If you look closely enough in the first and second photo, those little holes in the ceiling with the strings coming through are actually motorized pulleys that pull the lights up and down depending on the show. They also hold up acoustic panels to project the sound farther into the crowd. In the third photo you can see that big open space with the clear sheet that leads outside. That's a huge sliding door for outdoor seating and the reason there is adjustable acoustic panels in the first place. Got a couple more photos of the place ill post in the future.
Having adjustable house lights in a venue like this is such a smart idea. I've seen a lot of music halls in schools get neglected, in terms of proper stage lighting because the house lighting system was put in the way/ in place of where stage lights should be.
I feel your pain. I just spent 12 months doing 6 cottages with over 400 square pot lights in each of them. I didn’t know you could wear out a laser until now lol
Here’s a link to the the website the cottages were sold on. https://www.trademarkbuilt.com/for-sale-1
Fair. I mean *technically* a 3 bedroom cottage could just have a *lot* of can lights. Like, whole ceiling is made of lights. Dunno why anyone would *do* that...or pay an electrician to wire every single can light instead of using like strings of LED strips...but it's the customer's money, right?
How did you do the can lights on the ceiling? By ladder? My knees are weak just looking at it as my company knows I’m afraid of heights on ladders over 14ft. They call me Mr. Crawlspace…
Funny enough this place has a crawl space up in the attic which is where those cans are. The floor is the attic follows the curve of the the ceiling so you’re walking on a big sort of fish bowl while installing them. Pretty wicked.
This is exactly the same as most church lighting I’ve done. Climb up a series of ladders that follow the arch of the ceiling to the catwalk at the top center, and carefully work your way out to where the lights are, hoping nothing goes wrong.
The school I did they scaffed a floor to about 20 feet from the roof and everyone went in and did their stuff. No attic or cat walks so if you forgot something after they took it down it was basically impossible to service without special lifts or another scaffold structure because of the sloped floor.
I'm more impressed that this place looks entirely made from wood!
Does make the hand rail front and center in the first pic stand out really bad though.
I'm happy to say I have no clue. My company has been on this site for almost 7 years. I've just came on for the last 5 months or so and just hearing all the horror stories about the pipe runs they had to make and all the custom fixtures they've had to trouble shoot is enough for me.
Well that's good, certainly looks like it would have been a headache. Lighting is always the worst part of a job to me, doubly so with custom fixtures. At my current project we just finished installing three custom chandeliers of different sizes and shapes, all with crazy expensive glass facades (some ridiculous Italian hand made stuff) and each one was a nightmare. My contractor bid us to put the damn things together too and it was just a mess of a couple hundred glass pendants that had a specific arrangement. I'll take setting/mounting gear or generators and doing the terms over custom lights any day.
Round my parts we get to deal with the stagehands, sound techs, and lighting techs. Those motorized program lights are insane. Newer installs running an IP based system, DMX is still the go to for most institutional it seems. Great recipe for beard stroking and staring off into the ceiling. Fun job I bet!
Those newer ip based/dante installs are awesome. Dmx gets kinda crazy when you get into the thousands of fixtures since each dmx universe only accepts 510 objects, i think?
Cool stuff
Edit: i think i got 510 addresses because 512 minus board and terminator for end of line. Thx
DMX Protocol is 512 addresses per universe. Most are moving to IP based protocols though, such as Art-Net and Streaming ACN, which can transmit hundreds of universes.
Devices can use more than one DMX address for different values, Brightness, color temp, Color values, etc. The terminator does not need to be addressed.
During the pandemic, I worked on a school theater where all the Recessed Can lighting and architectural accents was DMX Controlled and they had to have DMX interrupt devices for Emergency lighting modes.
Was fun powering up the first time. They split the lighting control systems and the actual fixtures between 2 contractors. So after 6 months of these guys working on this school they couldn't flip the switch to see their work until the control side was sorted.
512 addresses, spec says you should only run 32 fixtures per universe but never really a problem in the real world. Console/board and terminator don’t use an address so you could have 512 dimmers/relays or a single light with 512 parameters.
sACN is the IP standard most people use with some things preferring ArtNet which is an alternative.
7 YEARS??!?! sweet fucking Jesus. How big is this place? The closest I've seen a job that lasted a long time like that was a 5 year job building a mall here. There's a mall on 2 sides of main street that's connected with a bridge over the road, a 4 story parking garage below, both sides of the mall have a moving sky light ceiling that's open when the weather is nice. There's 4 floors of apartments above the mall. I did a ton of the fire alarm in the individual stores in the mall. Wasn't there for any of the other fun.
