Intelligent Lighting in High School

[autophage]

From my experiences you'd be suprised. Last year I created a proposal to the district's educational foundation and got $5,000 out of it. This is was after several months or research and pricing. It's a all matter of being professional. You can't appear like a student wanting gadgets to play with. You have to have the whole thing figured out: storage, training, benifits, money, maintaining, and most importantly applacations. Districts prefer to fund things that will make a noticiable difference. Particularly major improvements. A good reason why districts often decline student funding requests because it's just simply not organized. So what if you get approved for a batch of mac2ks. How will they get used, are they even compatable with your existing system. Will they continue to get used after you graduate. Educational funding is entirely about long term funding. No school board wants to grant money (which mind you is tax money) and grant money once more because you made a mistake. This type of funding must be secure and efficient. These sort of things are incredibly audited, if there is a single hole you could receive nothing. A final tip, it does help to get staff/faculity to assist or endorse your efforts. And most likely your TD will. Of course they like getting money for new equipment why shouldn't they. If you want it bad, you gotta push for it.

I wasn't talking about purchasing anything - our purchase order system I actually sort of for the most part understand, and they'll sign just about anything. I meant in terms of allowing students to save the school money by putting knowledge to use that we've gained outside of the normal means (ie, they don't teach how to change fuses in the tech theatre class). It's not difficult, and if you know enough to be changing them in the first place there's a good chance you know how to go about it - but I realize the potential for error and don't blame them wanting to protect their equipment. Thus, I only do things like this when I'm 100% sure they'll work, when time's running out (can't rush a repair order through the opening night of the show no matter how hard you try) and when nobody's looking (or at least, nobody that'd care what I'm doing).

 

[len]

My school has two Intellabeams. They were so cool and shiny and new when we got them just two years ago but they quickly started glitching out... and they blow fuses more often than it seems they should (I've changed them before, it's not hard, but the school board REALLY doesn't want student techs doing that). All in all, we use them far less than we should given what we paid - they weren't worth the money.

(Is crossing fingers that the rumors of new fixtures on order are true).

Fuses in the fixtures, or breakers in the building? Either way, that is not normal. Find the money to have them looked at. HES has pretty good customer service, so they may do it as a warranty repair.

 

[techismylife]

Our school owns two Martin RoboPro 400 color changers and 1 elipscan mirror (similar to rosco's I-Cue, but cheaper). We also have a Martin Atomic DMX 3000 strobe We have rented Martin 918's before, and are now looking into buying some Mac 2000's. We currently control everything with either our Insight 2 or Express 48/96. We may upgrade to HogPC if/when we get the Mac 2000's
--Lincoln

 

[Techop]

I think most schools are better off with more lekos and no movers because the lekos dont break or really need maintnaince plus we are talking about students and teachers who dont know what a moving light is.

so go buy lekos saty a way from moving lites (like blow fuses)

 

[lightguy21]

My school did not have Intelligent Lighting, but I feel that if more school want to have a tech program and want to teach how to teach, buying Intelligent Lighting is a good idea. Today every show uses Intelligent Lighting. The collage I teach at just got 2 Mac 2000. I am not saying the all school need Mac 2000 but something to show how Intelligent Lighting works.

 

[TechWench]

my high school owned 4 studio spots and 18 color scrollers.

fun stuff.

the studio spots are nice, however while working with them i discovered a few errors in the manual and system.
such as the focus channel is named as the efx rotator.
but otherwise they were good to me.

and the scrollers are always fun to mess with.
especially during crew and making the entire crew feel like they are on an acid trip...ahh...

good times.

and yes. i voted. :wink:

 

[mbenonis]

auto- School boards never like students doing anything...even when they are better at it and have more experience then thier assigned faculty member....

Quite the opposite, in my experience. Over the summer, I ran the sound and lights for the annual administrative conference, which all assistant principals, principals, and higher-ups attend (up to and including the superintendent). During the conference, the superintendent made a comment to the effect of "when you want something done right, ask a young person to do it," and directed attention up to the booth and me. He also thanked me personally for all of my help.

 

[nloui]

Yeah, my school owns 6 HighEnd Studio Spot CMY's and 4 Technobeams among a few others...

