kitlane

Someone must be looking very closely at the CDM paperwork to work out who to sue for the lost revenue. 

Cotton sheeting is fine. Showers curtains can be fine. I've used large sheets of tracing paper taped together to make a screen an actor could burst through. I've used very thin white foam packing material.

Compared to a proper screen material you will probably lose brightness, you will no control over viewing angle which will probably be narrow, and you will probably have a very strong hotspot where the lens is.

Wander round Dunelm or any fabric shop with a strong torch and have a play.

Very happy to say my copy was delivered this morning. Wow! There is so much in there. It's going to keep me busy for a while. Well done to Rob and the rest of the team. It looks brilliant. I'm sure Richard would have been delighted.

On 4/16/2024 at 10:49 PM, adam2 said:

Do terrorists actually detonate bombs by ringing a cellphone attached thereto ? There would seem to be a significant risk of premature explosion due to a wrong number or a marketing call, and also some risk of not detonating when "told to" due to lack of a signal. I understood that the "alarm clock" feature found om most phones was used, this requires no signal.

 

There are certainly a lot of news articles online that indicate that they do.

Based on the limited information available, we know that it is at least a 3B. I found another Youtube video that implies it could be 100mW and 60mW (it depends on which model does what). The lack of any information makes it a really bad idea to consider using this. It looks like it has a diffraction grating that will split the beam into multiple beams. While this will reduce the power of most of the individual beams, it is impossible to guess by how much. The Zero order beam (the centre one that is not diffracted at all) will not have very much reduction in power. Without any solid data, the only way to know is to measure the beam Power Density and for that you will need a specialist, expensive piece of equipment. We have to assume that if someone gets one of the lower order beams in their eye then it will cause immediate and irreparable damage.

The UK industry guidance is 'Guidance for the Safety of Display Lasers' published by PLASA.

https://www.plasa.org/guidance-for-display-lasers/

There are a range of water ripple effects available, most of which seem to be variations on rotating one or more textured glass gobos. The Rosco X24 was possibly the most 'professional' product but now discontinued. There is the ADJ H2O, the Chauvet Abyss 2, Equinox WaterWave etc. (They might be the same product rebadged??). You could get pretty much the same effect with most moving head spots.

None of these look like a tubular ripple tank though.

It's a long time ago (20+ years) and I can't remember where we got it from, but we borrowed the prop from another theatre. IIRC the arrow was not concealed at 90 degrees but simply stuck out of the rear of the target (therefore requiring careful positioning to hide it from the audience). The arrow was propelled with bungee-type cord straight out of the centre front of the target. The coup de theatre was that the first arrow (the Sherriff's) was hollow and contained (part of) Robin's arrow. With a secondary release mechanism Robin's arrow 'split' the Sherriff's arrow down the middle.

Could you achieve this by using OSC instead?

You could try EPH, prophire.com, or Stockyard
Old Fashioned Cash Register | EPH Creative - Event Prop Hire

cash props Props, Prop Hire, Event

Cash Tills – Stockyard Prop and Backdrop Hire (prophire-backdrophire.com)

On a related but completely unhelpful note, I took teenage daughter to the Science Museum yesterday. There was an old fashioned till on display which fascinated her. It was while explaining how they work that I realised that the phrase 'Kerching!' in reference to a lot of money has no context to anyone below a certain age (who also hasn't watched 'Open All Hours').

Worth giving Drapemakers in Derby a call

Drapemakers - The Drape Specialists (designservices.co.uk)

The 'loudest' theatre show I've seen recently was probably 'Standing At The Sky's Edge' at The National. But it was never painful or uncomfortable. If your ears are hurting after the dress of a family show then something is wrong. If this is your job, then the Control of Noise at Work Regulations apply

https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/hsg260.htm

Do you mean this website?

https://set-exchange.co.uk/index.php

It's working for me right now.

As Andrew stated, there is no, nor (do I believe) has there ever been, a 'legal' height under which you did not need handrails. IIRC the 2m (or was it 6ft?) figure came from a specific regulation related to the construction industry. Because there was nothing else to go on, our industry adopted this as normal practice, but it was never even an 'official' guideline.

You need to carry out a Risk Assessment, which to a large extent will consider the Working At Height Regulations. A fall from any height has the potential to cause harm. You can step backwards off a 6" high deck and fall and bash your head, resulting in serious injury or worse. Standing next to an open trap door is Working at Height as there is potential to fall. Control Measures to allow an unprotected edge might include careful rehearsal, blocking actors to keep a minimum distance from the edge and making the edge clearly visible. None of these will be as good as having a sturdy handrail of some sort, so give serious consideration to that as an option.

