how to pack/move/setup lighting?

My lightshow has been pretty simple - a fourplay bar it it's own back, a stand/tree with one mini kinta and 2 par's - the cables/pars/kinta all find in a rubbermade tote.

works well, easy and fast to setup. Just use an o-clamp to put the kinta on teh top fo the tree.

for school danced I add a micro galaxan (clamped to my facade) adn an o-clamp hung acrobat.

Well.. I just got 4 mini moving heads and eco uv bar. All on a chauvet bar at the moment, on a stand. fits and works well.

I added a second kinta to my fourplay, mounting on top of it. again, works very well.

Other than a tote (or totes..) and the 4Play bag I got nothing to carry this stuff in.

If I break it down into totes that might work (the uv bar is 4 foot long..). But the setup time is gonna add up, as will break down.

Ideally I'd like to just take the bar with movers and put it in a box/case/bag..something of that sort.

So how do you do what you do with your lights - and how well is that working? What you have done in the past and why didn't it work for you?

What speeds up setup/teardown?

It depends..if I take my car which I can do for most gigs then I may not want 'deluxe' lighting...so a smaller case/bag may not matter - because if I take the big stuff (two etx18 subs) then I need to take a trailer..if i'm taking the trailer than I can do a rolling case/box of some kind.

Been thinking on it.. have to decide how I want to mount the moving heads on the stand..it's a chauvet stand and thin in diameter..the cross bar is a sqaure tube, 1" maybe. Currently have 4 heads hung off the bottom and the eco uv on the top. If I mount the heads each time the uv bar can stay on there and I think it will all fit in the second side of a stand bag. May wrap a towel around the light itself.

May move lights to 2 top/2 bottom..the uv bar then would sit in front. Sorta want to put the movers on the ends, so overall it looks like an I on it's side - so the heads can point up or down completely. Till I play more with them I won't make a final decision.

So o-clamps won't work...it has bolts and wingnuts which are fine...i have some oclamps, one on an acrobat and what a PITA to hold that 40lb light with one elbow while clamping with my other appendages.

what takes time is taking the wing nuts off/on - if the light had a slot more so than a hole the nut could be loosened, light slipped and wing nut snugged up. Much faster. Will try this with a kinta as I have an extra bracket in case the idea fails.

DJCC said:

My truss and T-bars are hard wired for power & DMX. Set up and tear down is about 30 min.

And of course you know I have built custom road cases for the lights.

Click to expand...

I've been to weddings with no lighting..boring.
I've been to a few mostly in the pat with overkill for lighting.

IMO you need some color and movement.
The least i've seen is one acrobat hung off a speaker stand. worked well for as simple as it is.

I aim the four play at the walls and kinta at the floor. it's not real bright, so a second will help that a bit. I already have it.

For school dance, something I enjoy and would like to do more of, is what I got the moving heads and UV bar for. If I can build a reputation then maybe i can charge more. So far dance don't pay much, but they are the most fun, easy, and are during dead times of the year.

the local gradeschool used to do 'cantine' (canteen?) - like for 40, 50 years they did it. I've been asking and it seems they stopped doing it...I'll pursue that more over the next couple of weeks. I'm thinking budget cuts. I used to be $5/kid to get in and was 3 hours every other friday in jan-march in the gym. 6 to 9 or something like that. My daughter and her friends went in 4 and 5 th grades.

With some good video of it all it will look good for marketing.
And it's fun to play with!

Got the heads working nicely tonight..still have some figgering to do, bolts to tighten, etc. then programming..have to figure out what I want to do..can easily run them as pars - all moving all the time won't be special after 3 songs anyway.

The lumadesk software is most interesting...you have scenes, sequences and cues..and can mix and match sequences across cues..just started figuring it out.
As in you could have a seq with all the lights set for sound active, then pull up a sequence where just the pars strobe with a button push, and then undo it and things continue as they were. Now you've got a light show...scratching? naw. Let the song play and I'll play the lights! Diff setup for the chorus perhaps...I have a few rough ideas.

i do free lighting for all gigs, but can of course leave it home. Never had anyone ask me to do that. Most ask about the lighting.

I got some video of my 'basic' setup on NYE, in action. Will get some of the 'deluxe' setup this weekend at the school dance.

sound active is redundant ..same thing all night.
Sushi dmx / lumidesk is $40. You an set up programs for off (easy), sound active, various macro alternatives, slow dance (fades and slower motion).
Just that alone makes a difference.

for saturday Ill have that, strobing (on some or all lights), and a variety of movning patters on the heads as well as still 'par' like effect.
And I've got an eco uv bar that I can put on, off or strobe (it has a remote too but more crap to carry, find, keep a battery in, etc).

As for color..blues for slow dances..reds and yellows for high energy, white for the bridal dance.

Wireless DMX is something I may look into this year not to easy setup - it's one wire from tree to computer vs one to receiver and one from computer to transmitter so no time savings - but so that I can put a light on the other side of the dance floor. Or maybe some pars behind the head table. Or moving spots at the door for grand entrance.

Can we post video here? As in host..as opposed to hosting on youtube/vimeo/FB? I shot some small segments of the different lighting programs for use in videos for the website (eventually..).

i've not watched my acrobat enough to know what all it does. I use it rarely. easystandalone dmx gives me the 5 or 7 channel acrobat, lumidesk just th one channel. I can customize it but haven't. So it runs in sound mode via dmx.

the 4Play does nice on sound active but I don't see the variance I can get on dmx - slow isn't slow and fast isn't fast enough.

I've not tried in the DMX 'tap' to set the beat..tomorrow is 'programming day' for the dance on saturday so I may try it.

What's nice about lumidesk is you set up the 'live' show like this:

CueList Cue Cue Cue Cue.

A cue list is a list of cues - duh. Each Cue is a set of scenes.

So you can play a culist and all the cues play, playing all the scenes.

OR you can pick and choose the cues from diff cue lists...so you can setup say a slow cuelist wiht a cue of slow par, slow mover, slow 4bar/4play.
then due one that is a cuelist of strobing each cue. then one for fast.

When it's time to GO you can pick a slow par, fast mover and strobing 4bar...and you can do keyboard shortcuts for each.

You can 'play' the lights like a piano!

And it has other 'live' features I'venot tried to understand yet. Stacking being one.