School installation spec

[Andrew C]

- all new fixtures have 5-pin connectors

Shame that's not the case, but it isn't. I'd guess that by number sold (rather than quality) more 3pin DMX-like devices are sold than TRUE DMX with 5 pin. Look at all the disco carp and Chinese fittings... 3pin :)

[gareth]

Perhaps what I ought to have said is that all new fixtures that are worth buying are now on 5-pin. Anything that, in this day and age, is still so cheap and crappy that it still only offers 3-pin is really not worthy of consideration, IMHO.

[JDP]

To Andrew C, I see your point about the patch. But hardwiring certain circuits (especially if the install is ALL on 16A) to me at least doesn't make sense. Do you not think? I could see where it would work nicely on 15A installs with 16A as hots.

 

Gareth, absolutely agree on the 5-pint front, but IF something came in on 3 pin, and there were the converters to loose, being a school, I am guessing these are likely to get lost, compared to terminating on both, and using whichever. Additionally, its going to cost maybe an extra £5 per panel to do.

[mac.calder]

there are plenty of movers spending time in smoky nightclubs that work ok with less maintenance than the original poster is proposing

 

True... but when they do fail, they generally fail dead... Nightclub movers without relatively regular maintenance tend to fail within a couple of years and often never manage to work again. Certain lights (ie "disco" type lights from a name brand like martin) are often designed so that they don't require too much maintenance, but their feature set is often a lot smaller - partly for price, and partly because the less moving parts, the less maintenance.

 

"Proper" movers are a lot less forgiving.

 

As far as scrollers - I love scrollers... but I hate regelling 60 odd scrollers when it comes to that point in time - and whilst the strings may last 6-12 months, there is no way you are going to teach the average teacher/school maintenance person how to properly change the string.

 

Maybe it would be worth looking into getting a general wash and side lighting with scrollers if the school is willing to budget for a maintenance contract.

[Russ83]

Sorry but I have to give these a mention, the EVL ProColor 1200 (or equivalent).

I know I've mentioned them in other threads but I've been using four of them in our school hall for 2 years now and apart from replacing a lamp I haven't had to touch them. OK they feel cheap and would not stand up to touring but that isn't an issue here. They have saved me hours, not having to get the scaffolding out and changing gels, all I have to do is hit a palette button and there's my wash! They are a little noisy but the results are worth it IMO.

 

I'm a little undecided myself on the patch bay issue. Personally I'd be quite happy with some hot power on the IWBs, a Chilli dimmer and then soft patch the desk. However I realise there are more people in the world than me and soft patching the desk would be beyond 99.8% of the people in the school even with the manual. Our current setup is 4x Betapacks with 15A sockets, 70 trailing patch leads going to the bars and then 8x 13A sockets above the dimmers with 13A->15A cables and I have no problems explaining this to staff and kids. ("This has a switch, it is ON or OFF and is for the big lights and effects. This is a dimmer, it has round holes to power the basic lights and is controlled by the desk." Always start with the basics :) .) For our new hall in 2 years time I'm leaning more towards another patch bay but will be watching this topic closely for other suggestions.

 

Moving lights...don't bother buying. We bought two a couple of years ago and I do use them but nobody else in the school could. I also never get the time to program them to use them to their full potential. In hindsight another 6 profiles with gobos and a few more Fresnel's for colour chases would have done the same job.

[KindredHyperion]

Russ, that's really useful, thanks for that. Those EVL things are exactly the kind of thing I was after. How do you find the 'infinite colour mix' the website describes? I'd also be interested, with regard to the movers you have purchased, to know how you have found the maintenance issue that many others have flagged up. Do you have e.g. a maintenance contract with an external firm?

 

Again thinking aloud here on the buying vs hiring movers issue. While at the moment we hire them for one show a year, there are several others (prime example being the rock gig) where I feel they could be used effectively. There is then this issue of by whom they would be used effectively. There's me, but only until I leave.

 

But we've had this issue before. A few years ago, the music prefect became so integral to the department, particularly in terms of sound & music technology, that they employed him for a year after he left. This essentially created a post of full time sound & music technician within the department, which is now normally filled each year by a sound tech student (this year from the Tonmeister course at Surrey).

