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Follow Spots in Schools


OldHollow

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Hi,

 

For context, I'm in a school where our "theatre" is a stage at the end of a sports hall and the audience sit at floor level. I'm trying to work out how I can get a couple of 13 year olds to run follow spots. My options seem to be (1) hire some form of remote followspot / controller for a moving head, or (2) go traditional and build a couple of towers behind the seating. My concern is that (1) doesn't exist / will be too expensive and (2) wouldn't be allowed as I wouldn't be allowed to send the kids up towers.

 

Any advice / experience / suggestions would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

David.

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Rostra ?You could buy something like a mate's school has which is approx 1metre square ply tops each with holes in each corner. The frames are plated steel that are coffee table like in structure and clip together using plastic units side to side and vertically the legs have a taper at the bottom so that they can stack.

You could build wooden blocks or buy them if diy creates issues

If the audience is on the floor the spots don't need to be too high but may dazzle the kids

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Why can you not send the kids up (sensible and proper) towers? Surely we're just talking something a couple of meters high? A bit of steeldeck on some tallish legs for example. Hint: Don't call it a 'tower' to the powers-that-be. That conjures up all sorts of images in the minds of someone who is not familiar with what you intend to do. A 'followspot platform' sounds much safer...! You can even build a set of stairs up to it so ladders aren't involved.

 

Do they not have climbing paraphernalia in school gyms any more? When I was in charge of a school venue (only about 5 years ago or so), we were happy for them to do pretty much anything I would do (within reason- age, complexity of task, maturity of student, etc, all coming into it). So long as they were given adequate instruction and suitably supervised. There are plenty of other more dangerous activities in a school than operating a followspot on a bit of rostra.

 

Ian

 

 

<school teacher mindset>

Here's a tower:

http://img.archiexpo.com/images_ae/photo-g/148492-11038161.jpg

 

 

And here's a platform:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JMy-Vj2TJ_o/UbZdeJVqCvI/AAAAAAAAAS0/ZcNOQumtJg8/s1600/SL+50.JPG

 

Edited by IRW
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We use Q-Build to make a platform with steps and rail around it. At about 1500-2000mm it's not as high as might be preferred so the followspots tend to be a bit flat. However, it keeps all the risk assessments less controversial. You may find that other schools around you have Q-Build and might let you borrow it, or at least have a play. We have a reciprocal arrangements with a local primary for when either of us need just that bit more.

 

We also have a reciprocal arrangement with a local am-dram and we use their followspots. Old school and hot, but good at the price. Young people need quite a lot of training to avoid potential burns but also to keep control. Our first practice session felt more like we were looking for Messerschmitt 109s than we were highlighting a bit of the action. You need to let them get that out of their system first.

 

There you go FWIW.

 

PS

If your 13 year olds cannot be trusted up a scaf tower then they cannot be trusted with a nice hot follow spot.

Totally agree, I'd trust mine with both. However, you can get a risk assessment for a followspot past the safety elf much easier than anything with height in it. They generally haven't a clue about anything specialised.

Edited by ojc123
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I agree that sensible kids should be allowed up a tower.

 

One approach that worked in a local school was to re brand a tower as a "mezzanine floor" with approach via stairs rather than a ladder. Children are of course allowed to use stairs to reach the upstairs of a school. The structure was built by a local firm and is very sturdy. It consists of a welded steel frame and a floor of heavy duty beech plywood. Can be dismantled for storage.

 

Used for follow spots and also very useful for refering sporting events, and invigilating examinations.

 

 

 

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Personally, from bitter experience, even if you can get the follows spots onto a suitable platform, the performance of 13yr olds with follow spots is enough to make me never waste money on them ever again. On the list of useful equipment followspots are often pointless. When they're used accurately on a wide stage to highlight certain performers in a tight hard or soft beam, they do their job - but with a novice spot op, with no experience, or real time to practice they either bob up and down missing the targets, or get used iris open to make it easier, and look simply awful. I'd have a long hard look at what they are actually for, and if the aim is to pick out people from others, maybe a big X marks the spot and half a dozen fixed focus profile on faders that can cover the acting area. I really can't say I have seen a single school production anywhere that had what we'd term competent operators by normal standards. In virtually all cases, people stood in the dark, or kept going bright/dim, or everyone got covered and looked light rabbits in headlights.

 

In the pro-show touring world, one nighters now rarely have any use of followspots any longer for cost and varying skill level reasons.

 

I've seen hundreds of school shows and cannot remember one where followspots added anything to what I saw. Far too often, they were used to avoid somebody climbing up and using the provided real stage lighting that often was abandoned because the safety elves determined it was too dangerous to let humans up ladders.

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I've seen hundreds of school shows and cannot remember one where followspots added anything to what I saw.

Following my post above where I've said how we've done it, I've only used followspots twice in the last thirty years for school shows, both were occasions where a new director insisted and I provided the equipment and training. On both occasions they agreed in retrospect that the show would have been better without. I think followspots are awful if not used properly. My first line of argument in this case would be to try to get the director to abandon them.

