r/stagelighting

A friend of mine had an emergency trip abroad and the club he is running needed an LD for this weekend only and since it was a techno and edm weekend I decided to help him out. BUT I’m a MA3 user and I m going to be busking in a hog4 for the first time ever without the original programmer there, and I really don’t know how or what to do. I need you gurus to help me out cause I’m starting to stress tf out, please leave any advice you have below. Thank you in advance <3

Probably a silly question, but I’m supposed to run lights for a small play happening in a church basement. The space has no actual stage lighting, so I’m trying to come up with a cheap, simple, and practical way to light the actors and stage area.

I have access to lighting equipment from my film school’s equipment depot, but it’s all gear intended for filmmaking/on-set use rather than theatre.

Do you think using a couple of Arri 650W Fresnels , or F.E Lighting 500W Fresnel would be enough for something like this? Or am I way off and should be looking at stronger lights or a different setup entirely?

Looking for a way to recall the next highest open value within a specified range of color palettes (ex. color palette 101 thru 200, enter next enter), have the console store that number, then create a color palette to that open value via macro. My issue is the recall. Once the console spits out that open value, I cannot apply it to anything, as it's reading as a completed line of code.

Thoughts from more experienced programmers? Programming EOS on an ION XE.

We have a 088 Fat frog and it sucks we have old theatre lights 0 Led 2 manual moving
spots 4 profile spots that can be andjuested 6 regular frensal (they are above the audiance on two sets of trussing) then we have a few par cans and frensals and washes over the stage then finally next to the centre of the audiences we have 3 frensal lights on each side on a vertical beam. I also need advice on how to adjust them, I am one of the student technicals but like the acc technical is usless, Btw all of these are tungsten
Then now to my actual point, The lighting console is a pain in the ass to operate I ordered a Luxara freestyler off aliexpress with a adapter from 5 pin to 3 pin any software recs? it needs to operate 4 tempos 15/10A dimmers pls help thanks

Hello,

I’m experiencing a problem when I’m using the chauvets in a very minimalistic setup: I run lightkey on my MacBook -> USB to eurolite USB-DMX512-pro -> I plug the chauvet sender right into the eurolite pro. The lights are stairville tri flat pars profile 5x3W

When I send a fade, the lights do change color but in very small steps/flickering. I’ve read about this problem in other threads on here and on YouTube. On YouTube someone recommended changing the channel as this would almost always have to do with disturbances in the frequencies. I’ve tried that but it didn’t help. Does anyone know if it’s just how they operate? Or can it be fixed?

Would be very thankful for any advice :)

I'm new to learning how to program moving beams, and I've had another model of beams before I got these recent ones. From videos I've seen on YouTube, the beams have the ray of light that appears, which is why they're known as beam because a beam of light shoots out. Even my previous model ones had beams appear, but these don't. Does anyone know how I can solve this issue? I thought it could be a manufacturing issue but I have 12 of these so it can't be that all 12 have an issue with shooting out a beam. I can get the shapes and colors to show but I want to see the trail of light as well.

I am ordering spare lamps for a small space with s4s.

B&H has USHIO HPL575 at an attractive price. Thing is, the photos show a lamp with a cream colored base between the globe and the pins. I have never used this lamp with a cream colored base- only the plain old aluminum. Does anyone have experience or insight here?

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who posted. I ordered a 6pack of full ceramic base ushio hpl575 from B&H which is nuts because they are usually high-dollar, but not this time. When they come in, I will check them out and will update as we use them!

Hey everyone,

I’m planning to get into wedding special effects in the Quebec area and I’m trying to build a simple setup for events.

The idea is to use:

• low fog / “dancing on clouds” effect for first dances
• cold spark machines for entrances and key moments
• possibly some basic event content (photos/videos)

Right now I’m looking at equipment like:

• Antari ICE-101 (low fog machine)
• Chauvet DJ Hurricane 1600 (fog / atmosphere)
• 2–3 cold spark machines
• a basic DMX controller (like Chauvet Obey 40)

Before I start investing, I wanted to ask people with experience in weddings / DJ / live events:

1. Is this a solid setup for weddings or am I missing something important?
2. Is the ICE-101 reliable for real wedding use or should I go higher end?
3. How many spark machines are typically used for a good effect?
4. Any brands to avoid or better alternatives?
5. Common mistakes beginners usually make with this kind of setup?

I’m just trying to learn and put together something reliable and professional-looking.

Any advice would be really appreciated 🙏

Good evening, guys. I'm beginner at stage lightning and i have one problem. Some spotlights begin blink, when I turn on them. We bought 120ohm resistors and stucked it at the ends of lines, i tried to patch them from controller (QuickQ 20), I tried stuck cables at other ports but got no changes. And one more detail, when I patch one of the spotlights (EuroDJ par 368 rgbw) it start geting commans for other spotlights at different place (One fader for 2 spotlights), also it don't use green light (i choose cyan - it's blue, i choose green - it's black and more).

Hi. I work for a small theatre and they have a HOG4 and some Mac moving heads with lamps. Not LED.

For a long time you would have to lamp on using CONTROL and LAMP STRIKE

but recently when you start running cues without striking the macs. They are lamping on themselves. The movers are not always used so the lamps are running when not needed. The other day I came in and the fixtures were giving a HOT error.

What could have caused this? I believe the settings on the movers were set to not lamp on automatically, but they could have been changed by a rental? Or could someone have built a macro to lamp them on?

Thanks