Design Ideas for "Wanipigow Idol"

[dantemclean]

We are going to be running "Wanipigow Idol" in our school in a few months.

Music Teacher has some wild ideas for lighting. Realistically, we are working in a gymnasium with a "Stage," and have additional portable staging (512 sq ft, as 16 4x8 sections). I have a lighting rig which consists of two trees, four fresnels, and two ETC S4s. We have two Dove DM 406 dimmer packs.

(It defies me that, in a community where the school is the _only_ "theater," they cannot put in a proper stage.)

We are going to be doing a rental for this ... so I'm looking for some design ideas so I can press the Principal for some budget for it. Music teacher wants LED blinders or something. (Where do we hang these without truss and/or pipes?!)

We are using a 2 scene manual preset board, capable of 16 channels. No good for movers, I've checked that previously. Our rental house can give us all the gear we want, including MAC movers--except a console that'll run 'em.

I have Entec Open DMX, and had it running okay on my PC laptop. Don't like it for concert lighting. I've switched back to a MacBook Pro, and gave the 5 year old--but not yet dead--PC laptop to a struggling student. I have Q Light Controller on the Mac. However, doesn't seem to want to communicate properly with the Open DMX dongle. It _should_, but it doesn't, and I haven't had much time to play around with it. Ideally, I'd like to use Q Light to run this show--anybody have any ideas on this one?

Power is a joke ... so don't ask. Gym is 3 - 15A circuits, and one of them is shared with the foyer pop machine. I can comfortably run a rig up to 65A, and have in the past. Let's just say that Home Economics has to take the turkey(s) out of the oven(s), and the Phys. Ed. teacher has to take the clothes out of the dryer, when I want to run a lighting rig We've got spider boxes for that

I'd like to get some ideas for the design and lighting, and then turn this design over to one of the kids to execute.

Thanks!

Dante McLean
Technology Teacher / ICT Support
Wanipigow School

 

[cpf]

Has someone decided what the "look" of the show is? Flashy, glitzy game show? Something else?

Going on the "gameshow" feel: I've never designed with the luxury of selecting fixtures beforehand, so talking from an audience perspective now, I'd imagine seeing some automated fixtures panning across the crowd during breaks, maybe the occasional effect on the stage, toss in some patterns too. Add to that some LED wash effects on the set, maybe some LED strips on the set itself.

As for control, consider MagicQ. It runs natively on OS X, and once you get past the learning curve it seems to work quite well.

 

[emac]

I agree with cpf, if we know what kind of show your doing for its going to be a lot easier on us.

In terms of control I have a open DMX dongle and from what I understand it does not work with a Mac. At least when I have tried connecting it to magic q. I did hear some rumblings about alternate drivers for the open dmx dongle that could make it work, but I can't link to that nor attest its functionality.

Now for the actual lights; as I am sure you are aware LEDs will be your friend. As mentioned before LED strips can be great for flashy effects as well as LED pars. Movers can be great too, you might even be able to get LED movers and have a bunch. Think Mac 101s, some elation movers ect. I would start off by seeing what your rental house has to offer in terms of LEDs. I personally would stick the two stands of lights that you have now on either side of the stage and use them for front washes and specials.

As for mounting the rented gear, I would look into getting a couple of trusses on floor stands (weighted with sand bags of course) it's usually not too expensive to rent and they can be topped with a mover or using a couple of cheese Burroughs and a piece of schedule 40 be side hung off the truss. You could then just use some LED pars as truss warmers or mount par/strips on them and do some cool chases or audience blinding. You could have two DS trusses on either side of the stage and mirror that on the US side of things or something to that effect.


Depending on your budget you could really have some fun!

 

[dantemclean]

Thanks for the ideas. I will see what comes up when I get a chance to meet with the music teacher.

Will try MagicQ and see what happens with the OpenDMX dongle. Have read that there may be a driver conflict, and will see if I can take a stab at that option first--but don't want to end up having to re-install my OS or anything too nasty, as this is my main computer and has my class marks, etc. on it.

I'm thinking US and DS trussing, if possible. Our rental house will have it ... it is a question of how to get it here. We've got a 12' cargo trailer + truck for school use, which I can use. However, if it doesn't fit into that, delivery is _not_ an option. We're three hours North of the rental place.

Sand bags are no problem: free! There's a natural sand pit 10 minutes up the road, just need some bags and a shovel. I moved six truck loads of the stuff last weekend to help one of my stage crew kids with adjusting the grade of his snowboarding hill (it sloped to one side). Back when I didn't know about that quarry as an option, I made some up from dirt I dug up in the school's crawl space

 

[emac]

Truss generally comes in 5, 8, and 10 foot sections (at least in the product range in which you will be renting from) so you could get 10 foot sections and maybe some 5 footers to go on top of the 10 footers if you wanted more height.

If you wanted black sand bags just get some duv and sew them up! That's how I did it!

 

[ruinexplorer]

Before adding the additional 5' section to get more height, take physics into account. It is very easy for these tall sticks of truss to topple and it takes an extraordinary amount of sandbags at the bottom to make them stable. Generally speaking, if I am ground supporting truss, I don't advise additional height unless the truss are connected forming a horse shoe or box using horizontal truss. Since this is still rigging, even though ground supported, I won't go into details about how to do this. However, your rental company may have a package for this and be able to guide you through it.

Since I assume you are looking to do a glorified talent show like American/British Idol, you are lookinig for mainly backlight for effect with a general front wash (so your trees with fresnels would probably work). You may want to use your Source-4's with either a breakup pattern to provide some depth to the performer or if you want to make custom gobos to do your show logo.

I agree with using scanners if mounted to the free standing truss towers as they keep the weight closer to the center and provide less movement. If you get moving head fixtures, I would consider putting them on the ground behind the performer and on the front corners of the stage.

 

[Tex]

If you wanted black sand bags just get some duv and sew them up! That's how I did it!

Old inner tubes also work well. Sandwich the ends between chunks of plywood. The curve sits well on jacks, trees and pipe bases. When I used them, I would make three out of each inner tube.

 

[shiben]

Truss generally comes in 5, 8, and 10 foot sections (at least in the product range in which you will be renting from) so you could get 10 foot sections and maybe some 5 footers to go on top of the 10 footers if you wanted more height.

If you wanted black sand bags just get some duv and sew them up! That's how I did it!

They also make special bigger bases, useful for truss sticks over 15 but below 25 feet. More surface area, lots more place to put sandbags.