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Atlanta’s The Weber School has installed High End Systems Halcyon Titanium, SolaFrame 3000, SolaPix 7, and SolaFrame Theatre fixtures, as well as HQ100 Performance Hazers and an Eos Apex 10 console to create an absolutely gorgeous theater rig in their space. 36 ColorSource Spot V’s and 36 Fresnel V’s provide a soft stage wash to complement the moving fixtures. Needless to say, this high school is not your typical educational institution!
Since its inception in 1997, The Weber School has welcomed Jewish high school students from all over Atlanta. Offering a wide variety of school initiatives, Weber offers multiple courses in technical theater, visual arts, music and dance, including several major musical productions each year.
Provided through Stage Front in Georgia, the lighting equipment serves multiform duties during the course of their typical school day. Scott Leaderman, Founder of LightAStage LLC and Weber's Technical Director for the Performing Arts explains the initial challenges were a tight deadline, the room’s 11’6” grid height, the ¾ round audience seating configuration, and my design requirement for even lighting across the stage from all audience angles. “I am so honored to have assisted the school with a design that would all but guarantee the space to be as functional and future proof as possible from a lighting perspective.”
Scott says the space can be utilized for a Town Hall in the morning, a concert during lunch, and theater performance in the afternoon, all without having to re-rig the lighting. Rather than choosing the smaller Halcyon Gold fixtures for the low trim height, the HES Halcyon Titanium fit the bill for Scott’s lighting design. “I really needed dual rotating gobo wheels and the larger fixture to offset the output loss from using the Hi-Fi engine, and that’s what pushed our decision from the Gold to the Titanium; the other thing was getting quiet operation at a 11’6’’’ trim height. How are we going to get fixtures that are not really designed to be that quiet … be quiet? A part of the reason I went with Halcyon over anything else was that ETC not only promised but were able to deliver full fan control in the fixture, which nobody else was willing to do. So essentially, I now have a SolaFrame Theatre at about the same output, two gobos wheels, and about half the size!”
In total, 24 Halcyon Titanium fixtures are in the rig. Scott elaborates, “I used two of them over the house left audience, two over the house right audience and the rest are distributed across the over-stage grid. Just having that 5800° Kelvin was so important; other manufacturers had similar temperature engines, but the color in a space of that size and that nature was critical and looked so much better than everybody else's high CRI engines, throughout the color gamut.”
“In our testing, we threw everything that was difficult to see on stage; lots of deep reds and purples, and lots of stuff that should have turned brown, and it simply didn't. From the naked eye, you could still see the intended color, the intended custom color, and the intended set piece, so that obviously makes designing sets a lot easier too, as I don't have to worry about a lot of color conflict.”
Ten SolaFrame Theatre silent luminaires were used as well, to allow for acoustic concerts in the space without being worried about fan noise, and the fixtures’ low noise level worked quite well for our more intimate performances. A dozen SolaPix 7 wash lights were placed on the floor for eye candy and even wash lighting. Scott adds, “Weber decided that their first show in the new space was going to be Rock of Ages. The SolaPix 7’s were relatively quiet and did the trick, which is nice. We also used two HQ100 hazers to add atmospherics to the space.”
An Eos Apex 10 console served as the final piece to The Weber School lighting renovation, a natural choice given Leaderman’s history with ETC lighting control consoles. “I've been using ETC desks for almost 30 years; it just works, it's adaptable, and I still feel it’s what students should be learning on. By and large, that's still what they're going to encounter as they move on in their career.”
In closing, Scott says, “HES Regional Sales Manager Clint Wingrove and Product Support Specialist Wyatt Mailloux were instrumental to the amazing customer service we received. This high school is going to be taken care of by ETC, and that really meant a lot to us!”
