Huge Moving Heads

[BobJ]

On a recent Carnival cruise I went back stage and noticed nearly every light in the theatre was the same huge moving head. The tech said they were "Gas Discharge" lamps. But they could do everything from spotlighting to washes, color changes and strobes. Searching around I find these behemoths are pretty much a specialty item and probably only available from specialist outfits. So my question is who makes these big boys. Not that we could ever afford to buy even one (unless I get the Lotto) but I'd still like to pull a spec sheet just to drool.

 

On the subject of Carnival, they have a new training facility in conjunction with FAU in south Florida.I've emailed the director twice now to see if a couple of us could visit. We didn't even get the decency of a reply! That's does it for my Carnival VFIP membership, next cruise I'm changing lines.

[Jevans]

From your mention of the words 'big boy' I'd guess PRG, who make a couple of products called the Best Boy and the Bad Boy. They are large movers and as I understand it aren't on general sale but are only available through PRG themselves, normally on hire.

 

There are however many other large multipurpose movers out there like the Robe BMFL or similar.

[alistermorton]

On the other hand, if "big boy" was just a figure of speech, could they have been Robe BMFL - not the biggest fixture out there but hardly tiny.

[timsabre]

"Gas discharge" just describes the type of lamp inside the fixture. Nearly all moving head fixtures use "gas discharge" lamps so we will need some further information to describe what you saw.

[ImagineerTom]

Carnival won't be using PRG kit. Whilst not the lowest production budgets out of all the lines they certainly aren't operating arena grade kit in 1000 seat old-school showrooms & I'd bet it was actually fairly generic MAC 350 / 600 type units. Also like all cruise lines technical kit is only upgraded when a show is replaced so if you're on a 15 year old ship with 15 year old shows you're almost certainly looking at 15 year old kit being held together through tightly planned maintenance. There's Royal Caribbean ships still using Clay Paky Goldenscans!

 

To the OP - all the major lines operate training centres; they are all also already operating at maximum capacity and are full of proprietary trade secrets worth hundreds of millions of dollars; they won't even let new-hire staff in to them until they've been vetted and signed a stack of NDA's; an enthusiastic amateur doesn't have a hope. I should also say that these centres don't contain what you think they contain, nor work how you'd expect them to work so don't be to disappointed because you aren't actually missing out on what you think you're missing out on.

[indyld]

If they aren't 7000W Space Cannon, I'm not excited. Pretty sure that they'd be no use backstage in a relatively tiny cruise ship venue but would be great off the top deck in the middle of the ocean!

 

As Tom says, probably something a lot more humdrum.

 

:-)

[Andrew C]

If they aren't 7000W Space Cannon,

Could be useful for spotting icebergs... http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif

[timmeh2]

...kit being held together through tightly planned maintenance...

 

Or not, in the case of my ship.

 

Carnival did use PRG on some of their ships as we had VL2500s and 3500Qs supplied by them as 220v units wheras the VL500s and 1000s came directly from Vari-lite America and were 115v.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[alistermorton]

...kit being held together through tightly planned maintenance...

 

Or not, in the case of my ship.

 

More a case of kit being held together by tightly planned gaffa tape?

 

 

 

[timmeh2]

Yes, and a lot of praying...

[ANDYLASER]

There's Royal Caribbean ships still using Clay Paky Goldenscans!

 

Nothing wrong with that. Did a lot of excellent shows with the HPE's back in the day. Very versatile piece of kit.

[LXbydesign]

There's Royal Caribbean ships still using Clay Paky Goldenscans!

 

Nothing wrong with that. Did a lot of excellent shows with the HPE's back in the day. Very versatile piece of kit.

 

Indeed not! .

 

In fact recently, I had the joy of using some HPE's on an event.......connected to a Masterpiece 108!

Bit of head scratching for 10 mins while I remembered how to use one, but then it all came flooding back.

 

Of course the programming seemed clunky and limited, not like a present day console with fx generators etc - but still fun to use. Well of course back in the day, the Masterpiece was a perfect desk to use with them . . . .