High school "general" coverage

[nealsam]

Hello all,

I am currently LD'ing for my school and was wondering if anyone has any tips or ideas? I'm looking at creating a "general" coverage as we have a variety of acts on our stage (music, dance, drama etc.) and due to time restrictions and everything we don't have time to refocus before every performance; often I'm called in last minute! The only thing that is really feasible is changing gels.

Our stage is not huge, probably about 15 metres by 10 metres and our equipment is fairly limited, currently standing at around 10 par cans, 8 fresnels, and 4 lekos, along with various gels and accessories. We have 1 FOH truss the is sort of a U shape (looking at the stage) and 3 onstage electrics.

I'm looking to get the best coverage possible so that I can cater for the variety of shows and just throw up anything that is needed at very short notice.

Any thoughts?

 

[mstaylor]

My first thought would be to load the house electric with lekos but that is tough with only four. Probably use part of your PARs for a front wash, use the rest plus the fresnels for stage washes. Keep the lekos for specials. If you get any money to buy equipment try getting more lekos.

 

[robartsd]

I do lighting for my church, so I'm very familiar with limited resources. Our general area lighting is just McCandless method front lighting. That uses the majority of our instruments and half our dimmers (with one dimmer per area—I'd love to get this to one dimmer per instrument). The few remaining instruments are used as curtain warmers and "specials."

 

[mstaylor]

The problem he has is the combination of instruments. It is hard to do a McCandless method with the ratio he has. That was why I suggested the PARs as the front wash and save the fresnels for top wash.

 

[echnaret]

I'm going to echo what robartsd said. I've been using pars (56's and 38's) for lighting at my church (you can find them online for really cheap, as long as you don't care about quality and make sure not to abuse them. ever.), and I've gotten them to do what I want. In general, you're not going to get any real isolation between areas (it's like painting a color-by-number book with a paint roller), but if you're good (and have the right type of lamp [wide, medium, narrow, vary narrow] for your area, it doesn't look too bad.

Like robartsd said, I'd definitely suggest McCandless here. For example, since you have 10 par cans, you might have five independently controllable areas depending on how many dimmers you have): three areas downstage (left, center, right) and two upstage (left and right). You'd have two par cans per area, one front left and one front right. You could use the fresnels for top light and/or a little bit of side light. I'd also suggest saving the lekos for specials.

Just curious, how many dimmers do you have?

Edit: Hey there, Michael, didn't see your post. The above combo has worked pretty well for me, though as I said, it's not that great if you really want to isolate specific areas of the stage. If you just need a general wash, though, it seems to work well for me.

 

[waynehoskins]

I'm not sure he has enough fixtures to mess with McCandless on a stage that large (45 by 30 feet for those of us in the States). McCandless's Bleeping Method eats half your lights before you start, and when the number of fixtures available is less than the short dimension of the stage, that's a luxury you just don't have.

I'd do straight fronts.

My best guess with that inventory is five PARs across for frontlight, and then repeat for upstage. Fresnels for backlight, and Lekos for specials. Not much isolation to speak of, anywhere really, but not much you can do about that with a one-size-fits-all hang with the resources available. You could probably do better with custom design for each event (dance, for example, is all about sides and not so much about fronts, so your 10 PARs would be more useful there as sides).

 

[nealsam]

Just curious, how many dimmers do you have?

Echnaret, dimmers aren't an issue, I have 3 6-channel dimmer racks, so I'm not worried about dimmers.

 

[waynehoskins]

Echnaret, dimmers aren't an issue, I have 3 6-channel dimmer racks, so I'm not worried about dimmers.

Almost as many dimmers as lights. 18 is a really small number of dimmers, and 6 is a rather small number to be in a rack; what dimmers are they?

 

[nealsam]

Almost as many dimmers as lights. 18 is a really small number of dimmers, and 6 is a rather small number to be in a rack; what dimmers are they?

It's got 6 twin 15a outputs, like this one here: Betapack 3 - 6 Channel Dimmer Rack

So the potential of 12 fixtures per dimmer rack.

 

[techno89]

What I would do is this:

Hang as many PARs FOH as you need to cover the stage, next take a few of the lekos and make things like a center special or use them as needed as specials. Hang all extra pars and fresnels over stage.

 

[jglodeklights]

First, to understand how to adequately light your stage, we must divide it into equally sized areas. This of course will depend on your equipment and trim height of electrics. Unfortunately, for that size of stage you don't have much. You would need 5 areas across just to make the lights not such at many trim heights. That means 2 Fresnels at the end of each electric for downlight, with 3 PARs inside, all placed at the center of each 9x10ft/3x3.3 meter area for downlight. That gives you 2 Fresnels, 1 PAR and 4 Lekos to form the front system, which would then allow for the 4 Lekos on the FOH Truss, and then the 2 Fresnels and 1 PAR as upstage front light. However, front light is more important for seeing faces, and using 4 fresnels across two of the electrics for downlight with the PARs as front light and Lekos dedicated as specials may be slightly dim depending on the house size, but may work better depending on the space. Without seeing the actual space, it is difficult to tell, and no solution will probably be perfect in your situation.