Starting form scratch need advice

[Shmoe3982]

I am the new director of worship arts at a church that runs about 200. We have an older auditorium so it is the typical wood panel walls with a concrete base that goes about 8 foot high before the paneling, high arching ceilings. The acoustics are pretty live which is good, but the only lights in the house are the main house lights and a chandelier that come on by circuit breaker. The main problem is positioning of a mounted light rig because either side of the baptismal (which is in center of back wall) is huge pipes for the organ. The screen for the projection comes down above the baptismal in between the organ pipes. the stage comes out about 30 feet from the wall of the baptismal but there are 2 rows of pews from an old choir loft at the back of stage. I have plenty of Radio tower to weld together for the mounts,but going strait across the front of the stage gets in the way of the projector and screen and blocks the pipes for the organ (which I don't mind but some of the older people may have a cow). I could run the tower up the arch instead of directly across, but that makes the cone of light a lot larger once it hits the stage and may splash to large and bleed into other colors. So I am not sure what I can do to create a rig that will allow both to light the stage as well as help with sanctuary lighting with the structure of the building. Any thoughts????

[milepost13]

could you post photos of your space?

Nate

[Adam Ogden]

Yes, I agree that pictures would be helpful. However, based on what you have said, there are three things I can say to you, without seeing the pics.

1. Personally, I would refrain from "building" (or welding) anything yourself that you plan to hang over people's head. If you are actually talking about literal radio tower metal, that stuff is not designed to take lateral weight, or have pressure put against its sides, it's meant to stand straight up. Plus, I don't know that you would want that liability of doing it yourself, and then it fail (I'm not second-guessing your welding ability obviously, since I dont even know you.....but Truss companies do this for a living....put in hours and hours of R&D to make sure that their product can hold 7-10 TIMES the weight that they specify.)

2. Lighting only works when it's done right. Having the right placement, right angles, etc, is essential, and completely necessary for the operation of the system. If you have to sacrifice a good lighting position so that you can see organ pipes, then don't bother.

That being said, if you are using an abbrieviated version of the McCandless theory of lighting, which is your typical 3-point light, you want your lights approx. 45* (degrees) above the eye line of a performer, and then 45* to the outside of the stage (meaning, the SL fixture moves farther Stage Left, and the SR fixtures moves farther Stage Right.)

3. You spoke of a "cone" of light. This is called the beam field. If you are using a soft-edge fixture like a par or frenel, there is no "cone" of defined light really, since there is no focus ability on those fixtures. You CAN however, make the beam size narrower or wider by using different lenses. They range from VNSP (Very Narrow Spot) to WFL (Wide Flood), with a couple other steps in the middle.

Or

You could use hard edge fixtures like Ellipsoidals (lekos). These fixtures do have a defined beam edge, although you can soften it if you desire. These fixtures also have different lenses (or barrels) that you can change out, to make the beam field larger or smaller. They typically use actual beam size to name the lenses..... 19*, 26*, 36*, and 50* are the most common, although there are 5*, 10*, 70*, and 90* as well. The smaller the number, the smaller the beam....WHICH MEANS the farther back you move in a room, the smaller number you want, to help offset the cone effect (and vice verse....moving forward would need a larger lens). These fixtures also have framing shutters built in, so that you can cut off the light from places you don't want it to shine.

I hope this helps. If you can send pics, that would help even further.

Thanks!

[Shmoe3982]

ya I'll try to get those pics soon, but if you were going to start with a basic system as far as mounts, lights, dimmer packs etc, that doesn't have too heavy of a cost, but has room for growth what would your hardware recommendation be?

[Adam Ogden]

Good question...although it's a little open ended. First of all, you have to determine what you mean by "Not to heavy on the cost". Is $500 heavy, or is $5000 heavy? Similar to how I said in my last post that if you can't put the lights where you need them, you shouldnt een bother.....the same thing can be said for money spent....If you cant afford to do it right, you should just wait until you can....you will save yourself a LOT of headaches that way.

Secondly, when you said that it needs to have room for growth, what do you mean? Does growth mean more par cans? Do you want LEDs? Do you want moving lights one day? The growth potential of a lighting rig is almost limitless, so knowing what growth means for YOU, will help determine what you will need.

However, here are some basic building blocks. You obviously need a console, and preferrably one that runs DMX. If you aren't going to have any moving lights at first, I suggest a ETC SmartFade. It's a great little console, packed with features, has a lot of control, but still simple to use. You could be looking at around $1300 for that alone. Dimmers are needed if you are going to use par cans or lekos. There are so many version out there, but stick to the higher end brands....ETC, Leprecon, etc, etc. Par Cans are great for Color Washes, and Lekos are great for focus white light. You stage size, and distance from the lights to the stage will help determine how many you need. Par cans are Cheap, usually around $25-$30 for a Par56. There are several eBay stores who sell them in packages of 4 or 8 for a good deal.

You can look at www.gearsource.com or www.usedlighting.com for a lot of this stuff. I use those sites all the time to buy AND sell gear.

I hope this helps. If you need any help with system design or install, let me know!

[Rocky Presley]

Adam, I know that Chauvet is a bit lower end, but I have had great success with their DMX-4 dim packs. They are only 15 amp, so you have to be careful that you don't overload it, but I have had them installed for 3 years now in a club install and one hasn't failed yet. Seems like one runs for around $100? There Obey and stage designer DMX consoles also work well, and are priced cheaper than the Smart console. If you can go with the ETC though, then by all means, go with the better brand. There are some options out there for you though that can get you up and running more cheaply if that is a concern.

BTW, thanks for the taking the time for the informative post. You are resoundingly correct that you don't want to rig anything overhead. You don't do that cheap. Do that right. You want to have that done by a rigging company that is licensed and bonded.