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Another Mod's View on The Gafftaper Method Part 2

Grog12 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:00:51 GMT

Part 1

* Gobo animation wheel with full movement/direction control... buy a Rosco Infinity Effects
* 9 static and 6 indexable rotating gobos plus open... buy a gobo rotator. GAM, City Theatrical, and Wybron make multi-gobo rotator tray devices
* Interchangeable 3-facet rotating prism... City Theatrical makes a static version so it's not quite the same but do you really need it?
I�m covering these 3 together because it�s all kind of the same rant.
Let�s get this straight. To be a little crass, I�m a gobo whore. I love them. I�d put one in every single light if I could get away with it. I like metal, I like dichroic, I LOVE having 2 gobo wheels so I can layer them on top of each other and then run the focus back forth focusing on the colored glass more for one scene and then the metal cut out for the next. Two slow spinning gobo�s moving in opposite directions is one of greatest tricks ever. And honestly anyone who asks you if you need a rotating prism hasn�t really used one. You mean I can have 3 gobo�s rotating for the price of one? Sign me up. Texture is one of the most under/poorly used elements of theatre. Too often it�s relegated too crappy logo images on the cyc, haze candy and �the forest scene� by designers who haven�t taken the time to look at the lighting around them on a day to day basis.

* Strobe effect 2 - 10 Hz, pulse effects, instant open and blackout... buy a strobe cap
As a designer I�m not a big fan of strobing in theatre. I have a hard time doing it right whether I use a cap or a mover. So do most designers. That being said, if I buy strobe cap that�s one instrument out of my inventory that could be used somewhere else. Also strobe caps aren�t designed to strobe patterns. Trust me I�ve tried.

* Pan and tilt range of 540�/246�... Rosco I-cue or Apollo Right Arm
I-cue is limited to 230/57 Right Arm is 340/270. While the tilt on the Right Arm is better the Pan on both can be limiting to your options of where you want to hang them. Or when the director says��So just write a sequence to follow the actor around the stage.�
Also if memory servers the I-cue doesn�t work as well with instruments above 26 degrees.
The Right Arm, when it comes to hanging is a little bulky for my tastes, granted so are most movers. Hang a mover, save a circuit have more than just pan and tilt to use. I like the product a lot, and will use it in a pinch but given my druthers�

* Variable fan control for quieter operation... usually not a problem for components
Not really a problem for movers either unless they're turned on when the sound guy is there. It�s a matter of perspective really. Scrollers in my book are a lot louder than any mover, especially when you don�t program their scrolls to take at least 10 seconds.

* Modular design for easy maintenance and servicing... even easier and less-expensive with components
Only if you have the know-how. Same goes for movers. Though I�ve found that theatres of every level people are more likely to let component pieces sit in a state of disrepair than moving lights.

* Electronic ballast with hot lamp restrike and flicker free light... not a problem with a conventional incandescent light source
This is actually a really great feature period. And with conventional light sources you don�t get the punch of a arc lamp.

Looking at the other principals
1)Don't spend your money on DMX toys until you have enough conventional gear to properly light a show. Please god, don�t buy anything until you have a fully fleshed out conventional inventory. This is just common sense. Period.

2) Don't buy movers until you have all the components and a proper light board to control them. (This one is a little more controversial). A good programmer can program on a Express. But you know what, I wouldn�t. Time is money, and by god it takes a lot of time. But here�s another thought, when you do have the board to control them, you�ll have multiple fixtures to attach to one light unless you create your own profile for that S4 with a Seachanger, I-Cue and Twinspin, as opposed to one profile for your Mac700

3) If you have covered 1 and 2... you can think about buying Moving Lights, but you still need to answer these last two questions:
a) Do you have the ongoing money source to pay for the upkeep (the lamps are very expensive!)? Good sound advice.

b) Do you have the staff to maintain them correctly? This is the only other principal that I have a little bit of an issue with. You need the staff to maintain component pieces as well. Again it�s always easier to let component pieces sit in a state of disrepair.

When all is said and done there is no right or wrong answer in the theatre. The Method does work. You need to look at your situation and make the right choice for you. Period. Don�t be wowed by everything a moving light can do and drool over it like a puppy dog with a bone. Don�t dream small because of your budget. Figure out the best situation for your designs and your money and make informed educated choices.

Another Mod's View on The Gafftaper Method Part 1

Grog12 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:55:58 GMT

You'll see a lot of Posters, Moderators and Senior Team Members posting about The Method here at CB. For those of you unfamiliar with it go take a look at the Collaborative Article on the subject , its cool I'll wait.

While the tenants and principles of this method make a lot of sense, especially for people who have limited budgets and/or limited experience in lighting, I overall am not a proponent of it.

