Lighting a small benefit

soundlight

Well-Known Member
So I was just asked (by my younger brother) to light a Make a Wish Foundation Benefit concert that's being held at our church. Every year, they select a child from the Make a Wish list and raise enough money for their Wish. Now before you get any grand ideas, the church holds 100 people tops seated, some more standing, and there is NO lighting package as it stands. Last year it was lit with 4 construction worklights that almost melted the gel.

So, I'm lookin' for a few things here:
1) Is there anyone in the philly area that could lend me some parcans and a 4-pak dimmer and a controller? or maybe some weird DJ lighting gear? I don't need strobes or foggers - the high schoolers have both of those covered just fine...
2) What are your favorite homebrew lighting solutions for a rock gig? (par38 on a ceramic base in a can, xmas lights, etc)
3) Has anyone worked with a company called "Vision Technical Group" out of Pottstown, PA that might be able to give me an edge when I call them up to ask for 12 PAR38's for a day?
4) Does anyone know of any companies that would let me "demo" gear for this? (Some of the Chauvet LED stuff would be great - but I just did a demo of their COLORado1 for a month)

Ideally, I'd like to have a pair of MAC250's on the floor, 9 Coemar ParLites and an Express 250 from Vision Technical, but this is a volunteer gig with no budget, so that probably won't happen.

Just for reference, the event is on January 12.
 
Well, first, I must give the obligatory plug for bulbamerica.com.

It's nice to dream, but Mac's and Coemars seem highly unlikey for you. LED would be really nice to have, especially for flexibility in a small venue, but again cost becomes a concern. The main thing you need to figure out first is your available POWER. If anything I'd be lookng at Elation or Chauvet. Have you seen our thread on the Chauvet MiN? There's really no point in building your own PAR38's anymore, because the Chinese ones are so cheap now. See if any of the companies near you rent Leprecon gear. Their tree-mount dimmers and two-scene boards are pretty cost effective and standard gear for smaller PAR oriented shows.
 
I have no money. If we get ANY money, it's going to a one-day rental package from Vision Technical. The one thing that we're looking at right now is getting Vision Technical as a primary sponsor, since they look to be a rather large production house for our area (cloned suburbia, PA) and we would have a very miniscule share of their equipment for a sunday afternoon/evening/return monday morning. We don't want to buy a thing, so bulbamerica is out of the question.

However, if we do get, say, ten bucks out of each member of each band (say $150 total), I'm going for the PARlite LED's and the MACs and the Express and pitching this as a Make a Wish benifit, and seeing if we can get a newspaper slot for the event that talks about the event and specifically mentioned that they helped us.

The homemade PAR38's would be made from parts lying around in my basement (the sockets, the cans, the lamps), so those will probably happen whether or not we rent, because I can always put some sort of homemade donut on them to simulate ACLs.

Also, I might look at getting a demo on a pair of MiN spots for this gig, 'cause they'd be perfect. Absolutely perfect.
 
Sounds like you've got a good plan. i'd say go for it.
 
So those of you who've gotten demos before - what's the best way to go about it? I don't want to put too much pressure on BillESC, because I just got the COLORado 1 demo from him. So I'd like to get a demo of 2 MiN spots, and maybe 2 of their LED pars or something like that.. Me personally. Probably shipped to my house. Any suggestions?
 
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$150 gets you that if the supplier decides (1 in 100 chance on a good day) that your benefit is worth supporting that much. It's a very special year for the benefit as well, so they want to throw all that they can at it. I know that BillESC isn't a huge supplier, and that's why I'm not asking him on this one. And yeah, Starlite is great, we get the moving lights for our dance concert (usually VL3K's) from them.
 
Well, it's early January, and if Philly is like Chicago, it's pretty slow in the industry. I bet if you called rental houses, they'd give you stuff for free for the night. Explain it's a charity, what it's for, who the honored kid is, etc. Send them a press kit, which doesn't have to be fancy, just with a pix of the kid and some background about the disease and about Make-A-Wish.

Don't expect to get their cutting edge stuff, but you should be able to wrangle some pars, lekos, and dimmers for nothing, or at least for very little. Expect to pick it up and return it yourself, but you should be able to get something.
 
Someone drives all day there and back in our big van to get the VL3K's, Charc.

Thanks Len, that's what I'm banking on. I'm also going to play the card that this is the last year that the founder of this event will be running it, and we really want to give him the rock show atmosphere. So I'm hoping for my MAC's, PARlites, and Express, and some PAR38's as all around fill light, but will probably end up with PAR38's and then two PAR56's for front light. And a Leprecon board. But the money that we've got together is the rental fee for that, so I'm looking to go further in the lighting package.
 
A 20A breaker must (except some very rare cases involving motors or transformers) be wired with suitable wire, normally 12AWG or larger. If more than one receptacle are used (a duplex counts as 2), you can use 15A or 15/20A (T-slot) recepts. If it has only one single recept, it must be a 20A one.
 
I will have 2 15A circuits to use. So 30A total. Plus a circuit for the light board in the back of the room that I may be able to pull some more power from - but that's shared with some other stuff.
 
SCORE! I've got an ETC Express, 2 Leprecon 6-ch dimmer packs, and a cable package from VTG, and 10 PAR46 with 200W MFL's plus gel from my department back at school. I'm currently working on getting a pair of moving heads from another donor, as well as some LED's from VTG.
 
So check this inventory:
Express 48/96 w/LCD monitor
3 Leprecon LD-360HP
2 mac250
6 Coemar PARlite LED
6 150W T-3 worklights
10 PAR46
4 small box strobes (ya know the ones with the faux wood casing and paper reflectors)
2 fog machines
1 AMDJ helicopter light
plenty of gel
plenty of DMX
plenty of 12ga cable

From two sources, my college and the local production company.

This concert is gonna rock.

Photos will be posted later.
 

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