Back To The 80's

[Neil Hampson]

to go really 80s, use a sirius!

 

Oh that hurts! :)

(Actually I thought the Sirius was more of a 90's phenomina, Mines a '94 Mk2 but the ealiest I have seen is a '90 Mk1, without insert memories)

 

Having been involved in a production of the show a couple of months ago you will need to keep some spare channels to keep the acting areas seperated, there seems to be a lot of small areas that need to be controllable, unlike a lot of these types of show where you can usually get away with pairing some washes up. The more PARS the better, maybe even in 500W guise as I suspect that the power in your venue is limited as there are only 24 channels of control, that will give you 4 Pars/Channel. If you can afford them, a set of scrollers on the Backlight goes a long way to enhancing the mood.

[Stutwo]

Dichroic disco effects with haze and fill the gaps with the few generics you have. As most of your lighting rig are old floods, you won't find them much use. Consider hiring in some profiles. Hi-Lights have all of the above, SLX will too but the dichroic effects will be newer and maybe TOO flashy.

 

Also, a couple of pinspots and a decent size mirrorball would come in handy.

[cedd]

Remember of course that a lot of the above effects (helicopters and the cheesy disco stuff) aren't dimmable units anyway, so you can discount them from your channel plot, maybe hire a couple of DMX switch units or stick a member of stage crew on a switch board. If you run power from the hall sockets ring main (which I'd hope would be a different circuit to the stage) you've saved yourself some dimmer channels for the sake of a bit of cable and maybe some 13-15A and 15-13A adapters to get power up onto the rig.

[merlin24]

Queen used moving lights at Wembley in '86.

 

Queen also had an enormous budget.....! I wouldn't imagine the OP has...

[Guest lightnix]

...No moving lights!

Hmmm... Vari*lite premiered in 1981 and were starting to become de rigeur (in moderate quantities) on many TV pop shows by the end of the decade :)

 

As suggested, look at...

6 lamp bars

Breakup gobos shining towards the audience in open white (good for chasing)

Mirror balls

Galaxy balls / harvesters / helicopters / other spinning PAR36 stuff

Pinspots / ACLs

Arcline (if you can still get it) / egg strobes

Smoke (and plenty of it :( )

Dry Ice

 

Also popular were Moonflowers and Strobeflowers, but they're no longer made and there may not be (m)any around these days.

 

For an authentic 80s generic desk, see if you can find an old Celco somewhere, although an Avo Pearl will probably do as a modern day substitute.

 

Go for open white general cover, perhaps with some 1/8th CTB somewhere (backlight?) to make it look slightly bleached out. Try using bright and mid-toned colours, rather than deep, saturated ones e.g. L101, L115, L124, L128, L132, L141, L142, L158, L164, L180.

[Pete]

Also popular were Moonflowers and Strobeflowers, but they're no longer made and there may not be (m)any around these days.

 

Strobe Flowers are still available,although I'll admit to not knowing of anyone with them in hire stock.

 

Arcline shouldnt be a problem to source,

 

Pete

[Stutwo]

I know the school involved, and the budget will probably be less than £300, so arcline might be a bit out of range, and the fixtures available are mostly p137's, p123's and p23's over the stage, and a dozen or so quartet profiles on a single FOH bar. They have 3 Act6+ dimmers and a Jester. Just more info so we point him in a more realistic direction :)

[MrBoomal]

Add a bit of haze. If I remember correctly there was always lots of haze in 80's videos

[gareth]

Some cheesy old "Top Of The Pops" pinspot-based effects (helicopters, harvesters, etc.) if you can get hold of them. No moving lights!

I know what you meant there, but you do realise your Freudian slip, don't you Gareth..... :D :D ;)

For the pedants .... no automated lighting ... sigh ... :)

 

 

Plenty of parcans, etc. Lots of vivid colours. Some cheesy old "Top Of The Pops" pinspot-based effects (helicopters, harvesters, etc.) if you can get hold of them. No moving lights!

Queen used moving lights at Wembley in '86.

They also had several hundred parcans, a couple of huuuuge video screens, four of the biggest rock stars in the world, and an audience of about 70,000. Yes, I'm quite aware that the first Varilite debuted in Barcelona at the very beginning of the 80s. However, one assumes that the sort of show the OP is trying to reproduce is not the sort of mega-production show which would have had ready access to movingautomated :) lighting. But hey, what do I know? If you want to chuck a couple of moving mirrors onto the show for that latter-part-of-the-80s-Top-Of-The-Pops look, give me a ring and I'll rent you a couple of my Stagescans!

[schooltechie]

hi thanks for all the replys

 

I think I will go for a mirror ball as plenty of people have sujested it and also possible some moonflower effects such as this one but not nesecerialy that one and fill it out with our floods . if so would it be possible to run a 13 amp light from the dimmers with convertors with the dimmers set to come on at 100% instantly as these cant be dimmed or is that a no starter? and also what colours would be best I know people have said pink's yellow's but can anyone elaborate? I just want all the facts before I go beging for money :)

 

thanks again folks

[paulears]

nobody has mentioned oil effect projectors and police lights, plus ordinary coloured light bulbs on batten holders flashing to sound to light devices - moonflowers came a bit later, I seem to remember. The average disco type venues didn't have PAR cans till the mid 80's - the first ones being too expensive and 110V - so early 80's disco had very basic kit - often the coloured bulbs being inside columns with prism perspex panels. Lighting didn't really develop. I remember clearly Saturday Night Fever - late 70's and we got excited as we had a rope light!

[peternewman]

PM sent regarding police/fuzz lights.

[benweblight]

would it be possible to run a 13 amp light from the dimmers with convertors with the dimmers set to come on at 100% instantly as these cant be dimmed or is that a no starter?

 

This has been mentioned many times before, its not really a good idea, as the motors in the light won't like it.

 

To quote White Light:

Act6+ dimmers are designed to control 240V filament lamps and may not be suitable for controlling for controlling low voltage lamps (via transformers) or neons.

 

I'd reccommend hiring some form of switch pack, or run from mains and have a member of stage crew switch on and off when required (but thats not ideal obviously).

[Jamtastic3]

Has anyone said NEON!!!!

 

Take a look at 80's performances on TOTP - they had flashing sets of neon circles, squares, lines here and there.

 

Of course neon is expensive so you could go on the lines of 4 x 10m rope lights: seperate colours. Put them onto a four channel chaser/dimmer and wind that stuff all over the place in a geomtric fashion :)

 

Another thing about 80's lighting was that it was random; non specific to many songs in terms of capturing mood, so you could have things flashing, twirling and strobing to nearly any genre of music with no real atmosphere created apart from the feeling of creating a party. Of course with slow songs everything slows down a few revs...

[Pete]

so arcline might be a bit out of range,

 

I doubt it,Arcline should be cheap to hire