Before you read this further know these things:

1. This is my personal opinion. That doesn't make it right or wrong for your situation. It is merely me opining and critiquing based on my perspective.

2. I have a large amount of respect for Gafftaper and the other Mod/Senior Team here. If I didn't I would have left CB a long time ago and never would have become a Mod myself. My critique is of The Method not of the individuals.

3. The Method is primarily aimed at schools and community theatre. While I understand the budget limitations of both, I think it�s necessary to always strive towards the best possible situation in a theatre regardless of size. Dream big first, deal with budget second and cut back where you have too. Monetarily you might not have the budget for full scale moving lights. So don�t get tied up in them. This is a principal of The Method that I agree with most. But the world isn�t black and white. If you find yourself in the position too buy 5 MAC700s or 20 Seachangers, 2 gobo rotators, 2 Infinity Effects, 4 Right Arms, 4 I-Cues, and 2 DMX Irises then you need to choose for yourself which is going to be most useful for how you design in the long run.

4. First and foremost I'm a Lighting Designer. I work as an electrician, a programmer and as a Technical Director to pay the bills. But when it all comes down to it I'm a Designer first and last.

Why do I say these things? Well I've been around the interwebs enough to know that people will flame bait and say stupid crap and misinterpret anything they so wish. What can I say I play a lot of video games.

On to the matter at hand.

When I have the opportunity to use "intelligent" fixtures I'm a rather picky person. I find myself longing for features that what I have hung in the air doesn�t have. It drives me crazy. I've hung backlight washes of Studio Color's and halfway through the Q'ing process wished they were Studio Spots because dang a backlight gobo wash would make this scene better. I've hung Mac 500's as "refocus able specials" and kicked myself for not hanging something with CMY because honestly the Mac500 stock colors suck and we just didn't have the budget for new colors in the wheel. It�s just never enough to sate my creative palette. Yes I plan out moments and what I want the movers to do before I sit down at the board, but danged if my best flashes of inspiration don't happen during the Q'ing process. And if the light doesn't have the feature, then that idea is out the window.

Looking through The Method CA you'll notice them using the Mac700 as a reference point for features. I'm going to stick to this standard, look at their critique and add my rebuttal. (We're looking at the profile unit not the wash unit. I�m going to group some of them together out of order as my thoughts on several features overlap.

* 700 W short arc discharge lamp... Bright and higher color temperature than the rest of your lamps. But this also means it will not blend well with the rest of your lighting rig. How much do these lamps cost compared to an HPL?
Color temperature is not something to be afraid of but something to embrace. Something I always find lacking is a little extra pop in the color temperature of my lights. HPL�s run in the range of 3200k (that�s Kelvin not short hand for thousand) movers run in the range of 5000-6000k, the sun itself runs in the 5000-7000k range. Despite the fact that most of us spend our time under artificial lighting our eyes are most attuned to the suns light by way of thousands of years of exposure to it.
Get to the point Grog.
The point is this, our theatrical lamps by design lack something that the human eye craves . The CT of movers helps give our conventional that boost, especially for outdoor scenes. When balancing with your conventional for an indoor scene a good chunk of movers have variable color correction. The Mac700 profile adheres to The Method as it doesn�t have either variable color correction or a color correction wheel.
While we�re on the subject another way around this problem is to hang a down blue wash or a front blue boost. Granted this eats up conventional and dimmers, and is also a topic for another blog.

* CMY color mixing system... buy a Seachanger
Technically a Seachanger is CMYG, but that�s for another blog. Seachangers are relativity easy to install with a little know how. Granted afterwards, if you�ve made it a permanent change, you�re stuck storing the rear housing assemblies that are left over. Also this eats into your conventional inventory. And while CMY on conventional is nice I find myself missing the punch from a discharge lamp for the saturated colors. Also if you have a fine inventory but no S4�s�.well better luck next time.

* 8 position color wheel plus open... buy a Seachanger or color mixer or color scroller
You�ve already read my thoughts on Seachangers ect. You also know I�m not the largest fan of Color wheels by now. Honestly I find them limiting. Color scrollers suffer from the same limitations as color wheels in that you�re stuck with a finite number of colors. Custom Scrolls also get expensive, and changing them out is a hassle as well if you don�t know what you�re doing. There�s also the age old battle of making sure 20% is really Color #3 and not Color #3 with a bit of #4 because the scroller isn�t aligned properly. Time is money friends. One of my all time favorite things is mixing color live onstage, with CMY fixtures, with RGB cycs. Sometimes the gel manufactures just don�t have what I want. Or I don�t have what I want in stock and the time to go pick it up.

