Lighting bars LX1 to LX8, which is upstage?

[Don Allen]

That was when we only had 12 dimmer channels, pairing disappeared when we got a second dimmer rack !

[alistermorton]

Haha - these days we have rather more channels but still end up pairing from time to time.

[Robin D]

A 4 year old school venue I go into has LX 1 to 3 from prosc to cyc with outlets sr to sl. Two FOH bars numbered out from the prosc but outlets from sl to sr. Worse still, completely hardwired onto dimmers with no patch. FOH 2 does have clean power but everywhere else I have to run out clean power and DMX for LEDs.

[Junior8]

They'll always try to do it unless you make a fuss. As I said in the other thread where the poor chap was having to fault find in a 12 way hard wired system I used to have shouting matches with salespeople about this - usually over the trivial overall saving saving of not having a cord patch. Looking back the Junior 8 got a lot right for school and community settings

[Robin D]

Sadly I wasn't involved when the school was rebuilt. The auditorium cum drama studio was clearly designed by someone who knew nothing about theatre, and wired up by sparkies with similar levels of experience. The 24 ways of dimming and bars came out of the old building, but for some reason the patch was lost!

[alistermorton]

Our patch panel has dimmers 1-72 on the panel outlets, with something like 100 tails to the on stage IWBs and to wall boxes around the auditorium, wings, in dips etc. Dimmers 73-90 are hard wired to the FOH IWB. The number of times I've wanted to repatch those channels when we're in the round, or use a few extra channels on stage, or even patch hard power to the FOH bar. Edited August 4, 2020 by alistermorton

[Ynot]

Slightly off topic, but still with schools, I was asked to consult (unofficially by one of the school trust's members) a couple of years ago on the plans for the replacement hall of a school I've worked with for a number of years. I may have mentioned it here in the BR before.

 

The old hall had 36 ways of Betapack3 on a stage side balcony, with hard patch out to 3 stage bars (numbered as I'd expect, prosc to upstage with ccts Sr to SL). FoH had a strange arrangement with 4 x 12 cct bars in a rectangle bordering the main hall, though still numbered reasonably, and 2 6-cct wall bars either side.Every bar had hard power both ends and DMX 5-pin alongside - also patchable at the rack end, so all good. A Stage LX install I believe. Their limited inventory of Preludes, Quartets, some Acclaims I bought in for them a while back and a few floods were always complimented by what I could bring from my venue and some hired movers at need.

 

The new bigger hall is rather different. A more than twice as large space, split in the middle by a wooden concertina door in front of which they can place demountable staging - haven't seen any of it yet but guessing something very multipurpose. No prosc to speak of and thus no curtains. LX bars - 2 or 3 IN TOTAL from what I recall, 1 over the 'stage' area which they'd put at the upstage end - pretty useless for anything but backlight and cloth warming. I think they managed on my suggestion to move that to here he prosc would be. FoH was one bar right at the back of the hall and I think one half-way. Again I hope they managed to change that to put the rear one at a reasonable position 12 to 15 feet from stage 'edge' but no idea.

 

Power was ALL hard power to the barrels, with a single DMX out on each. The plan was to replace all the tungsten with LED - poor decision in my book, but hey ho. Again, no idea what fixtures they went wth or how many so no idea how good those will be.

 

Control booth?? From memory of the plan, just over a third of the way between stage and rear of the hall - at the SIDE. Another addition I hope they took on (which I think they did) was to extend the DMX runs and audio snake (hopefully on a new digi mixer as advised) to the rear of the bleacher seating, else all else would have been tricky.

 

Power to feed the hard feeds to the bars? 32A for everything. After al - it's LED - that doesn't take much, right??

 

I've not yet been asked to go in and do an end of year show for them, obv, but do expect it maybe next year. I could find it at a time when my calendar's full...

[Junior8]

It's an interesting point I've noticed over the years that very few threads under this heading have anything to do with lighting. Control yes. Dimming yes. Patching yes. DMX yes. Lanterns yes. Actually what you do with any of this? Probably less than 1% of queries. I just make the observation. It's almost as if at the same time as the scope of what can be done technologically has expanded the fact that what we are trying, or should be trying, to do is actually very simple might have been forgotten. I do worry about this. Edited August 4, 2020 by Junior8

[Stuart91]

Power to feed the hard feeds to the bars? 32A for everything. After al - it's LED - that doesn't take much, right??

 

Let me guess - it'll be protected by a single 30ma RCD...

[Ynot]

Power to feed the hard feeds to the bars? 32A for everything. After al - it's LED - that doesn't take much, right??

 

Let me guess - it'll be protected by a single 30ma RCD...

Probably - I may find out one day

[Bryson]

We always number from the "Plaster Line" (real or imaginary!)

 

 

Make your architects or construction companies hire a theatre consultant, folks! This is exactly the type of stuff we try* to deal with before it's too late.

 

 

 

* = We don't ALWAYS succeed. :(

[sunray]

I assisted with a presentation in a hotel ballroom where they had IWB's just above the ceiling grid. So all we had to do was move a tile with a red dot aside to find a bar and socket. Mmmm

every socket numbered 1.2.3.4.5.6.6.5.4.3.2.1 on each of 6 bars [total of 72 sockets or so we were told] and a tangled bunch of 48 cables hanging out of the ceiling in a cupboard, all with a number between 1 and 6 [so 8x1's etc] Oh and all 13A. it took ages to rig a dozen or so lights.

Edited August 31, 2020 by sunray

[Just Some Bloke]

We always number from the "Plaster Line" (real or imaginary!)

 

* = We don't ALWAYS succeed. :(

 

I'd usually describe it as either the 'setting lline' in theatre or DSE (downstage edge) in concerts and events. Personally I've not heard of 'Plaster Libe' before but if you used the term I'd certainly know what you mean!

[kitlane]

We always number from the "Plaster Line" (real or imaginary!)

 

* = We don't ALWAYS succeed. :(

 

I'd usually describe it as either the 'setting lline' in theatre or DSE (downstage edge) in concerts and events. Personally I've not heard of 'Plaster Libe' before but if you used the term I'd certainly know what you mean!

 

My understanding of Plaster line is a line that touches the upstage face of the proscenium arch. So no good in a non-proscenium theatre. Setting Line is more universal but is always defined locally.

[Bryson]

We generally define an "imaginary" plaster line in non-proscenium spaces, even if it's just for the nominal purpose of numbering things. But this might be more of a North American terminology thing.