Small (Potentially Portable) Stage Lighting

[StradivariusBone]

The church I work at has a kid's ministry that does a lot of theatrical things. They have a small space (kinda black-box-ish in nature) that's a large, rectangular room with a fairly decent sound reinforcement setup. They currently have two strips of the track lights with angle-adjustable household pars that you see in 90's-era kitchens. Those are on dimmers. They are looking to upgrade the lighting for when they do their shows (they also film stuff there too) and asked me for input.

Initially I was thinking that we could remove the track lighting and the dimmer and straight patch it to a receptacle in the overhead (ceiling is not more than 12'). Get someone to install a batten and hang LED pars on it, probably with some barn doors. The ceiling is wood rafters, but I would recommend they hire a rigger to do the work. Plug into the existing power and run some DMX cable. From talking with them, they really just want the flexibility to do more color and illuminate different areas of the stage at different times instead of "on, dim, off".

The other thought they had was to find some way to have a more portable and adjustable set up. They do frequently adjust the stage (it's all movable platforms in front of black walls) so it would be helpful to have something. The only issue there is that there's a lot of kids and that makes me nervous safety-wise. The only thing I could think that would be safe would be a single piece of truss on a base plate acting as a boom or tree. In my mind that'd be less likely to tip than the older style booms.

Just wondering if anyone here had any insight in working with small spaces.

 

[Pie4Weebl]

Is there a way the rigger could install a pipe grid over the whole room allowing you to move lights around as the stage changes? If you are just planning on installing LED pars in a fixed position truss isn't needed.

 

[Focus]

Is there a way the rigger could install a pipe grid over the whole room allowing you to move lights around as the stage changes? If you are just planning on installing LED pars in a fixed position truss isn't needed.

agreed, a pipe grid can be installed at the price of just a couple lengths of truss, and will be more flexible. If the angle works, and the construction of the building is appropriate, you could even have unistut installed on the wooden beams, and use strut-clamps for fixtures. You may be more limited on weight, but that probably won't be an issue, baring hanging moving lights and tons of fixtures.

 

[David Ashton]

You can't light it with led pars only, it will look awful, especially on video, you need a wash of incandescents to give flesh colours and you can add leds for a bit of colour and movement.

 

[Focus]

You can't light it with led pars only, it will look awful, especially on video, you need a wash of incandescents to give flesh colours and you can add leds for a bit of colour and movement.

You need to buy better LEDs.
Regardless of fixtures the above solutions still work.

 

[StradivariusBone]

Keep in mind, the average age of kid here is 5-12, and they're really doing this more for fun than for professionalism. The throw distance is never going to be more than 12-14' on average, with most of it being less than that. I was concerned about using incandescent due to the proximity to the ceiling grid (standard office ceiling tiles) and the heat generated with tungsten. Knowing how this group operates, they could get a lot out of some little LED pars with barn doors, and upgrade as they go. They're going to want to do a bunch of chases and dynamic colors. It's more about them doing their church stuff and if a couple kids learn something about how to program and design lighting and/or audio too, then I think it's a good day.

I like the grid idea, but a full grid might be overkill here. I didn't even think about unistrut, that would probably be easiest with this particular ceiling. I've not worked with it with theatrical lighting before, I'm guessing from your recommendations the lighting hardware is easy to find. A grid spanning the width of the space and then maybe 6-8' front to back would probably work. The weight is going to be minimal, no moving fixtures or anything like that.

 

[derekleffew]

Since you've mentioned it twice now...

... and hang LED pars on it, probably with some barn doors. ...

1. Barn doors don't work so good on LED fixtures, as each emitter is a separate light source. They'll eliminate glare, which is seldom a problem, but don't expect to use them for beam shaping as one would with a Fresnel.
2. For some reason, LEDs with colorframe runners are significantly more expensive than those without.
3. Since you have a minimal throw distance, make sure that fixtures you buy have a wide enough beam angle. Less expensive fixtures often have a narrower beam in order to increase intensity. Frost doesn't usually work, so then one gets into expensive lenses. http://www.controlbooth.com/threads/frost-and-led-emitters.32268/#post-284391

 

[StradivariusBone]

That's a bummer. The lighting contractor the church has used was the one who was pushing me on the barn doors for shaping the beam. The performing space is maybe 15' wide, probably closer to 12' in its normal configuration. I think 8' deep. Would you suggest 25 degrees on up? For most of the positions they'd set it up in, that would cover a 5-6' spot if my math is correct.

 

[derekleffew]

... Would you suggest 25 degrees on up? For most of the positions they'd set it up in, that would cover a 5-6' spot if my math is correct.