 

The ideal solution may be employing a part time stage technician & technical operator, who could also oversee the upkeep of the equipment. I'm not sure how feasible this is, but it's happened before. And in a few years time, if the head gets his way, the school will be getting a brand new performing arts block containing a dedicated theatre & concert hall, which will probably necessitate such a position anyway. I'll bring this up the next time I meet with the head.

[Russ83]

I will say the 'infinite colour mix' is a stretch of the imagination (possibly lost in translation a little) but in ours I find the plain dichroics are useful and when you start mixing the two wheels you can get many different colours. If they were made with a little more quality control and quieter fans they would be perfect for our use (but would probably double the price). If you buy them all at the same time then you should be fine, just need to watch the firmware version and which dichroics they put in the colour wheels.

 

Re: Moving heads.

Firstly can I just say that my background from an early age has been music performance and then into technical sound (at a school level and self taught). I only started looking at lighting a few years ago when I took my current AV job and again it's all self taught so I probably fit into the stereotype of 'Have moving lights but don't know what to do with them' (although I can program them!)

 

We use our two ELV ProSpot 575s for about 5 shows a year. Maintenance wise, I strip the covers off them about twice a year, blow any dust out, clean the filters and main lenses, check all moving parts are free and that nothing looks odd or out of place. I don't know exactly what you are supposed to do but nothing has gone wrong with them so far so I'll carry on using my common sense until I know otherwise.

 

As an extra note, if the senior staff decide they want them and you are pushed into looking at moving lights then stick with Robe or Martin as they are so much worth the extra money when you run them side by side.

[cedd]

Personal preference thing on the patching arrangements here.......

 

I see a hard patch frame as being invaluable. Hard power on bars is all well and good (and I'd love it in our venue!) but even better IMHO would be hard power at the patch frame. Imagine a show where it's suddenly decided that a pair of movers are wanted at floor level on the stage. Hard power can be patched to them through the existing floor boxes. Projectors can be hung from the grid wherever they are wanted and the whole setup suddenly becomes a lot more flexible.

Soft patching is easy once you've done it, but now attempt to describe it to the next person taking over lighting from you when you leave. We had no members of staff who cared/were interested/could understand it and those students who were trained up subsequently left themselves and never passed the information on. I've been called back 3 times now to soft patching issues (one involving the whole desk being soft patched 200 channels too high).

I also have to say that, if technical theatre at school is seen more as a source of education in itself rather than a way of lighting up the school shows, it needs to prepare the user for (eventually) some work in a full sized theatre. That said, there aren't any theatres within the area that I've been to which haven't had some form of hard patching. I also think the desk you end up with should at least have some transferrable skills to future ones.

As a Pearl user, I'd love to recommend one, but it simply isn't a school desk. The Jester is very good, as is the leap frog. I would however, look for a channel count of slightly higher than 48 generics. Make sure you have some spare sockets available to take extra dimmers (you say you're going 3 phase, so possibly 63a 3ph, though a couple of 32a 1ph should be adequate). That way if you find you outgrow your 48 ways of dimming, there is always scope for more to be added in the future, either hired or bought.

 

Finally, if you do go for movers, I will second, third and fourth the suggestions of Robe's. Can't fault them. Our standard rig is 27 x 575's (mixture of spots and washes) and we've had a couple of failures, mostly attributed to these being touring, hired fixtures, however I get the feel from looking at them, opening them up and generally playing, that they really are built to last and that in a permanent setting, would be very reliable. If you had a full time technician who could maintain them when needed, they would be great. School theatres are very dusty places though (just look at your generics next time you're up there). I'd suggest if you had movers, that they came down at least once a year for a thorough clean out by somebody who knows what they are doing.

 

That said, when I was at school, I never had any movers to play with and we still did some pretty decent shows. Our current productions wouldn't be the same without them, but sometimes it's good to learn without the fancy bits and then get to play later!

[Ben Langfeld]

Here is my opinion on patches from very recent experience with a high school/6th form college that takes drama/music seriously - do not, unless you have a full time technician, mix hard power and dimmable power. Just have loads of both installed everywhere it could possibly ever be needed. Kids may be able to hang a light. They may be able to plug it in to a socket. But they WILL NOT, no matter how many times you tell them, check that it is powered from the correct source. You can tell them that they must check 10 times, you can tell them 20 times, hell, tell them 100 times. They still won't. Ever.

