Follow Spot color choices

[squigish]

How have you guys made artistic use of color in followspots? How about frost?

Do you go with more of the traditional, back of the balcony, hard-edged American type followspotting, or the higher-angle, softer European followspoting?

[SuperCow]

Our FS's are at the back of the theater. They have amber, blue, red, green, yellow, purple, and diffussion in them, so we can go hard-edged, or we can have then quite subtle, depending.

[zac850]

I have no high angle lighting positions for normal fixtures let alone follow spots. My follow spots are "american type" as you refer to them. In the past I have used white or an amber, but for the upcoming show I plan on putting my own color into it (just as soon as I finish designing the show that is...)

[lights11964]

We almost always use defusion in our spots. we do this so that it is not as noticable or as big as an impact as with a hard edge. if we are doing a concert or something of that sort, ill have fun and use some of the colors in the spot. other wise all we use is defusion

[zac850]

I should add that we do not use diffusion, but our follow spots focus nicely, and if I want a softer beam I just tell the follow spot op to soften the beam and, volia, we have a softer beam.

My schools usual venue is bi-weekly talent shows, and we usually have a hard edge, white spot during that, but for shows we often use the softer edge beam.

[RonaldBeal]

Most of my uses of follow spots involve video, and different spots every time. For tours I use a generic color correction package: 1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, Full CTO, .3ND, 1/4 minus green, 1/2 minus green. For video one-off's I will tape the CTO's and minus green's to the front of the light as needed and then load the light as follows: frost, 1/4 CTO, 1/4 minus green, light lav, light steel blue, .3ND.

If there is no video to be concerned with I'll start with light lav, light blue, bastard amber, and 1/2 CTO. The last two colors I choose based on other needs of the script, etc... or if I don't have anything planned I'll spec a primary red, and dark amber. I may change the other colors loaded based on need.

Artistic uses: (beyond color correction)
Generally if I need a performer lit, but not keyed I'll use the lav. I use CTO, BA, and Light blue as key light colors, depending on the mood. Light blue for cold and isolated, BA for warm, and CTO as a neutral/blend in with the rest of the rig. The Primary red only seems to work well for dimly lit scenes, and is good at creating a dark mood. Sometimes it's good to accent with light blue side lights, back lights or kickers at low intensities. The dark amber makes a nice punch, and gives me a little variety.

Hope this helps

[avkid]

Lets see now, last time I replaced the gels I played the "what do we have left"game. I think I ended up with:yellow,blue,green,diffusion gel and some others I can't remember.