All big events nowadays are full of moving lights:

[mark_s]

On a related note, the West End production of Driving Miss Daisy opens soon, and they have near three hundred conventionals...and not one moving light. It's quite refreshing really :)

[paulears]

It was quite nice to watch the STLD shootout at PLASA because the main presentations were very interesting because he was essentially a TV man, so his chatty comments had a slightly different focus (sorry) to ours - it was so clear that the really important things for him were the ability for the kit to be able to wash properly and blend nicely with the next ones.If they had barndoors that was great, and the fixtures that could have a gobo focused sharp, but have a nice soft defocus AND take a barndoor were the ones he was impressed with. Barndoor capable fixtures that didn't cut-off but dimmed when the barndoors were closed were obviously on the B list as far as he was concerned.

 

I'd also bet money that with all those light sources doing even lighting from a distance, there wasn't much individual tweaking as the event progressed - how would the op predict which PAR was the one 'featuring' the over obvious hat? locked off wide angle with sharpie drawn ovals on the screen?

[Junior8]

I was covering an event recently - I won't mention it - where backgrounds were lit by movers as up-lighters. The presentation started and I sat enthralled waiting for action from this high tech line-up. Nothing! I came away astonished at all that investment to do the job of a cheap conventional lantern.

[kerry davies]

Two comments stand out, firstly "What lighting?", possibly the greatest compliment I have ever recieved.

 

Secondly, "It was JUST daylight!" Many is the time I have dragged a young tech/LD out of prep for a show to see the sunset/moonrise/clouds simply to explain that no matter how brilliant we get, God (as you understand the word)) is still The Great LD.

 

Cracking job, thanks.

[ramdram]

Another aspect of moving lights which seems not to have been commented on is that unless you have a lighting guy fully au fait with what they can do and how to drive them on a desk then they can become an expensive white elephant.

 

Last week we toured to a Cornish Theatre with our production. Venue folk really, really nice lot; great welcome, hot beverages available the moment we go through stage door. Installed kit absolutely top notch...except it is so sophisticated is not intuitive in the slighest. Why? Both desks are PC based.

 

Fortunately the sound guy is available and our laptop with SFX is cobbled up in no time at all...by him...he has to go through several screens on the built in monitor to do what he does and we have sound. (This desk does everything...just type in the name of the production and it writes the sound plot for you, sets up rehearsals, does the calls and runs the show for you whilst you are in the bar sort of thing.)

 

However,the lighting is not so easy...all we wanted was some washes and a special. You will appreciate that when touring most companies have a very simple LX plot, so as to accommodate the most basic of lighting rigs (some places we work have 5 working (remember that, ** laughs out loud **) Par 56s with the gel material stuffed into the gel frames grooves...the gel frames vanished aeons ago). The washes can be combined so as to produce different FX; the special is an indulgence on our part and the scene would work just as well without.

 

First problem, the grid is fixed in a generic pattern...over the seating in part so moving them is out of the question...and before you ask the grid is set for other shows. Half the generics are either gelled up so too dark or not pointed our way so to speak.

 

OK then, can you drive the movers to give us our washes and I'll just bring the intensity up when needed? The movers are tricked up with gobos and the lighting guy is not sure how to disable the gobo function...if there is one? (I can understand, now, why "Engines of Satan" is an apt description.)

 

Aah...can you just find the open whites and we'll mix and match to give us two washes and we'll play on the faders and do it that way. Well, 2 hours later we have two, repeat two, usable states...which means three altogether and we'll mix and max and change the intensity on the faders...even do an almost instant DBO.

 

Err no...actually the faders don't work that way; you have to select the scenes on the screen, double click and then single click. So subtle change in intensity is out. The LX guy has worked very hard to help and I can detect he is coming to the same conclusion I have...all this wonderful technology is brilliant if you have the time to sit and plan. But for visiting theatre with the simplest of requirements it is a dead loss.

 

Granted there may be ways to trick up the LX desk into fully manual and cobble up some sub groups but unless you know this then the desk is another white elephant.

 

It strikes me that the aforementioned "wedding LD" knows all this, and more, hence him using the "old" tech because it's reliable and more importantly it "just works".

 

So for all you youngsters and LD manques out there...forget movers and learn your trade on Pars, profiles and simple desks. Learn the gel colours and how to use the barn doors or shutters.

 

And as for a theatre somewhere in Stratford using movers...wait a year or so and see how they get on before you consign the old generics to the scrapper man.

[Oovis]

And as for a theatre somewhere in Stratford using movers...wait a year or so and see how they get on before you consign the old generics to the scrapper man.

Reference to the RSC? If so, they've used a good mix of generics and movers for years. It's more flexible when you're performing two or three productions a day on the same stage. The lighting department are top-notch, in my humble opinion, having worked with them on a few West-End seasons now.

