High School Student Needs lots of help

[Aaronfen]

Okay, so i have kind of been thrown the task of doing lighting for our next show*not a lighting person.* Not going to go into why but its me and its in a few weeks(2). I needs lots of advice. i am going to try to describe what we have and our set and stage as best i can. So its about the 40 foot wide set and a simple unit set center pannel is about 25 feet to side pannels about 15 ft at 150* angles. its all about 12 feet high and the first 3 feet of the walls are wood grain and then the next 9 are a forest green paint not utlra dark though. The who set is about 18 feet back from our pit. we have to accessable batons one 9 feet from the pit and one 18 from the pit right behind walls. (still useful, you can see if you see in Sketchup). We cats surrounding the front of our stage about 30 feet up and 10 infront of the pit. in there theres about 30 strands some 19* some 26* and some 26*. On the batons theres about 24 Fresnel. Weave got a fair about of assortted jels and i just need tons of gernal help of what needs to be done. Gels, Placement aiming ANYTHING. the show is You Cant Take it With you.


Thanks in advanced i am going to try to upload the set design please ask questions if you don't understand.

[CrazyTechie]

Well, you are gonna want to use the fresnels as a general stage wash and then use the source fours or whatever your 19 or 26 degree lights are for front light and specials on stage that is a pretty basic wash and will cover it fairly well.

More specifics on the fresnels would be to do a warm and a cool wash, meaning that you should have one fresnel with an amber or a warm color gel in it (whatever you decide works best) and another fresnel with a cool gel in it and do this for each section.

For example at my school it takes about five fresnels to cover one row of light from one end of the stage to the other so in order for me to have a warm/cool wash I have to use ten fresnels so that at each placement of the lights I have a warm and a cool section for that part of the stage.

Does that make sense I tried to explain it as best as I could

[Les]

Luckily You Can't Take It With You (YCTIWY) is a pretty simple show that doesn't need much in terms of lighting. I did the show once and it took up about 20 cues. The most challenging part of the show was the fireworks explosion and honestly -- throw some red and orange gels in parcans/fresnels/ellipsoidals, bump them and that's it.

With face lighting, which I think is your biggest concern, my vote is to just do a simple 3-point McCandless plot. Search here for the (Stanley) McCandless method. Basically, you want to divide your stage in to areas, each usually being around 8-10' in diameter. Top light each area with a fresnel gelled in a neutral color such as light bastard amber or even no color. Then hit each area with 2 front lights (Ellipsoidals - in your case - Strands I'm guessing). You might want to use your larger degrees (26, 36) for the downstage areas and your 19's for the upstage areas. You want to basically create a triangle with each area, the fresnel being at the apex. There is a magic number somewhere for a good basic angle to place your front lights to in relation to your top light but you may just have to experiment. You just don't want it too 'dead on' and you definitely don't want the angle too wide. Something like 50 degrees should be sufficient but it really depends on your space.

Each area will want a warm and cool front light. It doesn't matter whether it's the one on the right or the left, just try to keep it consistent for simplicity. You will probably want to use R02 (Light Bastard Amber, Rosco) for your warm front light and R60 (No Color Blue, Rosco) for your cool front light. Again, these color choices are to your discretion, but I find them to be a safe bet in straight plays and for realistic skin tones.

How many areas do you need to do? Well, enough to get the entire set. With the size of stage you're working with you are probably looking at around 15 areas or so. This means 15 fresnel toplights and 30 front lights - individually circuited. You can pair up the warm and cool on one circuit if you need to but you will lose some control.

For me to go any further I will need to know things like how many circuits you have in your catwalk, how many instruments are available, etc.

Disclaimer - this is a "quick and dirty" light plot intended to get an even wash on stage. Here at controlbooth.com we generally leave it up to you to make the show look "pretty" because after all, this is an education forum and most of the education is earned hands-on, crash-course style. I understand your situation though. Just try to get those faces lit, and please try to get more details.

**And I really hope you aren't really hanging your lights from batons [those things acrobats throw]. For the theatre rigging term, see battens. Jels in lights can be messy. See if your director will consider switching to gels

[gafftaper]

Follow Les' advice and you will do just fine. Do you need help figuring out how to use your light board? If yes tell us what brand and model you have.

[Aaronfen]

I have about 30 strands and about 60 sockets in the cats with them paired. if you cut it inhalf there would be 2 sockets linked to channel 1 and 2 linked to 3 and so on

[gpforet]

[QUOTE=Les;151964]You will probably want to use R02 (Light Bastard Amber, Rosco) for your warm front light and R60 (No Color Blue, Rosco) for your cool front light.

Actually, RO1 is Light Bastard Amber (R02 is simply Bastard Amber).

I use RO1 for my warm, and R63 (pale blue) for my cool.

[Les]

[QUOTE=gpforet;152035]

Originally Posted by Les

You will probably want to use R02 (Light Bastard Amber, Rosco) for your warm front light and R60 (No Color Blue, Rosco) for your cool front light.

Actually, RO1 is Light Bastard Amber (R02 is simply Bastard Amber).

I use RO1 for my warm, and R63 (pale blue) for my cool.

Yes, definitely go for light bastard amber. R02 would be too orange for front light. (Sorry, I got my numbers mixed up)

It sounds like you have just enough ellipsoidals for 15 areas and if you're lucky you can get away with fewer, depending on the size and shape of your set.