Yearbook Ceremony

Edrick

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Well as if I don't have enough on my plate as it is, I have to do a Yearbook Ceremony since I'm on Yearbook. Now I've known about this for some time and have been working on it for well some time. But I figured that since this place is dedicated towards theater, this would be the place to ask.

I have a budget of absolutly nothing cause our yearbook advisors suck. Anyways, so what kind of special effects could you recommend doing with a standard lighting system, or possibly any laser show companies in the Mass area.

We have a Innovator 600 Console,
140+ channel system,
your standard stage lighting ( 3 rows of boarder lights (red blue green),
1 row of cycs for the back cyc (red blue green),
a few Source Fours on the front electrical pipe,
Fernnel 4 Per row x 3 rows
A catwalk of assorted source fours different angels and a few other instruments, and 2 side spot wells with 5 source fours on each side.

Plus about 10 DMX hookups around stage.
 
Um....I think most everyone is going to need more information before we can really help you.

1. What do you mean by "Yearbook Ceremony?"
2. What point do the "special effects" have/what is your intended audience reaction?
3. What did you mean by "or possibly any laser show companies in the Mass area?"
4. What is "your standard stage lighting?" Are the red, blue, and green cells individually dimmable? Can you achieve a colored wash effect with these lights, or are you interested in creating one?
5. By "absolutely nothing," you mean you can spend $0.00 on this?
 
See if you can hit up a DJ or production company for a couple of movers with some haze..

Some may be willing to do it for some free advertising.

Never know.
 
Yearbook Ceremony: The ceremony before the students go off and get their yearbook. This is done in our theater, we have people that come on stage and speak, we show a video that I have to make, and have some type of a big ending (special effects, music, ect..)

Special effects: Something to get the audiances attention make them excited, ect... They're about to go get their yearbooks and we don't want them to be bored. I'm trying to make this as far away from a formal thing as possible. Last year since they were demolsihing the old highschool it was all formal and sad and people just speaking one after another. Now we want to get them excited, concert like.

Laser Show: We have someone come out and put on a laser show at the end to some music or to a band or even sometype of video.

Standard stage lighting: cyc lighting (individual control- 1-red 2- blue 3- green 4- red 5- blue 6- ect...) 3 Rows of Boarder lights, strip lights, bank lights what ever you prefer to call them, Row 1 - Red 1 channel, Row 1 - blue 1 channel, Row 1 - green 1 channel) so on, plus a few on stage Source four lights, catwalk with source fours of assorted angels used for the color wash on the stage. plus other odds and ends for instruments.

Absolutely nothing: We have horrible yearbook advisors even though the yearbook staff wants to do fundraising they wont let us and shoot down any ideas we have. so we have a budget of 0, i might beable to get money from the school so lets say under 300.00 if any money has to be spent at all.
 
Wow, I've been around high schools quite a bit and never heard of a Yearbook Ceremony. That's something new. The last school I worked at no one could afford to buy the year book so only about 25% of the student got them.

I really like the DJ idea. Talk with the people who do your school dances about a specific DJ they use. Maybe that person would be willing to do something for you at a decent rate.

Renting good gear is going to get expensive quick. My local theater place rents out technobeams that have a laser on them for $200 a week. While that's not too bad, if you have no budget it's going to be hard to swing renting a couple of them. Then you have to figure out how to program them on your board... which might be hard. Or rent a board to control them ($300 for a week at my rental place).

For that price you could buy a couple of cheap DJ quality effects and throw them on stage with a rented hazer. You might want to check out the American DJ website. There are a variety of cheap gadgets that spin and do tricks sequenced to the music. And they don't cost much. It's not standard theater quality but it'll do in a pinch and you don't have to learn how program it or rent a special console.
 
Your innovator should control Technobeams just fine if you can get them, you just have to make sure that the profile is loaded. But that would be a really cool way to do the show: four techobeams hanging mid-air on a batten, some fun flashy conventional stuff from the floor, from that batten, and from above, and bam! you've got it! (Bam! 800 bucks out the door! That's the hard part).
 
Well that 800.00 for that seems like a lot less than what it would cost to do a laser show :p, 3,500 for a laser show to have them come out and do it plus additional costs (hotel stay ect...) But once our Musical is over, I'm going to start on the Yearbook ceremony and get that all set that gives me about 3 / 4 weeks to do the video and setup the ceremony. Which shouldn't be too hard as right now I'm at the school 4 days a week till 4:30/5 for drama plus 3rd / 7th period. So now I'll have all that time to get the ceremony ready.
 
RickBlu,

If you can get your hands on the $300 that would be a step in the right direction. For events other than Drama stuff there always seems to be some extra funds lying around.

To get the effects you are going for it seems as if a hazer is going to be essential. Also for that you could probably pick up a few scanners (i.e. Martin MX-4) for pretty cheap and still be under budget. Some rental houses to try in the Boston area are Advanced Lighting and Production (ALPS www.alpsweb.com) or High Output (www.highoutput.com).

A ground row of PAR's with Narrow Spot lenses gelled N/C would look pretty **** cool in the haze as well. Combine all this with a color chase or two and I think you're golden all for under $300:grin:

Max
Stoneham,MA
 
well those extra funds are going to a brand new turf field. Like we have said before they have no care for the arts but they give extreme care to worthless sports
 
Okay, so even the smallest funding is out of the question, gotcha.

To create a nice little lightshow I would highly recommend doing whatever you have to in order to get your hands on a hazer. To get the beams of light to show you NEED this. I would next create a series of backlight washes in different colors. If you don't have any PAR's you can use the S4's and the fresnel's (make them spot focused).

Provided your electrics fly (mine are don't, they are dead hung) it might be a cool effect to stagger two of them. For example, trim the first electric to 15' and the 2nd to 10'. Hang various backlighting and fan the audience. Make some various chases and throw them on subs and voila!
 

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