The Joys of Light Rig

This past weekend I helped out on a light rig at school for one of the undergrads for their show Las Meninas. It is one of the many mid-sized productions done at CalArts and is in our E-400 spaces which is a small black box. There was a good turn out for the hang and everyone had a good time it seemed. Music, bagels and coffee kept most of us happy throughout the day. I personally would have enjoyed some fresh donuts, but not this time.

The space is interesting and has a dead hung grid that is about 15 feet or so off the deck. It's a good spot for small shows and any student designer to work in. The biggest problem with the space is there are only 3 ladders that can reach the grid, which leads to some time-management problems and ladder stealing. The inventory for the space is a mix of conventional fixtures old and new, and if needed, some color scrollers.

We also installed 6 booms into the space which went smoothly for the most part. We had a good system down of using a laser level, installing the pipe with a fixed cheese-borough to the grid and then sinking the flange base into the floor. I was pretty content with installing the flanges with only 2 good sized lags and a washer, but for some reason the booms ended up having 4 lags on each flange. Considering they were fixed to the grid and only were going to have 3 instruments on each, I thought lagging this much just meant more holes in the floor. I'm just a lighting designer with a technical direction background, so what do I know? Overall, it was a good hang and we finished it in about 6 hours.