Portable Rig

[leapofdeath]

Hi, this is my first post in these forums, although I have visited as a guest in the past and found a lot of help.

 

I run a small theatre company in the UK, producing and touring our own work. We've reached a point where we're being offered a fair amount of work in venues that are not necessarily theatre spaces, and as such don't have any lighting or sound. I now think it's worth buying our own kit to take into these spaces, but while I've got the sound side of things covered, the lighting choices are proving rather overwhelming. I'd really appreciate some advice.

 

I'm thinking in order to get reasonable cover we will need a minimum of two T-bars, with at least two lights on each. We will potentially be in spaces where we have access to only one or two standard mains sockets.

 

I've been considering the following options:

Tri LED Bundle

or

Mobile Entertainer Bundle

 

I figure you're less likely to run into power issues with LEDs, and they will allow for a few different colours used during a show with the minimum of rigging or attention. Of course, I may be entirely wrong... Also, I have no idea what I need in terms of desk or controller, and no idea whether those supplied with the bundles above would be good enough. At some stage it would be great to integrate control of the lights with a Mac, which I use to run sound already. Is the Stairville desk capable of this?

 

I would be very grateful with any help on this, even if it's to say I'm looking at completely the wrong thing or that I need something utterly different. If I haven't provided enough info to go on, let me know what else would be useful...

 

Cheers, Noel.

[Jivemaster]

How important is colour to your usual shows. LED par cans use little power, produce great colours but usually produce less open white light than a halogen PAR can would.

[leapofdeath]

Well, colour would be nice but it's far more important that the show has good general cover. I'd choose simple lighting on and off over anything fancier if it meant that the show was going to be well lit throughout.

[the kid]

Having done a few small small scale tours and have worked with people from a large small scale tour company, they ran with 3 or 4 beta packs and a bunch of 500W lights. Their venues were village halls and schools.

 

Invariably a scene would contain only 5 lights but they might have 18-24 channels and used very cleverly. Unfortunately they have now disbanded but I have a few names who might be able to point you in a direction.

[Brian]

The problem with both products linked to is that they only have RGB LEDs. Mixing any colour that looks remotely like white will be a real struggle.

 

 

TBH, I'd start looking on eBay for...

 

CCT Minuette Fresnels

Zero88 Alphapacks

 

The Alphapack is ideal becuase you can set it so it's impossible to overload what it's plugged into.

 

The Minuette F is a great little unit, I've got loads of them and frequently light shows using nothing but them. I recently lit 'An Inspector Calls' using nothing but 11 of them.

[vinntec]

Well 2 x 13A sockets will give you 6.240 kW (assuming 240V) which is 6 x PAR64 parcans or 12 x PAR64 with 500W or 20 x PAR56 300W parcans. So don't rule out conventional lighting just yet as if you tour with some dimmers you can have a number of adapter pre-made up to connect to various different power sources depending on the location. Parcans are rugged and tolerant to touring - and extremely reliable. You get a lot of bang for your bucks even if you have 2 x 13A sockets to play with.

 

LEDs are obviously going to use less power and are slightly more complex to setup and control but you do that once at base. A bigger issue is that their face lighting will be poor - the units you link to are RGB (the bundle seems to include "UltraBright" LEDs which will be NBG for theatre work) so good at colour toning but probably not so good for "white" or tints. You say you are a theatre company, so face lighting and control of lighting areas is going to be your top priority rather than deep colour washes which would be a bonus? If your audience can't see your actors they will have trouble listening to them ("anyone who can't be seen can't be heard"). This is obviously less of an issue if you were a band or a DJ. So if you were going for LEDs as your primary lighting source then I would at least look for powerful RGBW lanterns - but beware of fan noise as the power increases. There are some theatrical LEDs on the market now (primarily ETC and Philips Selecon) but I am guessing they are way out of your budget?

 

If you are interested in seeing theatrical lanterns, Lancelyn are running a LED shootout with the Selecon LED range on 19th September in Oxford - see link if you are interested. I have no connection with either Lancelyn or Selecon but just happen to be going to this event for my theatre. However a single PLFRESNEL1 is nearly £600 including VAT (or more).

