# Hello All



## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 28, 2004)

Hello everyone

First time here, but this looks really cool and a great place to get advice on stuff. So heres some background on me and my school's theatre. First off I'm in Mass. Currantly a Soph in HS and heres what I've done so far:

Me and My Girl - Set Crew
Macbeth - Follow Spot Operator
Concerts - Lights, Set Crew, Set Crew
Special Sunday Program Show - Sound
Oliver Twist - Set Crew

If anyone has any Q's or anything or wants to talk leave a reply please. I'm looking to talk to other techies online so also if you wanna chat IM "SketchCroft Ppl" or leave a reply and I'll IM you. I don't care if it s a guy / girl my age or older or anything I just wanna talk to other techies. 

Our Theater is pretty cool and seems to be hooked up in a relativly unique way. We don't have a dimmer room at all. Instead we us something called SCRimmer sticks diasychained together and an Omega 2 board. The nice part about that is that first we don't have the Dimmer room which takes up space, and also if we want more lights we just plug in a new stick and thats it. Right now we have enough sticks set up for about 130 lights, plus 2 follow spots at the back. We have a full fly system as well. So anyone who wants to talk or has questions or anything ask away please.


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## Mayhem (Dec 28, 2004)

Welcome to the site and after that intro, I am sure that you are going to have a lot of questions asked about the SCRimmer sticks that your theatre uses.

I look forward to seeing you around the site.


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 28, 2004)

Well I don't mind any questions about them, I'll do my best to answer all of them. I'm only a soph and still learning but I know how they work to a pretty good extent. For the simple questions, they are basically a stick about 3-4 feet long. Each of them has a way to set their initial port number, and each stick has 4 stage pin ports. So if you set the number to 1, then your number will be 1-2-3-4 and it goes on like that. The next stick would be set up with a starting number of 5 so it would be 5-6-7-8. So basically, even though it is somewhat more complicated than this because all of the DMX in our theatre also runs to a DMX controler that talks between the booth and the SCRimmer sticks and a seperate system for controling mainly the house and work lights, the basic config is 

Booth --- {1,2,3,4} --- {5-6-7-8} --- etc.

Then in the booth we have an Omega 2 board and a second board nicknames stanley. The stanley is a bunch of sliders and the omega 2 has what I believe is a standard interface. So when we say lights 1-4 at full, it sends out the signal over the DMX which each SCRimmer stick recieves and then if it doesn't have one of those numbers, it sends it on to the next one. The whole system is very fast and to me there is no noticable lag between turing on light 1 and light 130 (if there were lights in both of those ports).

~Nick


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## Peter (Dec 30, 2004)

Cool! That is abit different!

Yay! another person from MA arround here! I am from about 1/2 way between Springfield and the NY border... where abouts are you? 

Welcome to the forums! (I would tell you to be sure to be an active member of the forums and comment and ask plenty of questions, but i see you are already doing a fairly good job of that! Good Job!)


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 30, 2004)

Hey Peter

Do you have aim? I live a few min north of Worcester so not super close to where you are. Your the first person from mass that I've seen in here.

~Nick


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## Peter (Dec 30, 2004)

Check your PMs

Yep, MA is an under-represented state arround here. From what i can tell though, it isnt really a big popular area for theatrical or concert events, at least where I live. Hmm... wonder if that will ever change.... You could probably do some analysis on the average income of households (or something like that) in different areas and find some coralation between some trends and the number and popularity of theators in any given areas. Maybe some day when I'm really really really board I'll look through the US Census Bearuo reports and come up with some huge philisophical explination that isnt based on anything.... (sorry guys, it's getting late here and I had a long week... I'll stop rambleing!  )


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 31, 2004)

Ha ha ... nice. Yeah I dunno theatre isn't HUGE in worster but there are a bunch. The school I goto has a really nice theatre by our standars and the private school and colleges around like WPI have nice ones as well. There are a few theatres around here as well which is nice cause I was thinking of trying to work / do an internship at one. I just got your message, I'll talk to ya more online once its fixed. Whats wrong with it exactly?

~Nick


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## Peter (Dec 31, 2004)

Alot of stuff is broken! lol 

I didnt break it, it just kinda died....

There are a few college reviews arround, if you know anything about theator @ WPI, i would really really like to read what you have to say about it (it would probably be best to put it in a new thread near the other college reviews), it is currently one of my top choices for where I want to go to college. 

There are NO theators arround here.... not even very many houses arround here... but we do have alot of trees......


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 31, 2004)

Well I don't really know a huge amount. All I know is I want to go to that school thats actually a 2 year HS and part of WPI. I know a few people who are taking theatre tech courses at WPI and are currantly a frosh there but I dunno much more outside of that. They really like it. If ya give me an e-mail I can try to send it to them and maybe they can tell you more than I can cuase thats basically as much as I know on the subject. But its also a top college choice for me as well.
~Nick


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## digitaltec (Jan 4, 2005)

I am quite curious about these SCRimmer sticks. Who are they made by and is there a website where I could see a picture of one. From what you have explained, they seem to be a interesting configuration.


Also, welcome to Controlbooth.com!


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Jan 5, 2005)

Ha ha thanks. I've posted a manual of them in another thread so you could look there. I'm looking for the link with the website right now. 

www.theflea.org/tech/docs/ lighting/scrimmer_stik_manual.pdf 

There thats the manual for one of them and feel free to ask any questions that you want, I'll be happy to answer them as best as I can.

~Nick


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## digitaltec (Jan 5, 2005)

Thanks!

It seems to me all it is, is a 4 fixture dimmer pack that is long.  It seems pretty simple and nothing really out of the ordinary. Thanks for the information, I guess if you wanted a low profile dimmer pack, that would be a good solution.


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Jan 5, 2005)

yeah thats basically it, we have I think about 20 or 30 of them hung on pipes attatched the the ceiling throughout our theatre and wings and such, and they are all chained together and go upto the booth.
~Nick


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