"Multipurpose Room" Lighting Advice Needed

I apologize in advance for the long post, just wanted to give as much detail as I could. I’ll start with a quick background on me. I’m the IT Director for a small school district in the State of Arkansas, USA. But in addition to my “day job” I help out our under-served drama and music programs pretty much when and wherever I can because, well, I figure if basketball and baseball can have any of 50 people ready to help them do whatever, the performing arts ought to have at least one. And my fancy piece of paper from college says I’m supposed to know something about broadcast production, so I do have some background. But that didn’t really include lighting, which is where my question comes in.

To tell you a bit about our venue, it’s a textbook case of what I’ve dubbed “Multipurpose Room Syndrome,” meaning it’s a facility which was intended to fill several needs and ended up not doing any of them very well. Basically it’s a mediocre gym which, it seems as an afterthought, they stuck a stage on one of the long sides of, thus making it multipurpose. It’s the only stage in our single-campus district, so it serves everything from the little kids’ Christmas program to high school drama productions and choir concerts. The proscenium arch, and I use the term loosely, is roughly 50’ wide by 9’ tall (that’s not a typo, it’s 9 feet, or actually about 7’ once you factor in the valance for the main (only) curtain. The stage deck is elevated about 2 feet above the surface of the main floor. Depth from the curtain to the upstage wall is roughly 16’, but the 3 or 4 feet closest to the wall are pretty much unusable as the structural steel for the building’s roof intrudes into the stage space. Yep, nice big I-beam right at center stage, and one in each of the corners. So, yeah, it’s pretty small, and has no wings or dressing rooms at all. Oh, and did I mention the walls of the stage shell are bare (painted) concrete block, and it has a standard drop ceiling which is about 10 feet above the vinyl tile stage deck. Basically it’s a classroom with one wall missing, and you’d better believe the acoustics are…interesting.

Anyway, on to my actual question now that the details are out of the road. I’m looking for advice on improving our stage lighting situation. Our current lighting was furnished by the fine theatrical firm of Home Depot, or it may have been Lowe’s, so it wouldn’t take much to be an improvement. Yep, that’s right, our current stage lighting consists of 3, count ‘em 3, sets of track floods like you would usually see in someone’s kitchen. They did at least put them on rheostats so they can be dimmed. We’d really like to move to something we could do more than on, halfway on, and off with, but we’re kind of limited due to the facility. As I say, the stage currently has a 10’ drop ceiling installed, but it’s definitely not structural, so removing it shouldn’t be a big deal. Of course we’d have to check with the fire marshal first, but I think the reason the ceiling was installed was they air conditioned the stage. But just the stage, the rest of the building lacks A/C, so when you’ve got the curtain open actually using the stage, that little bit of A/C does no good. Couldn’t tell you the last time those units were really used. But they’re getting ready to air condition the whole facility, so that should be a more or less a moot point. Just behind the proscenium, taking out the ceiling would gain us about 7 feet (It’s just under 17 feet from stage deck to the bottom of the structural steel at that point). It’s a sloped roof, so as you work upstage toward the wall, the height drops to about 14 feet from stage deck to structural steel. So, assuming it was allowable to dead hang electrics from the existing steel (would rather have them on winches, but can’t have everything), just behind the arch you’d have 8’-10’ between the lights and the head of an average person standing on the deck, which wouldn’t be bad. But, losing that 3’ as you move upstage, especially when you add in 24 inches worth of riser for some of the big elementary music programs, things get a little close for comfort. There should still be at least 6’ between heads and lights, so could be better could be worse. Right now one of our biggest problems is when people get close to, or in front of the arch, they get lost in the shadows as the only lights are a couple of feet behind the arch. Of course, this is a very active gym, so putting lights outside of the stage shell proper is tricky. Basically whatever we did would have to be easily put up and taken down, or able to take being hit by any kind of ball known to man. Rigging from the roof is probably out, as there are already four basketball goals suspended from the steel out in the “house”. There are the main goals at each end, plus one on each side at half court (yeah, there’s a goal right in front of center stage, but at least it’s on a lift). So even without calling a structural expert in to find out if the beams can take more load, there’s simply not much space available up there. It’s only about 70’ from the front of the stage to the far wall, so it might work to mount a truss or something on that wall, as long as it didn’t interfere with the baseball team’s indoor batting cage which runs basically the full length of that side of the room. But, I’m thinking our best bet is probably something like ETC Smart Bars on stands so they could be set up and taken down as needed. I’d like to be able to do something more permanent, as the frequent setup and teardown thing gets (has already gotten) old, but I just don’t know if that’s in the cards.

As far as budget, at this point there isn’t one. The local taxpayers just voted through a small bond issue, part of which is to be used to renovate and improve this multipurpose facility. Sad part is it’s not even 10 years old, so if they’d just done it right the first time…but anyway. Now, it shouldn’t be a surprise that doing anything to improve the stage space wasn’t a part of the package, at least not specifically. But, the powers that be always write a bit of spending latitude into their bond issues, so I’m hoping to be able to chisel off a small piece to be used for stage improvements. Don’t know that I’ll succeed, but can’t hurt to try.

