Over-specced theatre upgrade?

Jay Ashworth

Well-Known Member
[ I'm gonna put this in Electrics since it's mostly about lighting, and if a mod wants to move it, that's certainly fine with me... :) ]

So I have this friend...

Isn't that how all those Letters to the Magazine start?

His PTA wants to buy new stage lighting for his school's small proscenium stage. He has 2 bids from vendors, with 3 options, all clustered around $120k; one Altman, one ETC.

For an elementary school.

Whose stage has a dropped acoustic tile ceiling at about 12-15ft, attached to a gymnatorium with a 30ft ceiling.

He thought this might be somewhat overkill, and I agree. Both quotes are all-LED, one with Phoenix 2, and the other with S4 and D40. The fixtures are coming in around $1300-1500 ea, which as far as I know ain't all that bad. It's difficult for me to evaluate exactly what the hang is, because the components are broken down (at least on the ETC quote) in ways I'm not personally accustomed to seeing, even having looked at their website a fair amount.

The quotes include design and install, and all electric except panel expansion, with 2x20A at each batten. Since the design work isn't actually shown (one vendor explicitly offered to complete and furnish it in advance for $2500 in reply to a query, which I don't especially have a problem with), I can't really tell where they expect to put the pipes, and how they expect to protect the front of house electric from dodgeball, much less what geometry they envision for it.

The quotes were, as near as I can tell, written up in conjunction with the theatre teacher, who also teaches a grade level and has been there since Christ was a lieutenant; his enthusiasm is properly appreciated, but they're a little concerned that it's contributed to overkill in the spec.

Myself, I am inclined to think (and have suggested to him) that the PTA ought to engage a consultant to provide opinion and suggestions, if not a replacement design, taking into account *all* the constraints, including those at what we networking people call layers 8-10 (financial, political and legal).

The event inventory includes all the stuff you'd expect in the gymnatorium of an elementary school in an upper-middle class district, plus some of what I would call "light theatre"; trimmed down 45-minute Gilbert and Sullivan from the third-graders, and things like that. They're not doing Into The Woods, much less Wicked, on a stage this small (that's roughly a 13x25 proscenium, I think, and about 15ft deep, with no fly and almost no wings. It's not really a theatre stage.

I have the quotes, and about a dozen photos (of the stage, not the gym), and if anyone who does this is interested in looking at them, and seeing if they'd like to quote some consulting, I'm authorized to provide those, off-line. He doesn't have an engineering drawing at the moment, though he's planning to do a sketch with measurements next week; there may *be* such a drawing and he just doesn't have it; neither he nor I are clear on that point.

I can provide more detail here in the thread too, if that's useful for anyone.
 
120k is not bad IF you don't have any dimming or lighting positions currently. LED is the way to go here. If you have to get power pulled in and a dimmer rack installed that can easily touch 100k and you don't have fixtures or positions yet. It might feel like overkill but with LED lighting the money is spent on the fixtures, not infrastructure. With incandescent the reverse is true.
 
Oh, don't get me wrong; I think it's a fabulous quote.

For a stage twice as big with wings and an 18 foot trim height at a high school.

Or they could buy it for any of my three houses.

Ah, there I go. Pics below.
 
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Behind the upstage black is a very large American Flag, I think painted on, but I'm not sure.

The quote is for 4 battens; I assume that's front and 3 tops, though it's not clear if one's a cyc wash, since the cyc's black.
 
For an elementary school? I think mine had three wall switches going to three R40 floods. (It was the 60s)
High School would be a whole different thing.
 
Does anyone besides elementary use this space? Hard to judge suitability without knowing who uses it for what.
 
At face value, that sounds steep, and if the district authorized those kinds of funds for that, they may open themselves up to some very appropriate grievances from tax payers.

After blowing the budget, my primary concern would be usability. This theater teacher may know what all of this equipment does or assumes they can learn, but throwing faders to busk a show isn't as easy with LED's as it's always been with conventionals. At $120K, I suspect you would end up with a great system that would be disproportionately complex compared to the events put on in that space, the quality of acoustics, quality of the sound system, and general flexibility of the stage. Also, elementary schools are lucky to have anyone beside the custodian turning the lights on for most events. For most events, it really does have to be as simple as someone being able to turn on the system and push faders for different looks up and down.

Usually what you would see in a room like this are 2-3 lighting positions above the audience area with cages over them that can be opened up for accessing the lights to focus them, but otherwise protect the fixtures from stray volleyballs. On-stage, you might have all of 2 battens. Calling them electrics might be generous since it's primarily a pipe with a power and DMX drop next to it. Maybe 3 pipes if lighting a backdrop or the American flag requires special attention and is important to the way the room will be used.

Paradigm is almost certainly overkill for this room but if you wanted a little pizzazz without sacrificing usability, something with 1 universe of DMX, a touch screen and ability to select groups, record presets, recall presets would probably be more user-friendly than a formal lighting console.

At this level, lighting up faces is the single most important thing. Most of the people who enter this room will only care about seeing their kid's face, and if someone gets fancy with the lighting and steps on top of the ability for parents to take photos of their kids from the 7th row, there will be a parent uprising about why the lighting is so shoddy.