Beam diameter = distance * (2 * tan (beam angle in degrees / 2))
[For the math-phobic among us, use the PDF chart attached to this post.]
Ceiling height is 12'. Stage is 2'(?) high. Kid performer is 5'. Using the (optimum) 45° angle of elevation, (5' vertical and 5' horizontal) gives a throw distance of 7'. A 25° unit provides a pool of 3.1' at a plane 5' above the stage (7' above the floor). Actually it's an ellipse, with short axis of 3.1' and long axis of 4.7', but let's not quibble over details.
If you were only lighting the floor and had no stage, throw distance would be 17' and a 25° would yield a pool of 7.5'. Back to reality of a raised stage: now one can lengthen the throw distance for more coverage by going with a flatter angle, but will suffer intensity loss as well as loss of plasticity.

If using units narrower than 40-50°, you're going to need a lot more of them, which take longer to focus and more care must be taken to blend adjacent units.

Just some food for thought.

 

[StradivariusBone]

Just some food for thought.

Very appreciated! The stage is about 4" tall, in the back I think it goes up to 8". They just use plywood platforms with 2x4's framing it.

 

[Focus]

Unistrut and hardware can be had many places. We use Inventory Sales. There are tons of mounting options and accessories for strut.

TheLightSource.com has the specific clamps for fixtures, they also have clamps for making pipe grids as well, if you went that direction.

Here is a link to the clamps.
http://www.thelightsource.com/products/uni-bolt-for-strut-channels-82

 

[Focus]

Barndoors on leds, tend to give you a shadowy edge composed of each individual led, it looks funky, especially with multicolor leds.

That said, chauvet and elation, have some pretty good and wideish pars, in rgba, and rgbaw that can do good looking washes. You can get decent quality for a few hundred bucks each.

One caveat is that some cheaper leds will flicker on video.

 

[David Ashton]

before you spend thousands on Leds alone watch this guy,

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[Focus]

before you spend thousands on Leds alone watch this guy,

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Care to sum it up for those of use who don't want to(or cannot) spend 15 minutes watching a youtube?

 

[Focus]

You can't light it with led pars only, it will look awful, especially on video, you need a wash of incandescents to give flesh colours and you can add leds for a bit of colour and movement.

Check out the Mole-Richardson LED Fresnel; they look exactly Like the classic tungsten, both in light quality and physical build. The even have LED retrofits.

All existing accessories work just the same too, You would not know it was an LED is no one told you it was. Had a demo of these a couple month ago; they really hit the mark. Mole, did not want to sell a compromised product, so they waited to get into LEDs until they could reproduce the same quality with at least 80-90% of the output of the traditional fixture.

 

[derekleffew]

before you spend thousands on Leds alone watch this guy,

Fair enough David, but also watch this one:

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[JD]

Care to sum it up for those of use who don't want to(or cannot) spend 15 minutes watching a youtube?

It's actually worth the 15 minutes. LEDs serve a purpose but should not themselves become the "purpose."

 

[Focus]

Fair enough David, but also watch this one:

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I watched your's because it was only 2 minutes. The camera work left something to be desired, but, the point was single leds have poor CRI, ETC has some stuff in theirs to fix that. Got it. The Moles that I mentioned above, actually look perfect right out of the gate, I Don't remember the CRI, but they blend flawlessly with their tungsten counterparts.

 

[Focus]

Also, its not like I work for Mole-Richardson, but it was the first time I saw an LED fixture and was actually in awe; its really that good. They have a stellar reputation and history in film/video lighting, and the new products continue that trend.

 

[derekleffew]

... The camera work left something to be desired, but, ...

That would be our crack webmaster, or webmaster on crack, @dvsDave . He'll probably blame it on @gafftaper, however. :wink: bold color

I'm guessing this is the MR unit to which you are refering: http://www.mole.com/lighting/led/baby/baby_led.html . Six inch 1kW Fresnel replacement; MSRP for the DMX version is $1895, which I believe is comparable to the ETC Desire. I don't work for ETC either, and will say that probably neither is appropriate for a youth room in a church.

As said above, I'd look at lower end RGBA/RGBW/RGBAW fixtures from Chauvet or Elation. Maybe Blizzard, or the local dealer's "house brand". I have a no-name RGB LED PAR64 that I bought "direct from China" via eBay for $89, and I have to say, it's awful. But I might throw ten or a dozen of them with a SmartFade or Jands CL (more likely an old PC desktop running ChamSys MagicQ however) in a youth room. They're marginally better than a 150W PAR38 or R40 track light. YMMV.