Inteligent Lighting... Help... please...?

[adambattey]

Hi Guys and Gals,

 

I know that this topic is a bit of a taboo/sore point... but I'm going to talk about it anyway...

 

I am currently working on a production of We Will Rock You in a school hall where I work...[Here's a pic... http://cid-e008af3659c2d9a0.photos.live.co...itorium%202.JPG ]

 

I have been asked to look into getting some movers to enhance the show and provide a bit of 'wow' to the proceedings... But I'm on a bit of a budget.

 

Was sent this link by the director... http://www.djstore.com/item/acmisim03.htm but they don't have an automatic focus on them (which puts me off them).

 

What are your thoughts on the matter - I know that I'm going to get a mixed bag of replies and pro and cons - but that is what I'm looking for as I'm flying blind on this as I've never used movers in before.

 

Thank you!!

 

Adam x

[Matthew Robinson]

Hire some movers. As has been said many times before, it's probably cheaper to hire a few good movers in than buy the same number of poor movers in the short term. Plus you don't need to service them because the hire company does that for you.

[cedd]

So you're looking to BUY movers, for ONE SHOW, that you don't know how to use.....

 

What desk are you running? can you provide hard (un-dimmed) power to them, do you have a hazer and do you have an existing DMX cabling infrastructure.

 

I understand the will to get movers in for WWRY, it's the kind of show that lends itself to them (though doesn't need them, lots of PAR cans do pretty well too)

If what you want is beams of light and that "rock and roll" feel, you need a hazer. If you can't get one of them in under your budget, without the fire alarm going off, give up on movers.

 

I'll second the suggestion of hiring. I'm a bit far north for Sheffield, but the boys at ZigZag in leeds have always been great for this kind of thing.

 

the movers in schools topic has been done to death, you may have just opened a floodgate!

[Wilflet]

I'll second the suggestion of hiring. I'm a bit far north for Sheffield, but the boys at ZigZag in leeds have always been great for this kind of thing.

 

Hiring is definitely the way to go. Limelight (http://www.limelightps.co.uk/index.html) are Sheffield based and probably worth talking to if you go down the hiring route.

[paulears]

The thing with the fixtures you linked to is that they are dim - your grid height looks from the pic to be high, the number of seats pretty high too! Distance with these things just kills them. If you want bright and punchy - the 500W+ is the name here, and the other thing is of course as many as you can get. Those cheap things work, but you'd need an awful lot of them, and a hazer to get any kind of useful light from them. I too can't think of any reason at all to buy them for a one-off event.

[adambattey]

I'm running a Congo Jr.

I have hard power in the rig as well as DMX infrastructure ports on each bar.

I have hasers.

 

They are not JUST for this show - it's just that it's an ideal oppertunity to get some in.

It is something that we have been thinking about for a while for a variety of shows as well as loads of concerts/gigs/danceshows.

 

It is a 370 seat auditorium with a hall floor to rig height of 7m.

 

Cheers for the various links and suggestions - I shall carry on looking!

[kerry davies]

Adam, yet another for hire. Think of it a bit like buying shoes, cheap ones might look good for a day but good ones last for ages. The worst thing about buying what you can afford right now is having to live with that choice and the frustration it involves.

Hire a few times, hire different models, choose which suit your applications and venue and only then invest in purchase. Who knows, you may even be able to hire them out during vacations to make them self-financing, the cheapos won't allow that.

[tommulliner]

When you say your on a 'tight budget' what is tight? £500, £5000??? An idea would be nice for us to recommend other fixtures that would better suit your needs. The problems with cheaper fixtures, as im sure you know from your long search of other topics :D is noise and features. If they were for a night club, noise wouldn't be a problem but in theatres it can be. Not having features such as focus, iris, cym etc are why these fixtures are a draw back in theatre. You say you only want it for a bit of 'wow' but if your buying them, you want them to be useful for other things as well.

 

If you got a mover with an iris, you could have it in the center of your rig and use it for a moveable special for example.

 

Good luck in your search,

Tom.

[Jamtastic3]

It always seems to be this type of thread that brings up those nasty moving heads.

 

This is clearly a hire situation and for your hire budget, you'll get far better options with your lights (rotating gobos, prism, even an iris).

Even if you can hire out old mac500's or the old mac250's, you'll still have a better product than those imoves.

[MarkPAman]

Here's an example of something that's not big enough for the job!

 

:D

[Jamtastic3]

It always seems to be this type of thread that brings up those nasty moving heads.

 

This is clearly a hire situation and for your hire budget, you'll get far better options with your lights (rotating gobos, prism, even an iris).

Even if you can hire out old mac500's or the old mac250's, you'll still have a better product than those imoves.

[sleah]

I own a pair of those exact movers (well, stairville badged from Thomann) for disco use, which they do well for.

I tried them on a show a couple of years back in a hall not much bigger than yours.

 

Bottom line: Pointless :) Thet CANNOT compete with generics - in my case a few 650 fresnels and profiles and 12 PAR cans (500w at that).

 

Unless you put a truckload in AND dim the generics to less than 20% you will be dissapointed.

You might get away with a couple on the stage as eye candy..... with loadsa haze ;)

[GridGirl]

Hire, hire, hire. I work in a fully professional theatre company who has a show on 44 weeks of the year (the other 8 weeks are production weeks!) and we don't own a single mover. If we need them, we hire them in - that way we get the right unit for purpose and aren't stuck with making do with what we have, needing a wash unit but only having profiles; if one dies on us we ring the hire company and they bring us a replacement (we had a Mac600 blow up and catch fire pre-show a couple of years ago - the show still went up on time); we don't have to service or look after the units; and they don't get used just for the sake of it - which I have seen happen, they get used because they're there. As others have said, with what it will cost you to buy enough cheap DJ units, you can probably hire the same number of Mac500s which will be far brighter, far more accurate in remembering positions (a lot of DJ units have a notorious habit of going to a slightly different position every time) and, if one should conk out, you'll be able to get a replacement in. Plus there's a spelling mistake on that webpage (recieve instead of receive) and despite that being tiny, it always puts me right off!

[jonathanhill]

As everyone else has said, hire the units in. Find a local supplier, go to the warehouse for a shoot-out, select your units and go from there. The units that were linked in the OP have a 250W halogen lamp. Thats halogen. You need to really be looking for 250W discharge (at the very least with a low grid). Personally I would be looking at MAC500/600, MAC700 spot and wash, and VL5 and 6C dependant on budget and availability.

[Yorkie]

As Wilflet's already said, for hire of movers in Sheffield you need to be talking to Limelight www.limelightps.co.uk. They're based at Hillsborough (just down from B&Q) and they have supplied Mac 500's, 600's and 700's to jobs I've been on in the last 18 months - jobs where two movers were half the kit and jobs where they filled half an artic truck.