The other big question would, I guess, be available power. Answer is, I believe, not much. I’m no electrical engineer, but I’ve got enough common sense to look at the breaker panel and see there are no available slots. And to know that they’re going to have to revamp the power feeds before they go hooking up however many tons of air conditioning it takes to cool this big barn, and the 40 year old basketball gym to which the multipurpose facility is attached (building is basically two basketball courts end to end). So, logically, if we were going to have power added for some proper stage lighting, that would be the time to do it.

So that’s about it, I guess. Like I say, lighting is a new area for me, so I’m basically looking for some advice and suggestions at this point. I know some of you have venues along these lines, so I’d love to hear what worked and didn’t work for you. And, while it would be nice to call in a consultant and have them figure the whole thing out, it’s not real likely to happen. At the very least, my boss (Superintendent) would want some rough idea what kind of dollars we were looking at before we even went that far with it. Thanks in advance.
 
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For "frontlight" for your stage, consider something like SSRC's Spotlight Cage.pdf.
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If you manage to get any sort of lighting installed, I would probably find out if its possible to make the proscenium higher. Even a few feet would make a world of difference. Then get some PAR cans and a few other lighting instruments, and work from there? The ETC smartbars sound like a good option to me, but there might be better (cheaper) shoebox dimmers out there that would work for you.
 
Yeah, I was already thinking of suggesting raising the arch. Don't know why in the world they only built it 9 feet high. Actually, what I'd like to get them to do is expand the stage up and also out. There's 6 or 8 feet of basically wasted space on the opposite side of the basketball court from the stage. So, if we could get them to move the b-ball court over into that space, we could add say 6 feet of depth onto the stage and rework the arch at the same time, which would make, I think, a huge difference in usability. Part of the renovation plan is installing a proper rubberized basketball court surface, so if we were ever going to do it, that would be the perfect time.
 
Ruberized? I didnt know thats how they did basketball courts. Anyhow, that seems like a decent idea. A slightly higher arch will make it look infinitely better, and make it easier to light too.
 
Yeah, I was already thinking of suggesting raising the arch. Don't know why in the world they only built it 9 feet high. Actually, what I'd like to get them to do is expand the stage up and also out. There's 6 or 8 feet of basically wasted space on the opposite side of the basketball court from the stage. So, if we could get them to move the b-ball court over into that space, we could add say 6 feet of depth onto the stage and rework the arch at the same time, which would make, I think, a huge difference in usability. Part of the renovation plan is installing a proper rubberized basketball court surface, so if we were ever going to do it, that would be the perfect time.


in typical school fashion, they will probably install this rubber surface, then wont let you put chairs on it because it will damage the rubber eliminating all uses of the room besides sports

(we lost our community field which was used for carnivals, 4th of july fireworks show and concert, and a bunch of other stuff because the highschool installed a rubber field which would have been damaged...)
 
Nah, see, this isn't the "main" gym. That has a pretty nice floating hardwood floor that the coaches are very, very protective of. The multipurpose room is used more for P.E. classes and other things they don't want done on the "good" floor. The basketball teams do, grudgingly, use it as a practice facility (its sort of whichever coach loses the coin toss that morning gets the multipurpose room). Besides, if anything tears the floor up, it will be the baseball team doing batting practice in there. And the baseball coach is also the boys' basketball coach, so he's got no one to be mad at but himself.
 
I apologize in advance for the long post, just wanted to give as much detail as I could. I’ll start with a quick background on me. I’m the IT Director for a small school district in the State of Arkansas, USA. But in addition to my “day job” I help out our under-served drama and music programs pretty much when and wherever I can because, well, I figure if basketball and baseball can have any of 50 people ready to help them do whatever, the performing arts ought to have at least one. And my fancy piece of paper from college says I’m supposed to know something about broadcast production, so I do have some background. But that didn’t really include lighting, which is where my question comes in.

To tell you a bit about our venue, it’s a textbook case of what I’ve dubbed “Multipurpose Room Syndrome,” meaning it’s a facility which was intended to fill several needs and ended up not doing any of them very well. Basically it’s a mediocre gym which, it seems as an afterthought, they stuck a stage on one of the long sides of, thus making it multipurpose. It’s the only stage in our single-campus district, so it serves everything from the little kids’ Christmas program to high school drama productions and choir concerts. The proscenium arch, and I use the term loosely, is roughly 50’ wide by 9’ tall (that’s not a typo, it’s 9 feet, or actually about 7’ once you factor in the valance for the main (only) curtain. The stage deck is elevated about 2 feet above the surface of the main floor. Depth from the curtain to the upstage wall is roughly 16’, but the 3 or 4 feet closest to the wall are pretty much unusable as the structural steel for the building’s roof intrudes into the stage space. Yep, nice big I-beam right at center stage, and one in each of the corners. So, yeah, it’s pretty small, and has no wings or dressing rooms at all. Oh, and did I mention the walls of the stage shell are bare (painted) concrete block, and it has a standard drop ceiling which is about 10 feet above the vinyl tile stage deck. Basically it’s a classroom with one wall missing, and you’d better believe the acoustics are…interesting.

