Intelligent Lighting Boards - Questions

[Stutwo]

I work in a similar environment, the way we look at this situation is like this:

 

a) Hire lots of kit worth £1000, show looks great, give the kit back and hand all the money over never to be seen again.

 

b) Buy £800 worth of kit (DONT BE TEMPTED BY MOVING LIGHTS), do your damndest to make the kit work hard and look good even though it's less than the £1000 hire, but you still have £200 for some fancy bits and bobs. Hand £200 over.

 

To us, option b is a no brainer. Next time round, you do the same again and have a ever growing stock of versatile kit. Eventually, you can start showing the school how much profit they will be making because you actually invested the money and now, you don't need to hire. I bet in around 3 or 4 shows time, you'll be making most of your expenditure back. Moving lights (and LED's at this point in time) are quite frankly a waste of time and money in a school environment unless you have enormous resources, which of course you may have within 2 years of the above.

 

Something I forgot to add: Your employers will perhaps grumble at first but if you do the school some good (ie invest the money instead of blowing it all on hires) you will become more valuable to the school, and I bet your status will change considerably. Take a hard line and for goodness sake, stop being tempted to throw moving lights at everything.

[paulears]

Nice idea, but the trouble is many schools and colleges just don't have budgets that work like this. The demand for capital items is always higher than the allocated budget, so unless the expense is planned in, maybe up to a year ahead, you might get it or might not. Hires are not in the capital budget, so are usually within the remit of the department head to approve without telling anyone else. Most schools and colleges I go to or have worked at have this system. Maybe your own experience is different - that's great, but it just doesn't work for most places. Hiring is a waste of money, but you can spend a hire budget, you can't spend capital without scrutiny.

[Stutwo]

I bow to your experience on that one Paul, but surely there's scope to ask if the department has some control over how the show profits are spent? If an astute Head of Dept can see the benefits of such a scheme, then there may well be some method of clearing it with the Bursar/Head of Finance, especially if the school's long term finances wil benefit.

[paulears]

I got called into the office and asked to explain how one of my budgets was showing a minus figure? I explained it was because we'd actually made a small profit, and because we'd banked the money that was why a minus appeared. I was told that these accounts must never show a profit - not what they were designed for. Instead of a pat on the back, I got told off! Next step was to have a petty cash box. This was also frowned upon, and to cap it all - the surplus was simply removed, and we didn't benefit at all. Things that seem obvious, in education are not normal - and sense doesn't come into it.

 

The snag seems to be that in most cases it is public money, so systems to spend it are very carefully controlled and audited. We wanted a more secure door for a music studio, with fire exit to outside. No money. We got burgled, and the lightweight door broken in for access. The repairs budget paid for a steel reinforced door and frame, that couldn't be done by the buildings budget. Crazy stuff, but so common.

 

To be honest, once you know how your system works, you can use it to advantage, because very few people really understand business. When money is available, you need to have a dealer who understands things. You might get approval for new lighting if the old fails a PAT test, but the nice sound desk isn't going to happen, as it's a 'new' addition. So the dealer invoices you for twenty items and gets paid, but you make sure some items on the list are out of stock, or discontinued models. You then get a Yamaha XYZ as a replacement product for the Strand Optique you ordered. If you're lucky, nobody notices - as the purchase order and invoice get dealt with by people whose next invoice is for paperclips and has the same importance.

 

Not, of course, that I have ever done such a thing.

[Biskit]

So the dealer invoices you for twenty items and gets paid, but you make sure some items on the list are out of stock, or discontinued models. You then get a Yamaha XYZ as a replacement product for the Strand Optique you ordered. If you're lucky, nobody notices - as the purchase order and invoice get dealt with by people whose next invoice is for paperclips and has the same importance.

 

Not, of course, that I have ever done such a thing.

 

Similar principle but very different application (sorry for OT)..

