et cetera...: During ETC’s CUE conference in February, one of the most popular classes — in multiple languages and around the world — tackled the topic of upgrading your theatre lighting. The class, taught by Marketing Product Manager for Entertainment Fixtures, Jim Uphoff, was so popular, we wanted to share it here so everyone could see it! In this blog post, we’ll show you how to dissect your space into four zones and weigh the pros and cons of upgrading each zone independently.
4 comments:
I clicked on this article because my high school’s theatre lighting system is already pretty upgraded to my knowledge. My high school as a whole is young, it opened in 2009 and the theatre space they currently have was built in 2017. All of the lights are LED with a ColorSource lightboard. This is great in regards to the slow-changing over to LED lights. I wanted to know if this article had anything else to offer my high school. The first thing I noticed was that my high school only has three of the four zomes of lighting mentioned in the article no Back of house/long throw simply because the space is so small. It was rewarding to see that LEDs are the next big upgrade for any high school theatre. Additionally, I learned that ColorSource fixtures are budget-friendly options which definitely makes more sense as to how my low-income area school was able to afford such equipment.
I clicked on this because I thought it applicable to my high school. They keep “upgrading” their fixtures but in reality they refuse to buy LED’s so they can never truly upgrade to a full extent. I think this is something that's difficult in general because students are not learning how to use these fixtures, going into the world thinking they are new, when in reality, they aren’t so new anymore. What one uses in lighting is not the same as it used to be, however it seems at least in my experience people grow to like certain kinds of fixtures and don’t want to change, even in an educational setting. How one goes about handling this is another question that I do not have the answer for but would like to think about. The other thing is how to know especially from this article what is a worthwhile investment and what is marketing, as the recommendations are coming from the brand.
This is some interesting timing actually, because in about a month my old university is going to start work on their high-budget lighting upgrade for their main theatre. It was cool to read this article and hear ETC's suggestions line up with exactly what they're doing (For example, they're mostly switching all of their incandescents over to source 4WRDs, and supplementing with Source 4 LED and ColorSource fixtures, as well as a major architectural upgrade that will finally give them proper networking infrastructure, as well as laying the foundation for a sound upgrade that they haven't gotten in 50 YEARS).
Anyways, it got me thinking about my high school theatre as well, and how they are in dire need of an architecture upgrade as well. The last upgrade they've gotten was purchasing an Ion console, and ever since they installed a new communications system in the school, apparently they've been having problems with lights turning on and not wanting to turn back off. Not sure what that's all about, but that sounds like a major screwup to me. Not sure what this article would say about that. Probably call your local ETC Rep.
I seriously cannot repeat enough how great the Source 4WRD's are. In comparison to an out-of-the-box LED unit, if you are mostly looking to phase out your old incandescent units with LEDs, it really makes more sense economically to just buy the Source 4WRD base and call it a day. They are super easy to swap out and install, and it really is just plug 'n' play typed gear.
At my last job I was head electrician, and we rented Source 4 LED units for our dance concerts for out sidelighting. And it was such a massive expense each year. When the Source 4WRD was revealed, I went to my boss and was able to convince her that as a capital; expense we should just buy 4 and take the money saved to buy more Source 4WRD bases, eventually allowing us to swap out our entire inventory with LEDs. For a company running on a budget, they truly are a game changer.
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