Sounds like it’s all coming together for your theater.
Don’t forget the maintenance and rainy day savings.
On
Scrim or Bobbinet, it should be flame treated - don’t forget that note and flame treating on drapery is only good for five years thus part of the rainy maintenance fund.
Don’t forget also that anything you install in the gym is going to become a target for the jerks about with anything they can
throw.
On starlight drops as we
call them, mounting them to a
scrim bobbinet is an interesting concept. Kudo’s Wolf. I used to make them with cable ties on about a one inch square or hex netting to do a similar thing. The netting was easy enough to deal with, cheaper and perhaps a
bit stronger than if I read Wolf right 1/4" hole size
scrim material. It given the hole sizes had more sag and stretch problems with the lights on the other
hand.
One thing you do want to do is to get a more industrial type of X-Mass tree lights - ones with “
shunt” type lamps. These lamps when they die will go out without taking out the entire
circuit. One burnt out lamp that’s not lit is a lot easier to find than a whole chain of them. The only thing about it is that without that lamp the rest of the string is going to be operating at a higher
voltage - remember them candy questions and lamp life? In other words, every time you use such a chain you should probably inspect it for bad lamps but at least you would be assured the thing is going to work
thru a show and not have a string go out. Thus the value of the more expensive
shunt type lamps.
In addition to this, put the string on a
dimmer. The more you dim the lamps, the longer they will last, plus you don’t need full
intensity for the
effect. I have some X-Mass tree lights mounted to the back of a soft
flat with a textured cloud
pattern already on the fabric so
sizing for me was white glue and water thus
clear. The Lights show
thru the fabric at about 30% for a starlight
effect in the bedroom at night. It does not take much wattage to even have the lights punch
thru fabric, even with a
scrim layer under it as I have. Just a question of ambient light in the room or what is hitting and bouncing off the
scrim or fabric the lights are projecting
thru.
Another way of doing this all is to use a full
stage black drape and punch and glue the lights
thru the fabric.
You might look into the relatively new X-Mass tree light net products. It might even be possible to use them when supplemented by cable ties as one large net all by themselves given they are available with
shunt type lamps. It might be a little more uniform in
layout than useful, but might be of use in looking at even for doing the attachment to bobbinet - that way you don’t have to do as much work in laying out the wires/lights and putting them in place that will fill a large area. All it takes is one bad lamp and with a chain snaked all over a
drop you have a major headache to fix. Been there done that. A
voltage sniffer and multi-meter will help but not enough. If you use a net without it
shunt type you will loose an entire section. That’s at least the advantage of individual strings of lights - you can
snake them and cross chains with them all over the place so that should you loose a string it won’t be as apparent.
Finally, on doing some kind of “West Coasting” folding and pulling up of your
drop or
roll drop type of
system. Review the anything you install as a target idea above, than at least have made for it some kid of sock or bag so you can protect the
drop not only from physical damage but also dust. I would probably go more for having installed some “Sundays” as some
call them or swaged
wire rope cables that
drop down from the suspension points in the ceiling that you can clip your
drop(s) to when they are brought out of storage. That way you can remove the
drop, work on it on the floor and store it away when not used.
On the rigging, hopefully your lighting guy is versed in it sufficiently otherwise it’s well of use to hire someone that can engineer something for you. It might be possible to rig you some light pipes that are suspended from above and also supported by pipes or booms to the floor at the sides to
pick up some weight. Such booms won’t do much for supporting load placed towards the center of the pipe but will help some. Problem is that they will be in the way. Perhaps some form of trussing or pipes going to the side walls will be an option. Again, your eyes on site will hopefully be able to give the
call on the subject or will know a rigging company that will engineer hanging stuff for you. Remember the target idea, lights left hung in the gym proper will be targets. Stuff to think about.
Last thing, have fun - as if you were not already.