Flying a Chandeleir
- Thread starterFoxinabox10
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Foxinabox10
Active Member
Ceiling access is probably possible. We might have to get the maintenence department to come down with the big lift.
ok then you need to anchor in a pulley right above where you want to fly it in. You are then goign to need a pulley where you want the end to be to direct the rope down, then you have to construct a guide and anchor the lines into the guide. I don't recoment rigging unless you have some one experienced supervising
Foxinabox10
Active Member
What are the options for cost?
The cheep way: as JP12687 said, just get to the roof, and on the grid (or somewhere else thats sturdy) just chain or somehow attach a pulley. Then you need a cable and an extension cord. A few more pulleys along the roof to hold the cables, and then one more to bring them down to wherever you want backstage.
This is assuming that the chandelier is light enough for one to two people to lift easily.
If its not easy enough to lift with one or two people, you can use some more pulleys to create a complex pulley system, making it easier to pull (but someone else can tell you how to do that).
Total cost would be somewhere between $10 and $50, depending on where you get the pulleys, what cable you use, and other things like that.
Or, if you wanted to spend more money you can build a new theater with fly space. That would be about 1000x as expensive, but it would be much more fun ;-)
This is assuming that the chandelier is light enough for one to two people to lift easily.
If its not easy enough to lift with one or two people, you can use some more pulleys to create a complex pulley system, making it easier to pull (but someone else can tell you how to do that).
Total cost would be somewhere between $10 and $50, depending on where you get the pulleys, what cable you use, and other things like that.
Or, if you wanted to spend more money you can build a new theater with fly space. That would be about 1000x as expensive, but it would be much more fun ;-)
Foxinabox10
Active Member
JahJahwarrior
Active Member
my school (tiny, private Christian school. 23 drama students...and yes, whlie a faithful techie, I am an actor as well, thought for this play I will probably be an understudy and am VERY likely the TD) is doing the play "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde this fall, and we would like to have a chandelier flying for the mansion scenes. We will probably build something like that pulley system...depending on the weight of the chandelier we might use more pulleys up top, because we will need to lift and lower it during the performance (nothing looks as out of place as a chandelier in a garden!) and we don't want it to be hard work for whoever is doing that. And, as TD, I will get to train 4 people (one of them knows a little about sound) about sound and lights, and none of them want to learn much.....I'll do my best!
Yea i just finished doing Oklahoma at a local community theatre and the director had this vision of "rising corn from the ground" we after drilling 12 nice wholes in the floor and filling each hole with PVC pipes i had the task of rigging 12 "pieces of corn"
it involved me bringing up 20ft of pipe and cross laying it on the roof supports and then dropping down a weighted tie line to line it up with the whole then anchoring each pulley.
I then ran the lines over where i needed them and had 6 double pulleys and lined them all up and dropped them down.
I then constrocted a guide (a pentagon shaped piece of wood with a pin hindge on each side) I them dropped down 2 lines from the grid and anchored them into the ground. I then proceeded to run the hindges on the guide onto those 2 lines(i ran it through where the pin would normally be and it held against the line so it went up and down straight) i then attached each corn linen to holes i drilled at the top of the guide wood.
I then attached an I screw to the bottom of the guide and tied a rope to it.
and BAM you have your self flying corn
it involved me bringing up 20ft of pipe and cross laying it on the roof supports and then dropping down a weighted tie line to line it up with the whole then anchoring each pulley.
I then ran the lines over where i needed them and had 6 double pulleys and lined them all up and dropped them down.
I then constrocted a guide (a pentagon shaped piece of wood with a pin hindge on each side) I them dropped down 2 lines from the grid and anchored them into the ground. I then proceeded to run the hindges on the guide onto those 2 lines(i ran it through where the pin would normally be and it held against the line so it went up and down straight) i then attached each corn linen to holes i drilled at the top of the guide wood.
I then attached an I screw to the bottom of the guide and tied a rope to it.
and BAM you have your self flying corn
Foxinabox10
Active Member
So that you don't notice that this chandeleir is going up into the ceiling when it is down, I plan on taking a piece of board 6x6" and mounting the light on it essentially as if the board was the ceiling. Would a simple Eye-Bolt screwed into the board be enough support for the light, which is 30 lb. max?
digitaltec
Active Member
What the heck are you doing, The Phantom of the Opera? 
Foxinabox10
Active Member
JahJahwarrior
Active Member
wow...explaijthe whole board/ceiling thing!!
The best sense I make of it is this: you want the chandelier to look like it is hanging just beneath a ceiling, so you are going to paint a square board, mount the light hanging just below that, then run cables from the four corners of the board to pulleys?? If that is what you want to do, which sounds kinda wierd, most chandeliers are hanging from big roofs' anyways. I don't kow what your stage looks like....I wish I had a picture of ours, but I would assume that there is a lower appearing roof thing, but on the stage there is a higher ceiling than there appears to be, becaause from the audience it looks like, like....like it's lower?? man I suck at describing this!! basically, the audience cannot see the ceiling of the stage. like, here is the stage ceing, - Then, there is a wall in front of that, like -| and they see the ceiling as being at the height of the bottom of the |, when in fact it is higher?? Anyhow, most chandeliers are hung in entryways or things, where the roof is really high, so if they cannot see the ceiling it is mounted to, don't worry about that!
sorry to confuse you if I did!
The best sense I make of it is this: you want the chandelier to look like it is hanging just beneath a ceiling, so you are going to paint a square board, mount the light hanging just below that, then run cables from the four corners of the board to pulleys?? If that is what you want to do, which sounds kinda wierd, most chandeliers are hanging from big roofs' anyways. I don't kow what your stage looks like....I wish I had a picture of ours, but I would assume that there is a lower appearing roof thing, but on the stage there is a higher ceiling than there appears to be, becaause from the audience it looks like, like....like it's lower?? man I suck at describing this!! basically, the audience cannot see the ceiling of the stage. like, here is the stage ceing, - Then, there is a wall in front of that, like -| and they see the ceiling as being at the height of the bottom of the |, when in fact it is higher?? Anyhow, most chandeliers are hung in entryways or things, where the roof is really high, so if they cannot see the ceiling it is mounted to, don't worry about that!
sorry to confuse you if I did!
