white hot, the larger but lower resistance lamps need a both longer filament if not thicker one to provide that source of light sufficient to the wattage and resistance. In other words, actual resistance is different than wattage as a statement of work done but commonly also figured as resistance to load as it is in many ways.

A way around all of these wattage/type of lamp problems is to first ensure that the trim settings in warming the filament even if your board says they are "off", are set properly. The dimmer that when at zero is actually at zero is a dimmer that is out of alignment. All stage and studio dimmers provide a warming current to the lamps so that they don't just blow up due to cold shock from going from cold to instantly hot. This percent of the voltlage is about 13% when show to be at zero. Your board might say Zero, but the lamp is getting voltage anyway to warm and prep it's filament for getting very hot in too short amount of time.

This in answer of loading and fixture speed at coming to full can be refined for a higher wattage load by adjusting the dimmer's trim setting to some level while at zero at the dimmer are actually at up to 25% in not showing they are lighting the target, but still have some induced at this point quite a bit of induced voltage upon them to warm them for a quicker start up. The other more sensible way would be to use your cues to warm them. Given the cue before they are needed to jump to full, what if you were to install a level on the dimmers for these fxtures a percent of the fader sufficient that the PAR lamps now in being on, don't have enough intenstiy to mess with or be observed in your design.

This cue of added voltage to further warm the filament of your lamps will ensure a quicker start up time given the filament is already somewhat hot. Such trim settings however reduce the maximum amount of output given it's lowest voltage setting is moved upwards. Say on a dimmer, it's voltage is when trimmed from 12% to 102% as a dimmer range pre-programmed into it for zero thru 90 as just being the range of control. Should you boost up that warming current output, it's overall intensity will be reduced by being at full but the dimmer set for less than full at it's maximum setting but it still warming the filament The Zero thru FF on the board will instead of being around 10% voltage to warm the filament, instead you could just adjust the dimmer upwards given a cut off output of 100% no matter how efficient of the fixture given it's voltlage is static.
_______________________________________________________

The DYS lamp by memory has a GY 9.5 lamp base, the PAR 64 lamp has a GX-16d lamp base. Yep they are different and the PAR 64 for the most part is almost an Edison based lamp in shape. In any case, the DYS plugs into the lamp base provided with the ray light kit thus it being a ray light kit. Now what do you think that ray light kit plugs into for power???

In the case of old ray lights, they have two wires hanging off the rear of them which necessitate removing the lPar 64 amp base from the fixture to wire it up, but in the case of more modern Ray Light kits, there is a lamp base similar to those used on a PAR 64 lamp at the base of it which plugs directly into the GX-16d lamp base provided with the fixture. Thus my point about removing the "ray light kit" - not just the lamp and installing the PAR lamp into it.


(PAR 64) "they can be dimmed by the crossfaders, but the individual channel seems to either be full on or full off....but, Fresnels will dim just fine! (and, i've moved the fresnels' around a little, it doens'tmatter what channelt hey are in,t hey always dim, and the pars or leko's in that same channel won't...) "

Expecting that the cross faders are working as the Master fader and not indidual dimmer faders, this is a complex question.

Your question seems to be other than the issue of lamps fitting into fixture's at hand. This is a dimmer problem it would seem that needs some details to answer such as the wattage of the dimmers, load on them, it's maintinence and service call program and a lot of more details. My guess is that there is too much wattage on the dimmers and they will only go on and off in being overloaded but the circuit protection is not tripping given the overload. This would be the classic example at least as described in an overloaded dimmer situation. The other option would be that the fixtures going only on and off are of too little wattage for the dimmer to notice, but that's probably doubtful.

It could also be something to do with the trim setting on your dimmers given a much higher wattage of the other fixtures in comparison to the Fresnel fixtures. A lower wattage lamp might show more variance in dimming than a higher wattage load given the same dimmer. Given your Lekos and PAR's are a lighter load on the dimmers than the Fresnels, it might be possible that they are dimming but the rate is just not noted.