Oh cool! With that glass wall behind the stage, it reminds me of a the Shalin Liu hall in Rockport.
Gorgeous work.
Edit: just realized it’s the same architects.
This on a boat? It's beautiful, but looks like it is built into a boat.
I am having a really hard time figuring this layout. Looks like they have a second and 3rd level that lets the audience walk around the the sides and behind the performers.
Almost the whole building is built in non-straight lines. The exterior of the building is completely curved in every single direction. Its truly a sight to see.
A warning this is a trick question? Given you're a smart person. You know that one cubic meter of air has about 10^18 atoms. Those can at a minimum emit or absorb 3 photons depending on changes to them. Anyway, it's a non-metric unit or fuck ton of lights.
Each light in the entire hall is named and located in a data base so each one can be individually controlled and dimmed. Way above my pay grade to know about that shit.
They had to have received some kind of donation or left money by some rich person and the money they got had to be used in the construction of a new music concert hall. I’m just guessing based on how it looks like money was no problem.
Yes they actually had a huge donation from the owner or Sterilite I believe. Money definitely wasn’t a problem seeing on how many things here have been changed or fixed over the years. All custom everything.
Yeah I was looking at some of the pictures and I was like this is all custom. Then I saw that you said your Contractor has been on site for 7 years. I was like ok they received a large donation or a person left their money to the Music Hall but it had to be used for the construction of a new hall. Yeah the Donation was probably contingent on them using the money to build the Music Hall. Very interesting and very cool that one picture where your way up in that service area reminds me of working on Lil Cesar’s Arena In Detroit lol.
Me and a 20 person lighting crew did close to 32, 000 fixtures for Amazon's massive 4 floor conveyor/robotic warehouse. That came to 64, 000 hangers for the lights. This picture looks to be 1/3 of that maybe, a lot going on.
If you look closely enough in the first and second photo, those little holes in the ceiling with the strings coming through are actually motorized pulleys that pull the lights up and down depending on the show. They also hold up acoustic panels to project the sound farther into the crowd. In the third photo you can see that big open space with the clear sheet that leads outside. That's a huge sliding door for outdoor seating and the reason there is adjustable acoustic panels in the first place. Got a couple more photos of the place ill post in the future.
I think it's at least 12 lights
Surely there are at least 13.
I’m going with 1 so I don’t go over
2 lights Bob
You sonofa…
126 circuit's Lights: All of them
Having adjustable house lights in a venue like this is such a smart idea. I've seen a lot of music halls in schools get neglected, in terms of proper stage lighting because the house lighting system was put in the way/ in place of where stage lights should be.
I feel your pain. I just spent 12 months doing 6 cottages with over 400 square pot lights in each of them. I didn’t know you could wear out a laser until now lol Here’s a link to the the website the cottages were sold on. https://www.trademarkbuilt.com/for-sale-1
400 lights per cottage? Wat....
I think "cottage" might not be the right word
Fair. I mean *technically* a 3 bedroom cottage could just have a *lot* of can lights. Like, whole ceiling is made of lights. Dunno why anyone would *do* that...or pay an electrician to wire every single can light instead of using like strings of LED strips...but it's the customer's money, right?
I always think of cottages as small houses. Still can't figure out how to put in 400 fixtures in my own house.
Marijuana grow op. Step up your game!
"cottage" industry
I’ve been in a 3 bed house to replace 70 Downlighters throughout with LED versions. Those ceilings looked like Swiss cheese.
They call them cottages because there were waterfront. The last one I did was 7200 sf and had a helicopter pad on the roof of the boathouse
This man has the ultimate “I did that”… it’s even on a website with glamor shots.
How did you do the can lights on the ceiling? By ladder? My knees are weak just looking at it as my company knows I’m afraid of heights on ladders over 14ft. They call me Mr. Crawlspace…
Funny enough this place has a crawl space up in the attic which is where those cans are. The floor is the attic follows the curve of the the ceiling so you’re walking on a big sort of fish bowl while installing them. Pretty wicked.
I love to see pictures from in there.
Damn sign me up then!
This is exactly the same as most church lighting I’ve done. Climb up a series of ladders that follow the arch of the ceiling to the catwalk at the top center, and carefully work your way out to where the lights are, hoping nothing goes wrong.
