Portable Intelligent Lighting

[quiksilver8563]

We currently meet in a gym, and are ready to make a few visual enhancements in January. Currently lighting our stage with 8 LED lights, and 2 Color Strips. Im hoping to move to a Truss with a height of 18', and want to add Intelligent Lighting.

My question...If I were to mount 2 intelligents (looking at MegaLite Axis 250, or one of the Chauvets), would it be a huge pain to program in a portable enviornment? For instance, if the truss or stage positioning is off a bit, is there a way to set a 0 point that can apply to the rest of the programming?

I know that this largely depends on the board, so I will mention that I am also planning on getting the MegaLite Enlighten Software to run from a PC. Seems to be able to do about anything we need.

Thanks for any input! Also open to any lighting suggestions....I have included a picture to give you an idea of what we are working with.

Perhaps intelligent lighting isnt the way to go for now...maybe investing in other LED systems?

[Esoteric]

Well let me ask a few questions.

Are you satisfied with the current look, and just want to add a couple of things or is there something you would like to look different in your current system?

Any reason you are going with Megalite?

Mike

[quiksilver8563]

The look works for now, and nobody has any idea it could be better (small town), so we aren't talking major overhaul. Mainly, I would like more flexibilty with our scenes. The current system is 1 color wash on stage, white leds on worship leader, and 2 color strips hitting the ceiling. The only variety we have is
1. All on
2. white off
3. color strips only (kind of a backlit look)

I would love to be able to do more.

I don't have a major reason for choosing megalite other than price range and continuity if we were getting a megalite control system. Definitely open to any suggestions. I have about a 5,000 budget to enhance the system.

[Esoteric]

Oh! It doesn't look like there are white lights on the worship leader, they look pink.

Mike

[Esoteric]

Congrats on your use of video. A lot of people are afraid to jump out there and give video a try, but quite honestly (and this is coming from a lighting designer) video gives you more flexibility and more punch for the money than lighting does right now. So I always try and get people to start with video and move to lighting later (I am also a video designer though!).

Can we get a pic of your setup straight on? I wonder what is behind your projector screen.

Also something that bugs me a little is the flare of the lights on the screen. Is there anyway for you to move your screen back a little or your stage forward?

Well, I don't recommend Megalite. I love several manufacturers including Blizzard, WDM, and ColorKey. All these units while also being affordable are also carried and rep'ed by the larger rental houses (at least here in Dallas), so if you are into that they have that rep. They use American components assembled in China, but their customer support is all in the US.

For your space, while 10mm units may work, they lack a certain punch. In addition they will not translate well into a space with longer throws. In addition the more sources you have the more "multi shadow" effect you will have. I would recommend 1W or 3W units.

In addition those white LED units are quite harsh for face light. I would recommend something like Elation's ELED100 Fresnel or an AW LED unit. The Fresnel will give you more control, but the AW LED unit can work.

I understand your one product line of thinking, but (no offense meant here) Megalite is not the line I would choose. But what it comes down to is that some companies do some things well, while other companies do other things.

If you are worried about matching color, don't worry. Not because it will be easy, but because it is impossible no matter the medium. Now of course the higher you go up on the chain the easier it is, but I saw two VLX units in a demo and with the exact settings their colors did not match (and this is a $10,000 per unit light). This also goes all the way back to CMY moving lights. So you always have to use your eyes and mix each unit individually to the color you need (if you are that picky about it like me). So it really isn't something to consider.

In addition with DMX being the industry standard control language, setting up a control system is no big deal. I recommend the Chamsys line. Great equipment, infinite expandability, and a reasonable price.

Mike

[james tucker]

I really really really like that upstage projection. What is the output of that projector?

I second Chamsys as a nice control surface.... You can set position palettes (special cues that only remember pan/tilt information) for your commonly used positions (center, above crowd, splay, splay 2, etc), use them in your cues..... when you move to another venue/setup, you just need to tweak your position palettes and it corrects all your cues/effects that reference those position palettes.