This also can be the case with cheap dimmers in that while rated for a certain wattage they are either blown out in continuing to service a larger load or the can no longer handle in dimming the larger load thus just go on and off. In any case, the dimmers don't care what the load is Leko, Fresnel or PAR, I expect if you loaded up your dimmer with a bunch of Fresnels, it would have the same problem with them in similar loads.

Going back to the halogen verses PAR question, a dimmer does not magically detect "this is a Fresnel and we like them" in choosing to go on and off verses dim for them as a proper dimmer might. A dimmer dims given it is not malfunctioning. When detected to malfunction no matter what's plugged into it, it is not a cause for just using it and accepting that some things dim and some don't, it's a cause for getting that dimmer in for repair ASAP as it might start a fire at some point. This is either a dimmer module burning out type of thing or at leas an overload.
 
I apologize. I understand that you feel you must capitalize "par" in my sentence, however, the word (in my post) was shortened from the word "parcan" the name of the entire fixture. "PAR" would be the type of lamp, and also the basis for the word "parcan." I will admit, that "par" or "parcan" may be better suited as "Par" or "Parcan," as they are names of a type of lighting unit. However, I feel that this is a very trivial matter. As for the second of the words in my sentence that were criticized, I capitalized the word "lamp" as to emphacize it as the focus of my post. Furthermore, I did realize what "PAR" means, and the intention of my original post was to correct JahJahwarrior's incorrect usage of bulb, instead of lamp. Additionally, the addition of the word "foo'" was intended to add a lighter, more humorous, and less serious tone to the post, and to reveal to JahJahwarrior that I am not anal about the issue, just mildly irratated.

On a closing note, I would like to suggest to ship that he write a book about technical theatre, as he sure as hell has the patience for it, and seems to thrive on informing people as to the correct way to do things (this is a good thing).

Sincerely apologetic as to any confusion caused,
-Nick
 
to Source4Spike: dude, as far as I'm concerned, we're cool. I overreacted a little..but really, I try to be correct and say lamp but no one arount here cares so I don't get corrected when I screw up... we cool?

To Ship: wow...are you an electrical engineer?? Alot of that went over my head!! One thing: ALL of hte lights I use are 500 watts. All the fresnels use 500 watt fresnel bulbs, all the pars I use use 500 watt Par 64 bulbs, from Sylvania, and are wide flood. All the leko's, they use 500 watt bulbs...not sure brand, but they are 500 watt! I still don't get why it would dim with those and not with others...the whole system, board and dimmers, are NSI. The dimmers are NSI NRD8000 dimmers, two four channel dimmer packs built into one box to give 8 channels. 1200 watts per channel...out of two of those, for a total of 16 channels, only 6 still work. The broken ones...most of them are just on, all the time.you turn on the breaks which give the power to the dimmers, and any light plugged into tha tchannel is on. Even with master off, both crossfaders on 0, the channel on 0 and the bump button off, with blackout on. Doesn't matter WHAT you do, it's on! I've been trying to see about gettig them fixed, ,but the problem is things just get broken! In the past week, four 1/4 cables died. We've ahd two mics (one a Shure SM57 that someoen ripped the head off of!) died in the past 6 months, and we just had to order more XLR's. Just last week, we couldn't find the cables to run sound from the computter and video cam (for the announcement's video) to the soundboard...the soundboard is dying (we will switch tot he mackie soon) and I blew up an amp (that cost $200 to fix!) because I didn't realize that when you bridge an amp, you have to double the minimum impedence (4 ohms usual, 8 ohms bridged...didn't say that on the amp, but I learned about how you have to double it alter. I was running it at 4 ohms...) so really, I don't think the minister of music is very happy with the youth gruop tech deparment....but yeah, the dimmerse are busted, and it SUCKS. SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS!!!! you knwo, a year ago 8 channels worked....I had the privilege of blowing up two of them myself, by plugging in a cable (there are cables that come out by the dimmers, and the boxes they go to are in the roof) that I suppose had a short init. (same cable both channels, 3 months apart) first time, I assumed I must have somehow had too many lights on it, second time, when NOTHING was plugged into that box, I figured the cable had a short in it. Your thoughts on what is going in the dimmers? both times, the fuse for the dimmer channel blew, no breakers did, and then the channel is always on, doesn't dim and won't go off.
 

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