Advice for a Newbie

[midgetgreen11]

Hey guys, I'm going to be designing my first show on my own, and we're doing Fiddler on the roof. Any tips? Our fixters are all older 8 inch fresnels, 6x9 and 6x12 lekos, par 56's, and par 64's, and we have four cyc floods. what kind of advice do you experts have?

[icewolf08]

Originally Posted by midgetgreen11

Hey guys, I'm going to be designing my first show on my own, and we're doing Fiddler on the roof. Any tips? Our fixters are all older 8 inch fresnels, 6x9 and 6x12 lekos, par 56's, and par 64's, and we have four cyc floods. what kind of advice do you experts have?

First off, seeing as this is your first post, welcome to the booth. Stop by our new member's thread and introduce yourself.

Next off, we try not to tell people how to design their shows because we feel it should be your artistic vision, not ours. If you have pointed questions though we are happy to help.

Now, given that we don't know much about your space or the set here are some general tips. You usually want to have a system of frontlight, your lekos will serve you best here. Depending on how many you have you may want to have frontlight from two angles, one in a warm color and one in a cool color. Your fresnels would probably serve well as back or toplight, and the PARs would be left for pushing color in and side light.

Those are the basics to consider. You will want to look at what kind of feeling you want to convey through lighting. Look in books of photography and find images that convey the feelings you want to, and then think about how to recreate the lighting in the pictures on stage.

If you are working on a limited inventory you need to come up with something versatile as you need the same lights to work in many situations. On a limited inventory your first priority is to make sure the actors can be seen, then convey the feelings you want. If you have lots of lights and dimmers then you can get your lights for visibility in and then get all the creative lighting in too.

Yeah, so that is kind of vague I suppose, but you may need to provide more info to get more description. Good Luck on your design!

[highschooltech]

What kind of stage do you have? Do you have scrollers? Do your cyc floods have color in them that you can mix? Whats the back drop like or is it just a cyc?

These are all important things to know. Normally i like to have a warm and cool front wash with scrollers over the stage to provide color and use the cyc lights tho mix colors in the back ground to make a sky or something appropriate indoors.

[midgetgreen11]

All we have is the lights and gel frames, we can order gels, we have no scrollers, movers... its the most basic of basic, we've got 48 dimmers though. in a proscenium... we've had professionals in our space, but they all said it was built completely wrong and the light booms and electrics are all positioned completely wrong. i guess that's just high school theatre.

[derekleffew]

Originally Posted by midgetgreen11

Hey guys, I'm going to be designing my first show on my own, and we're doing Fiddler on the roof. Any tips? ...

Now, I'm no expert, but I think you're gonna need a violin player on top of a house.

[Van]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

Now, I'm no expert, but I think you're gonna need a violin player on top of a house.

Only, of course, if he's in a harness with an approved fall arrest system and completely checked out on all the equipment.

Check out a couple books on Lighting design. here are some extensive lists of reccomended reading and book list on here.

[Logos]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

Now, I'm no expert, but I think you're gonna need a violin player on top of a house.

Way to state the obvious dude!

[gafftaper]

Like Icewolf said we like to help you figure out how to make things match your vision, not give you our vision for the show. So I'm not going to give you the answers. But I (and others here) would be glad to guide you through the process.

Let's start by telling us more about what you have to work with. How many of each lighting instrument do you have. You said 48 dimmers. Are the 1.2k or 2.4k. How many circuits do you have on stage? What are your on stage lighting positions like? How many circuits in the house positions? What are those lighting positions? What light board do you have? If you can sketch a simple floor plan of the theater with lighting locations and number of circuits in that area that would be a huge help.

Then tell us a little bit about YOUR production. What is the set going to look like? What do you think of the mood of the show and where the director is going to take it? What sorts of feelings do you want to reinforce in the production?

After you've answered some of those questions go back and read what Icewolf wrote above. Come up with some ideas about mood and color you think you would like to try. Then let's talk about them here.

[midgetgreen11]

alright i've got a sketch, i'm having trouble posting it though, whether or not they're 1.2k or 2.4k...i don't know the difference, we have 2 circuits per dimmer, except 42-46, they have one. circuits 1-6 are house booms and inaccessible. other than that, our FOH lights are dimmers 7-21, 1st electric, 22-31, 3rd Electric, 32-36, and 2nd electric 37-46. 47 and 48 are floor dimmers on SR and SL. House lights are 50-64. we've got house lights patched into slider 48 on the board. If you give me an email address or something i can send the sketch. Well i wanna start off with ambers and blues because that's how i've been taught for just LIGHT, and we haven't gotten to far into the show yet, i'm meeting with the stage manager/set designer/my assistant [she's quite the multi-tasker] to discuss the set, and then i'll have a better idea. once i get that i'll know what else.

Our board is a simple Electronics Diversified 2-scene, with 18 programs

[gafftaper]

The easiest way to post a picture is to post it for free somewhere like photobucket and then click the little mountain symbol and paste the link to your picture.

As for the difference between 1.2k and 2.4k dimmers it's a question of how many watts of power the dimmer puts out 1,200 watts or 2,400 watts. If you have two circuits per dimmer it's probably a 2.4k. This is important because you don't want to put more instruments on a dimmer than it's rated for or you'll blow the breaker.

A mix of amber and blue is always a good start for a dramatic feeling show. Pink and blue are better for more of a comic feel. I've posted this several times: I always start students out with a 3 color mix of Roscolux 02 for warm, 99 Chocolate for neutral center, and 60 no color blue for cool. It won't win you any awards buts really hard to screw up. But we may be able to do more interesting things than that... so lets keep talking.

Post the sketch, give us a list of total instruments, and have your design meeting and we'll talk some more.