Anyway, on to my actual question now that the details are out of the road. I’m looking for advice on improving our stage lighting situation. Our current lighting was furnished by the fine theatrical firm of Home Depot, or it may have been Lowe’s, so it wouldn’t take much to be an improvement. Yep, that’s right, our current stage lighting consists of 3, count ‘em 3, sets of track floods like you would usually see in someone’s kitchen. They did at least put them on rheostats so they can be dimmed. We’d really like to move to something we could do more than on, halfway on, and off with, but we’re kind of limited due to the facility. As I say, the stage currently has a 10’ drop ceiling installed, but it’s definitely not structural, so removing it shouldn’t be a big deal. Of course we’d have to check with the fire marshal first, but I think the reason the ceiling was installed was they air conditioned the stage. But just the stage, the rest of the building lacks A/C, so when you’ve got the curtain open actually using the stage, that little bit of A/C does no good. Couldn’t tell you the last time those units were really used. But they’re getting ready to air condition the whole facility, so that should be a more or less a moot point. Just behind the proscenium, taking out the ceiling would gain us about 7 feet (It’s just under 17 feet from stage deck to the bottom of the structural steel at that point). It’s a sloped roof, so as you work upstage toward the wall, the height drops to about 14 feet from stage deck to structural steel. So, assuming it was allowable to dead hang electrics from the existing steel (would rather have them on winches, but can’t have everything), just behind the arch you’d have 8’-10’ between the lights and the head of an average person standing on the deck, which wouldn’t be bad. But, losing that 3’ as you move upstage, especially when you add in 24 inches worth of riser for some of the big elementary music programs, things get a little close for comfort. There should still be at least 6’ between heads and lights, so could be better could be worse. Right now one of our biggest problems is when people get close to, or in front of the arch, they get lost in the shadows as the only lights are a couple of feet behind the arch. Of course, this is a very active gym, so putting lights outside of the stage shell proper is tricky. Basically whatever we did would have to be easily put up and taken down, or able to take being hit by any kind of ball known to man. Rigging from the roof is probably out, as there are already four basketball goals suspended from the steel out in the “house”. There are the main goals at each end, plus one on each side at half court (yeah, there’s a goal right in front of center stage, but at least it’s on a lift). So even without calling a structural expert in to find out if the beams can take more load, there’s simply not much space available up there. It’s only about 70’ from the front of the stage to the far wall, so it might work to mount a truss or something on that wall, as long as it didn’t interfere with the baseball team’s indoor batting cage which runs basically the full length of that side of the room. But, I’m thinking our best bet is probably something like ETC Smart Bars on stands so they could be set up and taken down as needed. I’d like to be able to do something more permanent, as the frequent setup and teardown thing gets (has already gotten) old, but I just don’t know if that’s in the cards.

As far as budget, at this point there isn’t one. The local taxpayers just voted through a small bond issue, part of which is to be used to renovate and improve this multipurpose facility. Sad part is it’s not even 10 years old, so if they’d just done it right the first time…but anyway. Now, it shouldn’t be a surprise that doing anything to improve the stage space wasn’t a part of the package, at least not specifically. But, the powers that be always write a bit of spending latitude into their bond issues, so I’m hoping to be able to chisel off a small piece to be used for stage improvements. Don’t know that I’ll succeed, but can’t hurt to try.

The other big question would, I guess, be available power. Answer is, I believe, not much. I’m no electrical engineer, but I’ve got enough common sense to look at the breaker panel and see there are no available slots. And to know that they’re going to have to revamp the power feeds before they go hooking up however many tons of air conditioning it takes to cool this big barn, and the 40 year old basketball gym to which the multipurpose facility is attached (building is basically two basketball courts end to end). So, logically, if we were going to have power added for some proper stage lighting, that would be the time to do it.

So that’s about it, I guess. Like I say, lighting is a new area for me, so I’m basically looking for some advice and suggestions at this point. I know some of you have venues along these lines, so I’d love to hear what worked and didn’t work for you. And, while it would be nice to call in a consultant and have them figure the whole thing out, it’s not real likely to happen. At the very least, my boss (Superintendent) would want some rough idea what kind of dollars we were looking at before we even went that far with it. Thanks in advance.


Hey,

This is a super comman problem up here in the great white north. The cheapest solution is to go non-permanent. Get a couple (12 or so) parcans and plunk em on some of the stands that you would buy at (that's right) home depot (or you know a proper lighting supply store if you wanna be fancy) They've got a pretty good throw distance, and can be placed at the sides of the room, near the front, middle or back.
They're far from perfect, but they're cheap and a good little stop-gap solution that will allow you to use gels and gobos, ect to make things look, at least a bit more theatrical.
 

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