I wish had in my no-budget house...

[BillConnerFASTC]

Very few architects understand seating, sightlines, and intimacy. Your highest return on investment is to get a great theatre consultant who understands these things on board. No matter how whiz bang the systems and equipment, the performer audience relationship is what makes a space loved or ho-hum.

 

[ACTSTech]

not all smiling salesmen are your friends.

I know that I offended Ben from Chauvet in the other post when I said that Chauvet had a bad reputation, but that wasn’t his fault at all. Being equally far from Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Buffalo, no big vendor wants to “waste their time” (a direct quote from one of the big vendors) on a small group like us. When I spec’d out the sound system we wanted a few years back, one vendor wanted paid before he’d do a quote, another said he wouldn’t touch the group for an order under $18,000. A third said if we were closer he’d be happy to help but it wasn’t worth his gas money.

I’ve personally seen less scrupulous vendors who are local do exactly what you said, sell a bill of goods then never follow up a phone call. Luckily our board is pretty good at not letting that happen, they’re a penny pinching panel, so I think they’re not going to let that happen, but you read my post about the MAC 2k’s they wanted, so maybe they’re a little more swayable than I thought.

And I’d love to get a $250k grant, anyone know where those come from? We got a whopping $500 from the state last year. We might have gotten some from the city but the school needed a $1.5 million upgrade to the AstroTurf baseball field...

 

[ACTSTech]

Very few architects understand seating, sightlines, and intimacy. Your highest return on investment is to get a great theatre consultant who understands these things on board. No matter how whiz bang the systems and equipment, the performer audience relationship is what makes a space loved or ho-hum.

And what I really fear, Bill, is that we’ve already passed the deadline for hiring or even talking. The board wants to start ASAP, and I don’t know that anyone wants to work on the board’s timeline or can fit things in. Also, I’ll be honest, the pictures on the website of consultants you posted makes me shudder with shame. If you’re the major leagues, we’re middle school ball. I highly doubt anyone would, like the vendor told us, “waste their time” on a tiny place like us. Believe me, I’m recommending it to the board, but I can recommend until I’m blue in the face. Right now, the goal I’m hearing in Spring of 2021, but that would be in the building, no backstage built yet, no dressing rooms, no set shop, just shows. I feel like that’s too soon, but I’m not on the board, so I’m not in on all the behind the scenes deals. Is that realistically enough time?

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

More than just I work on store front and no budget theatres. Just saying.

 

[RonHebbard]

And what I really fear, Bill, is that we’ve already passed the deadline for hiring or even talking. The board wants to start ASAP, and I don’t know that anyone wants to work on the board’s timeline or can fit things in. Also, I’ll be honest, the pictures on the website of consultants you posted makes me shudder with shame. If you’re the major leagues, we’re middle school ball. I highly doubt anyone would, like the vendor told us, “waste their time” on a tiny place like us. Believe me, I’m recommending it to the board, but I can recommend until I’m blue in the face. Right now, the goal I’m hearing in Spring of 2021, but that would be in the building, no backstage built yet, no dressing rooms, no set shop, just shows. I feel like that’s too soon, but I’m not on the board, so I’m not in on all the behind the scenes deals. Is that realistically enough time?

@ACTSTech One of my favorite quotes was from a large, international, General Contractor with decades of condo's, malls, strip malls and at least one international airport behind him; and I quote: "It's only a theatre, how hard can it be: Four walls, a roof, and a big empty hole in the middle." He'd never built a theatre before, several of us subs rolled our eyes a lot; it was an "interesting" project.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[ship]

On the vendor/supplier end... we as normal companies, in development of a new space; I would think.. try to plan and supply everything needed to do a show by way of experience in doing shows in similar spaces for selling what gear is requested and needed.. At times it could be seperate and changed bids.

Even I frequently present different quotes for special custom light projects in how to approach it.

I know on a recent project of 3 Million... it was asked can we scale it back by a Million - later. Scale it back is frequent when advisising the proprosed theater with what they initially want verses when they get given the price tag. In scaling the bid back (above topic) perhaps some details were left still on the bid which when switching to say from S-4 to Altman got left out in the details? This is a problem by way of the supplier in quote... but also a problem in the buyer in details in paying for it. As the user of the gear, I would contact them the providers about the no longer needed gear, or gear which would not fit as agreed to purchase by the buyer and paid for in attempting to correct which most gear suppliers would work with their install with in correcting after the fact.

Such things are simple to correct especially if doing so right away. If you got a bunch of S-4 accessories, but downgraded to 360Q... there should not be a problem in fixing once noticed. Animosity to a mistake signed for by the supplier and receiver don't help anyone as there was no doubt no intent in selling useless accessories. The wait and viewing as evil the supplier instead more makes the case... you own them now in not objecting to the misake, and more important just sitting on the gear from the mistake instead of doing something about it.

