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Black Light has worked with one of the biggest construction companies in the UK, Laing O’Rourke, to provide schools in Perth and Kinross with state-of-the-art cinema and theatre equipment. The £1m project highlights our technical expertise and the importance we place on consultation. Thanks to the skill of our team, eight schools now have exceptional new facilities that can be enjoyed by both their pupils and their local communities.

The project brief involved four primary and four secondary schools in rural Perth and Kinross. We were asked to provide all the schools with full drama school facilities (lighting, sound and AV systems) and to turn their assembly halls into high-spec. performance venues. We were also asked to provide the secondary schools with cinema systems (including 7m-wide projection screens) and fully-featured sound recording studios. When we were presented with the opportunity to get involved with this exciting project, we turned a detailed and technically challenging project brief into a costed proposal in less than ten days, so meeting the client’s strict deadline.

Consultancy for the project took place over an 18-month period, during which we undertook meetings with project managers from the Council, teachers and representatives from the school and the local community. Our main priorities during the consultation process were managing expectations and being honest about what could be achieved. As with all our work, we are happy to be challenged to be innovative, but always focus on producing a system on budget that works.

Creating cinemas and theatres in the same space

The project involved a number of technical challenges, including how to get spaces to function as both cinemas and theatres. These have specific and sometimes conflicting requirements. For example, cinemas require 5:1 surround sound (in these schools, we’ve actually installed 11 surround speakers!), whereas Theatre and Presentation-use needs sound that appears to come from the same location as the presenter in order to be intelligible. We solved this by installing a single high-specification 11-speaker system, and a very clever controller. At a touch of a button, the configuration of the room is changed from a cinema set-up, to a proper theatre set-up, thus providing ease of use (of a very complex) system for the end users.

Another challenge was presented by the fact that the primary school halls are all used for ball games. This meant that we had to develop innovative lifting mechanisms for the lighting rigs we installed. These feature electrically operated Pile Wind hoists that allow the whole truss, lighting, AV and sound systems to be hoisted out of harm’s way, and dropped back to the optimal height when in use – all at the flick of a switch!

The schools will end up with some of the best theatre systems in the country and fantastic cinemas that provide all the experience of a fully-spec’d multi-plex.

Amongst the equipment supplied and installed by Black Light were the following:

• Prolyte X30V Box-Section Truss
• Andolite Internally Wired Lighting Bars, Cord Patch Panels and Facilities Panels
• Zero88 Chilli Dimming and Outstation Systems
• Zero88 Betapack 3 Dimmer Racks
• Zero88 Jester Lighting Control Desks
• Selecon Acclaim Fresnel, Axial Zoomspot, and Hui Floodlight luminaires
• Yamaha IF-series Loudspeakers
• Yamaha PC-series Amplifiers
• Yamaha DME24N DSP Processors
• Yamaha Blu-Ray Players
• Tascam CD/MD/MP3 Playback
• Soundcraft LX7ii and Phonic Powerpod 1860+ Audio Mixers
• Shure + AKG Microphones, inc. SM57, SM58 and PGX-series Radio Mics
• Sanyo XF70 LCD Projectors (9000 lumens)
• Yamaha S112V Loudspeakers
• Tannoy V8 and i5 Loudspeakers
• Tecpro Stage Comms Equipment
• Show relay and paging system based round Cloud Mixer/Matrix
• EEE Unitrack and E-Rail Curtain Tracks

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