 

I used to attend church which needed a new organ. The one they wanted cost £8000. The parish had the money in the bank, however diocese rules stated that any spend over £5000 had to be cleared by the Bishop's secretary. He was notoriously 'tight' and would never let it pass because the church already had an organ which (in his eyes) still worked fine.

 

So... the Parish had a quiet word with the supplier, and on 31st March they placed an order for a £4999 organ. The next day (new financial year) an order was placed for £3001 worth of repairs to the organ. The complete instrument was delivered a few weeks later! And the Bishop's secretary never knew anything about it!

 

Worth a try, perhaps?

 

Ben.

[david.elsbury]

Yeah, it's probably better not to cheat the system, if it gets found out, the brown stuff could hit the air ventilator...

[paulears]

It's very weird - in my case, we had tacit approval from the man at the top, and like the Bishop's secretary, the Governors - who invent such daft systems, go home happy!

[compant]

In regards to budgets, it is true that schools may never make a profit.

 

In my case, we use any monies made from sales of tickets plus a budget put aside for buying/hiring the kit - predominantly a grant or something or the sort for "technical schools". I dont understand where you are coming from about not being able to buy as opposed to hiring, anyone in this environment should be happy to buy rather than hire, things are always looked at in the long term, especially where we manage to make it cost less by hiring.

 

For example, the production we have coming up, we have managed to source the lights cheaper to buy than to hire for two weeks! (approx £15 for 2 weeks hire, or £14 to buy outright - so do the maths and it works out cheaper by week two!).

[mac.calder]

Learning how to work the financial systems where you work is a very important thing.

 

For example, in what I like to call the "Government System" of budgeting, if you do not spend the entire budget within the financial year, you obviously don't need all that budget, so your budget will get cut for next year. If you overspend, you have your budget cut for next year to make up for the overspend. It is why you see roadworks, new roadsigns, tree plantations etc spring up towards the end of the financial year in a lot of places - they need to spend their budget pretty much to the penny, what they spend it on does not matter, as long as it fits into the right accounting code, or they risk loosing money next year.

 

Many budgets created by accountants will be for "Hire" only, or "Consumables" only - now if you know how these systems get audited (ie talk to the purser) and you have the people who sign the PO's on your side, you can stretch "Hire" to mean "Hire on a permanent basis..." and "Consumables" to mean "Small purchases". A lot of these systems are created by accountants, they generally have very little idea about what happens in a theatre, and they really don't want to know.

[adamcoppard]

Just a note: we don't get funding from the government, we are a private school.

 

Also, as the buying over hiring argument enters, we only use this kind of kit once a year. A Yamaha sound desk (LS9-32 is overkill for us normally, but works wonders on the productions), speakers, amp rack, radio mics are only ever hired in, as our trust old Mackie 8 channel mixer and three wired mic's can get us through everything else. The same with lights, they only get used a couple of times a year (1) Junior christmas production (the simpliest LX on the planet) (2) Some form of Christmas fun for the pupils (3) possibly a fashion show and (4) the school production.

 

Therefore, hiring will always win over buying the kit in our situatuion, as the really expensive kit would never get used, and sit there gathering dust, or, in the future when it would get used, and the current tech team leave (we are students) no one will be there to run said kit.

[Just Some Bloke]

Just a note: {snip} hiring will always win over buying the kit in our situatuion, as the really expensive kit would never get used, and sit there gathering dust, or, in the future when it would get used, and the current tech team leave (we are students) no one will be there to run said kit.

Just to refer you back to my earlier post in which £800 worth of buying wins out over £1500 worth of hiring on just one show. I'm not saying it's definitely what you should do as I don't know your full situation, ut I do want to make the point that your "always" is not entirely true! :)

 

I'd also like to comment on the slightly OT discussion of managing budgets.

