Red
That's assuming, of course, that you start at the red end of the color spectrum.
L.E.D. I missed the boat!
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That's assuming, of course, that you start at the red end of the color spectrum.
porkchop
Well-Known Member
Necropost!
Here's a recent article from this month's issue of Stage Directions. The full article, located below, can be found here.
Here's a recent article from this month's issue of Stage Directions. The full article, located below, can be found here.
Virginia Beach School Leads in LEDs
In a somewhat unlikely place, an unlikely metamorphosis is happening. A theatre has switched out conventional lights for LEDs, which alone might not raise an eyebrow. But the team behind the switch is so enthralled with the potential of LEDs, they are looking at applying the technology behind the theatre—into the auditorium, and even beyond to the hallways and classrooms.
Yes, it’s a high school that is breaking new ground.
At the Virginia Beach City Public Schools, there’s a team at Green Run High who educated themselves on LEDs and then moved from asking “why” to “why not?” Their motivation started simply enough: Could they lower the energy bill at their theatre?
“They were looking at their electric bill as school districts often do, and realized if they went with LEDs in their theatre they could cut their electric bills up to $10,000 or $12,000,” says Chauvet’s Ann Feltgen.
And they are sharing the LED love to other schools in their district, and beyond.
Green Run High School is in the Virginia Beach Public School system. Built back in the 1970s, today it has a student body of 2,000. The theatre seats 400 and has changed little since its initial build. Conventional lighting included 50kW of cyc lights with red, green, and blue cells. Mechanical systems coordinator John Hasher says when they realized an upgrade was long overdue they carefully went through the infrastructure. When they concluded the lights needed to be replaced, they looked beyond the obvious. Chris Jacobs, the electrician for the school, already had LEDs on his mind, though more convincing had to be done.
“About four years ago a contractor showed us LED fixtures, but they weren’t bright enough for our needs,” he explains. “But I kept an eye on the technology.”
When the Green Run team started working with contractor Barry Basnight, the LED idea came up again. Intrigued, Basnight was encouraged to pursue the possibility. Basnight in turn contacted Ana Jaramillo, Chauvet’s regional general sales manager for the Northeast.
“We took Colorado 1’s, Colorado 3’s, and Colorado 6’s to the school and demoed them,” says Jaramillo. “We connected them to their DMX board and had a shoot-out. That was back in May, and the next month they placed an order.” The initial order was for 15 Colorado 6’s and 12 Colorado 1’s.
“They are totally thrilled—thrilled about not needing dimmers, and thrilled at the money they will save on electricity,” added Jaramillo.
The school went ahead and had Chauvet’s related software installed as well.
The idea of how to sell LEDs to the drama teacher and administrators was a simple matter of calculation. Fifteen LED lights of this type use about 5.5kW, which is 10% of the lights they replaced. If they’re used an average of 35 hours per week for 30 weeks per year, they would save 46,725 kilowatt-hours per year. If the schools pays $0.10 per kWH, they would save $4,672.50 per year. On top of that, the HVAC load would be reduced by 13,292 tons of A/C. Depending on the Energy Efficiency Rating (EER) of the A/C unit, that could save them about another $1000 annually. That says nothing about the tons of CO2 it saves, in addition to the toxic chemicals that are spewed in the air when coal it burned to make electricity, which is the case for 50% of the world’s electric generators.
Of course, energy savings weren’t the theatre folks’ only concern.
“We worked in conjunction with Marc Dyer, the drama teacher,” Jaramillo says. “Marc was hesitant at first, but we brought in a sample of the Colorado 6 and hung it on stage and showed him what it could do on a small scale. He was very interested once he saw how much light it put out, and also with the versatility the lights offered.”
“Once we figured out they would actually work, we took down the old lights and put up the Chauvets,” Jacobs adds. “We had million color combinations, and they worked better than any strip light I’ve ever seen.”
So the long-term savings in energy expenses was easy for everyone to understand, but alas, there was a catch: it required an initial investment that exceeded the initial budget. They kept pointing to the figures, and successfully convinced the administrators it was well worth it.
“While we were waiting for the fixtures to come in, I set up the DMX network,” Jacobs says. When the lights did come in they daisy-chained them together, which “made for a nice, neat installation. The whole process didn’t have many hiccups. We’re pretty pleased about that as well.”
So far, there’s only been one small show in the theatre, and the team says the lights have yet to be used to their full potential. Partly they’ve been taking a cautious approach, and partly they’ve wanted to take the time to become very familiar with them, as does the director. Another challenge is their Express ETC board, which wasn’t built to run as many channels as the Colorados can make use of.
