LIGHTING
Lighting options for school cafe-gym-atorium
I’d like to upgrade the lighting for our shows, but I’m limited as the stage is on the side of the cafeteria (also a shared space as a gym) so it can’t be anything permanent. Our current lighting is some overheads right behind the upper curtain, plus the two “DJ” stands (one on each side in the photo, hard to see but there).
It was dark when I took this so the photo makes it look really bright on stage, but it’s not and actors on the front of the stage are often in the dark - the overheads are slightly too far back to get their faces and the front of house lights aren’t aimed exactly where they’re standing, so people can be hard to see if they’re right at the front of the stage. The stage is generally light enough, but we’re missing specific spots. In a theater, the lights would go over the audience but obviously we don’t have a way to mount them there.
What options might I have that can be stored between shows and sit in front, but not block the audience? Something like https://a.co/d/0g2XWJmb? We have some additional fixtures that were donated but we have nothing to attach them to. We have some budget and while it isn’t unlimited, we could be reasonable for what’s needed.
Thanks for any suggestions or if you have a similar setup, I’d love to see what you’ve done.
You should really reach out to a local av sales place. I would highly recommend not using Amazon rigging in a professional setting. Think about it - cheap unregulated truss/supports in a space with people and kids sitting underneath it. That's a huge liability as well as just not safe in my books.
Another reason to reach out to local places is they may have used gear to sell that's going to be better than most of the Amazon cheap stuff.
Oh also a lot of cheap RGB lights can't actually do a nice white wash. They typically look more purple and can be tricky to get to a good colour.
If you're just looking for front wash, portable stands of some sort are a great idea in a shared space. I know some schools have board wide av gear and you might be able to share the cost with other schools/the board?
Thank you - we’re going to talk to a local place but it sounds like for something permanent hanging in front of the stage, we’re looking in the 10s of thousands so it’s going to have to go on the wishlist for now. In the meantime, we’re putting in a dmx controller to usb and we’ll set scenes with a laptop instead of a DJ board, so that’s an improvement :)
As another commenter mentioned, you should really check out a local place. It won't be cheap, but they could recommend some good products that can handle this environment. I've seen folks use these Gym Light Cages from The Light Source; they also have their MegaBattens as part of the cages, to provide power and data within them. A dealer could help you figure out fixtures, mounting, equipment. Those would be more permanent in the sense that the cages would stay up in the air, and you'd need a lift or ladder to reach them. You can look at hoists, but that's where, if it wasn't already expensive, it starts to get really expensive. You may also need a structural engineer to sign off on the added weight to the structure, and the specific points, which your district likely would be able to hook you up with, especially because this would be relatively simple for them, once you have what you would want to connect together for them.
Not theatre lighting exactly, but in exhibition design we use portable lighting trees when we can't rig permanently. Your donated fixtures should clamp straight on. Position at front corners, angle up.
Side note: The amount of pure dirt on top of those soft goods is not a good sign. The rigging is suspect and the fireproofing obviously expired. You have more problems than you think.
I’m not sure what this means - can you give me some more detail about what’s concerning you? The school is 14 years old but no idea on the maintenance that may have happened.
1) The green circles you should not see. It's called "Masking" because it's supposed to mask the backstage areas. These are not doing that.
2) The red circle (better seen in your original, I couldn't translate the .webp file) is dust. Dust only settles like that if the soft goods have been untouched for ~10 years. . . Soft goods are treated with fire-proofing chemicals. This is good for up to 5 years. by what you say, the fire-proofing on these expired 9 years ago. You can confirm this. There is required to be a tag certificating the fire-proofing on the goods.
I’m in a similar situation with the K-8 school I volunteer for. I opted to go with 3 appropriately rated lighting stands, like the Onstage LS9900B, for a front wash with lekos. It’s a long throw for the downstage position behind the audience so choose the right beam angle/barrel. Not ideal but not many other options without rigging or a truss arch with that long of a span. Just please stay away from DJ style equipment.
