New Equipment/Ideas?

[shiben]

The College that I work at does a lot of conferences and events over the summer in our new basketball arena, a 5000 seat venue that also includes 4 focusing bridges, which are 45' or more above the stage level. We were doing an event that included a talent show that utilized theatrical lighting in this space yesterday that hilighted some major deficiencies in our inventory, and I was wondering if anyone had advice on what we might use to expand the usability of the space further.

Our current inventory is this:
35 Source 4 750W bodies (all lamped at 575W due to a contractor error)
- 12x 14 deg. lens tubes
- 14x 19 deg. lens tubes
- 8x 5 deg. lens tubes
16 Source 4 PARs, all lamped at 575W for the same reason as the lekos.
Color frames for all the equipment

In addition, our main venue is currently under construction, and the lighting equipment from there is in storage, and sometimes used, but most of it is off limits for various reasons. What we can use is the following:
- 12x 19 deg. Source 4 750W
- 8x 36 deg. Source 4 575W
- 2x TwinSpin gobo rotators
- 8x gobo frames
- 1x glass gobo frame
- 12x 7.5" Color scrollers
- 10x 6.25" Color Scrollers
- 4x 7' booms
- 2 Lycian Starklite II follow spots mounted 179' from the stage. They are nice and bright, but have huge spots.
I have access to 2 more gobo rotators, 2 IQs, and 3 FilmFX units.

What can we add to this inventory to increase our ability to do cool shows? The college has basically forbidden us from getting true movers like a MAC 700 or something, but is open to the idea of LEDs. Our budget is rather small, having been set by a bunch of bean counters who have no idea how much things cost (currently the size of our budget is undetermined, basically we ask the VP for our department if we can get stuff at the moment). Does anyone have any ideas to expand this for not tons of money? Any help is appreciated.

 

[NickJones]

Mac700s are expensive, very very cool, but expensive. Check out the Gafftaper Methood, PAR cans, gel & dimmers can provide nice effects for talent shows, the Gobo Rotators and Colour Scrollers can be cool so definitely use them, and followspots ballywhoing are just like moving lights, except run by tired kids, and not as efficiently, as they don't like being put in roadcases. Read the Gafftaper method, in short, I-Cues, cool, easy to maintain, fast moving, and cheap (ish) maybe another two followspots, LEDs are also cool. A few LED PARs can give you the cool effects you want, as well as a Martin Atomic strobe, (drool) and a massive hazer. Plus with a strobe and hazer you get to play murder in the dark the fun way...

• I-Cues cost about a grand US (I think)
• Followspots vary, but if they were mounted say on FOH1, then you get that cool downward effect you see in concerts, you wouldn't need too much power. But that all depends on the setup of the venue.
• Foggers & Hazers aren't my area, so maybe do some searching.
• Selecon Pacific (I love theses guys, getting two just for the DIY Gobos is worth it, I have a gobo of me looking unimpressed. I can bring it up whenever I am unimpressed.)
• Cyc Lights & Groundrows, Groundwrows can look very cool, I was recently in a venue that used 20 year old strand ones, that used 150w household bulbs, and they worked brilliantly. And I noticed you had no Cyc lighting listed, so you might want to add some in.
• Projector, Vision Mixer & Cameras, it looks so cool and very professional to be able to have live video of your performers live on a massive screen behind them, Edirol V4/V8, nice beefy projector and a few cameras, looks great.

Just some suggestions,
Nick

 

[MNicolai]

Movers are a hard purchase to justify. Where I would suggest you start though is ask yourself what you might have don't differently in previous designs for that space if you had a larger budget for new purchases. What products would you have rented or purchased? Did you ever find yourself saying, "I wish I had a..." or "My life would be so much easier if we had some..."

Start with the basic necessities and toys and go from there. A large budget is great, but you'd be surprised how much further it goes on a lot of small purchases than for a few huge purchases.

 

[lazor]

I would look into PAR64s from Altman or the like. Fairly cheap and will be able to give you a lot of bang for your buck at 1000w. Altman's website has them for $107, and I'm sure you would be able to get them cheaper if you contacted your local theatrical supply shop. (I was able to get them for about $70 last summer) With a 45' throw from your lighting position to the stage level I would look into getting PARs with Narrow or Very Narrow lamps. PARs are good at throwing a lot of light on the stage. Have a couple of different colors in a few different systems of PARs and you got your self some classic Rock 'n Roll lighting.

