Lighting and DMX forum

[signal55]

hello guys

I kinda feel its about time we had a section on lighting and DMX on this forum, i know how alot of you feel aboput lighting and so forth but as most of us work in an enviroment that has lighting as a major feature, i feel it would be useful for us to get more involved with the way lighting works, and how we can make lighting and visuals more complimentary to each other, for instance i ahd some vjays in on friday at stealth and though they produced interesting content they used so much white in there content i found it very difficult to control the light in ther room, personaly i found this very irritating because the room looked shit and too bright.
As i'm both a VJ/LJ i have come to appreciate how well you can intergrate both mediums to produce an amazing visual enviroment for the clubber. i have to admit that i've only been doing lights for 2 months and at first i had major reservations about doing them, but after building, proggraming and intergrating the visual and lighting rig at stealth i feel that i have acheived results that are quite unique to the Stealth and would be benifcial to other clubs.
So lets have a useful debate on this subject please

love mossy

[Rovastar]

Moving to Updates and suggestions forums.

Personally I don't know. I feel we have a lot/too many forums as it is.

Don't existing forums HArware, backstage cover this subject already.

But let's get others feedback

[RayV]

i agree its a subject that have been neglected a bit, maybe due to un coperative attiude from the "lampies"
i often heard them saying "i cant change the program"
but i feel that the vj roll is only part of the atmosphere creators at a club gig, actually any gig.
shall i say compositon (?)
its very important if there is communication.
on the club i used to work every thursday, there was a very nice lighting guy, whith whom i got along very well, & we reached an understanding & balance between us,
giving tolat dark sudden moments to the crowd, folowing any music break together, i got him not to cross my visuals with tacky folow lights & i let him to have his "solos". ww used to think of ideas to do together, to match colors & it was fun.
while in the biggest club here, i always felt that the promoters attitude was to "load" or mark a "v" & there wasnt much synch between deco/lighting & visuals.
These days, when i go on a big gig , i make sure to take the phone number of the main lighting guy & talk to him before the gig, so we can develope understanding & mutual respect to each other work.
I find it helps a lot

[Anyone]

indeed, it's about time we discuss these issues...

I mean, DMX, the main lighting control language,
is now setting itself up as a real contender for controlling video

on the other hand, the Pioneer VDJ X-1 is letting DJs
play music video with same approach as normal DJing

should we feel threatened? attacked on 2 fronts ?

the flipside is:

a pletora of products have come out to translate midi to DMX
therefore permitting VJs to easily expand their repertoire
to lighting props

some would argue that VJ culture is less accessible than DJ culture,
making the move from the former to the latter easier than
from the latter to the former...

So should they (DJs and LJs) feel threatened instead ?

Ne1

[charlielangridge]

Being a lampy by trade i am happy to give anybody advice and help on DMX. I think it woudl be a good idea to have some basic information on lighting and some detailed stuff on DMX. I'll write an article over the next week or so and prehaps an FAQ so if anybody has any questions, add thme to this thread or pm me

A VJ is a lampy with ambition

[asterix]

Good lighting is very important and I take it on as my role as a VJ. After all my role should incorporate anything visual.

In fact I even setup visuals specific for lighting concepts.

These two can and should quite often go hand in hand.



Good suggestion.

[cat]

I also double as a lampy, mainly because when I started doing visuals there was no way I could make a living doing it on its own.
DMX is definatley the way forward, lighting desks were made to be performed with, loads of people want hardware interfaces for the software, fact is they're already available, only problem is the dmx-midi part, vj softs supporting artnet is probably the way to go. As I understand it thats the way the Hippotiser went, just have to hope vj-soft developers dont want to charge 10x the price to impliment it!
On that note I understand that Artnet supports video over tcp so you can run a monitor by the desk which has also got to be interesting for streaming video between different applications?
Cat

[Rovastar]

Obviously from teh quick replies there is a decent amount of interest in DMX and lighting, etc.

Although I don't really see the need for another forum maybe and change in the description of say the BAckstage forums to include 'lighting and DMX'

[LEVLHED]

aren't there already other forums out there for lighting/DMX?
I can see how many VJs might also work with lighting, but I still see these as distinctly different areas....
In my opinion, it doesn't warrant a seperate forum here at VJF, but should be integrated into another forum as suggested by rovastar.

[ristuuk]

should we feel threatened? attacked on 2 fronts ?

To A certain degree yes.

More and more Dj's are becomming involved with visuals, this is a fact. a dj/vj will get more bookings especially if they are already established .

More and more projectors and programs are becomming dmx controlled. programs/ controllers like the new Fairlight or the radlight.

In our venue, a large conference / event place, most of the visual element to a show would be done by the lx.

times change and so does technology.

Theres so much crossover nowadays between visuals and lighting.
back in the days of the solar250 , what was that ?, a lighting effect or an effects projector?

It used to be the lampies lit the space , us visual people lit the walls. Thats not so any more.