“There are a lot more channels then we’re used to dealing with,” Jacobs says. “With these lights, we’re at 412 channels but the board can only drive 192, so right off the bat we can’t separate individual lights as much as we’d like to.” This is leading them to consider adding a board, plus they are experimenting with PC-based solutions.
Their forward-thinking actions have inspired them to be get the word out about their success, and they are drawing the attention of other schools, in and out of their district.
“We’re the ones driving the boat on this, not the schools,” Hasher says. “We’re educating other drama teachers and engineers in the area. We’re the first to do this on a public school level.” A new school being built in the district is reconsidering their lighting because of what has happened at Green Run. “What we’ve done here might impact how they build that one.”
Getting the LEDs Out
But the Green Run team isn’t stopping at the orchestra pit. If it works in the theatre, why not use LED for the house lights? And if it works in the house lights, why not the hallways of the school? The classrooms?
“We have great hope that their will be more cost savings for us as we try to implement this technology elsewhere,” Hasher says. “Right now, Chauvet is taking some of their other LED fixtures and modifying them for other uses for us.”
The Green Run High team (left to right: Chris Jacobs, John Greber and John Hasher) researched the school’s infrastructure and LED capabilities before deciding to install Chauvet LEDs.
The Green Run High team (left to right: Chris Jacobs, John Greber and John Hasher) researched the school’s infrastructure and LED capabilities before deciding to install Chauvet LEDs.
And why Chauvet?
“I looked at all the other fixtures, and they are all interesting, but at this point, Chauvet had features we had to have,” Jacobs says. “Their lights also use an internal power supply and in our theatre, it’s hard to mount external power supplies in different locations. With these lights, if I need to move it, I just unplug them and pull them out.” Additional features won him over to Chauvet, too, but perhaps most importantly—as this is theatre after all—was the look of the Colorados. “Many of the other fixtures I looked at didn’t have the punch that these do. As of right now, Chuavet is making something that fits our needs really well.”
On December 4, Green Run had an open house of sorts to show off their new lights. “There were about 30 people in attendance,” Feltgen says. “Their backgrounds ranged from electrical contractor, to specifier, to architect. Everyone was blown away by the usage of LED technology by the School District.
“According to the School Board Representative,” Feltgen continues, “there was some initial resistance by the drama departments to LED technology, but once they saw it in use, they wanted it in their schools as well.”
Interesting to note that the High School in question did not think enough to replace their twenty year-old plus Berkey-Colortran Ellipsoid ERSs, or 6" Fresnels, at the same time. They now have some lovely, state-of-the-art, X-rays (except that X-rays would not exhibit the spottiness that is seen in picture #1).
David Ashton
Well-Known Member
What a fantastic con, can they evenly light the cyc? no.
Can the light a hard circle? no
Can they light people in a naturalistic way? no
Can they do rock shows? yes
Are these people fantastic salesmen? Absolutely, I'm seeing clients throwing away 10's of thousands of dollars on disco effect gear because its the "way of the future, etc,etc,etc"
Can the light a hard circle? no
Can they light people in a naturalistic way? no
Can they do rock shows? yes
Are these people fantastic salesmen? Absolutely, I'm seeing clients throwing away 10's of thousands of dollars on disco effect gear because its the "way of the future, etc,etc,etc"
On one of the earlier posts on this thread, someone asked the question, "If the eye could discern all of the millions of colors that could be generated by the various combinations of LED instruments".
Long before I ever became involved in using LEDs in the theatre, I was involved for many years in TV production. When Video switchers first came out, with color generators for creating colors for video lettering or backgrounds, There were theoretical calculations using Hue, Saturation and intensity, that rendered millions of colors. At that time an article was published that stated that the modern color monitor and the human eye could only see discernable differances of approximately 512 colors.
Now before you throw out all of the theories to prove me wrong, understand I am just repeating somebody's written article. In any case even if this article is wrong, my experience in producing a little over 1000 TV shows and trying to find different colors for titles and backgrounds that would contrast and be readable, This number is probably pretty close to being correct. I did find it interesting, however that the number used(512) is a binary divisable number.
Positive thoughts on the matter?
Long before I ever became involved in using LEDs in the theatre, I was involved for many years in TV production. When Video switchers first came out, with color generators for creating colors for video lettering or backgrounds, There were theoretical calculations using Hue, Saturation and intensity, that rendered millions of colors. At that time an article was published that stated that the modern color monitor and the human eye could only see discernable differances of approximately 512 colors.
