dhicks Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 Hello All, Our school uses a church building as our performing arts / theatre space. The building is owned by the church, not the school, so we are limited as to what we can do to the structure of the building. The first floor is layed out as a theatre, seating around 100 - some pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10ttDKgMRyD3WMbMqaZ-DeKemOvOMSWzx?usp=drive_link We are aiming to get some new lighting - modern LED, DMX-controllable lights. For the moment we're thinking they'll go on portable stands up on the balcony. Do these look like sensible choices: 2 spot lights: Showtec ACT Profile 50 RGBAL: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_62_111_258&product_id=1833 2 fresnel lights: Showtec ACT Fresnel 150 RGBAL: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_62_259_257&product_id=1186 Those four lights will be around £2,000 in total. For another £600 we could add a couple of "sunstrips" or "blinders": Showtex Razor Blaze 12 - "sunstrip lights": https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_112_399&product_id=1460 Are those four lights going to be enough to light the stage area, or are we going to need more? We could maybe add a couple of stands on the floor next to the stage area, I was thinking of using "tank trap" style stands rather than tripod stands to try and keep the footprint down a bit. I could maybe put the sunstrips on those?
TronXP Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 Hi, If the lights you have now cover the areas you need, then I would look up the beam angle of the lights and replace them with a new light with as close as possible the same beam angle. The strip lights will be a narrow beam, which is good for effects but probably not so for lighting up people on the stage. 1
Andrew_C Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 My gut says that's quite a long throw. I suspect that buying more profiles for that bar will be a better use of cash than the strips. I do have to admit I've not used modern LEDs in anger, so they may have come on a long way... Can you hire some to try? Or buy from someone woith stock who can demo? 1
dhicks Posted January 20, 2025 Author Posted January 20, 2025 If the lights you have now cover the areas you need, then I would look up the beam angle of the lights and replace them with a new light with as close as possible the same beam angle. We'll also probably be using these same lights over in another church hall we use, which is larger (800 capacity, 9-metre wide proscenium arch stage), so probably as wide as we can reasonably get is going to be best. The strip lights will be a narrow beam, which is good for effects but probably not so for lighting up people on the stage. Ah, good to know. I've seen them used at smaller venues (40-seater black-box theatres), where they work well as a cheaper option, but for somewhere a bit larger they would maybe struggle.
dhicks Posted January 20, 2025 Author Posted January 20, 2025 I suspect that buying more profiles for that bar will be a better use of cash than the strips. Thanks, that's good to know - I suspect you're right. Can you hire some to try? Or buy from someone woith stock who can demo? It's tricky getting the drama department and accounts department together to agree how much money can be spent on what. I'm aiming to get together a price for a reasonable setup that we can get the go-ahead to go and buy.
PotNoodleTech Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 Live sound and lighting is never on anyones agenda in a school. I've been trying to get our hall lights upgraded for 20 years. The actual lights must be approx 35 years old now. No ones ever interested in spending any money on lights. Now - it's so decrepid that their spending loads of money hiring light and sound for every show. *bangs head against brick wall*
dhicks Posted January 20, 2025 Author Posted January 20, 2025 Now - it's so decrepid that their spending loads of money hiring light and sound for every show. Indeed - that's what has prompted our drama department to look at buying equipment, rather than hiring it in each time. The annoying thing is that the venue in question was already set up as a theatre, there used to be a youth group in there, and is in a very good location (just opposite the back entrance to Harrods), so we could hire it out as a central London theatre location!
Andrew_C Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 Hiring - set a relatively small £sum against each production, but ignore totally the pain in the **** it is for the poor person setting up in not enough time, and clearing away in less. Worse if you have to collect the kit... Buying - ££$$CHING!! The only thing a bean-counter sees, or cares about.
SamanthaD Posted January 21, 2025 Posted January 21, 2025 Looking at your photos I think there's enough there to do something interesting. I like your idea of adding lights on stage and using tank traps (though have a look at truss uprights or the "H" style brackets) but I would stay using the tungsten front lights - maybe upgrade the dimming. If budget is a concern then make best use of what you have and embellish it rather than replace? My suggestion for an upgrade would be for some colour options on stage - LED Par style or cheap LED wash moving heads. We've been using the Shehds 19x15W RGBW moving head wash (not a typo!) in an install and they're pretty good for the price. Don't forget control either - a new desk is going to cost a fair chunk! 1
john Posted January 21, 2025 Posted January 21, 2025 Don't forget control either - a new desk is going to cost a fair chunk! For a desk you could just go MagicQ and dongle it on a laptop to start https://uk.chamsyslighting.com/product/magicdmx-full/ if you can cope woth the 5hr limit the cheaper dongle could also work for you. 1
dhicks Posted January 21, 2025 Author Posted January 21, 2025 Hiring - set a relatively small £sum against each production, but ignore totally the pain in the **** it is for the poor person setting up in not enough time, and clearing away in less. Worse if you have to collect the kit... Buying - ££$$CHING!! The only thing a bean-counter sees, or cares about. Our productions / events tend to be handled by our parents association, who tend to hire equipment and an events company in. Having a GCSE drama group, who need to be able to practice during the normal school timetable, is something the school is still getting used to.
