Low budget pro wrestling setup?

[wrestlingguy]

Hi folks, looking for some thoughts on how to make a low budget lights setup for a travelling wrestling show (WWE style, nothing with actual regulations etc). We mostly work in local community centres (think basketball court/school PE room) and rely on their overhead lighting, but with our Youtube channel starting to grow rapidly and competition in our region growing, we feel like some proper lighting is the next step in upping our production values, as the overhead lighting can create quite noisy footage and photos when it's dark out. 

 

We'd need to light the entrance stage and the ring. The ring is 16ftx16ft, and 3ft off the ground. The entrance stage is about 2m wide tall and is located about 3m off from one side of the ring. 

 

Very rough top down doodle for reference: 

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We're not looking for much in terms of fancy effects etc. Mostly just requiring a setup we can set up and take down quickly that will flood the ring with white light that isn't going to flicker on camera or blind the audience/the wrestlers. We don't have a need for intricate control over the lights, at least at this moment, though it might be nice to look into that down the road.

 

What we were thinking was a winch stand on the left and right side of the ring about 3m away (Kuzar K-3 looked like it might do the job, though concerned 5.25m won't be high enough), a T-bar on each, and two LED par cans facing into the ring on each, and one facing the stage on each. 

 

Does this seem like it will do the job? Is there going to be electrical concerns that would mean we'd need an expert in, or is it easy enough to hook up? And is there any recommendations on decent affordable lights that will do the job? 

[paulears]

Having seen a few, the real killer is toppling - the audiences are very excitable - so anything tall has to be stopped from falling over. It's not cheap to do this properly and safely. The simplest and most stable one I saw was 4 lengths of ladder truss - the two chord stuff that was a square about a metre bigger than the ring on all sides - suspended on 4 wind up stands. They hung lights, then four people wound it up and it seemed pretty stable and solid.

[stevep]

your entrance point is the easy bit and I've seen standard DJ Bridge type set ups do the job perfectly well on many occasion as that offers you the opportunity to hang standard lights all around it/quick to rig etc. 

The ring lighting however is a nightmare for this if trying to make a single solution work for every venue - in my experience you need to be a minimum of 4metres above the height of the ring platform to avoid dazzling the wrestlers (preferably much more especially if you move back from the ring itself) so the stands you mention are barely tall enough - of course you can mount lights on top of the bars rather than below and that'll give you another 30cm of height.

As Paul has stated - stability is an issue. As you'll know the audience can often include kids which can add an extra level of random behaviour on top of an already excitable crowd. There's also the potential for additional vibration in the room if the flooring is a bit bouncy. If mounting next to the ring then make sure the wrestler's cannot reach it or be thrown onto it. I'd second that a square box solution around the ring is the best option for stability 

[Stuart91]

1 hour ago, stevep said:

the audience can often include kids which can add an extra level of random behaviour 

I've not covered many wrestling shows, but "random" is an accurate description. On the first event, one of the headline competitors rode a Harley into the room. Hadn't been so much as mentioned to us beforehand, first I knew of it was when I heard the engine fire up. I don't think the venue were very happy...

On another event, the promoters brought a set of ladders for hanging their branding around the venue. They were then used for a "ladder bout" and got broken in the process. Cue much head-scratching at the end of the gig when they have to figure out how to get it all back down again. 

[dbuckley]

Not lighting, but you do have your favourite kick drum mic under the ring and a few subs, yes....?

[adam2]

If power is reasonable, consider cheap industrial halogen floodlights as used on building sites.

12 lights each of 500 watts should suffice, and may be powered from a couple of 13 amp sockets, NOT one twin socket, and preferably not on the same circuit. they are very cheap to replace if lost or damaged, and light in weight which simplifies mounting.

As others have said, be prepared for bad/random behaviour by both spectators and talent.

[david.elsbury]

Halogen work light won’t fit the “not blinding” part of the brief… they spray light everywhere 

[Stuart91]

11 hours ago, adam2 said:

consider cheap industrial halogen floodlights as used on building sites.

I was asked to quote to light a boxing show in a hotel ballroom. Priced it up using a bunch of nice LED cyc floods with barndoors, rigged from some bars in the ceiling. 

