If you had to put the IT back in your Hall and adjoining Drama Studio - what budget?

[kennysarmy]

We've had a quote in for providing and installing all the equipment in what will be a new Main Hall and adjoining Drama Studio!

 

It's a lot of money!

 

Has anyone ever done a full refresh and how much was allowed for the project?

 

Main Hall:

 

LED lights Showtec Powerspot 9 Q6; a minimum of sixteen units £4,500.

 

A mixture of variable beam wash lights and hard edged adjustable spot fixtures

Infinity IS-250 LED spot + Infinity IW-741 RDM RGBW wash; say eight of each £32,000

 

lighting desk

Infinity Chimp, Zero88 FLX or similar £4,000.

 

LED colour wash for the rear stage wall, cyclorama;

Showtec Pixelbar 16Q6; of another eight units £4000

 

four internally wired DMX bars are proposed, each with sixteen combination outputs, each providing power and distributed/buffered DMX control output: £12,600

 

ten truss beams;

Milos QTF710; equally spaced across the stage from one side to the other, at just under 200cm centres, with support at each end from the front and back main steel beams: £8,600.

 

Curtain tracks and border tubes, a proscenium curtain track, rear stage track, sash line and weight operation, three pairs of leg curtain tracks with swivel leg carriers, braked and corded, and four border tubes to support minimal border masking of hung equipment:

£15,100.

 

Stage curtains lined velour for front curtain and valance and black wool serge for the remaining on-stage curtains, legs and borders, all inherently flame retardant and manufactured with 50% fullness :

£20.000.

 

Sound system, DAP Audio Xi3 mini arrays with Xi28 sub bass loudspeakers, driven by the DAP 4 channel DSP power amplifiers. The main sound desk would be a Soundcraft Si Expression 1 with 32 channel digital stage box housed up in the control room together with an outboard rack housing ancillary elements, with a cross patchable DMP 180 mixer for day to day use allowing for microphone and laptop inputs would be included in the stage side rack together with the amplifiers, stage box and other outboard accessories:

£14,000.

 

Twelve radio microphone systems; AudioTechnica System 2000 with antenna distribution systems, pair of antenna, and rack case; one lectern microphone kit; AudioTechnica ES925ML x 2; and six hanging microphones; AudioTechnica ES933.

£11,800.

 

A wired stage intercom system to link control room with the stage and stage to classrooms being used as dressing rooms. Granite sound system based upon two channel master station, five beltpack/headset units and four loudspeaker outstations for dressing rooms:

£4,400.

 

8K lamp free laser projector with 0.75-0.95 short throw zoom lens

£15,000.

 

 

Drama Studio:

 

Perimter Curtain Track £2,600.00

Perimiter curtains £4,500.00

 

Lighting bars 3 £2,500.00

Lighting desk £1,300.00

 

Lighting Fixtures £3,000.00

 

Sound System inc Loudspeakers £4,500.00

 

Projection £3,000.00

 

Wiring PC £1,000.00

 

Extra Labour PC £1,200.00

 

Access Equipment £500.00

 

 

 

That's a serious amount of £££££

[Ditto]

It will be interesting to see how other quotes come through. Anytime I see a quote that has all numbers ending in double zeroes, I'm thinking that can come down a lot.

[dhicks]

Has anyone ever done a full refresh and how much was allowed for the project?

 

For some reason, every drama studio / hall I've been involved in seems to have come without any lights or speakers, leaving us to buy stuff from Amazon, mostly in the rather cheaper range than what you're looking at. A couple of thing it might be handy to add to the quote:

 

Portable staging - either as staging or as support for seating, it's handy to have stuff you can wheel out on a cart and set up.

 

A selection of wired mics - you might already have a bunch, but I'd budget for some stage mics (SM58 or similar), maybe some instrument mics for micing up various musical instruments, plus also some DI boxes for pluggin instruments in to you mixer and possibly an additional rackmount mixer unit to provide enough inputs for however many people / instruments you'll have on stage. Maybe also a rackmount power conditioning unit for the mic inputs to try and avoid any issues with hum when you start plugging stuff in.

 

Some sort of video conferecning camera setup - someone, at some point, is going to want to use your nice 8K projector to do a video conference call for an assembly or similar, having a camera or at least a handy place to mount one would be a good idea.

