New Website

[LavaASU]

I know I've shown parts of our LAVA Education Website, but now I have an functional prototype. After talking with some other LAVA people, as well as some other industry folk, we decided to go with the how it works type stuff for right now as there are tons of videos on how to program an xxxx and what a yyyy can do, but few to none on how the different gear works. I know in high school being the huge geek that I am I tried to find info/videos on that and failed.

Eventually we're also going to add some other stuff on how to do cool lighting on a budget and probably how to program movers on a 2-scene (a pleasure we get a lot as a moving light console isn't quite in the budget).

I'm looking for help proofing the site for everything from grammar (I may regret that with a few people on here to the technical content. I'm also looking for help if anyone knows either the intellabeam or the mac 350 well enough to add labels to one of those pics. I don't really know either of those fixtures and it's rather hard to tell for sure in the pics and I don't want to get it wrong. Also please do tell me if you notice anything wrong on the ones that we've done.

Thank you!

 

[cpf]

Am I missing something or is there no link?

 

[LXPlot]

You might want to add a link, also might want to move this into Education and Career Development so it doesn't get buried in the hundreds of questons a day asked in Lighting and Electrics. But I'd be happy to proofread if you add a link.

 

[LavaASU]

I'm sorry-- this is what happens when I post in the wee hours of the morning.

Linky: LAVA Education - Lighting Audio Video Arts

 

[nd925a]

Couple thins I saw:
When you click on one of the tabs at the top have a list of the subcategories and a general description of what the category is about.
I say put a description on there because if your site is aimed at educating newbies like myself we might get confused as to why you have motherboard layouts labeled "Consoles"?????
Currently when you click on the Moving Lights tab it brings you to the contacts page.

 

[Tex]

The teacher in me noticed this on the front page:

For two reasons-- 1. because we feel that in order to be the best technician possible, you need to understand how the gear you're using works and 2. we find that this is an area that is sorely lacking in existing resources.

In my opinion, it's confusing and grammatically incorrect. I know it's picky, but you are presenting yourself as an educational site.
The other thing I noticed is that there's not much content to explain what's going on in the still photographs. For example, there are pictures of the inside of a Hog console with labels for a few power related components, but no explanation of how it actually works.
I can provide you with photos of HES Studio Spots and Studio Colors with no clothes on if you'd like. We can call it "mover porn"!
Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[cpf]

Formatting varies widely across the site, some text is large, some small, sometimes a header stands out, other times it's smaller/lighter than the body text. Could use a lot more structure, and maybe consider a 'wiki' format to keep stuff organized and relevant (and you can turn off the public's edit permissions). Also, your "educational" and "pro" sites look identical, and the "educational" link on the pro site doesn't point to the right place.

Domain needs serious help, I'm sure "123bemyhost.com" is a very good host etc etc, but it's like a @hotmail email address.

 

[WooferHound]

I'm also looking for help if anyone knows either the intellabeam or the mac 350 well enough to add labels to one of those pics. I don't really know either of those fixtures and it's rather hard to tell for sure in the pics and I don't want to get it wrong.

It's been awhile but I used to work with Intellabeam fixtures a ton load, however I could not find any mention of them on the site.

There are lots of pictures without any kind of description. You should provide as much information as you can about the items being pictured.

When I clicked on "Moving Lights" or "Consoles" it cam up to an almost blank page. You should have the same menu there as you do in the Drop Down menus for these items.

 

[LavaASU]

Tex-- I'd appreciate any "mover porn" you can provide. Just don't send real porn instead . I already get to see enough bodies (abet dead and dissected typically) in advanced biology classes. Assuming it's because you have those units, I'll appreciate help proofing the pics as well.

WooferHound-- Opps... It seems that doing some of this at 3am was a bad idea. It's the intellaspot-XT1 I'm looking for help with. There will eventually be some pics of the intellabeams posted, but I think we've got those covered (as we own them and tech them ourselves).

Okay-- I'm going to work on captions for the pics. I keep forgetting that the idea is this is for beginning techs (for example a lot of times when I'm using a new moving light I'll find a pic or diagram online so I understand the relationship optically... for example what's next to what and can be morphed between). You'd think I'd be better at putting this together given I can talk forever when doing an in-person class.

Do you think it would be benificial to give the background on what we're troubleshooting/fixing? For example the reason the pics of the hog are of the MCB and power components are labeled is we were troubleshooting an issue with the battery and charging circuit. I could also go into a bit more detail about how the PSRAM is used as the main storage (it's the equivalent of a HDD) and such as well. I really couldn't go into much detail about other parts of the board though because I've never had to figure it out .

 

[icewolf08]

Do you think it would be benificial to give the background on what we're troubleshooting/fixing? For example the reason the pics of the hog are of the MCB and power components are labeled is we were troubleshooting an issue with the battery and charging circuit. I could also go into a bit more detail about how the PSRAM is used as the main storage (it's the equivalent of a HDD) and such as well. I really couldn't go into much detail about other parts of the board though because I've never had to figure it out .

