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[Jeff Lelko]

The wedding planners I have been talking to have been nothing short of depressing.  Some of the top people in town are taking weddings at the VFW lodge with DJ humpty dump. 

That’s really disheartening.  Not to risk turning this into yet another Covid thread, but it’s very interesting to see the wide range in responses and returns to “normal”.  I just got done with my third sound gig in the past four days - even the scene varies by county here in Florida.  Today and yesterday were 100% masks with social distancing, whereas on Saturday over in a different county not a mask in sight...  Hopefully things pick up in your area soon!

I also like the idea of offering warehouse tours.  I’ll have to file that away as a sales tactic for my own company!

[Tim McCulloch]

That message was horribly type on my phone, my apologies.  To be cogent the idea was to offer a one time discount off the invoice for first time lighting customers that would normally call this particular lighting firm. 


I had an interesting talk with another planner and I asked her flat out, what would it take to earn your lighting business too.  She related a story of how she once trusted a band who offered to bring uplights to a wedding.  Apparently they brought a bunch of mismatched wired pars half of them didn't work and filthy orange extension cables.  She said I know that when I call xxx company that I don't have to worry about anything, just like when I hire you to provide entertainment and audio.  So we left the conversation that we bring the same professionalism to our lighting work and offered her a tour of the warehouse to see that we truly have clean, properly cared for fixtures in matching, clean, well maintained cases.  She didn't say no.  My guess is it will only take a handful for the word to get around.

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate."

I'm trying to understand why she associated the quality of gear and service from your shop, with that of some cheesy band that ended up burning her.  Your shop tour will be reassuring.

[Scott Holtzman]

That’s really disheartening.  Not to risk turning this into yet another Covid thread, but it’s very interesting to see the wide range in responses and returns to “normal”.  I just got done with my third sound gig in the past four days - even the scene varies by county here in Florida.  Today and yesterday were 100% masks with social distancing, whereas on Saturday over in a different county not a mask in sight...  Hopefully things pick up in your area soon!

I also like the idea of offering warehouse tours.  I’ll have to file that away as a sales tactic for my own company!

Jeff, I didn't send this private because the alert system doesn't work.  You are close to Melbourne aren't you?  My wife's Dad passed away and she is down there with her sister avoiding the last of winter and prepping house for sale.  I am thinking of coming down on the 10th for a conjugal visit would be great to meet you in person.

[Mike Karseboom]

Heath - sounds like you have a nice basic setup that is not that different than what most people would provide for a bar-band or even small festival.


There are some good tips in the posts above.  I like the examples Paul O'brien provided as they show the importance of white, or at least a bastard amber, front light on the artists faces.  One of the scenes is maybe a little brighter than usual.  But the opposite is more often the problem.  That is, there are nice deep saturated colors but the artists faces are dark.  I have been guilty of this and now make sure at least half of the front lights are whitish.  Save the saturated colors for the back lights, side wash, uplights, etc.


Another comment on Paul's examples is that those uplights look great but I would not provide those unless they were in the budget.  His venue looks like they are both easy to deploy safely and they are extremely effective.  But it seems most venues will have dark walls that diminish the effectiveness of the uplights.  And, putting fixtures on the floor is normally a huge hassle due to cords across doorways, tripping hazards, no room for them in the first place, etc. So, other than a few at the back of the stage, uplights are usually a huge pain to deploy.  If you really like them get that wallet out and buy battery operated, remote control units.


One thing I wish I would have done was buy all the same kind of fixtures.  It is so much easier with both a cheap control surface and even M-PC to program fixtures when they all have the same attributes.  Instead I got 4x-8x at a time and each of those blocks of lights are different.  So even though M-PC has some tools to help drive an already programmed scene into substitute fixtures, it is still much harder than if they were all the same.


Being a one man operation you have to set realistic goals on what you can do busking lights while running sound at the same time.  If the band needs constant attention, then you better focus on simple looks with 4-5 scenes  that you can run though automatically.  Sometimes you will be lucky to even manage a blackout at the end of a song if all you attention is needed for the audio.  On the other hand if the band is self regulating, then you can start off with simple lights for the first couple of songs and once you have the audio dialed in you can do a lot more with the lights:  Fade ins at the start of songs, blackouts at the end, coordinating scene changes with verses, chorus, etc., and punching up strobes of efx at crescendos.  In all cases you ability to ramp up the lights or fall back to simple as needed will depend on your familiarity with your controller and how many looks you pre-program, and the genius you applied to your layering scheme.  There is a LOT you can do with just a few basic fixtures and your skill and creativity are more important than having a bunch of sophisticated fixtures.  I say this because I often struggle to accomplish what I would like with my DMX rig and I see more skilled LD's do more with a bunch of old Par 64's and an analog controller!


As always YMMV.  Good  luck whatever direction you go.