Pretty much the coolest thing ever.

It looks like you have your base lighting covered.... You may want to try some more LEDs on bases behind your band for lighting coolness. You could also try moving your tripods to behind your speakers to side light the band and give a little less spill on the screen.

Moving lights are cool, what effect are you wanting? Are you wanting the hillsong look of beams going through haze?

If that is the case, you will need to invest in a hazer as well....

You can try 4 movers on top of some cases on your stage... I do that look all the time, beams going over the heads of the crowd in the haze.

[james tucker]

Here is some pictures of some movers on road cases... controlled by Chamsys.

The 4 white lights are Trackspots on top of pillars.... The 4 red lights are blizzard flurry washes.... The back wall is lit up with 3 Divine LED 361's, the 4 lights in the air are Martin 518's



Just the Flurry washes: (the band had stopped playing, and it was just the crowd singing, we dropped all the front light)



Another cue.... Trackspots above crowd scrolling gobos in yellow, the Flurrys are pointed across the stage to side light the band... Note, the LED's are doing yellow, the camera didn't catch that.

[Esoteric]

Don't you love those Flurrys? Have you tried their Polaris units? They are awesome!

In addition their Rocklight units are very good units at a great price.

Trackspots are like tanks in the world of scanners. Those things are bulletproof. Not very finessable and there are some features that really annoy me, but man you can't destroy them. But for the price I prefer something like the Polaris moving head.

Mike

Here are some more pics of a few small gigs of mine. These have conventional PARs and a couple of Technobeams, but they have some of the Polaris units as well and some 1W and 3W LED PARs (from Blizzard and WDM) and a mix of 252 10mm LED PARs.

[quiksilver8563]

sorry it took so long to post back on here...its one of those busy weeks. you know...

anyways,

we are using the panasonic dw6300. its an amazing projector! we bought it bstock with just 15hours on it, and it has an output of 6000lumens. We also bought a short throw lens to give us a 16ft wide image at just 13.5ft!

As for the lighting update, I am in the process of learning magicq. I am hoping to start with 4 of the flurrys. Im thinking 2 on the back corners of the stage, and 2 right beside the drummer at waist height. I LOVE the pictures that james posted, as I feel that look is very doable given our current setup. (the middle blue picture especially).

This seems to be step 1 at the moment. Any other easy solutions or ideas? I thought about getting 16 silver work lights with standard lightbulbs, and building them in to 4 black vertical stands. I don't want to block too much of the screen...but I think I could find a few cool places to put them.

[james tucker]

Thanks for the update... I am glad you liked my pictures....

I like the work light idea... I would too be worried about blocking that pretty screen too much... I would try to go with something to make your stage seem "wider" to the audience via filling in the areas around your screen.

Maybe you should try some super basic scenic elements flanking your screen... one of the first thing I experimented with was corrugated plastic from home depot... we hung them on the walls surrounding our screen and lit them with LED pars... we would change the color depending on the screen background.

I can picture 3-4 between your center screen and outside screens on each side...

Then in Chamsys, you can individually address your leds to do simple animation effects to match your screens even more...

Here is a picture of the corrugated stuff on our youth stage, lit with $120 leds:

(blue)


(green)


Same concept... different screen setup:



closer view:



Hope this helps....

Church stage design ideas has a lot of cool stuff to get you rolling

[Esoteric]

Yeah you can use just about anything. Coroplast, fabrics of all kinds, chain link fence, printed plexi, screen door material, plastic bags, the list goes on and on and on.

Mike

[quiksilver8563]

i love the plastic, i have been thinking the same thing for awhile about building out a bit more. We setup pipe and drape now...I suppose we could hang it on the crossbar. Or, do you build a base at the bottom? Im also wondering if it would be tough to move in and out each week without breaking it. Are you just using 1 light at the bottom??

CHAMSYS CHAMSYS CHAMSYS
(just so that this topic is still relevant in this thread for now ha. )

I have attached a sketchup of our current setup.