Par walls

[the kid]

I was wondering, I've juts looked on the school calander and found a rock concert and was basially wondering; how do I go about making a bank of pars?

 

 

I'm thinking of something small like about 25.

 

So its just how do I support them?

 

and what sort P64/p64 stubbi

[Martin]

So its just how do I support them?

A grid of scaff seems the obvious option.

[TomLyall]

bars of aero's flown bellow each other?

[the kid]

Ok I should have said no flight bars our grid is simply this.

 

 

stage

---1---2---3---4---5---6---1---2---3---4---5---6---

 

---1---2---3---4---5---6---1---2---3---4---5---6---

_______________________________________

 

---1---2---3---4---5---6---1---2---3---4---5---6---

 

---1---2---3---4---5---6---1---2---3---4---5---6---

FOH

[peter]

You could still do it with scaff. Drop two verticals from the back stage bar to the floor, and clamp 6 lamp bars in between the verticals.

 

Bear in mind that pars are (generally) 1kW each, so you're going to be pulling ~110A with 25 on at full.

[Jivemaster]

'pends on the scale of it all but for a small rig par 56s give you more lamps to the amp as they're only 300 w.

 

The ACL bar uses 8 x 28 volt 250 or 450 watt Aircraft Landing Lights in series so someone will have to make or hire the series cable harness and find 10 or 16 amps per leg.

[Ike]

I did a similar thing last year but on a larger scale. We used a simple scaffold frame and IIRC 96 standard par64s, if you use stubbies you would get more stage space which may be useful however you probably don't want to get that close to them anyway incase someone goes for a 100% lamp check (been there, not a nice experience). If you were hiring you might want to go for 56s or something smaller as the more lamps you have the more effects you can pull off. If possible try and get them all on separate channels and if you do have to group them think carefully about which ones to pair up, we managed 2 lamps per channel and paired them so that top left and top right were together and bottom left and bottom right were together and so on which I though worked pretty well.

[730 doors]

You could rig the lamps of lighting ladders suspended from an overhead bar.

 

I've seen people touring with a similar kind of thing where six cans are suspended in a ladder style frame either six vertically, or two columns of three vertical cans in a frame. (The latter is what the darkness were touring with last year)

 

Or if you want to go for a floor standing option theres always pre rigged supertruss, which has two six bars of par 64s mounted on runners inside an 8 foot bit of truss which will happily stand on the floor.

 

Or alternatively you could just rig individual par cans or bars of six using scaffolding and floor stands.

[Blame Jono]

We were looking at doing the same sort of thing a while ago in the shape of a cross to blind the audience but realised it was drawing way too much current. So we used birdie battons. We got them from our hire company as about 12 birdies in a ling metal caseing. So you could get a load of those and put them side by side.

[the kid]

So insted of a wall of 25 P64's a wall of 50 something P16's that seems a good idea now let me just price that up....

[gareth]

(snip snip) ... we used birdie battons. We got them from our hire company as about 12 birdies in a ling metal caseing.

Commonly known as Howie battens (after the person who first produced them in this country). They usually come in 20, 30 or 40-lamp sizes (2, 3 or 4 circuits respectively), with the lamps wired in 110v circuits (so you need to run them in pairs or on a transformer). Often made by James Thomas Engineering. There are also the L&E battens that are often seen on larger shows as a result of them being the M16 battens of choice in White Light's stock. Similar sizes to the Thomas ones, but incredibly heavy due to their being made from steel rather than aluminium. The 40-lamp L&Es are not a pleasant carry!

[Grahame]

The biggest PAR wall ever seen AFAIK was two years ago in an EIF production of 'Parsifal' at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. It was custom-built steel frame construction in the shape of a giant chalice ( the Holy Grail in fact). I would estimate it at about 8m high and 12m wide at the top. It only just fitted through the EFT's rear dock doors. The front was covered with 274 1kW PAR lamps in custom steel cans, the whole thing was driven by 3 x 48-way AVOS, it pulled 1200A and required extra power to be laid in to the stage level....and even then we had to patch the dimmers at 80% to avoid blowing the bus bars off the wall. Oh, and it was on wheels as it had to be set in a quick scene change!

Took us 3 days to rig, with much hanging around on harnesses and cursing, and 6 1/2 hours to de-rig on the get-out! As to the effect - well it was impressive on its own, but the director didn't like the separate points of light so insisted it was used behind a plastic cyc to diffuse the image, which had only limited success, leaving it looking like a big blobby fuzzy thing. It was only on for about 30 seconds max, but the afterimage on the retinas lingered somewhat longer!!

[smeggie]

if you can get hold of ACL lamps in a large enough quantity, they look great[untill they blow] -or are these also known as howie's?

 

the same thing with pinspots was done in our venue and looked great- they also drew v.little current and were run of one big swithchpack. only pain was the delay in warm up time of the lamps.

[gareth]

if you can get hold of ACL lamps in a large enough quantity, they look great[untill they blow] -or are these also known as howie's?

No - Howie battens are M16 strip-lights. ACLs are .... well, ACLs!

[RoyF18]

Where can you buy ACLs from? We used some of them recently in a thing at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh (from SKL). I think they were 28v (and were in groups of 8 giving 224v).