Do you think it is wise to hand out photos of the guts of your gear and basic instructions to people who might potentially work for you or people who currently work for you? What happens if one of these people looks through the photos and figures that they have some idea of what they are doing when they have actually received no formal training and then start taking apart your console or fixtures to try to solve a problem? What happens when it is a piece of gear you rented and they start taking it apart? What happens when someone who works for me decides that they got all the information they need from your website and start taking apart my fixtures or consoles because they think they know how to fix them?

I think you need to think long and hard about what kind of training material you just blanketly post on the web. It is one think to post videos on how to setup a console and moving lights and how to patch them and operate them, but when it comes to service of said equipment it is an entirely different ballgame. Posting how to change a gobo in a Mac 2k probably isn't a problem, but I would be very wary of posting complete tear-downs with basic troubleshooting tips. When it comes to moving lights and consoles, if I have problems I don't want a person who has only watched a youtube video to be working on the problem. I am happy to train someone as I work on the problem, however there are even times that all I can do is send a unit out to the repair shop. The nice thing is that one of my local shops actually is willing to have me or one of my people watch/assist with repairs so that we can learn.

So think about the content that you post on the web. I would have less problem with someone who learned to program a console via web-video than someone who learned where the battery and power connector are on the motherboard of the console and thus think they can fix a problem with it. That being said, how often have you had a problem with your console that required poking around inside it? The only one that I have ever had was a failed hard drive or dead PRAM battery (clock battery).

Don't take this to mean that you shouldn't collect information and build your site. Just think about what information you really want to distribute and what information really requires hand-on training. The last thing you want is people with no experience aside from your photos and videos either breaking multi-thousand dollar equipment or getting injured.

 

[LavaASU]

Only two of the sets of photos are from repairs we did-- one was swapping a fader on the EDI Bijou, and the other was a through cleaning on the trackspot. The others are either from LDI or friends. We have some others that will be posted once we find/edit the photos. The reason we do so many repairs is that we buy a lot of used/abused gear for cheap and fix it. A LOT also is from closed bars, which means it typically needs complete tear down and cleaning (you don't want to know how much crap we got out of the trackspot!).

The intention of this is in no way as a how to fix an XXX, and we have deliberately not put anything about how to take the stuff apart. It's intended to teach students about HOW the gear works. Case and point-- in biology classes we've often had case studies about various diseases and surgeries-- does that mean I'm going to go home and try to do surgery on someone? Same thing with if I watch "How it Works" on Discovery.

In all the cases except for the trackspot (and I'm not sure about the hog as I didn't do it), it was like 4 screws out. With the movers we're usually just pulling off head covers for these, which you have to do to swap gobo . We had the trackspot like that for testing and I figured why not show it like that as you can see all the different components as opposed to in the housing where the logic covers most of the transformer section.

Also, I DO teach my crew the basics-- however they are under strict orders not to attempt any repairs or troubleshooting without the permission of the appropriate TD or in some show critical cases the onsite TD/ ATD. The reason I teach them is we HAVE has stuff go wrong in strange ways-- main one was a loose ribbon cable. Luckly we had someone onsite who know how to work with that console, but if we hadn't, someone would've had to fix it via phone instructions, and I'd much rather they knew what it was when they're told to check the cable on the main logic board, GPU, ect.

Like I said though, the website is in NO WAY intended as any sort of how-to. Its' intended to help students understand what goes on with the gear they're using. Icewolf, how would you suggest accomplishing our goal without making it too easy for people to take it as a how-to? Other than adding more "don't try this at home"s.

Thank you.

 

[mstaylor]

Whatever content you decide on, you definitely need to explain what you are doing and why. Perhaps warnings against doing repairs you aren't trained to do should not be attempted. I, like you, am a geek and like to learn just to learn. If I am going to work in a field I want to know all I can about it. Knowing the inside of a board or light is interesting, that doesn't mean I will tear one open. If I was going to do that, I wouldn't need a video to encourage me. I study as much as possible about sound and video but that is so I can help techs troubleshoot, I have have no intention of operating either.

 

[LavaASU]

Knowing the inside of a board or light is interesting, that doesn't mean I will tear one open. If I was going to do that, I wouldn't need a video to encourage me.

Same here . If I'm going to tear apart a whatever, it's either A. because I need to fix it or B. because I'm curious and can't find anything online (and it's something within my level of expertise or broken beyond fixing anyways).

If you're into video stuff you'll like that I'm working on getting one of our local shops that does projector stuff to let us come in and get some photos/video of them. I'm actually rather curious about that as I don't know how or have the resources to work on projectors (other than one that was getting trashed as it wasn't worth fixing so I pulled it apart for the heck of it (mostly) and to see if it was a lose wire or something I could fix (my excuse)).

 

[mstaylor]

I will have to stay tuned.

 

[ruinexplorer]

I moved this thread to the Educational forum as that is the intended audience and where it will probably be better viewed.

 

[mstaylor]

One thing you may want to consider is to take different lights or boards, open them up and show what is what. Not necessarily how to fix one but how the gobo works, the iris and color mixing. You could do the same with conventionals,PARs, S4s, fresnels and 360Qs. You could show the differences between small followspots, Supertroupers, and M2s.