On 9/24/2022 at 6:06 PM, Simon Lewis said:

There was also an equipment store run by colleagues in Art, that carried some AV and camera gear. This could also be booked online and picked up almost straight away, and could be taken off site. The more canny art students quickly realised that they could run a small photography business with some nice borrowed bodies and lenses if they booked the stuff at the right time...

Overall, small items could be booked at pretty short notice, subject to the rules regarding return times, etc.

For the past couple of years it has been 24 hours notice for the Media Loan Hub (no prizes for guessing why), but I just checked and it is now a minimum of 45 minutes notice! But consider that this is a facility set up specifically and exclusively to loan equipment to students and staff. It is not staffed by technicians who have lots of other duties and responsibilities.

24 hours notice seems reasonable as a rule, but I think some flexibility for genuine last minute requests could be accommodated.

If you want some general information on 'fog' effects then I recommend you look the ESTA publications  "Introduction to Modern Atmospheric Effects, 6th edition" and "ANSI E1.23 - 2020 Entertainment Technology -- Design, Execution, and Maintenance of Atmospheric Effects". You can download these from the ESTA Technical Standards Program Website.

https://tsp.esta.org/tsp/documents/published_docs.php

Type 'atmos' into the search box.

When I read your original post asking for a 'graveyard' effect, the last thing I pictured was half a dozen pea soupers pumping out clouds of low fog. That will just look like a cheesy 80's pop video. In my mind, you need a more subtle effect of wispy low lying mist. Same technology, but more subdued. Or hide a few ultrasonic mist generators behind the gravestones. 

10-15 minutes of a fog effect is not a short time. Whatever your consumables are, it will use a lot of them. 

Hi Harry. Welcome to Blue Room.

Is this for controlling Pan and Tilt on moving lights? Personally, I don't think joysticks are the most intuitive device for this. A track ball would be better. I think even a regular mouse would be better than a joystick.

Derby Theatre bought a Leon system a couple of years ago. As far as I know they are happy with it.

16_channel_cue_light_mk4.pdf

13 hours ago, sunray said:

 

The outer edge of the CD had gone a sort of brown/gold colour, it was only the first track affected... which was of course the UK national anthem.

 

You perhaps know this, but CDs scan from the centre outwards (i.e. the first track is nearest the hole). 

I agree with Kerry that at the very least they would be covered by PUWER, but I',m not sure why they wouldn't come under LOLER. A wind-up Manfrotto is raising and lowering a load by a non-trivial distance. The definition of lifting equipment in LOLER is very broad and I think it would include a wind-up lighting stand. AC Entertainment include lighting stands as one of the categories of equipment for which they offer LOLER testing.

Lighthack is an education project developed by ETC to support the DIY/Maker community in creating devices to interface with their desks.

https://shop.etcconnect.com/lighthack-box-1/#:~:text=%23lighthack is an educational project,official ETC hardware or software.

If you search for 'ETC Lighthack' you will find an array of homebrew projects, such as this one https://tinkering.home.blog/2019/02/19/lighthack-usb-encoder-wing-for-etc-element/

10 hours ago, sunray said:

No I have that wrong I think.

I think they had several branches, Birmingham and Blackburn seem to ring a bell. IIRC the London branch turned to paint but oop North stayed with electronics.

It was ages ago I found they had ceased to exist 25, 30 ?? years back.

"Penlyon Electrical Ltd was formed  in March 1993 as part of a management buy out of Norman Rose Ltd."

http://www.penlyon.co.uk/page.php?xPage=company

Once you get a decent amount of bubbles on stage the audience will 'ooh' and 'aah', and frankly they won't give a monkey's about what direction they are moving. I'm assuming that there will also be actors and/or dancers on stage at the same time, and their movements will inevitably push the bubbles around and pop them quickly.

43 minutes ago, Dave m said:

it appeals to me as I did a gig at Bolton Arena and they had "big metal superstructures" that required a building site trailer style compressor but once powered were shoved around by a small crew. The stuff was kind of free standing catwalks that had an oil rig feel to them.

I watched a couple of USA based furniture lifting sales videos

We currently use large false walls that are basically boxes with small pallet truck holes in the base. When we want to move them we slide in a truck, pump and shift but it's a bit unwieldy and hard to steer.

 

As we have a new building planned I wondered about using air.

This video of a changeover at The Derngate may be of interest

As the topic has been resurrected, I will note tragic fire yesterday in a nightclub in Cameroon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60102088

 

 

I think the G300 is a smoke machine BTW rather than a hazer?

True, but it has a 'haze' mode which works with their C-Beam fluid to produce a haze-like effect.