New to Moving Lights

[jamieconibear]

I have just hired 4 moving lights to be used in 2 weeks time for a school Dance show; this is the first time I will have used moving lights and only have 1 week to get to grips with them! My school has a Zero88 Jester 48ML; I've hired 2 Martin Mac 250 Entours and 2 Martin 301 LED washes.

I'm really just asking for an overview of how to program them into memories/submasters. It's a dance show so am hoping to have just 1 memory (scene) for each dance - can multiple effects be added to just one memory, or is it a case of multiple memories throughout the dance for different effects?

I would like to 'sync' the lights to the bass beat of the music, for a 'pulse' effect - how do I achieve this?

Also, is it possible to program a sequence of the lights moving to the music, like a lightshow? For example (and excuse the song, it's just that I know many people will know it), take "Eye of the Tiger" and the first beats of the music, "duh, duh duh duh, du du duuuuuuh": I would like the lights to flash on the first 4 "duhs", but then to light up and move upwards on the longer, more sustained, "duuuuuuh". Bear in mind I have a Jester ML; I have read somewhere about having software on the PC where you can 'bookmark' parts of the song and, via a USB-to-MIDI cable, these bookmarks would trigger memories/chases on the board, ensuring that it would be in-time.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated,
Many thanks in advance, Jamie Conibear.

 

[gafftaper]

I'm not really a moving light guy and I don't know the Jester so I can't help a lot with this question. However, I can tell you that syncing to midi and programming a light show that matches just one song can take a pro days of programming. Being that you are a beginner and that you have limited time to learn how to do it, you really should focus on simpler tasks. You could easily spend the entire week programming, not finish the song, and not have anything else done either. Your primary goal should be to start creating a variety of different looks that are cohesive which you can link together into stacks and playback in different parts of the song. Make these looks so that fit a variety of musical purposes. Get to know your looks well enough that you can say to yourself on the fly, "This song has a really mellow part at the start I'll use the blue look for that, then when it starts to crank up I'll switch to the blue and white look with the faster head rotation."

 

[bishopthomas]

I will echo what gafftaper said. Program some various looks and busk the show using playbacks. I don't know the Jester either (a venue I very seldom work in has one but I haven't taken the time to learn it yet) but you should be able to program either by channel or by fixture. So you can put effects such as a circle or tilt saw on a fader and play that over another playback that has the lights at a static position/color/gobo/etc. This is typically how I run my shows (typically concerts, not theatre) and you can get a huge variety of looks by just using a few playbacks.

Good luck. There's a lot to learn for your first time using ML's. Be sure to have the manual handy and spend lots of time trying out anything that pops into your head. Chances are it's possible to do, figuring out how to do it is the time trap.

 

[Clifford]

Like the others said, start simple. With more time and experience you'll be able to build on what you know how to do with this board and create more complicated shows. I downloaded the offline editor for your board to see if I could use it to give you some help. It's a fairly unconventional interface that looks like it takes some time to become proficient with though.

What I was able to learn from both the editor and the manual is that you should be able to busk on this board once you have the effects you want recorded. I couldn't find the profiles for the Macs you rented, so you may have to source those yourself and add them via the USB interface. There's an easy scripted menu to follow to do this. Once you have the fixtures added and patched (another simple menu to follow where you input the desired parameters) they can be selected by the MFKs (buttons on the right of the board, the ones with accompanying screens). Once the fixture(s) you want are selected, the scroll wheels will control the attributes and you should be able to create looks on stage that way. Once you have the look you want, you can save it as you would a standard memory with conventional lights.

As for creating specific effects, it looks like for this board you record them as a series of memories and those are converted to a single effect. Not exactly sure how this works, but the full manual should have a complete guide on doing this.

Have a look through the manual for the specifics you need for what you're trying to accomplish. If you have any more questions, I can try to recreate what you're doing with the OLE. Good luck!

 

[jamieconibear]

Many thanks for your replies; the lights are due to arrive on Friday, so I look forward to trying some effects!

 

[iLightTheStage]

One drawback of the Mac250: you don't have zoom. So you're beam size is however far away you are and that's it.

And echoing the other responses: yes, set it up so you can run things on the fly. Maybe a "cue stack" filled with different color looks, another with different movements, maybe another with gobo patterns, etc, etc. No matter what the board: I always want bump buttons

 

[robdag]

As a complete novice, I got thrown into lighting a panto (it's a long story which I won't go into now...) in a venue which didn't have anyone with any lighting experience at all.

