We hold music theme nights at our local outdoor ice rink on Friday nights. We turn off the normal 8000 watts of arena lightning to create a more club type mood. We have a limited budget and so far we run a disco ball / pin spot and use a Micro Galaxian, which is interesting, but only covers a small area. We want to grow this event and add more lighting each year. I'm looking for lighting recommendations for this application.
One of the challenges is that this is a large space. The ice sheet is 80' x 200'. The rink is open to the sky, but there is a roof that runs along the edge of most of the length of the ice from which lighting can be attached. The roof edge is 25 to 30 feet above the rink. Seems we will need fairly powerful lights to handle these distances and large area.
On the plus side, the ice makes for a nice surface for light to shine upon. It's white and reflective and shows color nicely.
There are speaker locations up along the edge of the roof. Currently the disco ball and Galaxian laser are near center ice, near a speaker. The Galaxian in sound active mode is triggered by the speaker. This avoids having to rig everything in DMX, but I am open to that idea in the future as we add more.
I was considering the H2O DMX pro for this year's investment. We need something that will cover a fairly large area and add more ambient light. I figure that from 30' up and with the 52 degree lens, I can cover an area at least 30' wide (but larger because it will be shining across the ice to some degree)
I could also see investing in led par cans at intervals along the edges. Which type are the brightest?
I could also see some moving head type fixtures to roam around the ice.
Any and all advice is welcome. I'm a total noob on this stuff and only know enough to be dangerous. We can only afford about $500- $700 per year.
Thanks in advance!
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