stocking up help

[lightjocky]

hi there,

we are upgradeing our technical side of the school

we currently have 2 drama suites and 1 stage

 

currect stock includes 20x acclaim fresnels, 10x acclaim profiles, 12x par 64, 4 x par56, 8x cct fresnels

we very easily use all of this at once for a show on a stage and hire in ontop of this

 

we have worked out our hire prices spent over the last 12 months and it comes to a shocking £21,000

we have realised we could now buy some stock

after much negotiation with the school governers we have secured about £15,000 for our technical dept

HOWEVER this meens we cannot hire anything duering the next 12 months wich is were the problem comes in

a normall hire such as a fashion show we did 2 weeks ago consisted of a £2000 hire of lighting including

6x mac 250 entours

2x mac 550

1x leap frog desk

20x par 64 cans

 

were should I start ????????

do we invest in generics i.e. parcans some more profiles ?

do we get some movers

we have no desk at the moment normall hire frog range in

ALL STOCK IS SHARED BETWEEN 3 ROOMS SHOULD THIS HAPPEN ?? (should we have permanent rigs)

we occasionally have 2 shows going at once for example we may have a drama show at the same time as a fashion show etc.

 

I know this is very confusing hense me posting this question I would rearly appriated any help on this

Jamie

[mac.calder]

were should I start ????????

do we invest in generics i.e. parcans some more profiles ?

do we get some movers

we have no desk at the moment normall hire frog range in

ALL STOCK IS SHARED BETWEEN 3 ROOMS SHOULD THIS HAPPEN ?? (should we have permanent rigs)

we occasionally have 2 shows going at once for example we may have a drama show at the same time as a fashion show etc.

 

 

My gut instinct is to tell you to raise more money. Idealy, earn enough to seriously bump up your generic stock and get a desk that is capable of movers if you use them often, as well as a more 'cheap and chearfull' two scene preset (maybe a jester if you usually use frogs). I would make movers a last priority.

 

How many channels of dimming do you have? What is your infrastructure like? Those things also need to be addressed.

 

If you need movers for a show, fund raise. Get sponsorship, run sausage sizzles, have a fun run, whatever. I noticed your profile said you were a student. I gather then, if you have been making proposals to the Govn's that you are a member of a small group interested in technical theatre within your school. If that is so, it is a great angle for fund raising. It worked when I was trying to get money for my schools upgrade.

 

As for sharing stock - there is nothing wrong with that. The important things is tracking it.

[DMX Will]

I would agree with whats been said. Good quality movers that you've used before are always going to be a costly affair when you've got the small budget you've been given. Remember when your working out how many more generics your going to buy etc, you also need to work out how your going to power them. Do you have enough dimmer circuits, will the circuits overload if you put more than two lanterns on each one, is there enough scope to put more in (the installation costs etc).

 

It's fesable to upgrade with your budget, just remember to think outside the box.

[David A]

Your budget is fine if you buy non brand name equipment, which performs as well as the name brands at a fraction of the cost and is very reliable nowadays.In school use it will last a very long time if it is cleaned regularly.The generic brands of conventional lights may be 10% less efficient than name brands but at school usage levels the 2-3 times greater amount of equipment you can buy far offsets the lower efficiency.In most cases you can light a show much better with 30 cheap lights than 10 really flash new ones.

[Pete]

Just to add my tuppence.

 

Assuming the infrastructure is fine (You don't say you hired dimmers rigging etc)

 

Then I'd suggest you don't spend all your budget,leaving you the room to still hire, and perhaps look at upgrading your generic stock,perhaps with Source Four Pars (Or MultiPars). This would save you need a huge stock of varying par lamps while giving you the flexibility of different beam angles!

 

Pete

[Tomo]

Lighting desk-wise:

Have a look at Smartfade ML

It was launched a couple of weeks ago at USITT, and I've been playing with one for the last few months - extremely cool, and very easy to use.

 

24 intelligent lights plus 48 dimmers and two independents, patchable across two full universes of DMX.

Also RDM-ready, although it doesn't do anything with the data yet.

No monitor required, and physically smaller than a Leap Frog so will squeeze onto a much smaller control table - more room for bums on seats!

 

It's also really cheap (as far as professional-quality products go) - there are cheaper moving-light consoles out there, but not many of them come with a two-year warranty, 24/7 support and full groups and FCB palettes.

(There are also full-colour mixing LEDs to show you the colours of the CMY and RGB intelligent lights, which is uber cool in my opinion)

 

For lighting:

I'm presuming that you've already got suitable power, rigging and dimming in all three venues.

If not, then this is the priority because you can't hire power, and hiring rigging and dimming is very expensive.

 

You've probably got a reasonable quantity of fresnels, but you sound very short on profiles.

Source 4 Junior Zooms would fit the bill - numbers is something we can't help with as we don't know your venue.

A few S4 Pars would complement your existing parcan set, and they take the same HPL575 lamp as the Juniors which wll reduce your long-term maintenance cost - HPLs are so much cheaper than CP6x lamps!

 

(Note that Multipars take a GKV 600W lamp. They do not take an HPL.)