Never heard a thing back from the prospective customers. After the event I found photos on social media, and it turned out that they had bought some building site floods, complete with yellow tripod stands, and stuck one behind each corner of the ring. 

To be fair, the photos didn't look terrible, and as Adam says it would work OK if rigged from suitable positions. If there's more than minimal budget, I'd suggest using the 300w version and putting more of them up. More sources of light means the shadows are less obvious (especially on camera) and since the bulb life isn't spectacular you're less likely to have an obvious dark patch if one were to give up during the show. 

[sunray]

23 minutes ago, Stuart91 said:

I was asked to quote to light a boxing show in a hotel ballroom. Priced it up using a bunch of nice LED cyc floods with barndoors, rigged from some bars in the ceiling. 

Never heard a thing back from the prospective customers. After the event I found photos on social media, and it turned out that they had bought some building site floods, complete with yellow tripod stands, and stuck one behind each corner of the ring. 

To be fair, the photos didn't look terrible, and as Adam says it would work OK if rigged from suitable positions. If there's more than minimal budget, I'd suggest using the 300w version and putting more of them up. More sources of light means the shadows are less obvious (especially on camera) and since the bulb life isn't spectacular you're less likely to have an obvious dark patch if one were to give up during the show. 

I'd use 30W or 50W LED floodlights now. admittedly they are usually bigger than halogen but less prone to failure with the potential vibration/knocking when on.

In 70's I used to rig 4 6ft bars from rafters in a market building in a 20ft square formation (dictated by position of roof A frames) for wrestling and used 2 500W floods 6ft apart on each. Assuming from earlier comment the ring is 16ft the lights would have been 2ft away from the ring at a height of standing on a transit roofrack and virtually full stretch for adjusting so I'll guess 14-15ft. In the theatre where I worked they used 2 2KW floods inside a wooden sleeve suspended directly above the centre of the ring so plenty shadows under the wrestlers.

[IRW]

On 1/16/2024 at 12:41 AM, david.elsbury said:

Halogen work light won’t fit the “not blinding” part of the brief… they spray light everywhere 

To be fair, they’d be less blinding than the horrible LED variants…!

[Jivemaster]

To do the job well you need really high supports that cannot be reached by any drunk/excited punter OR used as a prop or weapon by a fighter. This is best suited to a roof support rig IF there are rated points for your use. 

[sunray]

16 hours ago, IRW said:

To be fair, they’d be less blinding than the horrible LED variants…!

I am with you on this to some extent with their point sources but in reality I think it's probably more to do with the light levels and why I mentioned 30W versions. One of the camping events we did every year I used to put up 500W linear for safety, then 50W LED and more recently a 30W.

I'm finding more of the floodlights are now coming out with 5mm or 10mm LED's rather than cobs which is slightly better.

Also WW seems to be less blinding than CW.

[ninjadingle]

On 1/16/2024 at 12:55 PM, Stuart91 said:

turned out that they had bought some building site floods, complete with yellow tripod stands, and stuck one behind each corner of the ring. 

This is quite common in white collar boxing. Not great but gets the job done.

For wrestling, don't forget you have a lot of action going on outside of the ring so spill from floods is probably desirable. It's not like you need to worry about blinding officials like you do at pro boxing shows!

At the main venue we do boxing / wrestling we have 8 500w floods on a 3ft square assembly, 2 floods per side suspended above the ring. This is about 6m in the air from ground, so about 5m from the ring floor. It works ok for these shows but we supplement with LED washes from the sides (still about 4m above the ring) for pro shows. However even that isn't safe from wrestlers as one show they got hold of a ladder and suspended the belt from the lighting - winner was the first to get the belt. Cue me running to venue management.....

Other venues we rely on house lighting being available and just supply the entrance pizazz. Tie into the rig if we can, if not then leave the lights on. It's not great, but remember this is more athletic theatre than sport!

[Jivemaster]

The right venue will find you a rated point or ten in the middle of the roof, Battersea Town Hall used to have a square grid attached to the centre of the ceiling. Other places just don't bother.

[Dave m]

Most LED floods give flicker on camera, Halogen might be preferable (if available) 

Do you have a van/scaff tower/ A Frame ladder? 
getting height is hard without a budget.

We used to use Gas Genies a long time ago.