* Motorized zoom and focus... okay, we can't do the zoom... but City Theatrical makes a remote focus device and a DMX Iris
* Motorized iris... City Theatrical DMX Iris
Another feature that I love. I�m a gobo fanatic, love changing the size and focus of them. There�s also another issue they didn�t talk about�automated shutters or shapers, but alas it�s hard to find a light with everything. You usually dump the iris or the zoom for automated shutters and honestly I�d rather fuzz the light out then use a shaper to get it off the set.

* Mechanical dimming... no problem it's called a dimmer
True�but if I can have a light that runs off of constant power that can CMY, refocus with out an electrician, change gobos ect. AND have a spare dimmer so I don�t have too 2-fer my sidelight wash, I�m a happy guy. Lighting Designers, much like Chefs, are all about control. The more individual control I have over lights the better. So to get full washes/area lights ect on to their own dimmer is a big plus in my book.
Also I like having as many paint brushes in my bag as I can get. So having the conventional wash with a mover that can bend to my hearts desire helps me to make my directors and other designers happy.

Part 2

New Blog

Ikevis — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:10:48 GMT

Maybe I will use this sometime...but not now.

We have blogs? Cool.

gafftapegreenia — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:09:33 GMT

This is a blog test. I might actually be using this blog for a class cause I"m cool like that.

Ooohh.....shiny

avkid — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:59:36 GMT

Silly people gave me a blog.

Renderings of Theatre front.

Van — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:09:53 GMT

So these are some Ray traced Renders of the front of the theatre. I'm still learning how to use Kerkythea and it's a difficult, no instructions included program, but hey it's free!
Here's a link to my Picasaweb folder, thumb nails below

Faster Fiber

dvsDave — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:40:18 GMT

I had to call Verizon today to have my FIOS service moved to my new place.

My old place has the base FIOS plan of 5 Mbps up / 2 Mbps down. Apparently the new base plan is 15/5 and it's cheaper!!!! :lol:

Best phone call I've made all day :twisted:

Wow ! what a week!

Van — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:34:38 GMT

So my First full week back at work after a three week furlough! Can't say I didn't make up for lost time. This last week was supposed to be the week that I received drawings for our first show of the season, All My Sons. On a quick side note, I just want to say I'm so completely Jazzed about finally getting to do this show. AMS is my all time favorite Miller piece and, I feel his most relevant in modern times. While Death of a Salesman will always be an American classic I think there are a lot more timely topics covered in AMS. Anyway, I got my drawings and as part of our over all austerity program the size of our sets has really been reduced. I was actually able to get all my working drawings cranked out in just a couple of days. I got materials ordered, delivered and received and started installing a new masonite floor on our main stage deck. In addition to getting all this done I was asked by our Managing director to put together / design a solution to our new front of the building dilemma. Our new front has a covered U-shaped driveway, perfect for Valet parking. Well when we renovated out new lobby two years ago some plans were made to turn the big curved wall into a sort of Cyclorama, to receive color washes and possibly video projection. Well we ran short of money and time and the most we got was a S4 HMI fixture with an Apollo glass gobo of our Logo mounted in it. We had some old Colotran mini-zooms lying around that the ME didn't want so we hung them as well. Over the last couple of years we would change gobos according to the season, or, if we could find something relevant we install special gobos for the run of a show. The hang positions are outdoors they are very well covered and in no way exposed to direct "weather" but the liquid atmosphere of Oregon finally got to the mini-zooms and they all gave up the ghost at the end of last season. No parts availible for them so no extra gobo looks, just a big white wall with our logo on it.
I did some measuring, consulted some old, and recent, posts on CB did some thinking some scheming and consulting with our scenic designer made a call to Gordon Perlman, who spec'd out whole dimming system and helped oversee the installation and came up with an idea. We're going to install three small video projectors and design some really cool graphics and visuals to shoot on the wall. At present the idea is to have one on the most visible, but smallest available projection area, and then I'm going to combine two on the other wider area. Luckily all the power < constant> and dimming circuits are already installed. conduit and boxes were install for low-voltage applications but I need to pull cable in them. My plan at present is to pull cat 5 and run the projectors off of KVM switches. Two cheap Linux boxes with Open Office Ought to do the trick as we just going to make fancy Power Point show to loop.
Get this all I had to do was spec everything and hand it off to an intern! Once he acquires everything I'll install and configure it. And all this in one week!

Yeah I'm starting off the year with fun, for a change.

New Kitchen... and new BBCode tag

dvsDave — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:13:22 GMT

So, this is a short video of the kitchen in our new place.