At some point the 3 Million dollar project selling gear to isn't viable in the long term for it's use in making a profit even if down to a million in budget...no matter how much you take away from the project... it is not a viable venu. It's an exciting venue but just is not viabable in our "seller of gear" observation given the location. At that point, in scaling back and advising... it is a customer purchasing the gear and dilligance has been done.

 

[ship]

Was at a local Junior High Scool last week. Three years ago I had professionally serviced/upgraded all their lights and added to them for a plotted rep. plot package donation for GymAtorium light plot. They had an actual light plot design for general shows when I left the school staff for implantation of it.

Called last week from them... one dimmer (shoe box dimmers) keeps blowing and doesn't work now. Want to go LED and by the way replace the ancient drapes.

My associate - the business quote guy (I'm the wiring/rigging guy) went to the school. We quickly saw the school staff didn't follow any install details or have a clue about what they were doing or even in purchased gear not installed.. even test what they did. We couldn't initially solve the problems, but me on the next day changed some circuiting in down scaling the design for what was actual fixed the theater lighting program.

So three years ago, I advised and they paid for replacement tails to the electrics from the theater from 16ga SJT cables to the shoe box dimmers to 12ga SO. Such jumpers bought were never installed.

First House Electric had eight duplex outlets semi professionally installed in the ceiling above it.... Assuming a minimum of 500w per fixture... not a great idea given it was only four curcuits run back to the dimmers with 16 ga cable jumpers to the dimmers.

Bad me in assuming one duplex outlet per circuit for design in not testing that. Lots of pigtail cords coming to the patch bay - most un-used -somewhere on stage seemingly.

So in part of the design.. the maintenance person plugged in two lights per circuit for the first four outlets causing over wattage problems when other next outlet fixtures were plugged in. Dimmers are two circuit 1.8K so 500w and 575w fixture will cause trauma in loading. 2,075 watts on the dimmer, once say another 1,000 watts plus on the assigned channels was added would be a problem.

School staff installing the lights never informed me of a problem by way of three years. They also didn't install all the onstage lights, and changed the placement of them in further destroying my balanced loading patch. This in addition to install of the stage lights no longer allows the main drape to close.

Went well and beyond on initial install. Sold them cable and told specifically what and why, donated lights which in most cases were not installed by design.. Safety cables provided are where? Overall... school bought a bunch of wiring. The fixture to source jumpers were used as with many of the fixtures.. Problems, self induced and or... a quad box for outlets in the air, for a minimum of 500w fixtures, but 16ga jumper to th dimmer. And even when cable provided to fix it... Three years later, we have a problem and want to go LED.

LED is out of their local school budget but we can give them a price to shoot for
. Out of flame proof drapes is also out of budget but in measuring we can perhaps get that done. While there also install the lights and circuiting as per the plot in how it was designed.

 

[macsound]

The interesting thing with venues is unless the information is printed and attached to the wall or panels or circuits, there's effectively no information to follow.
In my experience, the person who talks to the electricians/ consultants/ GCs is someone "official" and not the person actually doing the work.

Especially schools, you have students, sometimes led by teachers but definitely not with VP oversight. Kids get to work during lunch, before school, after school, on weekends. Teachers are generally far too busy to know, ask or interfere with kids who seem to know what they're doing.

 

[RonHebbard]

The interesting thing with venues is unless the information is printed and attached to the wall or panels or circuits, there's effectively no information to follow.
In my experience, the person who talks to the electricians/ consultants/ GCs is someone "official" and not the person actually doing the work.

Especially schools, you have students, sometimes led by teachers but definitely not with VP oversight. Kids get to work during lunch, before school, after school, on weekends. Teachers are generally far too busy to know, ask, or interfere with kids who seem to know what they're doing.

@macsound Posting in full support; I learned a great many things in high school that they'd no idea they were teaching, many / most of which have stood me in good stead. They were teaching by rote; think this way, repeat like a parrot, get good grades, graduate.

What they didn't realize they were teaching me; don't learn to repeat like a parrot, learn how to think for yourself, learn to remember what they showed you and how to apply it 'out of the box' when an out of the box solution is a better, faster, cheaper, more elegant, solution to the problem(s) at hand.
As previously stated: They were teaching me things they'd no idea they were teaching.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[derekleffew]

They were teaching by wrote;
...
They were teaching me things they'd no idea they were teaching.

About homophones?

 

[mrtrudeau23]

My high school was similar. I learned a bit from the senior that was graduating, otherwise it was trial and error and whatever I could research while not knowing anything at the time. There was no drama program, just a group of interested kids to light and do sound for the musical, concerts and dances in the gymatorium. One of the band directors "oversaw" us, but he flat out told me that he didn't want to know how any of it worked. Really wish I had known about this group at the time...