Dear In My Element,
The answer is… it depends… on your instrument inventory, whether you have a rep plot, whether you have LEDs, whether you have moving lights, what your education program consists of (do you have a CTE tech theatre course, or do students teach themselves how to use the equipment, or anything in between), and what your staffing situation is like (do you have someone on staff who is familiar with, and comfortable with, programming light boards).
The Element is a very common board provided for high school theatres these days (usually blindly, without regard to how the theatre program is going to be run, but that’s for another post). It is (it can be, with some programming) a good cross between a manual board and a computer board. However, an Element is limited for moving lights. If you have LEDS (plan to/know how to use them) the Element is appropriate.
The limitations of the Element come if your theatre is run like a “roadhouse”, with a variety of events/classes using the facility each year: band/orchestra concerts, choir concerts, two or three productions a year, variety or “Mr”-type shows, class meetings, parent meetings, the list goes on and on, and then there’s also any outside events if your theatre is rented out (your theatre doesn’t have to be rented to the public in order to essentially be running like a “roadhouse” if your school events are many and varied).
Most of these events don’t have the luxury of tech rehearsals. For your plays/musicals the Element is a great board for programming cues (although there are a few quirks, but mostly all good). But, if the majority of your events each year are usually fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, and need to be run manually (especially because events are notorious for changing their mind about their running order on the night without telling the board op(!)), then the Element is not a good board for manual operation. The Express is much better for manual operation – mostly because it has 96 faders (one for each channel) plus subs (and you can have more sub ‘pages’ if you want – for instance, a page of subs for standard events, a page of subs for concerts, a page of subs for dance recitals), plus the ability to program cues (you can also use LEDs on the Express, but it’s a bit more of a process to program them in, but it can be done).
The reason why the Element is not a good board for manually running a show is because, while you can use 120 channels and 40 subs there are only 40 faders to control these all 160 these. There is a little knob at the top-middle of the board, where you switch between Channels 1-40, 41-80, 81-120 and Subs 1-40. That means that if you have more than 40 channels then you have to switch around to access the other channels. If you needed to bring up, say, Channels 1 – 10 (for your Areas 1-10, because you have a rep plot and have patched accordingly and aren’t running a 1-1 patch….), then you switch the knob to 1-40 and use the 1st through 10th faders, but then if you need to add in a special, say Channel 52, you have to switch the knob to 41-80 and use the 12th fader). But then, you need to bring up a special on Channel 44, but you will see that that fader is already up, because that’s the 4th fader, but you used that for Area 4, so the fader if physically already up, so you have to bring it down, and then you can use it to control Channel 44 and bring it down again when your done with that special, but then there’s a down fader for Channel 4, which is up…. Then when you have to bring out channels, when you have one fader controlling several channels… Got it? Needless to say, there’s a LOT of switching back and forth. Your channels and subs aren’t all laid out in front of you like they are on an Express.
There is a way around all this switching back and forth with the Element – either have a small rep plot that only utilizes 40 channels, or utilize your subs. If you are often running concerts and presentations/meetings and so on, then put channels 1 -10 on one sub, and perhaps another sub is channels 1-5 for just the front of the apron, or 1, 2,4 and 5 so that channel 3 doesn’t light your projector screen for presentations. Also, if you have a lot of dance recitals, or variety shows with bands and dance, you can create subs which have color ‘looks’ – a mellow blue sub, a jazzy amber and lav sub, a bright amber sub, all sorts of colors. You can do this with the Express too which makes it more versatile. And if you don’t have LEDs’, doing this essentially turns the Element into an Express, so why spend the money on an Element.
Bottom line is – if you have to run the majority of events in your theatre ‘manually’ (ie: not programming and rehearsing cues), and/or if you don’t have LEDs, and/or if you are not so tech-savvy, the Express is more suited to your needs. If you have a lot of events that have tech rehearsals and you can program – and practice – cues, and/or if you have LEDs (get an Ion if you have moving lights), and/or if you are tech savvy and can teach, and re-teach, your students each year on all of the intricacies of the Element, then use the Element.