I assume though that if the bids were consistent, this is not the case of contractors going overkill on your buddy. I would take a look at the RFP that was sent out and and see if anything extravagant was included, or more likely, anything that to a layperson would seem appropriate but to a bidder contractor would appear as a request for a premium design. I would also ask one or a couple bidders where the unforeseen costs might be. Things that may give cost overruns in certain situations: running pipe to add power and DMX drops, reinforcing structure to make for suitable positions to hang lighting positions, setting up lots of scaffolding for an install if for any reason the work cannot be performed from a scissor lift, the cost of a scissor lift to the contractor if the school district is not providing, plus the general complexity of the system (console, arch processor, DMX distribution, etc). It may feel like a small project, but in man-hours at $65/hr for electricians and $85/hr for system installers, labor costs can add up very quickly if the system isn't designed on the outset to be somewhat consolidated and mindful of the existing conditions.
 
Most of the elementary schools I see go by have one or 2 strips of track lighting, half that much curtain and must double as a music room the other 360 days of the year. Heck most of the middle schools and a few high schools would love that stage, as is.

Mike has given a nice review of might be wrong. An expansion of the track system might be the right answer. Or the teacher has created a nice program that far exceeds the state minimums and has good community engagement and so a 'real' lighting system is in order.

This is where an outside consultant can bring some reality what the salesmen have done. Too often they don't, won't, can't look at the big picture no matter their skill level or intentions.
 
Mike has given a nice review of might be wrong. An expansion of the track system might be the right answer.

Rick is on the money. It's entirely possible that the current system is the right approach but doesn't have enough horsepower behind it or needs to be extended to a couple new positions. Little extra bit of work to be done with servicing of incandescent lamps, but it truly is hard to beat the simplicity of a bank of traditional 1000W faders on the wall going up to track fixtures. The lure of energy efficiency for LED's is a myth because the system will probably never be used enough for it to matter, and once you go LED you need an actual control system and data distribution.

All depends on what the expectations and the budget are.

The problem with the RFP process is that bidders assume your RFP has been appropriately tailored to your budget and live-or-die expectations, and when contractors know they're not the only one bidding on a project, rather than qualify the assumptions made, ask questions, and push a customer toward where they should be based on where similar projects are, they bid the RFP as-written like every other bidder will do. Otherwise they end up the "squeaky wheel" or high-bid, neither of which are usually great for landing a project.
 
Mike, Rick, you're about where I am with it, in my amateurism. Not the district: this is a PTA dad friend of mine who got yanked in for an opinion cause he's been a professional opera singer for decades; he in turn asked me.

Bill: TTBOMK, no, it's just the elementary school and its functions.

I've just looked at the website for the 118 year old drama department in one of the three high schools in the district, and I'm gonna go ahead and bet they don't need it. :)

[ further: ]

I've just found a picture of what purports to be the theatre auditorium in one of the high school buildings, and while it's not drama-purpose built, it has real looking fixtures on 3 pipes above the front of the audience, while albeit no catwalks, and it's proabbly a pain to focus in.

This hang in the elementary would in fact make it better equipped than the HS, in my estimation.
 
And I've asked, but I doubt a formal RFP was done -- again, PTA money, not district -- it was likely just a walkthrough with the Drama Instructor.
 
You never know but a gymnatorium is not likely to be a beloved community facility like some HS theatres are. I have worked on a number of local K-8 gymnatoriums over past 15 years and the lighting systems and dead hung rigging tend to be in the $250,000 range in the all LED flavor. It is last money they'll spend on it in 20 years. A lot of different consoles but I have to say teachers seem to take to the Cognito best. Does busk LED fairly easily.
 
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In my opinion, just about all of this seems to be overkill (at least for the age group, stage size, and room use). The elementary school I attended many (okay, more like 10) years ago only had these janky looking light fixtures in the front- there were two of them, three flood lights in metal boxes with a metal fence in front of the lights, each box had its own breaker. All of our events went along perfectly fine (given there were only about four events a year that needed "fancy" lighting- the kindergarten sing along, a couple other forced singing events, and the 5th grade play).

I'd flip out if I had my source fours at risk of getting pegged by a kid who thinks he's funny every other day.
 
For elementary? Yeesh...

From our PTA we managed to squeeze 14k Canadian rubles for new lighting (mind you we already have bars and circuits) This is a highschool that sees regular use outside of the
School.

I remember having a grand total of maybe four events a year in elementary that could have possibly benefited from having a lighting system. Of those, two of them hired a DJing company to bring a couple lights along with their mixing gear.

That 250k would run a lot of those....
 
I have a friend who is an elementary school teacher. She has to pay out of her pocket for class supplies like paper and pencils. It's hard to reconcile the priorities on this one. K-6. Just imagining a lot of equipment which will age out before it wears out.
 
Here are a couple of local elementary gymnatoriums. A friend of mine teaches at the second one and also has to buy classroom supplies.
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I have no idea how the no cage thing is working out, I'll have to ask the architect next time I see him.
 

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