Movers, what can they do?

[Lampy Craig]

Sorry this is a bit late on the subject but I have used the Martin Mania DC1s that c33kay mentions, mainly for a house night called underwater at Pacha in Ibiza. They are great little bits of kit, tough (dropped them loads of times and they never broke), have varying speed so you can get a full on waterfall look or that of a millpond, and have four different colours which are blue (which'll be the one you want I guess), white, red and yellow.

They will be much cheaper than movers as well. Companies near to me rent them out for £15.00 a day and you can buy them for just over a ton.

[WiLL]

The manias would actually be better than movers if you want that effect, plus being a tenth of the hire price.

[Ryote]

The only comment I would use about lamps like the mania's is that although the effect they give off is fantastic, you have to ensure that their limited output won't be killed by the light coming from the generics washing them out. As I found out in amongst my own learning curve using CX2's in my Rig.

[Lampy Craig]

Fair point made there by Ryote, of course you won't want your underwater effect being washed out by your generics, so you want to place them well as to benefit from their effect. But as it's a school production with no big budget, If this washing out of the effect was likely to happen I would go with the not ideal but very real one of turning the generics down a little just to let the audience see that the scene is underwater then bring the generics back up very slowly to light the performers. Although this not ideal it would save a few hundred quid that movers and a desk would cost.

[jcgoldcoast]

I LD'd a school production of Les Mis earlier this year using 3 Mac 500's and a Hog 250 (as well as over 100 conventionals). The movers were a very big learning curve, but ended up working well in the show. They were only used at one key moment in the show actually moving, but the rest of the time were mainly used as static specials and generic colour washes. The only reason the movers were actually used is because we didnt have enough power in the venue to run more dimmers for the many specials used throughout the show. If we did have more power, I would have been much happier using conventionals rather than the movers.

[Don Allen]

For any effect light or even your cyc lighting to be effective, you need your basic conventional's design set up properly so that you have NO light hitting your cyc. If you are using the generic 45 degree angles and the stage is divided into nine zones, the only time a conventional light should hit the cyc is when the director stands someone directly in front of the cyc. Then you can use tightly shuttered side lights to light them.

 

In a smaller venue, if you have the lights, split your upstage area into two, so you can use a steeper angle and two bars to keep the light off the cyc, as directors tend to use all the stage area they have available.

 

This gives you much more room to work with your cyc, you can use lower wattage cyc lights and 250 watt effects lights can be seen.

 

The Martin have a better light output than the generic effect lights so this is a case of you get what you pay for.

[KindredHyperion]

It really depends greatly on your (or whoever's programming & operating's) experience, and aptitude to picking things up quickly. I did a production of West Side Story quite recently for which I hired two Mac 250s (placed DSL & DSR).

 

I did this primarily because we only had 24 dimming channels' worth of power available to us - not enough to run the number of specials we required. They were very useful in doing miscellaneous tight spots, gobos etc. They were even useful moving in a couple of scenes (for example, searchlights). We also had very little focussing so it was easier to bung the macs up there and focus them remotely.

 

Yes it was a steep learning curve, but I tend to be pretty good at working stuff out quickly and with some help from the manual and tech data for the Macs I got the show programmed in about a day.

 

I feel the movers definitely improved the show, but as I say it depends hugely on your time and skill at learning stuff (as well as budget!). For the record I spend about £1k on lighting, of which about £120 went on the two movers - and in my opinion money well spent.

 

A