Lighting the Proscenium Arch

[theILLUMINATEDfrog]

What would be your suggestions as to lighting the inside (underneath) of the proscenium arch with a tight, solid wash?

[DaveySimps]

What is in your inventory / what is your budget? Where are you hanging the instruments from? How much power / how many dimmers do you have available? How far away will the instruments be from the proscenium. How wide / long is it? If you can give some additional info, we will be able to help you more.

~Dave

[theILLUMINATEDfrog]

its a 39' wide proscenium, in a venue with just under 1,000 seats--

i have plenty of dimmers available (not sure the exact numbers, we have 192 total with SEVERAL open).

Our inventory is decent (plenty of S4 26*, 36*, 19*, 50*), 12 moving heads of diff. man. (VariLite 2500 washes/spots, VL1000s, HES StudioSpot250/colors), 6 ColorKinetic LED panels with more on order. Old school Altman fresnels as well as S4 ParNels and Pars for backlight/washes.

Lighting technically only has a budget of 12K a year, but our department has other resource accounts to pull from)

My biggest problem is limited hanging positions... no side boxes, no floorlights, no ladders in the wings. Mainly FOH positions and from our TensionWire Grid.

[DaveySimps]

Are you looking for recomendations on equipment to buy to accomplish this task, or are you looking for recomendations of what to use based on what you have in stock?

~Dave

[theILLUMINATEDfrog]

Purchases are possible... we're in the middle of a huge expansion project so I have to be careful what I ask for because it will ultimately be balanced elsewhere in the project. Also, I have plans with my new focus for aboutn99% of our stock, so I will need to at least purchase some equipment for the job. Recommendations on positioning, instruments, or a cross between architectural and theatrical.... i just need to make this space pop. Its a great venue but our staging "dumbs down" a lot of the technology and resources we have. Looks very high school/college-ish on stage when the house is state of the art. make sense? Lighting this arch is just one of the many ideas in place.

[theILLUMINATEDfrog]

what would ultimately work best is something low profile, recessed, or otherwise thrown from a distance that would not obstruct valuable floor space. however, the stage is raised and the seats are raked, so i would like the apex of the arch to be as evenly lit as the vertical rise, ideally with DMX control over color, but I'll take suggestions with static color as well. LED instruments (panels, etc) were the first option that came to mind, and then possibly cold cathode installation... but again, I don't know about specific manufacturers enough to spec anything.

[DaveySimps]

Some more of the LED Panels would be great if you can find the $$$$ in the budget. Depending on how you are going to place the lights, some sort of strip light may be the way to go. Either option gives you multiple colors to choose from, as opposed to some other conventionals that may need color scrollers to dot the same thing. Even some of the lower end LED par cans may work for this application, depending on how many you have, and the distance you are going to shoot from. You would have to do some investigation and preplanning so that you can get the maximum punch, since units in this category often just do not have enough punch to do the job on a large scale.

~Dave