Lynn Roth
Member
I'm a (very) part time technical director for a small K-12 school theater. The school was built about 10 years ago and a Strand Preset Palette 48/96 was installed with all (about 60) conventional lighting fixtures, plus work and house lights. (This was done before I was involved).
The theater is used for 2 Musicals and a play each year along with concerts (band and choir) and a talent show. High schoolers are involved in running the console in most of the shows.
We are starting to think about adding some LED lighting for cyc lights and possibly starting to upgrade some of the fresnels and ellipsoidals with RGB(WA+) LED lights.
I hadn't worked with lighting before, so the Strand is really the only console I know and it has worked fine for what we do but I'm starting to look at other options that would work better with intelligent fixtures as we would start to add some new fixtures.
For plays and musicals we record cues for everything and playback for the show. For concerts (with no chance for rehearsal) I'll just grab some lights with the mouse and scroll the mouse wheel to bring the fixtures up or down. (Home/end or use pgup/pgdown for larger adjustments) The layout of the stage could change substantially between shows/concerts and we don't always reorient or re-gel the lights, so picking and choosing on the fly quickly is important.
I've Started playing with the downloadable version of ETC Eos Nomad, Chroma-Q Vista, Onyx, ChamSys Magic-Q and LightFactory (Neo).
One thing that I haven't found easy on the PC versions of these (other than LightFactory/Neo) is to just quickly grab some fixtures with the mouse and instantly adjust the intensity with the mouse wheel or even using the keyboard to manually adjust up or down. (I know I can set an explicit level with the command line)
So, I'm trying to understand how to best use these consoles with the variety of shows that we deal with.
We don't have a budget set yet, but trying to keep the price lower by staying with the PC versions. Perhaps adding a wing or midi control in the future.
I'd love any advice on which consoles might be best for us going forward or advice on using these effectively.
The theater is used for 2 Musicals and a play each year along with concerts (band and choir) and a talent show. High schoolers are involved in running the console in most of the shows.
We are starting to think about adding some LED lighting for cyc lights and possibly starting to upgrade some of the fresnels and ellipsoidals with RGB(WA+) LED lights.
I hadn't worked with lighting before, so the Strand is really the only console I know and it has worked fine for what we do but I'm starting to look at other options that would work better with intelligent fixtures as we would start to add some new fixtures.
For plays and musicals we record cues for everything and playback for the show. For concerts (with no chance for rehearsal) I'll just grab some lights with the mouse and scroll the mouse wheel to bring the fixtures up or down. (Home/end or use pgup/pgdown for larger adjustments) The layout of the stage could change substantially between shows/concerts and we don't always reorient or re-gel the lights, so picking and choosing on the fly quickly is important.
I've Started playing with the downloadable version of ETC Eos Nomad, Chroma-Q Vista, Onyx, ChamSys Magic-Q and LightFactory (Neo).
One thing that I haven't found easy on the PC versions of these (other than LightFactory/Neo) is to just quickly grab some fixtures with the mouse and instantly adjust the intensity with the mouse wheel or even using the keyboard to manually adjust up or down. (I know I can set an explicit level with the command line)
So, I'm trying to understand how to best use these consoles with the variety of shows that we deal with.
We don't have a budget set yet, but trying to keep the price lower by staying with the PC versions. Perhaps adding a wing or midi control in the future.
I'd love any advice on which consoles might be best for us going forward or advice on using these effectively.