I've been trying to do something about the poor event lighting at my school, and after Friday, I'm determined to figure something out. On Friday we had a "Coffeehouse". Coffeehouse is basically where bands, singers, poets, etc. from the school perform. It's in intimate setting in a student lounge type area. Everything was pretty lackluster. Audio consisted of lots of individual amps, 6-8, one for each instrument / microphone. I was saddened by the quality of the audio set up. The school has a nice small sound board we can use in coming shows. I'd like to pose a secondary question here. I know next to nothing about audio. But it seemed to me that we should have each mic/instrument on a separate channel on the sound board, and then just output to one amp/speaker s.l and s.r.. Are there any cons to this set up?
Anyways, back to lights. Lights for this show consisted of light spilling out of the building's vestibule, one rotating police style light, christmas lights strung around the 2 walls, and whatever light came through the the bay windows off the major road behind the actors. I've been debating in my mind how I can get more lighting there. The acts are barely visible, as all the lights were out. I really don't know enough about the power needs of lights to make any decisions right now. The only power I'll have access to is standard 3 prong outlets. I assume this won't be adequate for lighting needs. But I need to figure something out. It'd be nice if I could get 6-8 instruments, and some kind portable control board and dimmer unit. Manual control is preferable, and cheap. I've only ever seen one in my life. Any suggestions on portable set-ups? Low cost of course. And how to get lighting in this situation, because now it's pretty much useless.
Anyways, back to lights. Lights for this show consisted of light spilling out of the building's vestibule, one rotating police style light, christmas lights strung around the 2 walls, and whatever light came through the the bay windows off the major road behind the actors. I've been debating in my mind how I can get more lighting there. The acts are barely visible, as all the lights were out. I really don't know enough about the power needs of lights to make any decisions right now. The only power I'll have access to is standard 3 prong outlets. I assume this won't be adequate for lighting needs. But I need to figure something out. It'd be nice if I could get 6-8 instruments, and some kind portable control board and dimmer unit. Manual control is preferable, and cheap. I've only ever seen one in my life. Any suggestions on portable set-ups? Low cost of course. And how to get lighting in this situation, because now it's pretty much useless.