MAC 250+

[paulears]

this season I've made a concious decision not to use movers at all (well, except for one bit in the chuckle brothers show!). Comments have been good and It's rather nice to see what can be done with the budget, once movers are taken out of it. An extra advance bar with 12 more par cans cost very little - we had plenty of lamp stock - another 12 upstage and the results are much better than the same money spent on hiring in a few wobblers. Oh yes - don't forget they are also SILENT!

[Just Some Bloke]

Just for the record, I've used Mac250s quite a lot in the last few years for things like pantos (250s on stage 500s FOH) and dance shows (for whizzy backlight). But I've used moving head wash lights more because you can get an infinite number of colours from them and you can use them to light the set or wash the stage (as much or as little of it as you want) leaving generics to do the interesting stuff.

 

Despite using heads often in my freelance LD work, I wouldn't dream of buying some for the venue at which I'm Production Manager: too expensive to buy, too expensive to maintain and, most importantly, just wouldn't be used enough on the plays, concerts and so on that form the bulk of the shows.

 

Having used Robe (and other re-branded Robe stuff) I'd agree that they're better vaue for money if you are going to buy, but you need to know how expensive they can get when things start to go wrong. It's surprising how many professional theatres hire and don't buy. The 95% mentioned ealier is not an exageration. My suggestion earlier that you keep something back to finance hiring when needed remains my prefered route. If you really do want to buy go for Robes and keep some money aside in later years for maintenance.

 

As paulears says, the more you use moving heads, the more you find you can do with generics! My latest design suggests using Macs for the loads of specials required, but I've instead gone for a series of well-placed Pars instead: nicer quality of light, nicer edges to the light, take the colour well, easy to rig and focus, and, most especially, cheap as chips! You can get loads for the rate of a couple of Macs!

[James]

The venue I used to work at's bread and butter was band gigs. I was the only one there who seemed to light theatre gigs. Anyway we had a standard 48ch rig of 48 parcans. Plain and simple and depending on how big the bands were depended on how many movers were brought in. The point I'm making is one LD would bring in VL5's and 6's another would bring on Goldenscans, Another Martin fixtures........

 

Therefore If the venue had bought some they would be wrong most of the time. It might suprise you to know that the place I currently work for has the same policy. No owned movers in any studio - every single one is hired in depending on what flavour the LD in that studio wants today....

[vinny baby]

Not a great fan of the MAC 250 +, I have just bought 4 brand new ROBE MS Zoom 250s and they are the mutts, also seem a lot brighter than the mac and better priced, you also get the added feature of having a Zoom, its not a progressive zoom but is till a great feature, I also like the 2 colour wheels they have so I can mix something like 32 shades, you also get an indexing gobo wheel (like the mac 250+), but I have also put some dichoric gobos in the 2nd colour wheel so I can layer them with a rotating gobo, colour and the prism and get some great effects.

 

I think the MS Zoom 250 retails around the £2000 mark.

 

for that money its a cracking bit of kit

 

vince