Staging And Riggin For Rock Band Stage Iii

[45NorthKeyboardist]

Okay,

This is all coming together and I'm a happy and lucky MOFO! Thanks for the support and ideas thus far. My rock band is playing small to medium sized clubs right now.

I've seen this question asked a million times before but we're good now on the VJ side of things: software, two projectors, and some pull down screeens. We're in business this way.

Our bass player just picked up 60 Par 64 Cans to flood the entire stage with all kinds. We'll have to cannibalize them and get a few of them working so really we're figuring on 40 of those 60 but need some help with rigging.

Small clubs. What do you guys use for trussing? Where does one look?

Should we mount the projectors on the trussing and does anyone here use lasers and other elements of the light show? We're looking at some of the cheaper scans right now to maybe rig 8 pieces of those into our shows to take this to an unprecedented level for a show.

My question is how do we make it all fit?

2 Screens.
2 Projectors
40 PAR 64 Cans
16 PAR 38 Cans
8 Scans

Argh. We need a light board too. Any help here would be great. It seems that light guys are few and far between compared to someone who wants to sell me a keyboard.

[alangeering]

With that much equipment you probably want a box, like this:
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/kingscf/Animate/before.JPG

Scale up/down depending on size.
This is a simple construction. Unless you go really big you'll be rigging truss first then lanterns.
Larger systems will employ winches so lanterns can be rigged at low level.

Ask your question at the blue room also as there are more techies there that do lighting/rigging than here.

Alan

[SlinkyTrips]

assuming that they are par64 lamps they are using 1000watts each, thats 40kw of lighting on just the par cans. Thats a lot of juice, are you sure most clubs will have that much spare power??
________
vaporizer store (http://vaporshop.com)

[Ocular]

The biggest obstacle you will have to overcome is setup/breakdown time. You need to find out where you are in the lineup, headlining, opening etc.. and figure it out from there. I have played headlining shows where it was not a problem, but also opening for entire tours where breakdown was 15minutes or less.

[MikeIa]

They would cost some $, but, man, these would be nice for raising the rig:

http://www.ribbonlift.com

[jeffhtg]

anytime someone asks "how do i rig" I cringe.. unless you are a professional rigger you should NEVER EVER try and fly or rig anything period. For that matter.. 60 par 64's is 60k of power - requiring some serious dimmer packs / power distribution (500amps us/ 250amps uk) This sort of thing should really be handled by professionals as well.. you can kill people!

There is legislation beeing passed in the u.s. right now - as all this time there has been no actual federal standards to ratings and whatnot. I am very suprised we havent seen big accidents on the front page of the newspaper.

[asterix]

You'll need a dimmer bigger than all the lights you've got to handle all this shit !
I personally think 60 cans and 8 scanners is to much unless you got a fucking metallica size stage?. Personally - I'd be talking with a pro stage designer about your options. You gotta carry all this shit around, rig it, break it down. Have you looked at your logistics costs and what you're capable of with your budget?

[alangeering]

I agree that experienced people should do the rigging and LX but the guy is asking what he needs to buy. Maybe we should add professional rigger to his list, and move on.

[45NorthKeyboardist]

Thanks for the follow up. I dream of a set up like above and you guys are right. We've agreed to scale down the lights a small bit to 16 PArR 64's. That gives us 8 in front on trees and 8 behind on a simple 10' truss that should be good for most stages.

As for rigging and the like, we have a light tech as part of our ensamble and he's a member of the band essentially having done lights for various staging companies around town.

As for power, we've had two master electricians build us boxes for the power requirements....holy crap do PAR 64's use a lot of juice. We learned this as a matter of experience at our first gig just trying to fly 8 PAR 64's and blew circuit breakers all the time! We're using meters to measure our load and have balanced it and all that other good stuff....

That being said, status report is this... We're going to use 6 Intelligent Lights across the back and hang them on the truss we bought. Set up and Take down is simpel since we have a 8 ft' truck that leaves the lights (only the PARs) on the rack and we set up and take down.

As for safety, we've purchased safety cord for each PAR just in case they do come lose on a show they're not falling on anyone. Our biggest issue is the tripods for this load. It's well with in spec coming in at 125lbs on a 200 lbs truss but center of gravity is a bitch.

Any suggestions on quick mounts with tripods so that we can anchor them appropriately and adquately into the floors? One swellowing fall from a drunk and the $3k we have tied up in lights goes bye-bye....

The best I've heard is sand bags and I'm not too happy with that.........

Lastly, we'd like to get a box truss set as in that beautiful pix. I dream about that. My only concern wtih that is we play multiple stages and with many different sizes from 13' wide to 17' wide (nothing greater than 20' and deep---these are all small clubs---they're very small in depth usually less than 10' deep. A cube would be economical from the stand point we're not buying a lot....

my question is how do you vary the length of the cube? 1' sections of truss so that we have 5', 10' and 3' sections that get us really really close? Tell me here..... I can then build custom pieces for each show that are easily adaptable. Would I need to go up to 2.5 or 3"? We're not putting all that weight on it...

What's a good way to spec that out as well?