[Paul G. OBrien]

Building on what has been stated by other here I have a few more thoughts to add. Mikes comment above about having some whiteish lighting to illuminate the artists is spot on, I'd even go as far as saying if you can only provide a limited amount of lighting that front lighting should be top priority even at the expense of any other lighting. I have been in a couple situations now where the need for this was more than adequately demonstrated, in both cases I provided all the lighting the event organizers asked for and then some, but the thought of how it would perform in the dark hadn't crossed their mind. Here's a pic of one of those situations, in this case the band hired me to provide sound and some minimal lighting, they wanted some side lighting onstage and something to throw a bit of lighting on the crowd, but the budget was very tight. What this event really needed was some elevated truss across the front of the stage with stage front and crowd lighting, but I wasn't about to throw that in for free. I could have gotten away with a single elevated spot light at what would be FOH position, only problem.. there was no FOH position so that would have been challenging to setup, but I probably could have come up with a solution if I had enough time and the incentive.

I think it goes without saying that anything you can do to make your job easier should be put in place. Another poster mentioned having t-bars preassembled with lighting and wiring, I do that now if I know I'm going to be needing them. I have also gone down the same path with hardwiring all the trees together to using a DMX splitter to using wireless DMX. I have in fact gone all in on wireless control, most of the fixtures I now own have built-in wireless DMX, I have added it to a few others and I also have a collection of wireless dongles. Also all of my fixtures have an AC pass through on either IEC or Powercon, and I have a purchased cables specifically for certain uses, short links for connecting fixtures together on a stand or truss, longer lengths for daisy chaining uplights. So when I setup a light stand now 1 cable comes down and gets connected to the nearest AC supply.. that's it, or if I'm doing uplighting I can run a whole wall of lighting from a single outlet. This is manditory in larger event centers and hotels that have large ballrooms they divide up with temporary walls as there is no electrical in them. I actually have some battery powered pars too but in some cases I'm setting up lighting the night before an event and even the best batteries won't last 24-30hrs, so these have not been much use to me. This move to wireless has completely eliminated control issues for me and made setup much more streamlined.

[Dave Garoutte]

Building on what has been stated by other here I have a few more thoughts to add. Mikes comment above about having some whiteish lighting to illuminate the artists is spot on, I'd even go as far as saying if you can only provide a limited amount of lighting that front lighting should be top priority even at the expense of any other lighting. I have been in a couple situations now where the need for this was more than adequately demonstrated, in both cases I provided all the lighting the event organizers asked for and then some, but the thought of how it would perform in the dark hadn't crossed their mind. Here's a pic of one of those situations, in this case the band hired me to provide sound and some minimal lighting, they wanted some side lighting onstage and something to throw a bit of lighting on the crowd, but the budget was very tight. What this event really needed was some elevated truss across the front of the stage with stage front and crowd lighting, but I wasn't about to throw that in for free. I could have gotten away with a single elevated spot light at what would be FOH position, only problem.. there was no FOH position so that would have been challenging to setup, but I probably could have come up with a solution if I had enough time and the incentive.

I think it goes without saying that anything you can do to make your job easier should be put in place. Another poster mentioned having t-bars preassembled with lighting and wiring, I do that now if I know I'm going to be needing them. I have also gone down the same path with hardwiring all the trees together to using a DMX splitter to using wireless DMX. I have in fact gone all in on wireless control, most of the fixtures I now own have built-in wireless DMX, I have added it to a few others and I also have a collection of wireless dongles. Also all of my fixtures have an AC pass through on either IEC or Powercon, and I have a purchased cables specifically for certain uses, short links for connecting fixtures together on a stand or truss, longer lengths for daisy chaining uplights. So when I setup a light stand now 1 cable comes down and gets connected to the nearest AC supply.. that's it, or if I'm doing uplighting I can run a whole wall of lighting from a single outlet. This is manditory in larger event centers and hotels that have large ballrooms they divide up with temporary walls as there is no electrical in them. I actually have some battery powered pars too but in some cases I'm setting up lighting the night before an event and even the best batteries won't last 24-30hrs, so these have not been much use to me. This move to wireless has completely eliminated control issues for me and made setup much more streamlined.

One of the best upgrades I have done is to go to Chauvet wireless battery powered uplights.  NO wires or cords to trip on.  Super fast setup and tear down. Never had any problem.

[Jeff Lelko]

Jeff, I didn't send this private because the alert system doesn't work.  You are close to Melbourne aren't you?  My wife's Dad passed away and she is down there with her sister avoiding the last of winter and prepping house for sale.  I am thinking of coming down on the 10th for a conjugal visit would be great to meet you in person.

Sorry to hear of your loss Scott.  It'd be great to finally meet up while you're in town.  I'll PM you my contact info - post back if the message never makes it to your inbox!

------

Back to the topic of the thread, I second a lot of the recent suggestions as well.  A good lighting designer can definitely make effective use of less than varsity fixtures for sure.  Just don't buy so cheap that quality and reliability become an issue.  Since this is something you (Heath) aren't able to bill for you'll have to really weigh the return on investment for any purchases, but glitchy lights won't help you sell your product either.  At around $85/ea. the ADJ Mega Hex Pars are the cheapest LED Pars in my personal inventory.  They're definitely not my first choice for facial lighting but work well for uplighting, truss-warming, and eye candy.  They're fanless and so far have held up well.

