Moving Heads (Movers)

[paulears]

I'd like to add that in pretty well all cases, mirror balls in colour don't work too well unless you have LOTS of light on them. You might get away with light colours - yellow often works kind of ok.

 

Please don't panic about the response to your posts. They probably do appear harsh, but you posted on a forum where there are lots of people who do this for a living - it's a bit unrealistic to expect that when you find you've posted not quite what you might have wanted, and people respond, that you can stop the ball once rolling.

 

As an example - you mentioned movers again, I asked about the desk, because I figured maybe you didn't know it wouldn't be that useful controlling them - you answered by saying "no movers". So the design changed in just two posts - it kind of makes us think we could have wasted all our time responding to your original post - moving the goalposts when the heat is felt doesn't really work.

 

The best advice any of us can give you is keep it as simple as you can - and just duck for a while. We all have rubbish memories and no doubt this will be forgotten about in a few days, when it starts again with another poster.

Paul

[Ynot]

As an example - you mentioned movers again, I asked about the desk, because I figured maybe you didn't know it wouldn't be that useful controlling them - you answered by saying "no movers". So the design changed in just two posts - it kind of makes us think we could have wasted all our time responding to your original post - moving the goalposts when the heat is felt doesn't really work.

Actually, Paul, in the youngster's defence, I think we finally wore Tom down over the movers - wasn't quite in the space of 2 posts - more as a result of the suggestions from several quarters persuading him of the alternatives available at a lesser cost!

I'd say the first hurdle for a newbie has been jumped successfully, as Tom's listened, took note and modified his thoughts - and credit to him for that I say! ;) :** laughs out loud **: :D

[gnomatron]

hang on, though, didn't he say at some point that the trackspots were free? here -

2 Trackspots (Because I need them to light the disco ball and change colour while they do this and I can get them for free and because I need the beem on them to move around for various reasons)

 

So, well, why not take them? They're gonna be a pain to control on the little desk, but they're pretty handy if you're not going to have to pay for them. Maybe an upgrade of desk to a fat frog could be good. I liked the idea he mentioned of a slowly moving sun, that could be a nice effect that would be easier to achieve with a mover.

[Ynot]

hang on, though, didn't he say at some point that the trackspots were free? here -

2 Trackspots (Because I need them to light the disco ball and change colour while they do this and I can get them for free and because I need the beem on them to move around for various reasons)

 

So, well, why not take them? They're gonna be a pain to control on the little desk, but they're pretty handy if you're not going to have to pay for them. Maybe an upgrade of desk to a fat frog could be good. I liked the idea he mentioned of a slowly moving sun, that could be a nice effect that would be easier to achieve with a mover.

Maybe so - BUT trying to faff with a trackspot to do what could poss be achieved simply seems to me like a whole load of fuss !!

[Tomo]

Just to provide an example of the difference between programming a generic rig and a moving light rig:

 

This week I've been board op for an amateur production at Uni, and I've been using a Congo which is a desk aimed at complete control of moving lights and generics in a single package.

 

After softpatching and grouping, each generic-only state took roughly 30sec to program, followed by a minute or two of discussion and tweaking until the LD was happy.

 

When a state called for the two moving lights to be involved, it took 30sec to build the generic base, and two to three minutes to properly focus the moving light elements, followed by several minutes of re-running the cue and tweaking motion times to get the exact effect the LD wanted.

 

I'm the first to admit that I'm not the fastest moving-light programmer out there, but these timings are when I'm using an extremely powerful moving-light capable desk.

 

Don't forget that changes always happen - each night I've had to slightly adjust the positions to fit new blocking.

On Congo I edit the palette in a few seconds, but on an Express you don't have those palettes and making the changes will take much, much longer as you have to edit the preset states as well as the 'on' states.

 

For JCS I used a single Tourwash with a Celco Explorer generics desk - that Tourwash alone took roughly 1/3 of the plotting time!

I would choose the Tourwash again, but only because it replaced about ten specials which I didn't have the space or dimmers for.