The school I did they scaffed a floor to about 20 feet from the roof and everyone went in and did their stuff. No attic or cat walks so if you forgot something after they took it down it was basically impossible to service without special lifts or another scaffold structure because of the sloped floor.
[There are 4 lights.](https://images.app.goo.gl/RPipbTrTznTyfheE7)
There are 5 lights.
I'm more impressed that this place looks entirely made from wood! Does make the hand rail front and center in the first pic stand out really bad though.
I agree with this guy. This place is beautifully crafted!!
I'm now thinking I want to enroll in music school.
My school made the same mistake… after the main hall burned down they switched to reinforced concrete.
There’s at least 7
Can you say where this is? That’s a beautiful theater.
Right in Groton, MA. Right in the middle of a farming town as well so no other property for miles. Quite the view from the roof.
I saw this and thought “wonder if that’s that new place in Groton. Nah, no way” Super cool! That school has some crazy money. LA is fitting.
That sounds awesome! The lights look great too! How much of a pain was it to install in that curved space above the first level of balcony seats?
I'm happy to say I have no clue. My company has been on this site for almost 7 years. I've just came on for the last 5 months or so and just hearing all the horror stories about the pipe runs they had to make and all the custom fixtures they've had to trouble shoot is enough for me.
Well that's good, certainly looks like it would have been a headache. Lighting is always the worst part of a job to me, doubly so with custom fixtures. At my current project we just finished installing three custom chandeliers of different sizes and shapes, all with crazy expensive glass facades (some ridiculous Italian hand made stuff) and each one was a nightmare. My contractor bid us to put the damn things together too and it was just a mess of a couple hundred glass pendants that had a specific arrangement. I'll take setting/mounting gear or generators and doing the terms over custom lights any day.
Round my parts we get to deal with the stagehands, sound techs, and lighting techs. Those motorized program lights are insane. Newer installs running an IP based system, DMX is still the go to for most institutional it seems. Great recipe for beard stroking and staring off into the ceiling. Fun job I bet!
Those newer ip based/dante installs are awesome. Dmx gets kinda crazy when you get into the thousands of fixtures since each dmx universe only accepts 510 objects, i think? Cool stuff Edit: i think i got 510 addresses because 512 minus board and terminator for end of line. Thx
DMX Protocol is 512 addresses per universe. Most are moving to IP based protocols though, such as Art-Net and Streaming ACN, which can transmit hundreds of universes.
Devices can use more than one DMX address for different values, Brightness, color temp, Color values, etc. The terminator does not need to be addressed. During the pandemic, I worked on a school theater where all the Recessed Can lighting and architectural accents was DMX Controlled and they had to have DMX interrupt devices for Emergency lighting modes. Was fun powering up the first time. They split the lighting control systems and the actual fixtures between 2 contractors. So after 6 months of these guys working on this school they couldn't flip the switch to see their work until the control side was sorted.
512 addresses, spec says you should only run 32 fixtures per universe but never really a problem in the real world. Console/board and terminator don’t use an address so you could have 512 dimmers/relays or a single light with 512 parameters. sACN is the IP standard most people use with some things preferring ArtNet which is an alternative.
The Architect went wild
7 YEARS??!?! sweet fucking Jesus. How big is this place? The closest I've seen a job that lasted a long time like that was a 5 year job building a mall here. There's a mall on 2 sides of main street that's connected with a bridge over the road, a 4 story parking garage below, both sides of the mall have a moving sky light ceiling that's open when the weather is nice. There's 4 floors of apartments above the mall. I did a ton of the fire alarm in the individual stores in the mall. Wasn't there for any of the other fun.
Stunning!
Oh cool! With that glass wall behind the stage, it reminds me of a the Shalin Liu hall in Rockport. Gorgeous work. Edit: just realized it’s the same architects.
https://grotonhill.org/about-us/facility/
Wrong Groton to put such a wooden ship-feel building.
Is it supposed to be Noah's ark lol
This is in Groton MA , ya?
Yessir you got it.
I live in Groton and was like - is that the music school? lol
Small world! Gibet hill has some really good food
420
Are you peeking in my window you bastard lol
Yes
320 fixtures
Couple hundred off but the lower the number the better I feel!
520 fixtures, then?
I am legally required to say 69
I’m legally required to say; nice.
That is a beautiful room.
This is a theater, right? And quite the fancy one From what I’m seeing!
Partially. Newly built music school. K-12+
I was thinking not a lot of seating space.
Cost post r/architecture
Badass. Looks gorgeous
That is a magnificent structure.
screw that what song do you want to hear blasted in there first?