45' is a long throw and I'm not sure how the newest LED lights would do at that distance. Since you don't quite have a budget, could you look into just up grading all your S4s to 750w to improve the light you can get from your current equipment?

 

[shiben]

Thanks guys. I just read the gafftaper method, and I think there is quite a bit we can do for not too much money. Thanks for all your help!

 

[Esoteric]

I am, as always, Devil's advocate. My view is that if you HAVE to because of budget reasons, then go with the Gafftaper method, but you can find good units, new and used for good prices.

The way I see it is if you only have $1200, sure, buy 4 scrollers. But if you have $4000, would you rather have 4 SeaChangers (which only give you CMY Color Mixing) or 4 moving heads with CMY mixing capabilities, the ability to move, and add different rotating lithos?

I know which one I would want.

Of course if you do not have the basics in place, then that is where you need to begin. But I just cant bring myself to spend $1000 on a CMY mixing add on or $350 on a gobo rotator.

Of course I came up using movers in everything from straight plays to musicals to live music. In fact I am opening a straight play this weekend using 2 Technobeams (which I got for $500 each and for another $150 I am about to add a wide angle lens, try getting litho color, rotating patterns, multiple patterns, and multiple spaces for $600 with the Gafftaper Method).

Mike

 

[gafftaper]

Well my initial reaction is that you just don't have enough fixtures. My "method" is supposed to help you integrate toys into your collection on a budget. However it assumes you have enough fixtures to light the stage. From what you've said it sounds like you should start by adding more source fours to allow you to have multiple color washes of the stage. A bunch of source fours with breakup gobos out of focus will do wonders to creating interesting texture in a variety of shows. Multiple color washes are critical for creating mood in a theater performance. On the concert side, I'm with Lazor. Add as many PAR cans as you can afford. They are the cheap old school way to light music. Lots of par cans all gelled in heavy saturated colors and light it from the front with a follow spots in pastel colors.

When you have the ability to do those things then I would say go ahead and begin applying "the method". But you've got to cover your basics first.

 

[NickJones]

As said before, your first priority is to get everything well lit, as Gaff said, his methood is for "Toys" if you want effects on the cheap, PARs & Gel. The end.
Nick

 

[shiben]

Update: We have loads of gel, not a full rosco catalogue, but quite a bit of it (lacking in the 300 series gels). As for lighting effectively, our average stage size is 32'x28', so for a white light wash, we can get it super bright, and even with color, I managed to get a blue, green, red, and amber wash pretty good, bright enough to see the performers. Anyhow, we got 18 more 750W source 4s with 19 degree barrels and 24 PARNels (575W lamps) from the venue under construction.

Has anyone used the Seachanger? I am thinking of requesting funding for 8 so that we can have colorchangers on our 5* Source 4s. Are they a decent investment?

Esoteric, where can I buy a technobeam for 500 bucks? Every place that might have them either does not carry them (our local distributor, as far as my boss was able to find out) or it costs more like 1200 (online). I think the technobeam looks interesting, and am thinking of getting one or two myself to play with.

lazor, you would think that 750W lamps would have been the first thing to buy. Unfortunately, I cant get funding for new lamps until I have gone thru the ones in the instruments and the 36 that we got from the installer. Something about why buy something new when we have a perfectly good one?

Nick, as for projectors and cameras, we have 2 jumbotron type projection screens with 20k lumen projectors, and a scoreboard that theoretically does video on its LED screens (cant get it to work with our HD video system tho). Our video crew has a brand new system to work with, $800k worth of HD cameras and the like (yay for broadcasting on PBS). I would like to use a groundrow, but we only have 8 circuits onstage. How much would a portable dimmer system be? We have 2 100 amp and 2 400 amp company switches backstage, and a distro that is bussed for 200 amps (thats how big the company switch in the old venue was). I can get a hold of the theater departments MR-16 strip lights if I want, but we cant run them and anything else onstage due to the circuit requirements.

