The Timelapse Theatre - Planning n' Build Log - Page 7

Blammo! New video!

Lighting the Theater


Here I am again. This time I'm installing 21 (!!!) recessed lights in the soffits I built in the last video.

The room had nine 6" can lights wired in three zones when I started. I added soffits around the perimeter and installed 21 more 4" lights. I did this because the room is going to be *dark* once its painted.

The new lights are wired in four different zones (legs).
1. The front 4 lights (behind the screen - with the groovy colored LED bulbs, maaaaan),
2. the side 12,
3. the rear five, and
4. the nine overhead.

I'm zoning them this way so that I can kill front lights (almost always), kill back lights (keep from shining on screen), and dim sides for ambient light during movies.

All of these will be LED so that there is a minimum of heat added to the room (not to mention power consumption!).

I'm planning on getting a 4-zone Lutron Grafik Eye QS to control all this mess but they're kinda pricey so it's going to be dimmer switches for a little while.

Thanks for watching!

Yeah, you and me both! Thanks for the compliment!

I wish I could work that fast too! Unfortunately I'm painfully slow at getting this thing built! I just wanna watch a movie, man!!!! Thanks for your kind words!

Thanks, Brad! I'm really glad that you like the videos!

I just skimmed your thread and WOW! What a palace! Your attention to detail is great. It's so great to see another woodworker blundering through a project like I'm doing. :-)

I lost my soda when I first cut that footage! I told him that he looked like Dash from 'The Incredibles'. The part with the measuring tape cracks me up the most because I wasn't paying attention when he did that. My parenting that day amounted to "don't touch the sharp tools"! He was really excited to build some things for the camera. The CinemaScope cropping cut some of that out, unfortunately. It's hard to shoot in 'Scope!

Thank you! That's quite a compliment considering the bevy of fine programming available like "Storage Wars" and "America's Next Top Murderer"! I actually know relatively little about TV. We haven't had cable in over a decade and we haven't even had an antenna since we moved into the new house in May. My limit of TV knowledge is what is on Netflix streaming... :-)

Have the kids seen all seven videos? This latest one is my favorite but the others are good too.

Thanks, Nick! Every time I look at footage that guest stars my son I see just how SLOW I am! It reminds me of that scene in Trainspotting where Ewan McGreggor is sitting at the bar while the whole world blurs around him.

Thanks, stockmonkey2000 and cuzed2!

It's hard to keep motivation up. I had the chance to go and visit Tony123's theater this past weekend and it was such a motivator! Wow! Yeah! His theater is AWESOME! I can't wait to get back in my own space and start making stuff happen!

Visible results have helped keep me motivated lately. Seeing those lights turn on is SO NICE. My wife and I are talking about what to do next and we think that I should run the necessary wiring and conduit and then we're going to start installing acoustic treatments and work on prepping the ceiling.

We are going to scrape all of the popcorn off the ceiling before we paint it black. I don't like scraping popcorn but it's SO satisfying when it's done.

After THAT I'm probably going to set about getting the screen wall built!

I forgot to mention that I ordered some equipment!!!!


I ordered a handful of Neutrik 5-pin DINs!



These stupid little buggers are what allow Meridian speakers to talk to each other. Meridian speakers, for those uninitiated, are digital active speakers. Each speaker has its own integrated amplifiers and DSP engine.

You connect these speakers to a special surround processor that has SPDIF coaxial digital outputs for each channel pair (Left/Right, Center/Sub, Rear L/Rear R) and then you daisy chain a communications cable to each speaker so that they all change volume in sync. Far out. Incidentally, I'm going to be pulling speaker wire along with the COMMS and SPDIF cabling for future upgrades.

I have been thinking about my walls lately. I'm not sure how much absorption I'll need on my walls and how high up to run it but I'm going to bring the RTA home tonight and play around.

Here are a few mockups I've been working on that show the general idea of my plan as it stands now. I have been looking at the plan of hanging big absorbers on the walls covered in photo-printed fabric and I'm not as crazy about it as I was when I drew it.

Here's a new idea.

It's ridiculously easy for me to make carved MDF panels like this



So I'm thinking that I'll run 1" Linacoustic up the walls about 40 inches (but starting above the outlets since I have a metric butt-ton of outlets down there and I'll be damned if I'm going to frame out and cut fabric for each of them). Above the Linacoustic I think I'll abut 1" carved panels (3/4 MDF + the Z-clips = 1")

Behold (not to scale):



I was thinking about using FabricMate track and GOM to cover the Linacoustic. I will probably leave the MDF in its natural state but painting is certainly an option.

Soooo waddya think? GroovyWalls are actually easier and less expensive than GroovyCeiling which, frankly, I'm talking myself out of. GroovyWalls are a replacement for the GroovyCeiling idea. I LOVE how the light from the new soffit lights creates dramatic shadows on the sample I cut!

I'm not 100% sure what you mean about being able to "see through them" Do you mean the MDF portion? The dark parts on the MDF frontal view are caused by shadows cast by the lines above them from lighting in the soffits.

The way I'm planning you can't see through the MDF pieces. The MDF carving will be opaque because it doesn't cut all the way through the material. I could though, paint the wall black behind it and cut through the MDF. I hadn't thought of that. It would be bad ASS if you then put some colored light behind the panels!

I think that the only acoustic difference between the sculptured/carved MDF and plain drywall will be that there will be far more random diffusion.

Thanks, Brad. I've got a 12x12 piece of the MDF carving so I'll put it up next to the fabric swatch tonight and see what I like.

edit: and yes, a CNC router. I use a ShopBot.

Yikes! That stuff is awesome!

It's amazing how quickly these exotic sheetgoods get expensive. I have used bamboo plywood a bunch and that crap is $240 for a 4x6 sheet!

The nice thing about this MDF technique is that I can do it for the cost of the MDF... $35 for a 4x8' sheet.

That was pretty much my hunch also. It's not like they're skyline panels or anything. The point of the MDF is 100% aesthetic.

I'm glad you like the looks of it! I know it's hard to visualize when I was trying to explain it when we were in your theater, Tony. It didn't click for my wife until I handed her the 12x12" piece and said "See?!?" and she was like "YEAH! Let's do it! JUST LIKE THAT!"

Thanks! I think that it will take about an hour to an hour and a half to cut a 4x8' sheet.