My kids' school has a small café-Gym-atorium stage. The lighting system consists of an ancient system of screw in colored floodlights. None of which works at this point. This is a small private K-8 school with not a lot of budget. It will be a fundraiser project for the annual school auction this spring. The Stage is about 25 feet wide x about 12' deep. There are two electrics on stage with a throw straight down of about 13-14 feet. We replaced the curtains last year so I have proper boarders and legs. I'm going to need some frontlight out in the gym which will need cages around them to protect them from basketballs. I'm thinking the console will probably be a Smartfade 1248. I'll probably set up the DMX addresses so that it's all grouped into 4 "fixture groups": 1st electric, 2nd electric, House Left, and House right. Keep it Simple! Budget... Probably around $4,000 max (trying to keep it around $5k after taxes, electric cable, DMX cable, etc). We've got parents who are electricians and a parent who owns an electrical supply store.. so I plan on exploiting free labor and discounted electric supplies for the installation. After buying the Smartfade, I've got a little under $3k left in the budget for fixtures. That means products that are in the $300 each range somewhere between Blizzard and Chauvet in quality. I rented a couple of ADJ LED PARS at Christmas and the color was HORRIBLE. It was so digital and artificial looking. Yuck! But the other parents were SO excited about how "beautiful" the lighting was. We need to avoid that again and give them something nice to look at.
So I need some product suggestions:
1) Downlight from Electrics: I'm leaning more towards wide angled PARS rather than strips here just because you can get a more even wash rather than strips and gaps... I'm thinking something like four wide angled fixtures per electric. One common use of the stage is for concerts where the kids are up on choir risers... so that 12' throw gets down to 7 or 8 when you put a middle school boy on top in the back row. So wide angle is really important. Do you agree with this approach or do you perhaps prefer strips with diffusion?
2) Front light: These are probably going to be about a 30' throw. So I'm thinking going with a little better quality fixture here with some punch, a good quality white, and a tight beam. I need to do some measurements so I can work out the actual photometrics of these... I'll get back to you. I'm thinking McCandless placement with two per side of the stage... maybe two at center as well.
3) Does anyone know of pre-made "baskets" to install over lights in gyms for ball protection?
Thanks! I'll get measurements so we can be more specific with the photometrics.
So I need some product suggestions:
1) Downlight from Electrics: I'm leaning more towards wide angled PARS rather than strips here just because you can get a more even wash rather than strips and gaps... I'm thinking something like four wide angled fixtures per electric. One common use of the stage is for concerts where the kids are up on choir risers... so that 12' throw gets down to 7 or 8 when you put a middle school boy on top in the back row. So wide angle is really important. Do you agree with this approach or do you perhaps prefer strips with diffusion?
2) Front light: These are probably going to be about a 30' throw. So I'm thinking going with a little better quality fixture here with some punch, a good quality white, and a tight beam. I need to do some measurements so I can work out the actual photometrics of these... I'll get back to you. I'm thinking McCandless placement with two per side of the stage... maybe two at center as well.
3) Does anyone know of pre-made "baskets" to install over lights in gyms for ball protection?
Thanks! I'll get measurements so we can be more specific with the photometrics.