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I have used sixteen year olds and over for this never anyone as young as thirteen. Hand picked and indoctrinated in the usual disciplines of course. It is not impossible to get them to do the job properly but they have to be at all the calls you see fit to attend and feel part of the company. Q build makes a good solid platform. In your space and circumstances I probably wouldn't bother. (The worst following I have ever seen though was in a professional show of some prestige the evening spoiled even further by the star - a household name which I will not reveal - apparently playing unashamedly to friends in the front stalls.)
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I teach on a backstage theatre production diploma and have to train up 16 - 19yr olds on followspots as a matter of course, regardless of whether it’s required in our shows. I find that with a few exercises and just a few hours of practising they can often achieve a passable result. It’s important to remember that in a educational setting, you have to give students the opportunity to fail. If you prevent them from trying out new things because you’re too wrapped up in your (or the director’s) own production values, pretty soon there’ll be no one left in the industry.

 

As for the safety aspect, again I train young people to work at height on ladders, access towers and indeed, operating a followspot from an open gallery with a 4m drop below them. As long as any structure you provide is constructed by a certified professional, adequate training and supervision is given to the students and the whole operation is risk assessed, I can’t see that any reasonable OSH officer would have cause to block it.

 

In terms of the followspot itself, you could always look into hiring an LED one - smaller and lighter to carry up a tower/platform and very little heat kicked out in operation. Of course I’m not familiar with your venue, but even the cheap ones are capable of a comfortable 20m throw distance.

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How on earth can you supervise them, unless up the tower with them? Impractical. I just don't see the point of the exercise. You can provide infinitely better lighting without followspots. There is little point training people to use them when practically, it's impossible without show conditions and this means you're giving one to one tuition which is over and above anything the current specs ask for. If you are running a BTEC spec, or one of the extra snippets of a GCSE, there are no real criteria for getting grades for accurate follow spot practices. The rules get twisted to let this happen, but follow spots are just rubbish lighting tools compared to a clutch of elderly Fresnels, profiles or nowadays, movers! Why mess around with H&S people and the hire costs of external people putting up towers? It's daft use of resources.
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Paul, Dan has gone off on a tangent since 13 year old's and 19 year old's are different species of fauna, in H&S terms.

 

Yes followspots can be made usable in these circumstances but why?

 

For the OP it might be worth a teaching exercise in getting your actors on a floor in front of you, creating a blackout then shining a mini maglite at roughly the angle of the spots straight into their faces. If they manage to deliver their lines without addressing their shoes then perhaps I am wrong but followspots are anathema to subtlety, nuance and creativity.

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It doesn't matter a tinkers curse whether anything adds or detracts from the lighting of a school production and if someone decided to use follows simply to get two or three more kids involved they'd get three cheers from me. I used specials boards often for this purpose when there was no real need. It is the process that counts and we need to provide as many opportunities to get involved as possible. Yes they will fail at times but that is the important thing. I posted above that I wouldn't bother but if I had older kids aching to get a job in a show I might, even of it only meant two Patt 23N, an underrated tool for this purposs, that couldn't really be noticed. Edited by Junior8
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I run a technical section of a Youth Theatre Group, so apart from being in a 'proper' (small) theatre and having a set of kids who are all there because they want to be (not becuase they have to be) to all intents and purposes we do 'school shows'. We'll take them in at 14, and we usually lose them at 18 (just as they are getting quite useful....) as they head off to uni/the big wide world.

 

We have the benefit of followspot positions on a permanent tech gantry with the lighting and sound desks on (not ideal for sound as it is a bit high up, but that's OT). We aim to get the Tech Youth to do all the jobs for the Youth Theatre productions, under guidance and supervision from us old gits that have been around for a while. This gives us variable results, and when we started this part of the operation a few years ago we discussed with the artistic directors of the Youth Theatre that the overall technical standard would likely drop with this approach, as we're giving the young techs with less knowledge and experience the opportunity to do the jobs. That was accepted, and recognised as necessary if we want to encourage youngsters into the technical side of theatre - as Junior8 suggests.

 

We use follwospots in most of the musicals that we do. Operator quality varies and it is often seen as an 'anyone can do that' kind of job - which it isn't of course. Yes we have bad follow-spotting - that misses the mark on pickups, or hasn't read the 'follow' part of the job description properly, but it does get more youngsters involved and ofen in a rotation of jobs for broad experience. No-one wants to specialise as a follow-spot op though!

 

When it's bad it does look pretty terrible, but if I'm on the gantry they'll get told that and provided with some 'advice and encouragement' to get it less wrong next time.

 

I think they do have a place in some shows - depending on the design - but I would agree that if it's difficult and expensive then it's value is diminshed.

 

We do need to get youngsters excited by what we do, and at least on followspotting you're out-front and kind-of get to watch the show.

 

Jason

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Hi,

 

For context, I'm in a school where our "theatre" is a stage at the end of a sports hall and the audience sit at floor level. I'm trying to work out how I can get a couple of 13 year olds to run follow spots. My options seem to be (1) hire some form of remote followspot / controller for a moving head, or (2) go traditional and build a couple of towers behind the seating. My concern is that (1) doesn't exist / will be too expensive and (2) wouldn't be allowed as I wouldn't be allowed to send the kids up towers.

 

Any advice / experience / suggestions would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

David.

 

Hi David, we hire follow spots and build small platforms from rostra with guard rails around the sides and hazard tape in the edges of the platforms. Each operator is given a good familiarisation session with the spot, a script with cues and, where possible, on comms.

 

This has worked really well for us! We only us the spots on solo/duet numbers in the shows. Hope this helps?

 

 

 

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