Chaparral High School installs Vari-Lite luminaires
- Details
The arts centre within the $147m school boasts a 1,200-seater auditorium, band, choir, and orchestra rooms, a black box theatre, set design workshops and teaching spaces, built by American Constructors and designed by James Fauver at PBK Architects.
“Our mission was to provide an integrated, fully networked, professional standard stage lighting system that would be intuitive to learn, access and use for both students and staff,” says Erich Friend, principal consultant at theatre consultancy, Teqniqal Systems. “Our desired outcome was that they would be able to create compelling stage shows, in any format or configuration, quickly and efficiently.”
To achieve intuitive operation and powerful, wide access to the lighting system, the team installed Vision.Net touchscreens, button stations and sensors at strategic locations around the building. “We wanted granular control from every part of the building,” Friend says. “The lights in the auditorium, including the blue backstage running lights, work lights and house lights are DMX- controlled individually. Multiple network switches feed over 73 DMX 3 Port Nodes throughout the facility.
“Each lighting control panel is programmed to perform specific actions that relate to their specific location. For example, in the fly galleries, there are controls for the work lights and show running lights, and out in the entry vestibules there are entry stations, ensuring no one needs to ever walk into a dark theatre. We even integrated a Ghost Light function into the houselight presets over the stage apron so the drop-off remains visible when the rest of the theatre is shut-down.”
Other key aspects to the setup include a system over-ride that will put the entire theatre into an automated five-minute shutdown, as well as astronomical time control with the potential to deliver hundreds of events with full day-of-the-week and calendar scheduling, which has been programmed to power down the system at a predetermined time each day.
In the performing arts spaces, Aurora LED Strips have been chosen to illuminate the orchestra and for up-lighting or down-lighting clothes and scenery. Other luminaires installed include Acclaim LED PLE, Acclaim LED Fresnel and Acclaim LED Zoomspots, Coda LED, and VL800 Series Event Profile and Event Wash fixtures. Together, they cater for everything from dance to theatre, musicals, rock music and general presentations both in the main auditorium and black box studio.
Mandy Stockhausen at representatives Bell & McCoy collaborated with Jeff O’Brien, regional sales manager, Vari-Lite at Signify, on the project, sourcing the Vari-Lite rig from dealer, BATTS AVL. The Vari-Lite team also delivered comprehensive training on the Neo console, Vision.Net and fixtures.
