The past two weeks have gone from a fairly standard pace into high gear. Bryon Winn, our lighting designer, flew in earlier this week, so I had a lot of prep work to do for rig and focus which we finished late last night. The theatre space is very manageable, but it does get tricky sometimes. We have a 96 dimmer sensor rack and about a 150 lighting instruments. Needless to say, there is a lot of two-fers and three-fers in the plot and a lot of cable to run. Overall, I was happy with the amount of time hang and circuiting took. I pre-planned all of the circuits to minimize cable lengths, place our mult breakouts in convenient locations and worked to save our precious twofers where possible. Preparing the circuiting ahead of time allowed me to set the patch up quickly too. I realize that 96 dimmers are really easy to type in and patch, but then again I'm either lazy or ambitious, take your pick. I still find it ultra convenient to export the ASCII patch from Lightwright and load it into the off-line Expression editor to do my patch. The problem these days is finding a computer with a floppy disk drive to transfer the show. I could be all slick and buy a USB drive for the few times I need it, but I am a little stubborn, and would rather unpack and reconnect an old computer we have at the theatre that has a floppy drive. It worked just fine though, and I didn't have to punch any numbers, so I win!
Below is a list of our inventory. For the life of me everyone here has the same conversation each year to discuss why the theatre bought Source 4 Jr. for most of the inventory. Certainly there is the cost issue, and that the space is on the boarder-line of throw distances of Jrs. Vs. Source Fours. The units are well maintained and in good shape, so that is a plus. But this is our inventory:
Instrument Qty
25-50 S4 Zooms Jr 42
50 S4 ERS Jr 14
36 S4 ERS Jr 12
26 S4 ERS Jr 2
S4 PAR 32 (6 XWFL lens)
S4 PARnels 16
50 S4 ERS 6
36 S4 ERS 2
26 S4 ERS 2
50 Strand 12
10" Scoop 6
6' Mini-strips 4
AF 1000 2