Good evening everyone and happy 4th of July!
This coming spring is our school’s spring musical. This year it’s going to be In The Heights. My job of course is lighting design and I’m honestly very excited I got a 10 month headstart.
After doing some research I believe that the nightclub scene is one of the key scenes and every nightclub isn’t complete w/o some disco lights (in my opinion, at least).
Now there isn’t a budget set yet but I’ve been looking into some disco lights and the Rotosphere Q3 by Chauvet DJ has really got my attention except for the pricing (yikes!). I’m wondering if anyone in the CB Community has had any experience with using disco lights and could probably
throw some suggestions and ideas my way.
DMX Control would be very nice and the price range shouldn’t be too high. My plan B though would be to have a
mirror ball and have
LED lights aimed at the
mirror ball to reflect some color.
Thanks and please ask some questions if clarification is needed.
There's a lot of information here and I think some of it may be over-complicating the matter...I did a fair
bit of lighting work for large nightclubs in the 80s and 90s, and, in my opinion, there is no
fixture that properly simulates the
effect of a
mirror ball. Not the CP Astroaggi, not anyone's "porcupine" (like the
unit pictured above), nothing. The lazy, somewhat mesmerizing spin can only (and most cost-effectively) be achieved with a glass
mirror ball.
As for
DMX control, there are several DMX-controllable
mirror ball motors on the market. As for illumination, a Par38
pin spot using a VNSP lamp works best for single color -- the best placement (if possible) is directly below the ball (directly below the "south pole") as a single
fixture can be focused to illuminate the entire bottom half of the ball. With a
bit of air media (
fog), the light column itself becomes and
element; and, if you have any
spill, it may be irrelevant as it will most likely be on the backstage ceiling.
As for the
spill/no
spill argument, I've done both: if your
mirror ball will be near a scenic wall, then the halo created by over-shooting the ball can be just as dramatic as the ball itself.
If you want something larger than 6', you can order half-spheres.
Best wishes, M