Live band lighting

[misterbassman]

Hi everyone,

In a couple of weeks time Im doing lighting for a christian rock band and my college.

We are using the college's rig plus some of my kit probably. The college owns a large number of selecon profiles, plus a reasonably large selection of 500-1kW profiles/fresnels/floods. 4 betapacks and a fat frog. I have a selection of various PAR 56's and PAR 64's one moving mirror, a DMX moonflower gobo projector, a large DMX strobe and also 8 500 watt flood lights mounted in a cross shape to produce a cross blinder effect.

Basically this is the first time I have ever lit a live band properly so am after some advice.

Do people program the desk then assign the memories to the submasters and then bring in what ever submaster they feel suits the music at that time?? Or do you program the whole lot and hit go? Or do you do it manually?

 

Any advice would be great.

 

Thanks guys

[Brian]

It depends. What it depends on is whether you will get a full rehearsal after having been sent a set list and CD, or if you just get a rehearsal, or just a set list, or nothing at all.

 

For a major tour, things are obviously rehearsed to within an inch of their lives. For a one-nighter, the chances are you will have the band turn up a couple of hours before curtain up, have time to set them up, do a sound check and that's all. As lighting, don't expect to be given any time to try things, sound will always need their sound check.

 

In the latter situation (which is how I do many of my jobs) I simply program up a pile of generic looks, some generic chases, stick them all on subs masters and busk it. As an example from last weekend, I knew the rough layout of the band before they turned up so I was able to pre-rig most of it. Once they came I just had to tweak the final positions. This is what I had...

 

FOH bar, pile of Par64 with 3 colours for general stage foh wash.

On stage 2 bars, one US with 3 more lots of P64 with 3 different colour, one DS with 3 more lots and 3 specials to top light the 3 vocal positions. The onstage colours were zoned, so for instance, one of the colours just covered the drum area.

 

I was controlling on my XLS using 24 subs and the chasers. I set up 8 different chases. I then set up the subs thus...

3 subs for the 3 foh colours

6 subs for the onstage colours

2 subs for the overhead specials (one for all on, one for main vocals only)

1 sub had the smoke on it

I then set up 12 subs each with a 'named' look on it, so I had a look called 'spooky', one called 'hot', one called 'moody', one called 'sunset' and so on.

 

Armed only with the set list and a vague recolection of what the song sounded like I then busked the whole show.

[sam.henderson]

I did a gig the other night using a Fat Frog and I just programmed loads of different states and chases onto the Subs and busks a bit. Also if you plug it into the sound board you can set the chase modifiers to beat so it will go with the music. If you build up a 18 step chase then you only need a few and your on your way.

 

If you wanted to put less effort in then you can use the FROG (Fixture random Output generator) feature. This just outputs random effects (for any fixture not generics). You can also set Min and Max settings for Pan and Tilt so you don't get it doing loads of stuff going on offstage.

 

To activate the Frog setting do the following;

 

Select the Fixtures you want to apply it to,

Click Colour, Beamshape and position and on each one press the FROG button.

It will continue to run until told to do otherwise (by hitting the GO button for the next memory or by raising a sub)

 

To edit the Max and Mins press the Frog Screen Button.

 

For the best use of your Fat Frog use a Monitor and Keyboard!

 

Sam

[Guest lightnix]

Have a look at this thread from a couple of months ago, lots of useful information and suggestions in there.

 

And don't worry about it not being a "theatrical" question, this place is full of non-theatricals, including me :o

[Ike]

Having never used a frog desk(!) I cant really comment from a programming point of view however I would go for lots of subs split up in the same way as Brian explained.

 

Flashing pars isn't a problem but I would suggest leaving the floods on just enough to keep the filaments warm and not flashing the profiles.

 

To be honest I don't know how much use the moonflower and moving mirror will be, there is nothing to stop you experimenting though.

 

Most of all, have fun!

[Mush]

don't know how much use the moonflower and moving mirror will be

 

Moonflowers look good as floor mounted backlight, moving mirror got o have few possibilties.