Introduction to reflective journal.

This section of the website is dedicated to my studies at University Centre Weston in assosiation with Bath Spa University.
For this Professional Development project I decided to take the opportunity to improve my skillset in lighting design, for which I took up a role as the lighting engineer at a local church (St. Paul's Church) for their monthly youth service. All of my research for this have been conducted on an experimental basses through trial and error processes, all of which are documented below.

These entries will mainly consist of the plans for each lighting setup for the youth services, as due to safeguarding concerns not many pictures could be taken.

"Impact" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 07/10/2016

Lighting Plan
Floor mounted acme rulerspots with hazer under the drum riser
Lighting in use
This was the first youth event for St. Paul's church where lighting was required. The four poles are part of the existing lighting rig at the venue, along with the fixtures attached to them. In edition to the existing setup I also brought in a quad truss with a pair of winch stands, to hang some extra lighting fixtures and a black drape (curtain). The additional fixtures included: 4x American DJ MegaTriPar Profiles, 1x Stairville DJ Lase150 RGY, 2x iSolution iMove 250s, 2x Acme Rulerspot, 1x Stairville AFH600 Hazer (not listed on the lighting plan) and 2x stage decks with legs for a drum riser. I also decided to use my own lighting controller instead of the church's Zero88 Jester TLXtra lighting console. This decision was based on the requirements for moving heads as the Chamsys MagicQ software allowed for easy programming for moving fixtures and also offered the ability to design the rig in virtual space and program the 3D model in advance. This meant that on the day of the event less time was needed to program the rig as the majority had already been done.

The truss was borrowed from a friend (Phil Boorman) who owns a large amount of lighting equipment and truss. The main contact for St. Paul's Church and this event was Sam Jones. All communications for this particular occasion was conducted over phone calls within the week of the event. 

The lighting setup for this event worked as intended for this event. Although, I did discover that the single hazer was not enough to get the desired effect, so therefor the decision was made to purchase a second hazer. Also, during setup the hazer was moved about and setup multiple times. The short video below shows an example of the lighting in use before the kids arrived (further footage could not be obtained due to safeguarding concerns).

"Impact" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 04/11/2016

Quad truss being setup
Quad truss with drape and lighting fixtures attached
This was the second event. Lessons learnt from the first were taken into account for the setup of this event, which was the addition of the second hazer. The hazers were positioned either side of the drums and facing towards the front of the stage and audience area. This proved to be more effective and produced the desired smoke/haze effect which allowed the light beams from the fixtures to be seen clearly. Other than this the lighting rig remained the same as used in the previous event. As before most of the communication took place over phone calls within the week of the event as this was the only time I could get hold of the youth leader (Sam Jones) due to his busy schedule. After evaluation of this event it was decided to try to obtain some extra moving fixtures of some sort to add concert lighting effect. The haze machine had also been moved and setup multiple times again, so for the next event it was decided to set the hazer up last.

As mentioned in the previous entries, all communication with Phil for truss hire and Sam the client was conducted in phone conversations within the week of the event.

"Impact" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 02/12/2016

Lighting plan for Impact
Lighting rig in use during the talk with the Martin Roboscans added
As mentioned for the previous event I had decided to source an extra pair of moving lights to expand on the concert lighting effect. The original plan was to hire some extra moving heads, however the option of purchasing a pair of scanner based lights presented itself. As shown in the lighting plan the design had changed. The MegaTriPars had been removed from the setup as it was decided that they were not necessary as the church's LED par cans were sufficient enough to provide the colour wash effects by themselves. In place of these fixtures 2x Martin Roboscan 918 Pro were added. The hazers were the last fixtures to be setup on stage, which proved to be the more efficient method and meant that less time was spent moving the hazers around and more time to work on the rest of the rig.

During the show the expansion of moving fixtures did the larger concert lighting show effect and was noticed by the children and youth leaders. However, with the MegaTriPars missing it was difficult to create effective strobe lighting effects. Plans had been made to either include those fixtures in the next event.

Once again, all communication with Phil and Sam was conducted in phone conversations within the week of the event.

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"Impact" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 03/03/2017

Impact Lighting Plan
This was the first Impact event of the new year. During the December event there was a safeguarding incident, which prevented the club from running for a month and a half. During this time I was asked to redo my safeguarding training with the rest of the youth workers, which was a great learning experience and a necessary procedure for those who are working in an environment where children are present. This answered a few concerns I had before in regards to working with the children, such as; how to handle specific situations, what to do in the event of a potential incident and precautions to take to diffuse dangerous situations.

As for the event itself much of the rig didn't change from the previous event, except for the addition of 2x Stairville strobes and the positions of the roboscans and imove250s were also switched. This can be seen in the lighting plan.

Please note: with the new regulations put into place because of the previous incident, pictures and video clips could not be taken of this event.

All communication procedures remained the same as in the previous entries.

"Youth Silent Disco" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 03/10/2017

Lighting rig with the laser and Orbitor in use.
Lighting rig with moving heads and scanners in use
Leading on from Impact, the church decided to organise a silent disco for university students. They then decided that as they hired the headphones for the weekend to also run a disco for the youth also. I was asked to provide a lighting setup during the previous Impact event.
 For this event I used an 8 metre quad truss with winch stands (from Phil) to suspend lights in the air. As this was last minute I did not have time to make up my usual lighting plan, so instead I used the visualizer in MagicQ to quickly design the setup whilst also programming the lighting shows.
This rig consisted of all the fixtures used in the Impact event, with the addition of the QTX LED Orbitor, which gave a moonflower disco light effect but could be controlled over DMX.
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Although the event did not attract the amount of children that the organiser had hoped for, the technical aspects of the event performed without issues and I was able to take pictures of the rig before the children arrived. 

"Student Silent Disco" @ St. Paul's Church (WsM): 03/11/2017

This event used the same rig and setup as the youth disco as this was held the following day. Nothing was changed for this setup. Below is a tutorial video which shows my methods in planning, programming, testing and then a clip of the event. As this event had no children the safeguarding implications for taking video did not apply.