This summer I started working full time as a lighting tech with Advanced Staging Productions, a company that sells theatrical staging, lighting, and video services to corporate clients. I thought it would be fun to share some of the jobs and setups I work on with the company and share some photos of the results!
Tent College Event
Last Friday I worked a setup at a school that was holding an event for its alumni. It was an outdoor event in a massive tent that was air conditioned and had multiple rooms, and we had the responsibility to light all the branches of the tent for the event. Above is a photo I snapped after we finished most of the setup for the day, it took us several hours of hard work but it was worth it in the end! One of the notable elements of this setup was the house lights we installed on the tent poles, which are pipes of 6 Source4 PAR units each known as "PAR Bars" that were installed using clamps that hook to the tent poles and allow you to install a pipe (or PAR Bar in this case) to the pole. Also notable are the 8ft truss towers along the perimeter of the tent, upon which are hung two Source4 Ellipsoidal fixtures to shoot gobo patterns into the ceiling of the tent for some extra flare. Overall, this was a hard setup, but through the course of it I learned how to drive a lift and how the specific tent clamps worked, which made it plenty of fun in the end! The whole thing was controlled from a Jands Vista L5 lighting console.
Philly Ballroom Show
For my birthday this past week, I was put in charge of a setup in a lovely room in central Philly. It was a fairly basic setup but was still exciting to do. Some of the key elements here were the blue uplights behind the stage and two 14ft truss towers in the back of the room which held the stage wash on them as well as lighting for the auction tables in the back of the room. The uplighting you can see in the above photo were four PAR 56 units on base plates powered by a Leprecon dimmer pack.
The truss towers (one shown here) were 16" black truss on a base plate with aluminum pipe installed on top, upon which we hung our fixtures. PAR 56 units were used to light the auction tables behind the towers while two Source4 Ellipsoidals on each side were used as a stage wash. The whole tower is controlled using another Leprecon dimmer pack at its base with a multi breakin running from it up to a breakout at the top, which powered all the units. As the show utilized relatively basic fixtures, it was all controlled by an ETC SmartFade console, with plenty of DMX cable running all over the room to reach all the dimmer packs. Definitely a fun foray into being in charge of a setup for the company!
That's all for my first few weeks of major setups! Next week I'm operating a fairly large event using a Jands Vista S1, and I'll be sure to take plenty of photos for this blog! Hopefully this was interesting for some of you, I'll try to keep this blog updated with the more interesting things I'm doing professionally!