 

So you might be looking at a mixture - tungsten parcans for faces + general illumination and LEDs for colours - unless a smaller number of theatrical LEDs will do the business for you but will certainly cost a lot more in the short term.

 

Get a demo of anything you are considering - reputable dealers won't be worried by this and might even provide some kit on a short term loan.

 

Hope this helps...Peter

[J Pearce]

Unless you spend proper money most LED kit will have beam angles too narrow to be of much use for general cover.

At the budget touring theatre end of the market it is still hard to beat a few T bars, a pile of small fresnels (lamped at 500W or 300W if you are short on power) and an alpha pack or two.

If you are playing small spaces you might find birdies can provide sufficient illumination, as popular at edfringe this year. If you go down this route try to go for the 12V 50W versions, they are brighter and more durable than 240V GU10s, and you could add a few S4 minis for specials/gobos if required.

[the kid]

 

 

If you are interested in seeing theatrical lanterns, Lancelyn are running a LED shootout with the Selecon LED range on 19th September in Oxford - see link if you are interested. I have no connection with either Lancelyn or Selecon but just happen to be going to this event for my theatre. However a single PLFRESNEL1 is nearly £600 including VAT (or more).

 

 

 

If you are down that way or anything do ask them about the kits they sell, They have a line of kits for schools, I think the smallest is 4 500w, to a 12 unit mix with a little dimmer and desk and all the cables for a reasonable price.

[dmxtothemax]

I would go for 4 x led pars a side, with 4 x par 56's ( for white light ),

So two tree's, one either side,

And on each tree would be 4 x led pars ( for color ) and also 4 x par 56 ( for white light )

All cheap, all low on power, and easily moved.

[Brian]

All cheap, all low on power, and easily moved.

 

And with no beam control.

[paulears]

This sounds odd, but for this kind of thing, almost any Fresnel out-performs LEDs in every area. So many times the really important features are down to compromises as to where you can put the lights. Distance, height, width etc - so something that can be spotted down when the distance increases, but flooded when you have to go too close outweighs power consumption, colours, weight etc. You can do an awful lot with a spaced pair of 650W Fresnels, up it to a pair either side and you can do warm/cool or multiple areas. I discovered yesterday that one of my lighting people did not realise that Source 4 zooms actually zoomed. He'd turned a knob, but it never dawned on him that there were two lenses that let you do different things. Maybe it's real basics that are getting forgotten in the quest for cleverness!

[Jivemaster]

It's a cost vs benefits choice that you must make!

 

PAR56 cost little but have no beam control thy draw 300w each so you could get about 10 on a 13a socket!

 

PAR 64s cost more and are brighter but draw more power

 

Fresnels will need to be found second hand but give you all the light of PARcans with a lot more beam control.

 

All the above produce good (tungsten) white light and will dim well but for colours they will be one lamp per gel.

 

LEDs are usually very poor at whites and very good at colour changing but usually have fixed beam angles and little beam control, brands and batches of LED lanterns may not match for colour or even channel allocation

[GaryNattrass]

Just a suggestion but check out the KAM LED par bar.

 

It will give you four DMX controllable colour heads but you can also use the top of the bar to mount a couple of white LED or fresnels on to give you some more controlled stage focussed light.

 

I use one as a single stand light solution for discos but also have a couple of american DJ lights and a 3D laser mounted on the same bar.

[leapofdeath]

Thank you all so much for your responses, this is all extremely useful. Although I've looked at various products and combinations, it's difficult to find much about their performance in layman's terms, video examples or reviews and so on.

 

I think from the advice given I will have another good look at conventional pars first for general white stage cover (possibly with an odd gel here and there), and then perhaps consider adding an LED or two for colour at a later date.

[J Pearce]

Can I encourage you to go for fresnels over pars? You'll get more versatility on where you can place you stands (as fresnels zoom bigger and smaller, and have a bigger angle available), and they'll blend into a much smoother wash than a bank of pars.