Transporting Gear Without Cases

[iLightTheStage]

I suggest building boxes with good casters at the wood shop. If you make four of them 2'x3', you should be able to easily move them on and off a truck, and these will pack well from wall to wall of the truck so you can strap them in. Good for cable, or units (without lid).

 

[photoatdv]

Here's what springs to mind on something like that if you have lots of good techs (and I mean good)... this is totally based on stuff I've don't in non-tech theatre type competitions by the way:

If you want to have, say, 3 specials HL on the catwalk, 5 specials HR catwalk, 2 on the 1st electric, and 4 on the 3rd electric, then you have to divide it up. Have a 'chief' and 'crew' for EACH position. They don't talk to each other, help each other, ect. Completely separate groups. Then you have someone (LD) overseeing it all. That way you can get much more done in roughly the same amount of time. The trick to this though is-- PRACTICE. Get a neighboring school/theatre/whatever to let you come in and practice this. Try it as many places as possible. If you can, bring the whole production, not just lighting.

I did a competition last year (not theatre) where we had 4 pickup trucks full of gear. We had practiced setting up and tearing down in different places probably a dozen or more times. That way we were able to set up all of this stuff in a few hours with only FOUR people. Yes I know you don't have four hours... but you will have more people and less stuff.

 

[josh88]

maybe our way is strange, and we also don't travel huge distances when we do it, but we have stacks of packing blankets and we pad the floor with some and then just start laying fixtures in on top of that, then add another blanket and then another layer of fixtures in the valleys created by the lower level. the nice thing about packing blankets is that pretty much anything is one, comforters, wool blankets, anything you might find in soft storage. and packed in layers like that you can just strip it away as you go, making it for a pretty easy unload especially if you have someone staying in the truck organizing the effort there.