[Chris_Cook]

this sort of kit is expensive, but I would get a few quotes, and have a really good idea of what it needs to be used for. For assemblies, you don't need much, for full on drama events, that's probably not that overkill.

 

If events are infrequent, some if it might be cheaper to hire in. You can even hire crew in to setup etc.

 

It also depends on the size of the venue. Ours are quite small, so that would be way overkill. But things like LED fixtures, a better desk etc are on my list as things break.

 

You basically have 3 options

 

1. Buy cheap, buy twice/three times when it doesn't do what you want/expect

2. Buy the basics (desks, power distribution, data cabling, LX bars, etc), and then add/hire over the years.

3. Buy everything in one go, because the school prefers to spend big chunks of money than spending bits each year.

 

We've used a company called David Fitch Services who beat other quotes by lots.

 

The FLX is a nice desk, and price is reasonable. I'd certainly recommend not cheaping out on the core components just to get the extra toys.

 

Things like the Subs, and the moving head lights might be considered overkill, but they are nice to have. They could be hired when needed.

 

On the other hand, who is setting this up for events, and who is changing over the sound kit? Having all this stuff pre-rigged saves loads of time - you probably would halve the number of tech staff needed. Pre-lockdown I had a student operate lights for a drama performance and that worked really well as they could sit though all the rehearsals and nail the queues. Staff did all the rigging etc, and I was supervising, so it was plenty safe enough.

[SamanthaD]

No surprises your supplier has an account with Highlite - they're the company that manufactures Showtec, DAP Audio etc. I'd be looking at other lines, Chauvet, ADJ and eLumen8 are all worth looking at. Also are these prices ex VAT?

 

Without knowing much about your needs or the size of the space, I've got the following observations....

 

1. Your prices seem to be inflated. Yes installation labour and cabling etc needs to be factored in, but ask for it to be broken down into sections so you can see the true cost per item (Bax Music sell the Showtec Powerspot 9 Q6 for £201, x 16 = £3,216. They'd probably do some discount for a bulk purchase too)

2. No generic lighting. Again without knowing your stage size you're putting all your eggs in the basket of movers. 16 LED's with 8 wash movers? 24 wash fixtures? 8 spots I get, but having no fresnels or profiles seems a little short sighted.

3. Do you need IWB's? If it's just DMX and hard power, and you're constantly re-arranging your rig then you'll find the outputs will probably be in the wrong place, or worst still the outputs are exactly where you want to hang your fixture. Clean bars are much more flexible, and don't require electrical testing every year.

4. The sound system seems very underpowered, and old. The Expression 1 is an ok desk, but has been around for a long time now, the SI Impact is, IMO, a much better desk (it actually has 24 faders, not 22!) and is upgradable to 64 mono inputs as well as 16 stereo, massive upgradability, or the Allen & Heath SQ series are a good alternative with flexible options on stageboxes. For £14k I'd be expecting Martin Audio level of equipment, or at a push if you're not fussy about good quality secondhand a Q7/QSub d&b rig (if you're thinking about hiring the equipment out, d&b will always make you money).

5. Yo have no stage monitoring factored in, even for drama I'd be expecting 2 pairs of monitors, maybe flown over the stage.

6. Lighting control - have you considered PC systems? A Chamsys PC Wing is half that price and gives you up to 64 Universes if you combine it with an Artnet node. Much more power and flexibility, and redundancy. (If your desk crashes halfway through a run, what do you do? Chamsys shows you can run without a Wing just on a PC via Artnet, you don't need the hardware, just another PC/laptop!)

7. The projector again seems expensive. I'd be looking at £10k max. Again it might be that they've factored in their labour and cabling etc, ask for it to be broken down. For convenience I'd be looking at including a switcher/scaler and RS232 control panel, maybe linked to an audio matrix processor as well to control the volume for your microphones to the end user.

8. Edit to add - if you're thinking about leaving things powered up for casual use (microphones for example) buy kit that is rated for 24/7 use, or expected seriously shortened lifespans on the kit. Most digital mixers would only be on for 12 /15 hours max per day, if you're thinking about leaving it live all the time ensure ventilation is going to be a priority and maintenance factored in for cleaning of fans etc.

 

Definitely get some other quotes, maybe split the project up to gain experience in the relevant fields. A good audio installer might not be so good at projection?

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by SamDavis