 

I'd go against what Pete said regarding holding some budget back for hire - in most places, the hire budget and purchase budget come out of different pots, and are not interchangable.

 

Check that there is an ongoing maintenance budget (this is necessary! New lamps etc are not cheap), and spend the whole purchase budget.

It sounds like you probably won't get another chance - long term, try to convince them to let you use any profit from ticket sales to upgrade

 

Don't buy moving lights. Go without this year, and continue to hire them in forthcoming years.

The maintenance bill for them is large, and it requires skilled individuals to undertake it.

 

£15k is tight, but it will get you a reasonable distance - remember that nobody pays list price on professional lighting equipment, and get quotes from several dealers.

 

One thing to remember - you will not make the final call on any of this.

Your teachers will be deciding - all you can do is offer reasoned suggestions, and hope they agree with you.

[Jivemaster]

Firstly you WILL want to hire something in the next year or buy spare lamps/gels/gaffer etc so sensible predictions and sensible allowances should be made!

 

Secondly for economy keep AWAY from movers, they are very nice and effective but one light eats massively into budgets -rigs of them even more so.

 

Ask your school about buying second hand kit! Look at the sources of second hand and ex-hire kit to be found here (BR wiki for a start!). Ask your current hire supplier for ex hire bargains.

 

Always keep the infrastructure up to standard distro, leads, hook clamps, safety bonds, etc.

 

Please keep things SIMPLE for school use as each year 10% of the useful info is not passed on to the rising pupils and soon stuf can only be used in manual mode 'cos no-one can programme things. Try getting several copies af all manuals and lock some away in the office so that the kit doesnt become un-useable as the book goes walkies.

[Pete]

The reason I said to hold back is that I assumed that all the money was from the same Pot.

 

Im excited about Smartfade ML Tomo,as an alternative to a Fat Frog,I'll just have to wait for ABTT to see it!

[StevieR]

The one piece of advice I commonly give to our customers is to buy what they use regularly and hire what they only use occasionally. This tends to offer best value for them overall.

 

Sit down with details of the kit you've hired for previous shows and see what the common items are. This should be a good starting point for your shopping list.

 

Ditto to the comments above re moving heads as well. They are costly both to purchase and maintain. Its always tempting to go for them as they are great 'toys' but you do have to step back and ask yourself how often they are actually used.

 

And yes, leave some budget for spares and consumables.

 

Steve

[LeeStoddart]

The one piece of advice I commonly give to our customers is to buy what they use regularly and hire what they only use occasionally. This tends to offer best value for them overall.

 

Almost exactly what I was about to say.

 

Look back at what you hired over the last year or so - did the hire cost of individual pieces of that equipment come to more than the purchase price - if so buy it - otherwise continue to hire.

 

And I echo all the comments about not investing in the movers - great to use but expensive to buy and maintain - only if you use them regularly will they be a worthwhile investment.

[mac.calder]

The reason I said to hold back is that I assumed that all the money was from the same Pot.

 

The problem with most schools, is things like upgrades to lighting will be put to a committe, and they will say "Right, if we sacrifice this, this, this and this, we can give you 15 grand to do it." That does not mean "Here is 15 grand" - it means "Your allowed to spec equiptment up to 15 grand, anything less is a bonus.".

 

If one of the things cut was your 2 grand hire budget, just because you come in 2 grand under does not mean they will give you your budget back...

 

Jivemaster: re second hand kit - schools may have a problem with that (at least private sales). I don't know about the UK, but second hand electrical equiptment was (generally) unacceptable for schools - the exceptions generally being hugely expensive items which were often hard wired.

[Ynot]

we have worked out our hire prices spent over the last 12 months and it comes to a shocking £21,000

we have realised we could now buy some stock

after much negotiation with the school governers we have secured about £15,000 for our technical dept

HOWEVER this meens we cannot hire anything duering the next 12 months wich is were the problem comes in

a normall hire such as a fashion show we did 2 weeks ago consisted of a £2000 hire of lighting including

6x mac 250 entours

2x mac 550

1x leap frog desk

20x par 64 cans

My first observation is that £2k hire bill for the equipment listed above is somewhat high - although you did say including....

The movers and par cans I can hire for under £700, and I doubt that any company would charge the balance for a Leap frog (haven't got a price for that).

 

I'd personally go back to the school board and ask that the budget be modified and that you spend, say, £12K of that 15 on generic lanterns and upgrading the architecture of your lighting/technical needs and keep the balance in a 'hire account' to cover the odds and sods that are needed occasionally.

£12k will buy a LOT of basic stuff, that will allow you to kit the venue respectably, whilst retaining that fallback for things you may not realise you need right now.

[Paul J Need]

I agree with YNOT; for example we've just installed a new system at Marlborough school consisting of 48 ways of dimmers, Fat frog, 72 ways of lighting bar, 12 x Source 4 Profile 575w, 18 x Selecon Rama 150mm, 10 x Selecon HUI Floods. for not much more that your budget.

 

I would suggest also spending in infrastruture, leaving equipment such as movers to rent in as required.