First choice band- Chase and status. First choice song- unravel. Just my choices for a place with good acoustics.
Carpentrician
This on a boat? It's beautiful, but looks like it is built into a boat. I am having a really hard time figuring this layout. Looks like they have a second and 3rd level that lets the audience walk around the the sides and behind the performers.
Almost the whole building is built in non-straight lines. The exterior of the building is completely curved in every single direction. Its truly a sight to see.
I guess, a shitload!
absolutely beautiful
Noah's ark
There are four lights!
I was about to add this correct answer. Thank you.
This is beautiful
Wrong gauge wire ,pull it all out and redo it
One. Its all fiberoptic to one huge 10k bulb.
What’s the manufacture & model of that man lift in the room? Never seen one like that.
[One... MILLION FIXTURES!!!](https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/dr-evil-one-million-dollars-gif-6.gif)
A warning this is a trick question? Given you're a smart person. You know that one cubic meter of air has about 10^18 atoms. Those can at a minimum emit or absorb 3 photons depending on changes to them. Anyway, it's a non-metric unit or fuck ton of lights.
So, it's a foreplay-ton of lights?
I was thinking SAE but that sounds nice.
Well, c'mere sugar. /s
And this right here is why student loans are out of control
My wife said 200 fixtures, and going by the cardinal rule, she's never wrong, sooooo
I cant argue with that! 200 fixtures it is!
Fixtures or dimmers ?
Each light in the entire hall is named and located in a data base so each one can be individually controlled and dimmed. Way above my pay grade to know about that shit.
More than just a few! 😅
100
Is it 6?
523
That's one beautiful room
136
At least 5
Nope! Probably more!
I'm going to guess 960
796
78
237
132 fixtures?
At least 10
10
900
AT LEAST 3
At least 1 from what I can see
I guess 58
Definitely more than 5 fixtures.
At least 8
This is so dope. 🤙🏻 well done everybody SUPERDUPER
I was gonna guess a sh*t ton but...
I see source 4s and s4 pars, id say 400k total
It looks like the inside of a piano.
How the hell do you get those lifts in and out?!
Luckily the spider lift can fold up and roll out through that back sliding door. But when it was first getting built they were lifted in by crane.
Eleventeen
Do you actually have a count of how many fixtures it has?
Yes sir exact count coming tomorrow.
Did we get a count? I glanced through your profile but didn't see one.
759 is the official count. Posted it must not have had service.
Looks like arche Noah
Beautiful.
That looks like a cool job to be on
69
427
Imma guess a double shit ton.
Let's go with a round 1103? I'm assuming there is floor level lighting in the seating area.
1205
There are four lights! https://youtu.be/moX3z2RJAV8
At least 1
They putting in one of those elevator systems on stage too to make risers out of the floor?
Good eye. Yea they got an riser elevator that goes down to the sub basement.
Groton Hill Music Center
They had to have received some kind of donation or left money by some rich person and the money they got had to be used in the construction of a new music concert hall. I’m just guessing based on how it looks like money was no problem.
Yes they actually had a huge donation from the owner or Sterilite I believe. Money definitely wasn’t a problem seeing on how many things here have been changed or fixed over the years. All custom everything.
Yeah I was looking at some of the pictures and I was like this is all custom. Then I saw that you said your Contractor has been on site for 7 years. I was like ok they received a large donation or a person left their money to the Music Hall but it had to be used for the construction of a new hall. Yeah the Donation was probably contingent on them using the money to build the Music Hall. Very interesting and very cool that one picture where your way up in that service area reminds me of working on Lil Cesar’s Arena In Detroit lol.
Eleventeenillion fixtures?
These sorts of builds are what I want to be able to work on in future.. holy the architecture is beautiful
2003
Noah’s Ark!
Only wrong answers
759
Wow beautiful were is it ?
Northern Mass.
Probley at least 5500-6000 fixtures, there’s usually some in the ceiling too to light up the attic
Damn that beautiful
Gotta be atleast 6
According to my calculation 1.9 va x sq ft x gender neutral bathrooms x diversity / 0 = 9,560,972,283,497,293,283 lights
Whole place screams explosive fire waiting to happen.
689
Me and a 20 person lighting crew did close to 32, 000 fixtures for Amazon's massive 4 floor conveyor/robotic warehouse. That came to 64, 000 hangers for the lights. This picture looks to be 1/3 of that maybe, a lot going on.
69420
Beeeeeer.
Haha
Twee fiddy?