The problem with high schools in the US is that when they
build, they have money. After that, until the next bond issue in 10-25 years, zippo. It is unfortunately a now or never situation. I've helped with replacement schools where the one being torn down had
dimmer rack space for "future" modules, never added. With few exceptions I have found spending any money for preparing future equipment of almost no value. I don't think that's good necessarily but I'm not going to change the way school facilities are funded.
Amen to that.
One night when I was up really late (you know, where you start to think on a different level- your true genius comes out), a bunch of the choices the contractors made for my school's
auditorium didn't make any sense started to all come together.
First off, who the hell uses
NEMA twist lock connectors (sorry if I offended any of my fellow
twist lock users)? I had read a while before about how there's really no way to tell a dimmed 90v Powercon from a static 120v Powercon (being constructed in the late 2000's, probably like 2008, powercon was probably all the rave among electricians and designers alike), and
stagepin has its issues... So, the contractors must have chosen the
twist lock connector for that reason. A new high school student certainly runs the chance of mixing up circuits.
The other thing is the wide assortment of
relay'd 120v sockets on all the rigging. All three
house hoists have their own
relay circuit, each
batten over the
stage has its own
relay circuit. This kinda made sense, other than the fact that the only 120v sockets on the battens are all the way
stage left (literally four or five inches from the end of the big metal electrical
conduit box directly attached to the
batten). I had then realized that the reason for this was that the regular
socket was used to allow for control over
conventional devices (such as a Wal Mart
blacklight), but more importantly, so that it could be turned into a Powercon run with an
adapter (thus justifying the placement of the outlets on the battens).
Then each
hoist and
batten has a
DMX output on it, along with outputs on the downstage-most
leg walls on either side of the
stage (five pin, on
universe two. yes, we have a honking big
opto-splitter that I'd love to see, but I only have general ideas as to where it is- its got at least 10 outputs!). At this
point, I had realized that the entire
auditorium was designed with an absurd
level of thought for the addition of intelligent and
LED lighting for down the
road. Just don't mind the fact that we got a "new" light
console when the addition was built (an
Express 48/96- wonderful for moving lights. Just wonderful. Lets not forget to mention that it backs up and reads data with floppy disks- cutting
edge 2008 tech right here, my friends).
Sadly, the only intelligent lighting we have consists of two Technobeam-i's (that were donated to us), and four generic
LED cans (which don't even belong to us, one of our frequent designers just leaves them there for us).
So yes, very rarely do schools/school districts provide substantial (or even adequate at times) funding for
theatre or technical
theatre departments (despite the school complaining about only having 1 1/2 wireless mics whenever it holds an event run by guidance). If only I could have a few thousand dollars *poof* into my bank account at my will- that place would be packed to the brim with cutting
edge lighting technology (and get a new
console).
I still can't quite comprehend why they put the backstage equipment rack directly 3 feet in front of the fire hose. Luckily the inspectors have learned to go lightly on that issue as to not upset administration, and to not forego the penalty as to protect their job.