dhicks Posted January 21, 2025 Author Posted January 21, 2025 (edited) Looking at your photos I think there's enough there to do something interesting. I like your idea of adding lights on stage and using tank traps (though have a look at truss uprights or the "H" style brackets) Ooh - good point about the truss uprights. I was thinking tank traps would be cheaper than they seem to be, truss might be a good option. If you mean brackets to screw into the walls then we (mostly) can't, as it's not our building. but I would stay using the tungsten front lights - maybe upgrade the dimming. If budget is a concern then make best use of what you have and embellish it rather than replace? It's a good point, but I'm aiming to simplyfy the setup as much as I can so that we can have our teachers / pupils handle using the lighting (and sound). We only have the three working older lights now, and for some reason the faders have stopped working - I'm sure the equipment is fixable, but I don't want to spend any more of my time trouble-shooting equipment, I figured new kit would be easier to handle / use. The older lights do get very hot and are quite heavy, I think our pupils would be better off with newer LEDs. My suggestion for an upgrade would be for some colour options on stage - LED Par style or cheap LED wash moving heads. Yes. My current thinking, after both the advice from this thread and elsewhere, is that these par cans might be better value: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=112 We can get more of them (6, probably) for our money, allowing us to better position them around the space - a couple up on the balcony, a couple at the sides, a couple at the front. Combined with 2 of the spotlights, hopefully that will make for a reasonable setup that we could add to next year. We actually have a couple of moving-head lights in another hall - no-one has ever used them, so if I can swap them out for a couple more of the par cans I can move them over to this location. Don't forget control either - a new desk is going to cost a fair chunk! Our new drama teacher has the board in mind that he wants to get: https://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Consoles/Eos-Consoles/Element/Features.aspx He seems to fairly sure of that one's capabilities, and seems to think he'll be able to have some of the pupils use it, so that seems like a fairly set choice. We do also have a USB-to-DMX dongle and a license for QLab. We initially bought a Macbook for the drama department to use QLab with, but I don't think they ever used the Macbook for that. Edited January 21, 2025 by dhicks
Andrew_C Posted January 21, 2025 Posted January 21, 2025 (edited) ETC over Chamsys. Both capable, but actually having faders for learning for me. ETC widly used in schools, and real theatres. Chamsys IS out there, but more towards music & events. Edited January 21, 2025 by Andrew_C 1
robk Posted January 21, 2025 Posted January 21, 2025 I personally use magic Q, the ETC desk our head of drama has is very basic, and frankly no one can work! (Magic Q has a learning curve but worth looking at as the software is free...) 1
TronXP Posted January 22, 2025 Posted January 22, 2025 I use MagicQ also but on an MQ70 board. I had always used Zero88 \ strand desks. MagicQ certainly has a learning curve, did my first event with it in December and was very pleased with how it went. As I do music\discos\musicals as well as theatrical the versatility of MagicQ is a good fit for me. 2
dhicks Posted January 22, 2025 Author Posted January 22, 2025 ETC over Chamsys. Both capable, but actually having faders for learning for me. ETC widly used in schools, and real theatres. Chamsys IS out there, but more towards music & events. Thanks, that's very useful to know. It seems from what you and the other couple of posts have said that the ETC board should be a good choice for drama lighting - I'm not going ot be using the board, this is for the head of drama to deal with, so it's more about getting something he (and the children) will be comfortable with, and something with physical faders does sound like a good idea. Music / audio is probably going to be a separate station, possibly a simple touch-screen device with sound cues on. We might hire someone in to operate the board for productions, so having something that is reasonably well-known would be an advantage there.
Andrew_C Posted January 22, 2025 Posted January 22, 2025 For audio playback I'd look at SCS running on a PC. Sophisticated, powerful, but the simple stuff is fairly straightforward. I think the trial version is still free. None of this stuff is going to work itself. Despite what drama teachers seem to think... 1
howartp Posted January 22, 2025 Posted January 22, 2025 +10 for SCS. Been using it for years in three drama/theatre groups. 1
dhicks Posted January 22, 2025 Author Posted January 22, 2025 For audio playback I'd look at SCS running on a PC. We do already have a license for QLab, we would probably go for a Mac Mini to run that. None of this stuff is going to work itself. Despite what drama teachers seem to think... I'm reasonably confident the drama teacher here understands that - I'm going to keep our existing basic 6-channel DMX controller so we have a backup.
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