They had 4 Mac500's which the director was desperate to use, and after hours of trawling the internet, and some help from the folks over at BlueRoom, this is what I wish someone had told me before I started:

1) RTFM. It sounds obvious, but there was enough info in the manual for the venue's desk and the Macs that I was able to link the two together. I had to google for both manuals.

2) Don't assume the settings in the fixtures are right - double check them against what you've decided they should be from your reading in step 1.

3) Ditto the board.

4) Test that you can drive the fixtures - ie, move them round, strike the lamps, run the colours etc. Double check any cabling/settings if you've any issues. I had one fixture which wouldn't return to the "home" position, and assumed it was faulty. When I'd a bit more time to look at it (ie after the panto), the DMX mode was set differently to all the other lights - but I'd assumed that it was the same as the other three - lesson learned though, fortunately before I tried to get someone to repair it.

5) Set a few interesting looks, and note them down - with the Jands Event, everything is done in %'s - so I noted the position of pan/tilt/colour etc so I could manually operate the movers.

6) Once you've got the looks that you want, and can recreate them, program them into the desk - that way, if you run out of time, you can always go back to the notes you made to do it during the show and you're not faffing around trying to create a look.

Also worth thinking about - if you were going to get MIDI timings for the song, where would you get them from? The Jands desk I used had a dedicated "Fixture" fader, so you could take the fixtures up/down quickly, and to get the same effect that you're looking for but save programming time I'd set the lights for the song with DBO held, and just release the DBO as I would have thought that taking all the lights out in the gaps would look more effective that just the movers? (At least, that's what I found when I was doing a Zumba!Live gig, YMMV)

I will also admit to being a complete newbie to the forum and to lighting in general, so I'm more than willing for someone to correct me.

And finally, good luck! hope it goes well for you.

 

[jamieconibear]

Thanks robdag for your reply. Just one more thing: I now understand about the 'static' (i.e. getting the lights into postions with colour etc.) programming using submasters/memories/palettes, but how to do get the lights to move around whilst illuminated... I've read something about an Effects generator on the board, but how, for instance, could I get the lights to whirl around for a 'prison searchlight' effect?

 

[bishopthomas]

You're right, there should be an effects generator. Again, no idea where as I'm not good with the Jester (actually going to be at the venue that has one in a few hours and will try playing around with it). Worst case scenario, you can record each step of the movement as a chase, set the times, and run it that way. This actually can be more precise than the shape generator since you're telling it EXACTLY where to go, but also is a huge PITA.

 

[jamieconibear]

The lights arrived today and have connected them all up; I had to use the Fixture library instead of RDM to add them to the Jester as RDM couldn't 'find' them? Any ideas? They were switched on, and the DMX connected, yet it could not find them on the universe. I did manage to control them from the board, but like I said, I had to use the Fixture library on the board. Also, some function buttons/wheels on the board don't do the correct thing that they state they do: do I need to re-program somehow? I notice a DMX index in the user manual with all manner of numbers doing different things. Many thanks.

 

[bishopthomas]

I'm not familiar with rdm, but patching a fixture from a personality file is very common. If you've got control that's what counts. The mixed up attributes are because the personality file is incorrect. Depending on the screwy attributes that may become a problem for locating fixtures and using a shape generator.

 

[robdag]

I don't know if the 250s have multiple DMX modes, but the 500s have 4 DMX modes, and different channels have different functions in the different modes - does the personality file have different modes in,and if it does do you havethe same modes set on the fixtures and the desk?

 

[bishopthomas]

I don't know if the 250s have multiple DMX modes, but the 500s have 4 DMX modes, and different channels have different functions in the different modes - does the personality file have different modes in,and if it does do you havethe same modes set on the fixtures and the desk?

There are different modes for 250's. And different models of MAC250's (standard, plus, krypton, entour). Using the proper profile is imperative.

Edit: Just read you're using Entours. Make sure you're in the right mode. There's a basic and an extended. Here's the manual.

 

[jamieconibear]

It has 2 DMX modes: 16 standard and 16 extended, I have extended 16 mode selected. Yet, the fixture library just has "Mac 250 Entour", no 16E or 16S selection.

We had the technical rehearsal today, and whilst programming, some unusual things happened: I set up a scene with the fixtures, yet when playing back, some attributes weren't correct. Do I need to tag every attribute in order to prevent old attributes from old scenes from coming through?

 

[bishopthomas]

It has 2 DMX modes: 16 standard and 16 extended, I have extended 16 mode selected. Yet, the fixture library just has "Mac 250 Entour", no 16E or 16S selection.

So switch the fixture to the standard mode and see if the attributes line up. Without looking at the manual, it seems like extended just adds a fine adjustment to several attributes (pan, tilt, gobo rotation) that you could probably live without if it makes your life easier.