Hello, I'm a sound and lighting engineer working both as a house technician and band FOH. In all cases I run both boards. My history with lighting is ETA and Lightronics 2 scene consoles with bump buttons and chases and I got pretty good at that back in the 80's.
Currently working with a band that has Elation Operator, 5x 7ch LED strips and 4x mini motorized fixtures (need to get brand and model for you). Having some fun getting used to programming scenes prior to shows, aiming wigglies and doing some spot work on the fly during shows.
I've also purchased a band's old gear including PAR56 cans and Operator PRO console. I think this will serve me well as most bands like to use lesser current draw devices but I enjoy having some PAR fixtures for beams, front spots (with color gels of my choice). The array of DMX controllers seems bewildering but for now this is what I have.
Have spent some time reading on this Forum and have found some info but not exactly all that I need for now. Can you help?
The Op has 8 scenes x 30 banks = 240 whereas the OPro has (DMX side) 8 scenes x 12? for 96 total scenes is this correct?
Our stage setup is not the same every time and for now we put a wiggly on top of each speaker stack and the other two on the subs or floor. Therefore I have to spend a LOT of time reprogramming at each gig. This will not do. Seem that either need to standardize (very closely) the placement of light instruments and players or devise a better way to reaim. Hopefully the OPro will be better due to the joystick, I've not tried it yet.
Seems that there should be a studied approach to the layout of scenes and banks that makes for easier access and simple retreivability. For instance, when I programmed a bunch of color washes ROYGBV as banks on one scene button, I'd have to hit both buttons to make a change. So it appears that I could use banks for tempo of gobo change, or color choices, whereas the scenes of each bank could contain a 'quiet scene'(between song), lead vocal aim, guitar solo aim, dance floor party scene, all vocals etc. That way I'd get to a bank that was artistic to that song, and just hit various scene buttons to cue during parts of the song ( I think further work could be done as 'shows'? or is this the same term as banks?)
Is there any threads or charts dealing with approaches like I'm talking about? One thing I realized last time was to set my aims, REC, then make color or gobo change, then REC again. In this way many scenes could be made with same aiming. But I'm back to the same issue every show that every motorized light needs to be reaimed and scenes resaved. There has to be a faster way than recreating every show each time. HELP!!!
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