 

You, personally, may be technically brilliant, highly organised and 110% reliable. But for every one of you, there's a few hundred the opposite who will screw everything up. Schools are not like theatres. Kids are put in 'tech crews' because they're troublesome; they're put in them because they're lonely or some other similar reason (I'm not saying this is every tech crew person, but some aren't there because they want to be). These people don't check, double check and then check again. They don't know everything they need to know. They don't, much of the time, care. They also wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to operate a rig of Martin 500s.

 

I would put a very large sum of money, in the situation where there is no dedicated, knowledgeable, experienced member of staff (ie a full time drama/music technician) and a large, complex rig (be it sound or lighting), on everything sitting and gathering dust the minute you leave. I know, I've been in that situation. I specified a large rig (relative to the space and the school - no movers) a few years ago. I used it for a few years. Now I've left, it gets used for the same things as equipment a tenth of the price could be used for. It's a huge shame and very regrettable on my part that I didn't have someone telling me what I am saying here at the time.

 

Of course this is all very different if someone is employed to deal specifically with this kind of thing - and I don't mean a chemistry lab tech who plays in a band, I mean a proper technician suitable for the job.

[KindredHyperion]

Here is my opinion on patches from very recent experience with a high school/6th form college that takes drama/music seriously - do not, unless you have a full time technician, mix hard power and dimmable power.

That is a very good point. At the moment if I want to hang a mac, I change the plug get an adapter B-) for one of the 15A plugs in the patch bay and plug it into a 13A socket somewhere. Even after this I'm slightly tense that I've changed the wrong one, particularly as the existing patch bay has about 3 different systems of numbering which are all different, and try to check with a conventional lantern first if possible.

 

So I agree with you that making it that easy to supply a mac with dimmed power would be a very bad idea. Keeping 15A for dimmable stuff and 16A for hard power, much less can go wrong.

[smalljoshua]

Agreed.

 

It is one less thing to go wrong at the end of the day.

 

Also when you leave make sure there is a good focus left up on the grid and that the desk is left patched 1:1 to make everyones life easier.

 

It is probably best to go with a desk that can be used to make complex scenes but also has one fader per chanel.

 

I think the new Leapfrog 48 is probable the best bet for this.

 

Josh (another school student)

[charl.ie]

Again on the patch bay: We have one at the school I go to, and currently it's a nightmare, because we have no idea which plugs at the bay correspond to the sockets on the grid! We're slowly building up a diagram, but it's a nightmare while focusing! We have 3x Betapacks (= 18 channels) and 37 plugs/sockets, and we do lots of pairing up, but while we're patching and focusing we have to plug a plug in, turn it on (test buttons are our savior here), see if it's the right one, if not wash, rinse and repeat! It takes forever.

So, if you do go for a patch bay, make sure to leave a laminated diagram securely stuck nearby, another one in a draw, another one with the head of drama/music/technical, and another one...

[bruce]

Charl.ie, that's bad organisation, not bad design. Armed with a labeller and a capable assistant, I'd expect it to take about an hour to label 37 circuits...and it should be a one-time job.

[charl.ie]

Well, they've all got numbers on the plugs at the bay, and we've got a half-filled in diagram. However, the only way to test where a plug goes is to plug a light into each socket and try to find what plug it is. Which probably wouldn't take more than an hour, if you had access to all the sockets on the grid, which we don't, unless there's a show coming up, in which case we have so little time anyway (as we have to work around assemblies and tables for break/lunch, and have to shout at our drama teacher to focus the lights), that we don't have time to do anything other than focus lights for the show.

 

It is poorly organised, I agree, but it's just something to keep in mind if the OP does go for a patch bay.

[mark_s]

So, if you do go for a patch bay, make sure to leave a laminated diagram securely stuck nearby, another one in a draw, another one with the head of drama/music/technical, and another one...

 

...or just use a sensible numbering scheme. For example the last school venue I worked in had 4 bars. The FOH bar was circuits 1-12 (going SL to SR), the most downstage bar 12-24, the next bar 25-36...you get the idea. No need for a diagram, only technicians who can count. As long as you don't end up with a noiseboy helping you patch one day, simple B-)