KatieDuke Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Hi everyone, I'm Katie and I'm in my last year of a Technical Theatre course and I have to complete a research project. With ETC revealing a brighter Lustr+ last week and Peter Mumford using more LED fixtures on Stephen Ward and King Kong, compared to other West End shows still operating with no LED, I thought I'd like to address how popular (or not, potentially) LED is becoming throughout theatre. I've spent four weeks researching around the subject (articles, practical studies, product specifications and company policies etc) and in this time I have also interviewed theatre professionals for case studies as qualitative research, I'm now at a stage where I'd like some quantitative results as well, and I have created a survey that can be found here:http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/1580794/Is-LED-Ready-to-replace-Tungsten-in-Theatre-Lighting-Design This survey is specifically for theatre, rather than live events or TV, and when I refer to LED it tends to refer to generic fixtures unless otherwise stated. Questions are set in that perfect world where no-one has to worry about a budget - but I am really keen to hear from people that don't mind being quoted in my paper about whether venues or shows with smaller budgets would choose LED (maybe for the longer term energy benefits, and flexibility for a smaller space) or steer clear of them altogether, (too expensive when there are plenty of generics that can still do the job). If anyone who does fill out the survey feels they have more of an opinion that they would like to express then feel free to email me using the email at the end of the survey, or comment on here. Alternatively if you think there was something I neglected to ask, I'd like to hear from you too.If you have the time to spare, I'd really value your opinion, so far it's proved to be a really interesting topic of conversation! Katie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBoomal Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Katie, Why the front, side and top option, but no back light ? Backlight is where I tend to use LED the most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_s Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 As above - and I also generally tend to use a lot more backlight than any other sort in general. It definitely needs an option :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatieDuke Posted March 22, 2014 Author Share Posted March 22, 2014 Thank you both - the option was there and had disappeared but I'll put it back in tomorrow! Thank you to everyone who had already filled out the survey and to those who have emailed me with their interest and input, I'm so grateful :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pscandrett Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Ooh, you get different questions depending on what role you admit to doing :-) I'm in a funny situation doing gigs and live events as an LD/rigger/tech/op but in theatre I said I was more of a tech (as your survey is theatre-focussed) - and then got confused that the front/back/side light question as mentioned in this thread didn't appear. I reckon that a lot of us are fairly multipurpose, wearing different hats in different situations, and wonder whether you'd get more data for each of the specific sections if you allowed everyone to answer whichever sections we felt qualified to answer for rather than screening us out earlier on? I don't mind, and it's just a thought... You say that this survey is specifically for theatre. Do you have a similar one for live events, or are you deliberately narrowing the field of your study? (It's a good idea for you to focus on one area specifically rather than 'the industry in general', particularly if your studies are time-limited, so this isn't a criticism and in fact is probably praise!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatieDuke Posted March 24, 2014 Author Share Posted March 24, 2014 Ooh, you get different questions depending on what role you admit to doing :-) I'm in a funny situation doing gigs and live events as an LD/rigger/tech/op but in theatre I said I was more of a tech (as your survey is theatre-focussed) - and then got confused that the front/back/side light question as mentioned in this thread didn't appear. I reckon that a lot of us are fairly multipurpose, wearing different hats in different situations, and wonder whether you'd get more data for each of the specific sections if you allowed everyone to answer whichever sections we felt qualified to answer for rather than screening us out earlier on? I don't mind, and it's just a thought... You say that this survey is specifically for theatre. Do you have a similar one for live events, or are you deliberately narrowing the field of your study? (It's a good idea for you to focus on one area specifically rather than 'the industry in general', particularly if your studies are time-limited, so this isn't a criticism and in fact is probably praise!) Hi there :) Thanks for doing the survey, sorry the conversation threw you - do you think I need to explain on the first page that your job role will affect the questions you're asked? Or would it not have affected your choice? I did consider giving people access to the entire survey as I can see it, but it's 10 pages long and I felt that quite a lot of people tire of filling in things like this, especially as there's nothing in it for any of you apart from knowing you've helped me out; currently I've had 50% complete responses and 50% partial where people have just stopped filling it in after page 1, so I thought I'd have more chance of a complete survey if people had less questions to think about; especially as most of the questions ask people to type responses rather than just tick boxes. I spoke over the decision with my tutor who also asked me about people that fill more than one role - as most people do I guess, the majority will have done at least two of my job options! But if I'm honest the important general questions (the last page of them) everyone sees - it's just the middle set that change depending on your job role - and it's these questions that are the most important to the part of my research paper I'm using the survey for. In an ideal world I'd love for people that are multi-purpose to fill out as much as they liked, but to guarantee data I had to make all the questions required so people didn't just press next and give me nothing to work with, and I thought I'd be pushing it to get people to answer 40+ required questions in one go... You're right I am deliberately narrowing it down. If I had a greater amount of research time (and a bigger word count) I'd love to have expanded it out just because I think the contrast in answers would be amazing to go into. But I only get 4000 words to analyse all of my data and my methods - surveys, case studies, the works and I don't think I'd do either topic justice if I had to limit talking about theatre just to add in live events. I've worked more in theatre (barring the odd corporate thing) and that's definitely the emphasis of my university - we do drama, opera and one musical a year. But it's a shame I've had to specify, making it industry-wide would have been something I'd have really enjoyed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 Katie, you won't be aware, but these kinds of surveys normally get a very poor response and lots of complaints about the content - I think that this is the kind of survey people do actually like (maybe that's not quite the right word) rather than the surveys that are poorly put together and show the designer had no clue at all. Yours didn't fall into the trap, which has to say quite a bit about you personally. On a purely personal note, it's usually very easy to see the designers own views and common to see the very pointed questions that will hopefully provide justification for what we often think is an unreasonable or futile viewpoint. Your's did it's best to remain firmly balanced. Have a read of some of the topics in this section and you'll see the minefield you avoided and see a more typical response! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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