 

Just my 2p

[Matthew Robinson]

I think a distinction has to be made between different events. In theatre, you're going to use intelligent lights in the same way as you'd use a large number of generics; whereas in rock and roll or a nightclub, you want intelligent (specifically moving) lights to provide movement to accompany the music?

[paulears]

I don't think the problem is that it's PC based - it's that it's either a very poor control designed to waggle lights in a disco - mismatched to the needs of a theatre style venue.

 

There will always be places that are technically poor - a fact of life.

[ramdram]

Being PC based means there is another layer of "control" to negotiate before you get what you are after. Excellent for running large complex productions but pretty much overkill for a touring company with a deliberately simplified LX plot to accommodate the most basic of venues.

 

For our purposes having the facility of coming into a venue, cobbling up the LX plot with just four washes,say, with each wash being on a manual sub is very much more convenient than having to program each fixture into a desk then run the desk with the "go" button. Essentially this means I need only four settings and BOs can be whatever speed by simply moving the fader.

 

Imagine how long it could take if you wanted to program different "speed" BOs. As mentioned above some resident techs rarely use the manual control and from very recent experience are not entirely sure on how to run "simple" stuff manually in real time, not that the tech didn't try as hard as he knew how to make it happen.

 

Yes it was the RSC and very competent they may be. My concern, if I was fortunate enough to work there, would be if the desk/PC went awry. (Having worked for some years with PC based control systems on comms rx and satellite dish/rx I know from long experience that if PC stuff can break then it does...and it is a fag to sort...as well as driving the system manually in order not to lose program.)

[themadhippy]

Being PC based means there is another layer of "control" to negotiate before you get what you are after

Does it? Turn on my lighting pc,enter the password and the software opens ready to use.no need to go into menus,click icons or waving a mouse at anything.

[Oovis]

Yes it was the RSC and very competent they may be. My concern, if I was fortunate enough to work there, would be if the desk/PC went awry. (Having worked for some years with PC based control systems on comms rx and satellite dish/rx I know from long experience that if PC stuff can break then it does...and it is a fag to sort...as well as driving the system manually in order not to lose program.)

That's why it's normal to run a tracking backup. If the main falls over the backup takes over seamlessly. No fuss, no problem.

 

We have an EOS remote processor unit running as the main and and ION running as backup for our current show. We operate the show from the ION, the theory being if the main throws a wobbly then we're already operating from the unit designated as backup.

 

In the years I've worked here I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a desk crash on me during a show.

[fireball40k]

Yes it was the RSC and very competent they may be. My concern, if I was fortunate enough to work there, would be if the desk/PC went awry.

 

They've got five GrandMA 2s kicking around between the RST and the Swan alone, I think they'd cure a wobbly desk without too much sweat.

[mac.calder]

Even the most basic desk that you buy these days is a computer. Unless we want to travel back to the days of 0-10V multi-preset analogue desks, computers are going to be involved. Some are a simple microprocessor. More often than not though, a theatre desk is a full blown PC running a full operating system - like XP Embedded, VX Works, Linux, Windows CE etc. The Strand consoles - running DOS - have been running theatre shows for MANY years. Yes, desks crash - but the advantages of a good desk far outweigh the occasional swearing session when something crops up.

[Matthew Robinson]

I've been considering building some equipment to sit on a DMX network (mainly transmitters for the desk that I'm slowly designing), and it's so complicated to do it in logic, that I'm turning to micro-controllers (ie: computers).

[ramdram]

Agreed you can't get much of anything new in the desk line these days without some form of processor.

 

That aside what was a pain was not being able to sort, or get someone else to sort, a simple set of washes by selecting a few lanterns on a subgroup, if you will, and then having the ability to simply select, crossfade, add another channel and vary the level, not forgetting the blackout on the faders. It should have been doable and I'd be a bit surprised if it wasn't.

 

I had no idea about RSC of course hence the question. If the switchover can be effected seamlessly then very nice design but if the audience have to sit and wait for hours for someone to swap a kingdom for a horse because the backup fails to kick in then perhaps not so clever...

 

(Whenever we had a new piece of kit "dumped" on us the first thing we wanted to know was can we use it in manual mode; you'd probably not be surprised at the claims made by some manufacturers...bit pointless having something which could not be manually overridden...and having a proc controlled override would have been trusting to luck.)

 

Ref your point on the Strand stuff Mac, this desk which allegedly would not run in manual was a Strand Palette, basic model I think. IF, and it is a huge if, this desk cannot run in manual simply by using the faders then it begs the question about suitability for visiting co.s to use.

 

And ref Mad Hippy, yes it does mean another layer(s) to negotiate, after you switch on your PC controlled desk it sits there, waiting for you to tell it to do something, and if it is programmable then it waits for you to tell it, and remember, to do a lot of somethings, then it waits for you to select save or similar, then invites you to name the file you saved etc, etc.

 

And don't forget you mentioned having to use a password just to get into the desk in the first place...that sounds like negotiation to me.