 

[Esoteric]

Drop me a line Shiben at [email protected]. I use several suppliers for used equipment I can see if they have any around. The two I have are in excellent condition.

Mike

 

[gafftaper]

I have 8 Seachanger Profiles and 12 Seachanger Wash lights and I love them. They are slow compared to the color changers in your typical intelligent lights. They can't instantly "Snap" to a new color. It takes between 1/2 and 1 1/2 seconds to change colors. The standard model is setup to maximize performance in the pastel colors. They now have a new model with deeper color saturation for non theater applications... not sure if it's faster than the original model. I keep my Seachangers set with gobos in them so I have a texture wash in whatever color I need in my rep plot. I use the wash fixtures as down light. Like I said the look great but they are a little slow. If you do buy Seachangers beware you have to also buy a special giant yoke or you'll find them really hard to aim. Also they charge extra to get a special adapter on the wash lights that allows you to use barn doors on them. I

35 Source fours lamped at 575 from over 40 feet away lighting a 32x28 stage is NOT "super bright". I would consider that survivable. I have over 90 fixtures lamped 575 lighting my 23x40 black box rep plot from 17 feet away. It's bright but far from overdone and a little dark in the corners. The additional fixtures from your other space are a good start. At 32x28 I would divide your stage up into 16 areas. As a minimum, each area would have a left, right, and center light coming from the house with a down light from overhead (one S4 Par in your inventory). To fill it out I would add a bunch of fixtures for side and back light (your Parnels will do this nicely). To really make it look good I would double hang all those lights from the house to give you multiple color wash looks.

Esoteric is a big fan of buying used fixtures. The major dealers of used gear are CB supporting advertiser Avforsale.com, GearSource.com, and SolarisNetwork.com. He may have other connections as well. Often schools are not allowed to purchase used gear. At my college the rule is I may buy a used product only IF it is still under warranty (so anything factory refurbished or demo models are still good). So before you get to excited check out your purchasing policies.If you have a person skilled enough to care for them, Used gear can be a great way to go. If you don't repairs can get very costly.

I'm still unclear on exactly what your purpose is. Do you want to improve concert lighting, theater lighting, or both? Each is a different animal with different equipment needs. They sometimes cross in musicals but often don't.

Any chance getting the basketball team to chip in some cash for the moving lights. Nothing makes a game more fun than having lights going crazy when the team comes on the court or after a win.

 

[shiben]

We are mainly interested in concert and random event lighting being improved. (For example, we had a 1200 person youth group in and they had a talent show that needed lit, but also a big, flashy, exciting opening session) I like the idea of the basketball team utilizing moving lights as well, it would be very exciting, and we might be able to pull it. I will recommend that to the department.

Our theater program and the special events office are separate. However, I work for both so I can usually get away with sharing equipment between groups for short periods of time.

 

[gafftaper]

What kind of light board do you have? That can make a big difference on what you can do with the moving lights. Do you have a staff person who is willing to learn to program them and teach students? (It takes time and often schools get stuff then find out no one wants to take the time to do it).

 

[shiben]

We have a congo jr in our main venue, and when our auditorium comes back online we will have a congo jr in there as well. We use ETC Net for DMX. Our arena right now has about 130 channels of dimming, (sensor+ dimmers, i believe), along with high output fluorescent houselights, HID houselights, and even bigger HID game lights. Those learning how to program lights would be myself and any other employees who are interested, and training would be done by those of us who regularly use the lights to new employees. Our boss is not exactly a lighting person, and our crews operate semi-autonomously from our bosses. Basically, the full time staff handles scheduling and other logistics of that type, along with sound system maintenance. Most lighting maintenance on fixtures and other inventory is done by me or others, and for major electrical issues, I bring in the TD from the theater company, who has experience as an IA electrician.

That said, I am becoming a bit concerned about moving lights, because although I would not mind learning how to use them, the maintenance on them seems to be high, judging from what people post here, and so I am not sure if we actually want to get them, seeing as we have a pretty lax structure for that type of equipment.

After reading all of your posts, I think I am going to try and get somewhere on the order of 36 more 5* Source 4s, and probably 36 1k PARs. Also, we are probably going to upgrade to 750W lamps in all instruments.