Now before you throw out all of the theories to prove me wrong, understand I am just repeating somebody's written article. In any case even if this article is wrong, my experience in producing a little over 1000 TV shows and trying to find different colors for titles and backgrounds that would contrast and be readable, This number is probably pretty close to being correct. I did find it interesting, however that the number used(512) is a binary divisable number.
Positive thoughts on the matter?
Esoteric
Well-Known Member
I've heard stated that ETC is seriously dealing with the fact that the S4 will not carry them indefinitely, as the market becomes more saturated. It's getting nearer to the point where all that want them have them. And thus they have to be working on the "Beyond S4" as we speak. It would not be surprising if it involved LED's....
Thanks for tracking the stage directions story down. I went looking for it a few days ago but it wasn't on-line yet. I was shocked reading the story. These people were ripped off! The story brags about how amazing this is... but the pictures show it SUCKS!!! Look at that horrible wash on the curtain/cyc in those two pictures. Furthermore, there's a great quote in there about how Chauvet had the best product to offer. Well yes... if you are going to sell people a really crappy wash and claim it's amazing by stressing how cheap it will be... Chauvet does have a lot to offer. The truth is yes it can be done all LED but in order to afford gear that won't look as terrible as these pictures you have to spend about 5 times the amount listed... and you still won't be able to get a hard edge or project a gobo.
As for the future of lamp technology keep an eye on plasma lamp sources. The demos on display at LDI were very impressive.
Well yes... if you are going to sell people a really crappy wash and claim it's amazing by stressing how cheap it will be... Chauvet does have a lot to offer. The truth is yes it can be done all LED but in order to afford gear that won't look as terrible as these pictures you have to spend about 5 times the amount listed... and you still won't be able to get a hard edge or project a gobo. As for the future of lamp technology keep an eye on plasma lamp sources. The demos on display at LDI were very impressive.
Somebody write this date down; David and I AGREE on something!
Yes and no. It took, roughly, eight years to sell the first one million SourceFours, and six years to sell the second million. Everyone, raise your hand if you have enough SourceFours, and DON'T WANT any more? That's what I thought. (Current economic conditions may delay hitting the three million-mark; but a year ago I would have predicted 2010 or 2011.)
ALL manufacturers are looking at alternative light sources, but I suspect we're still some time (three? five? ten? years) away from a true replacement to the incandescent lamp. The plasma source appears especially intriguing, though.
Get out of my head, GT.
The article's math is flawed also. They had 50kW (!) of cyclights gelled in RBG? Must have included borderlights also.
How many schools leave their RBG cyclts/borderlights on, at Full, an average of five hours/day, thirty weeks a year? I suspect those 1000W, FEL-based Ellipsoids are going to be used even more than they have been previously.
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Esoteric
Well-Known Member
Thanks for tracking the stage directions story down. I went looking for it a few days ago but it wasn't on-line yet. I was shocked reading the story. These people were ripped off! The story brags about how amazing this is... but the pictures show it SUCKS!!! Look at that horrible wash on the curtain/cyc in those two pictures. Furthermore, there's a great quote in there about how Chauvet had the best product to offer.
As for the future of lamp technology keep an eye on plasma lamp sources. The demos on display at LDI were very impressive.
Of course it all depends on what you are using it for and how much you need. It isn't all that hard to do a color wash with LEDs. A top wash? Yes. A side wash? Not really. Also some heavy diffusion works wonders with LEDs.
But no you can't project a gobo with them. But I have never seen a wash unit (CAN/Fresnel/Pageant/etc) that you can project a gobo with or get a hard edge on.
LEDs will never be a replacement for conventional front light but if used correctly they are already a replacement for wash units.
Mike
Darthrob13
Active Member
Esoteric
Well-Known Member
Hahahaha.. Point taken. Rephrased, right now and in the near future, LEDs are not a replacement for conventional front lighting.
Mike
Icewolf08 and Gafftaper, you guys never said too much more about your MinSpots. How well do they do at projecting a sharp gobo?
Showgun? VL3500 Wash FX?
David Ashton
Well-Known Member
It is informative to read LED professional Review, and get an inside, realistic idea of the real state of play, even the manufaturers hope for a 5 year timeframe for a competitive priced, high power LED at a reasonable price and with good colour rendition, and 10 years is more realistic given that research doesn't hit a brick wall