 

I used to work in a place where we were given a few pots of money a year (maybe 3 or 4 if we were lucky) for specific projects. On one occasion we were given a pot of cash (say £2000) to do a specific job we had costed at exactly that amount. Having got the money we found another product/supplier combination that would do the job for, say £1200. We therefore had £800 to spend which had to go on the same project, but there was nothing left to buy for that project. What we really needed, and didn't have the budget for, was £700 worth of kit for something completely different. So we agreed with the supplier of the £1200 kit to buy the product we wanted (which was not something he'd normally supply) and sell it back to us for £800 as "accessories" (or somesuch). Thus we got what we actually wanted and he got £100. You might say "everybody wins". You might say "what a waste of £100"!

[Joe Bleasdale]

I have similar situations. Only in the very last few weeks I have ordered scrollers, DMX console, DMX dimmers and cabling etc. I thought moving lights at first, then I did my Martin traning, and this isnt just martin lights, but all moving lights will provide problems at some point! they are much easier to avoid. For example you only have to have a MAC 250 (new series) to be powered up and the covers off and you will recieve a ShER error message. How simple was that! (no offense to martin, it was a common example we where told of in training.)

 

Me myself would have been fine using them and maintaining them... but when I leave in the spring of next year... my boss and anyone he replaces me with wont! Thats why I speced the new system, and not him or a teacher. Think of the future, movers need lots of programming and TLC. Scrollers still need the same.. but no where near as much. With your console you can program simple pallettes and groups for the scrollers and then make cuestacks/submaster looks for each show, thus saving alot of your time.

 

hope this helps

[Krislights]

After researching into getting in a intelligent lighting board for this year's school production to go with our colour scrollers (would chew up the channels on my generic lighting board), I have a few questions:

1) After playing with the Zero 88 offline editors, do all lights get a set time for each scene (in seconds that stays the same for every scene in that group)?

2) If I was to set up a chase to a set piece of music, how can I get lights and sound to be in perfect sync, or is it just luck when pressing the next buttons?

3) Could a whole light scene be completely set up to a sound effect (something requiring a lot of flashes), me just pressing start at the very start of the scene, and everything will appear as programmed?

 

Also, what is the most intuative desk / easiest way for me to learn how to control fixtures like the one's we are planning to hire, as well as some UI friendly editor software (hate Zero 88's), without buying licenses / USB dongles?

Ohh, dear..

It's not intelligent, it's automated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

After researching into getting in a intelligent lighting board for this year's school production to go with our colour scrollers (would chew up the channels on my generic lighting board), I have a few questions:

1) After playing with the Zero 88 offline editors, do all lights get a set time for each scene (in seconds that stays the same for every scene in that group)?

2) If I was to set up a chase to a set piece of music, how can I get lights and sound to be in perfect sync, or is it just luck when pressing the next buttons?

3) Could a whole light scene be completely set up to a sound effect (something requiring a lot of flashes), me just pressing start at the very start of the scene, and everything will appear as programmed?

 

Also, what is the most intuative desk / easiest way for me to learn how to control fixtures like the one's we are planning to hire, as well as some UI friendly editor software (hate Zero 88's), without buying licenses / USB dongles?

Ohh, dear..

It's not intelligent, it's automated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Need a clue, more than happy to help!!

PM me.

[david.elsbury]

For example you only have to have a MAC 250 (new series) to be powered up and the covers off and you will recieve a ShER error message. How simple was that! (no offense to martin, it was a common example we where told of in training.)

How is this relavant to the original post? The OP was talking about *hiring* a board and scrollers. If you hire moving lights, there should be no need to open them up (in fact, if I were the hire company, I would be royally p1ssed off if a school and schoolkids opened up my moving heads).

[jamienip]

back to the original post,

 

with the desk in question (alcora) has 12 ch, or 24 in wide mode, so with some clever pairing on your lamps, even if you did hire the scrollers, and had them addressed the same, thats 23 chans to play with, even so, 24 ch in a school is plenty.

 

whenever it was I was at school, we had a pulsar 18 way 2 preset manual analog desk, with 14 dimmers (4 were fudged) and we still made it look good, imagination, creation, no scrollers.

 

but we did have a hazer.