Hardwired Dimmers...and old cut circuits

JP12687

Active Member
So all last year i saw these lights along the wall of our auditorium...focused down right along the wall...and i wanted to get them to work but never had the time/old TD was against it..said it was "impossible and a waste of time"

But this year since no shows have started yet i decided to say screw it and grabbed one of the students who work for me and went on a quest to find where the circuits are for those lights....so we found the cut wires....they wwere with t he mix going to our dimmers...but they just were not connected.

So we have one dimmer that is currently un-used...but has circuits hardwired into it. So we killed all the power opened up the dimmer...and figured out how to wire it in...so now going around our theatre the walls are red, white and blue...it looks sooo amazing...

Determination pays off....
 
That sounds like a cool effect.

The coolest effect I did for no reason was putting a red 'X' gobo, geled red, in two 50' Source 4's and aimed them at the wall.

That sounds really cool, I wish I could do that, sounds fun. Also, very patriotic.
 
Hey the best reason to do this was somebody said it was impossible. The next answer would be the same as why would you want color changes on stage? To set the mood. I would certainly use them for a musical overture. Use them the same as curtain warmers. Then if you follow what is going on in some of the newer facilities, if you forget to light the auditorium, you're not doing the whole job. The New Amsterdam used 96 x 2.4 kw dimmers just for the house lights on Lion King.
 
Robert said:
The New Amsterdam used 96 x 2.4 kw dimmers just for the house lights on Lion King.

I'm trying to remember back 3 years or so when I last saw that show. If my memory serves me well, there was no special house effect, it was just the normal house lights. It looked nice, I believe there was a chandelier in the house, but how would they use that many dimmers?
 
It was just normal house lighting, no special effects. I guess it may have included the additional lighting during the animals entrance, but there were dozens of birdies (par 16's) on the deck and uplight and gobo wash fixtures all over the auditorium. The paperwork I have shows 10 racks of 96 x 2.4 kw. for the show, so why not have one only for aux. house lights?
 
Interesting. Did you do work on the show? How do you have the paperwork?

I wish I remembered the lighting of the show. I saw it 3 years ago, right before I became really interested in theater lighting. I'm trying to remember what lights they had for the animal entrance through the house. At the time I had assumed it was the house lights, but thinking back on it, I'm not to sure.
 
I went to the LDI Masters Class in New York. The session had tickets to the show, a backstage tour, and a breakfast with some of the production team. That's where I got the paperwork. There was an amazing amout of light in the show. The cyc had double rows of T-12 (1 kw cyc cells) 3-color, top and bottom (set into the deck), as well several wiggle lights each side to cover the center portion of the cyc. They also had par 64 strip lights doing backlight on the cyc. Each portal had MR 16 cyc lights that wrapped around the entie unit. They custom built strips that hinged to meet up with the headers. I really liked the retro look of the stampede effect and the use of the PANI projector. While I'm not usually supportive of large corporations controlling artistic endeavors, the money they spent on the show certainly contribute to the technical sucess. They did things in the shop for months before deciding on the final look.
 
Wow, that sounds amazing. How many dimmers did they use for all those instruments?

I sort of remember the look of the stampede, I remember there was a projection, and set pieces that rotated. Was that projection on the cyc?

Were there any moving lights used in the show? I'm trying to remember if I saw any, and I can't remember for the life of me if there were.

Also, just out of curiousity, what type of light board did they use?

In one of your posts you talked about the PAR-16's used in the deck. Where were those, and what were they used for? And how exactly were they built into the deck?
 
Your right the best reason to do something, or TRY to do something is because someone says its impossibe. Even if you do not succeed in doing it you now have the experience, and the knowledge you learned trying to figure out how to do it.

Never let anyone tell you its impossbe...you can make a look multiple ways...

If i couldnt get those lights working...i could have hunge Frenels of even S4s from the ceiling and patched them in to do the same effect.

But Luckily i got it to work the way i wanted it too...
 

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