[NickT]

Take a look at the Optikinetics 'Trilite'. It comes in three styles, ladder, trianglur truss and box section. If you download the PDF catalogue you'll be able to check out the different lengths available and the load specs etc.
There's loads of this out there, exhibition companies use lots of it and it pops up on ebay quite frequently as well.

http://www.optikinetics.com

[gnomatron]

Originally posted by 45NorthKeyboardist
we have a light tech as part of our ensamble and he's a member of the band essentially having done lights for various staging companies around town.

....holy crap do PAR 64's use a lot of juice. We learned this as a matter of experience at our first gig just trying to fly 8 PAR 64's and blew circuit breakers all the time!


Um, is the light tech guy new? Any lighting tech would know how much power a par 64 draws.


As for safety, we've purchased safety cord for each PAR just in case they do come lose on a show they're not falling on anyone. Our biggest issue is the tripods for this load. It's well with in spec coming in at 125lbs on a 200 lbs truss but center of gravity is a bitch.

Any suggestions on quick mounts with tripods so that we can anchor them appropriately and adquately into the floors? One swellowing fall from a drunk and the $3k we have tied up in lights goes bye-bye....

The best I've heard is sand bags and I'm not too happy with that.........

stage weights. But, again you NEED TO SPEAK TO A PROFESSIONAL RIGGER. you can kill people if you don't know what you're doing. Also, if the other guy is the lampy, why isn't he doing this? No offense to you, but if he does it for money, surely he knows better what you need.

here, go to the blue room (http://www.blue-room.org.uk) , they'll help you, it's mostly a lampy forum anyway.

[Pesh]

Originally posted by jeffhtg
anytime someone asks "how do i rig" I cringe.. unless you are a professional rigger you should NEVER EVER try and fly or rig anything period. For that matter.. 60 par 64's is 60k of power - requiring some serious dimmer packs / power distribution (500amps us/ 250amps uk) This sort of thing should really be handled by professionals as well.. you can kill people!

There is legislation beeing passed in the u.s. right now - as all this time there has been no actual federal standards to ratings and whatnot. I am very suprised we havent seen big accidents on the front page of the newspaper.
remember this one?
http://forum.i-lite.info/uploads/post-7-1089835143.jpg
fucking scary

[wellREDman]

Jesus , where/when was that?

[Pesh]

carnage link (http://forum.i-lite.info/index.php?showtopic=72&mode=linearplus)
Justin Timberlake gig in 2003, amazingly nobody was seriously injured

[alangeering]

I sent that photo to all the aspiring techies at my university last year to remind them not to overstep their competence.

[asterix]

Pesh thats fucking classic!!
45NorthKeyboardist - honestly mate - I admire your enthusiasm but the best lesson you'll ever learn is KIS (Keep It Simple).
Good luck in the meantime buddy and send us through some pics (which hopefuly don't look like this last one!!!)

[SleepyLampy]

Speaking from a Lampy Point of View, rigging in clubs is usually a Major pain in the ass. On a club tour you have little to no idea of technical specs of each venue you are going to play unless your tour manager is extraordinarily organised (which in my experience is VERY rare!:P ) and even then, most club managers wouldn't know the difference between a socapex and an xlr or camlock and cee-form. Then you have the wildly varied sizes of staging and venue with their different power supplies and stage sizes/positions/heights etc...

To be honest, if your playing clubs, the best thing you can do is keep it as simple as you can!

Pre wired bars of 6 PAR cans on tripods should be your mainstay. Invest in some good quality multicore cable for them such as socapex or lectraflex to help speed your rig/de-rig times and think about LED fixtures to replace your 1000Watt Pars when you can afford to...
As for dimmers, AnyTronics make a fairly good quality budget dimmer range as do Zero88, but most professional dimmers come in blocks of 6 channels, so think about pairing up your PARs left and right of the stage to save dimmers.

Instead of rigging stands in the crowd to provide front light, try setting your stands up at the sides of the stage and light your frontline that way with a few scattered cans on the floor to fill in the gaps in the middle at the front. Having a slightly patchy cover is better than getting sued because some drunk punter tripped over a tripod and almost killed himself and a bunch of other people!
Good tripods are made by PowerDrive for fairly cheap manual lift versions or Manfrotto for wind up versions.

As for the very nice box goalpost arrangement. A good idea as most clubs would be VERY dubious about letting you fly anything from their rig. (although some would be happy to let you place a few Par cans to give frontlight on your band)
If you really want to go with the truss system, think about hiring it first and see just how much time it'll take you to setup and de-rig on a gig. (I think that you may change your mind unles you have a good many rodies to help you out!)
If you decide you're going to invest in truss, I would advise you buy stuff that a local hire company already has so you can extend on your rig for larger venues if needed without too much hassel.

I hope this is of use to you! :D

Good luck, and remember the two cardinal rules :-

1/ Keep It Simple! (as was already mentioned)
2/ If in doubt, leave it out! (Safety should ALWAYS be paramount! It's just not worth risking your life or anyone elses to look good!)

Feel free to mail me if you want further advice or contact detals of a good Lighting and Rigging company in the States.;)