 

[ccfan213]

some schools and adults appreciate students knowledge and others think students are bound to screw stuff up. for example, our, i guess you could call him the staff TD but he never came to any rehearsals and had no idea whatsoever how to even turn on the sound or light board came into the booth the night of the show and said "i wish we spent more time learning how to use this stuff" we told him we knew what we were doing and he said, "thats what you think" he spent the rest of the show selling tickets. far away from the booth. other staff members like my director last year said she wished i could do tech for a show she wrote that was playing in NYC and i was only a freshman, i couldnt cause i dont drive and have other stuff i had to do, but still. my point is you cant generalize all school staff as either trusting or not trusting students with valuabale and complex stuff.

 

[Jinglish]

Just two RoboScan 812's. Me might spring for an I-Cue eventually, though.

 

[shiben]

For all the schools with MAC 2ks, why? If your looking to buy, I would recommend MAC 700s or something similar. They are cheaper (still expensive) and smaller. Although if you can get funding for them, more power to you.

 

[LightingPenguin]

We've got 4 Elation Design Wash 250's, and 2 Design Spot 250's. Useful at times, but we're looking to get Mac 700's and trade the Elation's out. We'll see what happens.

If you want to count these, we've also got 6 I-Cues. But I don't really count those as movers

 

[highschooltech]

The high school i went to owns two right arms with auto iriss and scrollers. I guess you could call them movers. They also have 24 more Coloram scrollers which are very nice. They were willing to rent as needed. In fact at the moment i'm plotting for their performing arts gala they hired my to do with something like 26 mover on it.

 

[ishboo]

We have 2 Right Arms, 6 Color Commands, and 2 Rosco ICue's. So not really any Intels but we have the components of one.

 

[Spader]

My school has three MAC300's, three Martin SCX600's, two Technobeams, and six color scrollers. When Martin was still in Simi Valley (I found their old office yesterday and was SO exited - until I saw that they had indeed moved away) I heard that they would often lend units to our school for different events.

The great argument that I have read in this thread and will totally agree with is if they will be used. Can the students learn how to use them beyond turning them on and pointing them at the stage? I'm sure that (even in today's world) it would be an excellent tool for students to learn how to use them economically and often. Can students learn how to find places for them in more than two spots in a show? What's the point of paying all of that money, even to rent the equipment, if they are only used in two scenes?

This is just my two cents, and I'm sure that there is some fault in it.

 

[lighttechie5948]

My school is a nationally recognized performing arts high school. We own 2 MAC 250s and 4 Robe 250ATs. Controlled by an Express 72/144.

 

[MillburyAuditorium]

We don't own any moving lights, we have bulbs, electricity, color plates, and 48 dimmers

Along with some renovations we are doing, we are thinking about getting two or four low end Chauvet moving heads, Wont be the best as I have been told be others here, but for the price, a moving head is a moving head, and would be nice to have a manual spotlight instead of switching between the 16 foh spots. Since I have also been warned the color intensity will be washed out by other lights, We are planning only using them for specialty performances like dance recitals, or to follor a moving singer or performer when the rest of stage is on blackout, or dim.

 

[shiben]

Um, your still going to have problems. Keep in mind that Chauvet products are intended for Clubs and whatnot, so to really work, they need to be in the dark. Also, I doubt that you will find much versatility with them for dance performances. And have fun following the performers. Manual followspots will do that best. They might be fun to play with tho.

 

[cprted]

We don't own any moving lights, we have bulbs, electricity, color plates, and 48 dimmers

Along with some renovations we are doing, we are thinking about getting two or four low end Chauvet moving heads, Wont be the best as I have been told be others here, but for the price, a moving head is a moving head, and would be nice to have a manual spotlight instead of switching between the 16 foh spots. Since I have also been warned the color intensity will be washed out by other lights, We are planning only using them for specialty performances like dance recitals, or to follor a moving singer or performer when the rest of stage is on blackout, or dim.

Instead of spending your money on movers that aren't going to do what you want, why not pickup a follow spot instead?

 

[soundlight]

We don't own any moving lights, we have bulbs, electricity, color plates, and 48 dimmers

Along with some renovations we are doing, we are thinking about getting two or four low end Chauvet moving heads, Wont be the best as I have been told be others here, but for the price, a moving head is a moving head, and would be nice to have a manual spotlight instead of switching between the 16 foh spots. Since I have also been warned the color intensity will be washed out by other lights, We are planning only using them for specialty performances like dance recitals, or to follor a moving singer or performer when the rest of stage is on blackout, or dim.

Yeah, remember what I said in the other thread - until you have 96 dimmers and good fixtures for them, don't even consider moving lights. Scrollers? Sure. I-Cues? Why not. But moving lights? With the minimum cost of a decent mover for theatre (aka bright enough to make a difference and useful enough to justify it) at about $3200, why bother?