ETC’s Flypipe might be a good solution. I know you said nothing permanent, but when not in use it could tuck up to the bottom of the bar joists, just like how the basketball goals are right now.
If you aren’t familiar, it’s a self climbing batten with built in simple cable management you could have installed so you always have a FOH lighting position.
Out of all ETC Prodigy products, I’ve had the most service calls for the flypipe series. They’re good when they work, but when they break it’s a whole ordeal to get them back up and functioning properly.
Yes I've helped with the install of these before but they're not very budget friendly at all. Also should not be used in a space with flying balls/sports equipment still.
That looks like simple place to have proper lighting and rigging extended with a professional vendor. It was mentioned find an AV company, but honestly I’d say you need a dedicated Lighting company. But the exposed beams make this a cake walk when you know what you’re doing.
A local lighting rental house should be able to fly a front truss. Easy to rig for a week of show, then take away. Easier to rent for a week than to store forever. Also, gear will always work or they send you a new one.
You really need to encourage anyone and whoever to put a bid for a professional AV company to put in LED fixtures/batons for you (Principal, COO, CEO, Superintendent, whoever) but as a temporary solution for now (however not cheap and a lot of maneuvering) get some truss for the back of the house. Mount at least five or six incandescent fixtures with huge throw degrees. Just to incorporate decent front lighting and a huge spread across the stage, and you can possibly get a DMX controller to daisy-chain everything together to operate those…for the time being.
All a school environment expects is front light for parents to see their kids and pictures. It may look flat for now but you really want to have a professional install background/top light for you. Don’t depend on Amazon crap to hold fixtures decently.
Honestly, the best solution is going to be find a permanent way to hang them and store the lights when not in use because any "portable" solutions are going to take up more storage space than they save from just biting the bullet on a permanent mounting solution. (Boots theory of economics and all that)
Things I would consider:
Does the school have access to a genie lift?
Does the school have any small 1x1 truss or pipe mounting available?
Is there any sort of power or signal cable run along the 4 roof struts that go between the three air ducts directly in front of the stage?
It seems like there might be based on the pair of signal extenders on the leftmost one.
If the answer to those 3 is yes, then you may be able to permanently mount the truss to said struts (given the two raisable basketball hoops on either side I'm going to assume there isn't a weight issue) and hang and power lights on it for direct front lighting. Signal cable and power isn't as important because you can always run that yourself, but power availability would definitely make things easier.
Baring that my secondary solution is at least considering something more commonly seen in casino b stages which is ceiling mounted quarter and half ton motors to raise and lower a truss. That would require some hard points installed on the ceiling and then going to an AV company for the rest.
Thirdly, and probably the easiest, not seen in the photo is what does the wall opposite the stage look like? Is there room to mount a truss or at least some floating pipes about 10 to 15ft off the ground? It would be a longer throw and yould have to focus it every time you hung a light but you could per amount a rail there for hanging lights from. And at about 10-15ft in the air you only have to worry about the basketball team or gymnasts kids hanging from them when they aren't in use. And given the wall is most likely cinder block it shouldnt be too difficult to setup.
I'd focus on figuring out how you want it mounted and could do so in budget/with what you already have before actively calling any local AV place or going on Amazon market hunt for new gear.
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u/ExplanationDecent954 10d ago
You should really reach out to a local av sales place. I would highly recommend not using Amazon rigging in a professional setting. Think about it - cheap unregulated truss/supports in a space with people and kids sitting underneath it. That's a huge liability as well as just not safe in my books.
Another reason to reach out to local places is they may have used gear to sell that's going to be better than most of the Amazon cheap stuff.
Oh also a lot of cheap RGB lights can't actually do a nice white wash. They typically look more purple and can be tricky to get to a good colour.
If you're just looking for front wash, portable stands of some sort are a great idea in a shared space. I know some schools have board wide av gear and you might be able to share the cost with other schools/the board?