If you do make a purchase, definitely try to buy all your units in one go if you can.  Varsity fixtures are usually factory calibrated to ensure consistency across inventory but lesser fixtures typically aren't.  Even at the pro level I've been caught with "gotchas" such as spare parts intercompatibility issues when trying to add additional fixtures to inventory beyond my initial investment.   

I'm still personally in the camp of only using wireless DMX when absolutely necessary.  Examples are when I need fixtures on several rooftops around a city block or campus.  I don't consider personal convenience to be a driver to use wireless, but everyone's different and you'll have to weigh that against any potential issues and impacts to your product/reputation if things don't work as they should.  In a bar/club setting I think that'd be minimal; working pro and corporate events might be a different story.  Hope this helps!

[Heath Eldridge]

Sorry to hear of your loss Scott.  It'd be great to finally meet up while you're in town.  I'll PM you my contact info - post back if the message never makes it to your inbox!

------

Back to the topic of the thread, I second a lot of the recent suggestions as well.  A good lighting designer can definitely make effective use of less than varsity fixtures for sure.  Just don't buy so cheap that quality and reliability become an issue.  Since this is something you (Heath) aren't able to bill for you'll have to really weigh the return on investment for any purchases, but glitchy lights won't help you sell your product either.  At around $85/ea. the ADJ Mega Hex Pars are the cheapest LED Pars in my personal inventory.  They're definitely not my first choice for facial lighting but work well for uplighting, truss-warming, and eye candy.  They're fanless and so far have held up well.

If you do make a purchase, definitely try to buy all your units in one go if you can.  Varsity fixtures are usually factory calibrated to ensure consistency across inventory but lesser fixtures typically aren't.  Even at the pro level I've been caught with "gotchas" such as spare parts intercompatibility issues when trying to add additional fixtures to inventory beyond my initial investment.   

I'm still personally in the camp of only using wireless DMX when absolutely necessary.  Examples are when I need fixtures on several rooftops around a city block or campus.  I don't consider personal convenience to be a driver to use wireless, but everyone's different and you'll have to weigh that against any potential issues and impacts to your product/reputation if things don't work as they should.  In a bar/club setting I think that'd be minimal; working pro and corporate events might be a different story.  Hope this helps!

Thanks all!

Most of my stuff is chauvet. It works for me. I have one of their wireless dmx things - it’s useful but it flickers a bit - which I suspect is being caused by being in a box with the lighting wireless router.

My next step is better control. From what I’ve read ideally I’d like a chamsys quick Q 20 but that’s a lot of money for where my lights are - about A$5500... a lot considering I paid about A$2100 for my QUpac.

But I do think control is where I’m falling down.

[Jeff Lelko]

My next step is better control. From what I’ve read ideally I’d like a chamsys quick Q 20 but that’s a lot of money for where my lights are - about A$5500... a lot considering I paid about A$2100 for my QUpac.

But I do think control is where I’m falling down.

I can certainly agree with that.  Luminair is a neat product in the right application but not something I'd consider to be a significant step on the ladder of professional control solutions.  All things being equal I'd much rather take a proper console and budget lights over the opposite.  The programming tools and capabilities you gain with mainstream consoles make it so much easier to get professional results even when working on the fly.

How much to spend is always the question.  A few years ago I wrote a review of my still-in-use ETC Congo Kid and the process I went through when selecting that console for personal ownership.  (Link)  It's not something I'd recommend in your case or really at all for that matter now being a heritage console, but these are the kinds of questions that you need to asking when selecting a board.  The QuickQ solutions definitely show promise but there are other options out there too.  Good luck!   

[Nathan Vanderslice]

That message was horribly type on my phone, my apologies.  To be cogent the idea was to offer a one time discount off the invoice for first time lighting customers that would normally call this particular lighting firm. 


I had an interesting talk with another planner and I asked her flat out, what would it take to earn your lighting business too.  She related a story of how she once trusted a band who offered to bring uplights to a wedding.  Apparently they brought a bunch of mismatched wired pars half of them didn't work and filthy orange extension cables.  She said I know that when I call xxx company that I don't have to worry about anything, just like when I hire you to provide entertainment and audio.  So we left the conversation that we bring the same professionalism to our lighting work and offered her a tour of the warehouse to see that we truly have clean, properly cared for fixtures in matching, clean, well maintained cases.  She didn't say no.  My guess is it will only take a handful for the word to get around.

Scott, I hope the talk with this planner helps solve the problem and that the others get the word. I get the feeling that what was happening was certainly unethical, but would question whether there may have been any legal questions there. I guess that what would bother me is that things that may be being done are things that are ultimately negatively affect the outcome of the event in some way or other.

[ProSoundWeb Community]