I would like more, but our hang arrangements are kind of odd. We dont have a nice long strip of circuits, but rather boxes with anywhere from 2-6 circuits in each, along with a constant and a non-dim in each. These are all positioned in odd places around the focusing bridges, and all hanging of instruments is off of the railings. this works fine for PARs and whatnot, but a 5* source 4 is a bit hard to wrangle when it has to be hung out on a right angle from vertical just to fit.

 

[gafftaper]

Yeah if you don't have the staff or a nice budget for maintenance, buying movers can be a very poor choice. You can never go wrong with more conventional lights in your rig gelled different colors just waiting to be called into duty. They help with everything.

Derekleffew always says that schools should not purchase moving lights. It's far wiser to rent on a show by show as needed basis. You can rent a lot of fixtures when you are talking $5,000+ each. And you never have to buy new lamps or get them repaired.

 

[Esoteric]

Of course Gaffer and I have a little different views. I love movers and there are always people around who do maintenance at a good price. Plus if you have the time you can always learn yourself (and make yourself more marketable in the process).

But yes, there is nothing like having a good conventional rig to start with.

I totally disagree that schools should not purchase movers. For me the breaking point is usually 4 times a year. If you use them more than 4 times then you will pay for them in no time at all. If you use them less, then you might look at renting. There is a time to rent and a time to buy for sure. But when you are looking at $350 per unit per week to rent, if you use them for 12-14 weeks a year, that is $4200. That is a lot of money to throw out the window.

Mike

 

[gafftaper]

I totally disagree that schools should not purchase movers. For me the breaking point is usually 4 times a year. If you use them more than 4 times then you will pay for them in no time at all. If you use them less, then you might look at renting. There is a time to rent and a time to buy for sure. But when you are looking at $350 per unit per week to rent, if you use them for 12-14 weeks a year, that is $4200. That is a lot of money to throw out the window.

Hey we agree on something! In my experience, most schools only end up doing one or two events a year that actually would benefit from movers AND that they have the time to actually program for. They rent two-four fixtures for three weeks and they are very happy. In that case, renting a couple is by far the better way to go. If however you are in a situation where it's more of a community event center and you have lots of musical events rolling through, and they have long runs, then purchasing is a more financially sound way to go.

I would look at how many times you are going to use them in a year... be VERY realistic about this number. THEN multiply the cost of those rentals by about 5 or 6 years to see if buying makes sense. With the way the industry is changing and gear is improving there will be lots of awesome LED or Plasma fixtures in 5 or 6 years. Can you pay your old fixtures off in time? If you are going to buy it would be much better to wait a few years and invest in gear with LED/Plasma lamps that last forever and have really low power consumption.

 

[Esoteric]

Totally. I know a lot of schools who like you said, use them 3 or 4 times for a one week run.

The school I taught at in Austin, we used movers in every production, so using them 30-40 weeks per year, buying was the only way to go.

Mike

 

[shiben]

I guess one thing that I had not thought of as a second issue is how hard it it to just run up a show if your using movers? I would say for us a typical show (one that will probably happen 10-30 times a year in our old venue) would be a small to mid sized rock show, between 500-1200 people in attendance, and load in starting at around 10AM the day of the show, and start of show around 8 or so, with a sound check in there for an hour or so per band that we cant do any lighting work during that time. During the summer, we would probably have 3 to 6 shows that would use movers on a regular basis, and some more time to program them. However, if it takes more than 3 or 4 hours to throw together a decent show, there really isnt a whole lot of marginal benefit to getting something that is going to be a maintenance hassle. We have not really used movers for anything in the past few years unless an operator comes in with them, mainly because the prevailing attitude is "we already have all these lights, you dont need anything else", which i guess works when we had maybe 110 instruments in our old venue, our new venue is a bit more sparsely populated, but now everyone figures to bring in moving lights means flying truss, and our mimimum quote for that was $12k for one show, which means its not happening for any conference that comes in, no matter what they want. I highly doubt that we will get anything moving, but at work today I put in a request for 36 PAR64s and materials for 16 2fers, so we will see how that goes for getting in more gear.

 

[Esoteric]

It all depends. I can program a great show in 3-4 hours.

Mike