alistermorton

When you aren't projecting any image, i.e. you have a black tile say during a blackout, the projector still emits light. This means that a proper blackout isn't achievable. The shutter (also sometimes called a dowser) blocks the light coming out of the projector. We have one which swings down over the lens that mounts on the outside of the projector, It works, but it's noticeable. A better solution is where the shutter is built in to the projector - it reacts more quickly and is quieter.

Aha ...

Not offhand. I can have a look when I'm next in which will be Tuesday. There are plenty of projector manufacturers. Depending on the size of your stage you may get away with a basic model, but brightness may be an issue. One thing we regret was not spending a bit more and getting a projector with an internal shutter. Our external One does the job, but one built in would have been neater and quieter.

You can see a skirting board across the back. The projection just came down to there. I can't recall exactly how close to the wall you can get (depends on your height but 6-8 feet rings a bell) but there they were about 10-12 feet away. The wall is painted with white projection paint which has good reflection. The projector is an NEC and it's intended for offset projection so the optics and electronics compensate for the keystoning and focus correction

I suspect strongly that the courts' attitude if anything were to go wrong would be that you simply didn't hire enough crew to get the job done or manage the project properly; that's your decision but there are consequences of that decision. We all try to go the extra mile to get a show on, but we have to be aware of the consequences, and at the end of the day, someone's chopper is on the block. The buck stops somewhere. Do you want to be that person?

According to the manual, the DMX selection mode starts with A. e.g. address 162 would be A.162 The displays starting with d seem to be special set up modes. Once it's in DMX mode you need to make sure it's running in the correct number of channels, too - displays starting with Ch.. How are the other ones patched?

There's also national pro lighting and sound swap shop on facebook. I've bought a few bits through there.

Are you sitting down? Reflectors on Lightspares I'm sure they're not the only ones holding them. Might be worth trying Whitelight - I think they have a load of new old stock for Strand.

Agreed, even without haze the sharp edge can work. When we did rough justice we had the "cell" set in the centre of the acting area which was the courtroom. The courtroom was lit in warm wood panelling in sunlight colours, and the cell in harsh cold blueish white (L201), with the edges of the cell clearly delineated on the floor, both in floor colour and with the profiles's shutters and steeper angles to cause some face/eye shadow. It worked really well, using the contrast between a smallish, cold harsh "box" with a dark border compared to the warm expanse of the courtroom.

Yes, there's triangular bracing at the corners and the cross pieces. The edges are rounded so as not to leave lines in the paint from where a brush presses up against the square edges of the wood. They're 11' tall and in various widths.

Our flats use threaded inserts and thumb screws to attach plates and hinged joins. It's a system we've used for nearly 40 years and works really well, allowing quite large box sets to go up in half a day, ready to be prepped for painting. They're canvas covered, rather than ply faced. Some of the flats have doorways in them, so that a door frame and any one of a selection of doors can be quickly inserted. Windows in flats are built from ply as and when required.

we have one but it's going to be used in a show in September - after that it might be available for loan.

Sounds like a business opportunity for someone with a 3d printer?

Yes, covers the whole visible area. In an earlier scene, where Oliver Kilbourn and the other painters met Lady Sutherland at the hall, the scene started in the gardens, with the flowers in the foreground and the stately hall in the distance. The projection then zoomed towards the hall, then the window and the scene then turned "inside out" and we were transported inside the hall. All done in qlab. The fellow who put the projections together really got to know qlab well and did a fantastic job.

True, whenever we're using projection the lighting design upstage has to be different to avoid lighting the cyc, but we're used to it, and it works really well for us. Our recent productions of Daisy and Pitmen Painters used a lot of projection and washout was never a problem. Pitmen image: http://www.millercentretheatre.org/images/201819/ThePitmenPainters/IMG_9963.jpg The window image was far brighter to the eye than the camera has picked up here.

Presumably they're both set to exactly the same profiles, and it exactly matches what the software is expecting. It's almost as if one of them is interpreting the pan/tilt speed channel differently to the other.

We use a fairly short throw projector (4 m ish) projecting down from the stage grid (about 4m ish too, I'd guess) and you can get surprisingly close to the cyc before shadows from cast members become a problem.

This might be a red herring - are the two fixtures addressed differently or the same (i.e. both responding to the same data) and still they get out of sync?

Single core yet constantly flexed?

QolorFlex 3x10 dimmer from City Theatrical can be configure to be 1 x 30 if need be! You'd need to add a wireless interface too (Tx + Rx). Theatre Wireless RC4 S3 DMX4dim-500 can do 15A per dimmer continuous and 40A intermittent(although total continuous for the whole pack is 42A limited by the input connector). Built in Rx, you'd need the Tx too. Could both be worth investigating?

Now that's an idea, Brian. 8A or so shouldn't trouble a decent Lead cell for a reasonable duty cycle I'm pretty sure I read an article on the RC4 website about paralleling outputs to increase the capacity - that might be worth investigating too.

You could slave a power mosfet to increase the current capability of an off the shelf dimmer. Large power mosfets aren't hard to come by. Or maybe City Theatrical have a bigger dimmer available of the shelf. If you could get the warmth and smooth laggy dimming of tungsten would you consider LED?

I did just find a bug in MultiPlay 2.5.5.0 that caused the "one file out of order" issue when you added multiple files to an empty cue list. That is fixed in version 3. Ah, excellent news.

Interestingly, if I write a quick C# application to create a file open dialog and make a multiple selection, they are presented in the same order that they appear in the directory listing. I wonder if this is a change in behaviour. I'm about to write a native test app to test the theory ... sems to be the same. Presented in the order they're selected.

Near as damn it. 9-40 and 10-40