You'll notice that I've embedded a *gasp* Facebook video! The code is: [fv]video id here[/fv]

the video size is set at 480x300

New Townhouse!

dvsDave — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:52:01 GMT

Will be moving in mid-July to a new townhouse. (I'll have my own office, from which I will start implementing my plans for global domination :twisted: )

Very happy to be moving. More space, a gorgeous kitchen (granite countertops, sunken sink, wall mounted oven, custom cabinets), nice quiet neighborhood (for now).

The thing I'm dreading? Packing.... I hate packing boxes.

Attached Thumbnails

a Blog Eh?

Hughesie — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:34:03 GMT

Sounds like an interesting idea. might post stuff about shows here sometime down the track.

for now, like derek just visit my site

[url=http://alexwhughes.com]Alex W Hughes.com|Lifestream and Blog[/url]

oooh ooooh ooooh

Grog12 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:33:05 GMT

A blog!

Wait I think I have one of these somwhere....that has nothing to do with theatre.

Sound class day three

gafftaper — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:44:09 GMT

A few more random thoughts from class to share:

-If you are in a high school with no money and VHF microphones. Put the receivers as close to the stage as possible. Now line the area around them with aluminum foil and experiment. Hopefully you can find a way to block out all the other signals except the ones you want.

-Looking for some sound design music that fits a style but is a little different. Check out Pandora. It lets you enter a musician and it creates a play list of similar songs for you to listen to. Cool way to find music that's appropriate for a show and a little less known.

-Sound design inspiration: If you can't find an obvious musical style choice in the script, try this. Research the life of the author, try to determine what type of music the author may have been listening to when writing the show.

-Celtex an interesting pre-production software. Obviously very useful in Hollywood. Its definitely got some cool tricks that would be helpful in theater as well, but I'm not sure how useful it will be for me as it appears to take a lot of time to setup if the script you want isn't in the database. Check it out.

-Sound design inspiration: Doing a show in the 40's? Listen to the 40's station on XM radio or the music channels on your cable tv.

-And my favorite tip. If there was a fire backstage or some sort of an emergency that required you to evacuate the audience... what would you say? Who would say it? Write a script that is to be read. Decide who reads it (for example sound op on God mic?). Train that person what to do. Post the scripted message on the wall near the person. Don't say, "there's a fire backstage" say "we are experiencing technical difficulties".

I have a Blog ?

Van — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:10:33 GMT

Hey! I've always wanted a Blog. Everybody talks about Blogging and I figure I like the idea of a forum where I can say almost anything and bored or delight other to death.
This is going to be fun 'cause I'm on "furlough" for another two weeks. I quoted Furlough 'cause I'm not really furloughed. They cut everybody's pay by 3 weeks over the last 9 pay periods and told us we had to take 3 weeks of time off over those periods. Somehow, Management believes this means we can't claim unemployment. C'est La vie, now I've got nothing better to do than; play on CB all day, re-finish and tile the bathroom, finish clearing out the backyard from the huge winter storm that knocked down most of my 60 year old Cedar Hedge < so far I've stacked a little over half a cord of wood, and I'n a little over halfway through the project. Oh yeah, and spend some time with the family I hardly ever see. I guess that's the best part about the time off.

I HAVE HEAT... and class was good too.

gafftaper — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:41:52 GMT

Well the maintenance people fixed my heat and now I'm back again happy but bored in my little hut.

Class was good. The prof. has done a LOT of live sound over the last 20 years... and she's a GIRL too. She said she's only met like three other female pro sound ops over the years and had some funny stories about men thinking she didn't know anything about sound.

She mostly talked about her philosophy as an op and designer, and how that relates to educational theater. A few random points that struck me as interesting today:

-She trains her student sound engineers that they must personally hand the microphone to each actor in a musical. When handing off the mic they are to ask, "How is your voice tonight?" What a great idea to help prepare for a singer who needs a little help because it's feeling a little off.

-She said she has heard that Samuel French and others are cracking down on videos posted on the internet of productions and charging the people producing the show up to $10k per violation! Ouch! More reason to be a real jerk about video recordings.

-If FORCED to mic dialogue, during a musical never try to mix it. Just set a level and leave it. Mix during the singing, not talking.

-She likes to teach about sound board operation using a Mackie manual. They are well written and easy to understand.

-She calls Planned Parenthood to get free expired condoms for use when protecting mic body packs from sweat.

-She likes getting sound effects from The Free Sound Project or www.freesound.org I don't remember hearing of them around CB before. Looks like a great site!

-When designing for a period show, change your radio station to an appropriate era radio station. You'll be amazed at why you might find out about the era by listening to it AND you may just find music you need for the show.

That's all for now.