Cheap Ground row recommendations?

[JLNorthGA]

We will be doing Susan Zeder's "Do Not Go Gentle" as one of our plays this year (the two act, not the one act). The director showed me some pictures of what other people have done for lights. She likes the ideas.

Anyway - she showed me a couple of pictures from another production. They used a ground row or bottom cyc light to illuminate the backside of a painted partially translucent panel. She wants them controlled by the light board, i.e. dimmable.

What are some reasonable, less expensive ground row lights? Each "panel" or flat would be ~3-4' W and 6-8' tall. Cheap is good - we don't have too much money to spare on more lighting fixtures as we need to spend money on everything else right now.

 

[Les]

You could do keyless sockets mounted on backboxes, and have those mounted to a board or straight to the floor. They won't be "to code", but I imagine they'll be as up to code as any other practical, which this would essentially be. My guesstimate would be that each fixture would cost in the neighborhood of $6 to build not including wiring. You could even use split coffee cans as reflectors, and if they look cool enough, work them in to the design.

http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/players_slideshow/

You could also buy/rent some par 38 cans to do the backlighting. I know you can get par 38's with gelframes for under $20 each online (Chinese). Alternately, you could use halogen worklights, but this would take more care in mounting and gelling due to the intense heat and lack of color media provisions they present.

 

[NickVon]

You could do keyless sockets mounted on backboxes, and have those mounted to a board or straight to the floor. They won't be "to code", but I imagine they'll be as up to code as any other practical, which this would essentially be. My guesstimate would be that each fixture would cost in the neighborhood of $6 to build not including wiring. You could even use split coffee cans as reflectors, and if they look cool enough, work them in to the design.

You could also buy/rent some par 38 cans to do the backlighting. I know you can get par 38's with gelframes for under $20 each online (Chinese). Alternately, you could use halogen worklights, but this would take more care in mounting and gelling due to the intense heat and lack of color media provisions they present.

I did something like this for a pho-shakespeare show we did. looked nice and old timey

Do you have strip lights at all?. We do this frequently in our space but we have (3) 4 channel old school par 38 strips that we set on the floor for the bottom of our cyc. If you don't need much high or fullness like one would need on a cyc, perhaps a LED color bar would suffice. Others might have thoughts on small form factor inexpensive LED options.

 

[ToddCWF]

You could do keyless sockets mounted on backboxes, and have those mounted to a board or straight to the floor. They won't be "to code", but I imagine they'll be as up to code as any other practical, which this would essentially be. My guesstimate would be that each fixture would cost in the neighborhood of $6 to build not including wiring. You could even use split coffee cans as reflectors, and if they look cool enough, work them in to the design.

You could also buy/rent some par 38 cans to do the backlighting. I know you can get par 38's with gelframes for under $20 each online (Chinese). Alternately, you could use halogen worklights, but this would take more care in mounting and gelling due to the intense heat and lack of color media provisions they present.

Les,

Inquiring minds would like to know.....how you found this photo. These are the portable footlights are used for our 18th century play series here in Colonial Williamsburg. It's kind of both shocking and cool, when you are not expecting it, to open up a thread and see you own stuff being used as an example. Do you have a connection to Williamsburg, or did you just find the photo on the web somewhere?

Todd

Production Manager, Kimball Theatre
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

 

[Les]

Les,

Inquiring minds would like to know.....how you found this photo. These are the portable footlights are used for our 18th century play series here in Colonial Williamsburg. It's kind of both shocking and cool, when you are not expecting it, to open up a thread and see you own stuff being used as an example. Do you have a connection to Williamsburg, or did you just find the photo on the web somewhere?

Todd

Production Manager, Kimball Theatre
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Hi Todd,

I've had this image in my Photobucket account for some time, but I can't remember if I found it myself via Google search, or if I took this photo from our WIKI. I suspect the latter, because this photo has made it on our WIKI entry for footlights, and the credits for the image originate from An Actor Prepares Slideshow. I've always liked this picture as a visual aid for homemade footlights which look both simple and professional.

We are all about giving credit where credit is due, so if there's anything else we should do to credit you for the picture, or where it came from, let us know!

 

[ToddCWF]

Hi Todd,

I've had this image in my Photobucket account for some time, but I can't remember if I found it myself via Google search, or if I took this photo from our WIKI. I suspect the latter, because this photo has made it on out WIKI entry for footlights, and the credits for the image originate from An Actor Prepares Slideshow. I've always liked this picture as a visual aid for homemade footlights which look both simple and professional.

We are all about giving credit where credit is due, so if there's anything else we should do to credit you for the picture, or where it came from, let us know!

Les,

No problem at all with the photo. Just not expecting to see it....

Thanks!
Todd

 

[iLightTheStage]

We will be doing Susan Zeder's "Do Not Go Gentle" as one of our plays this year (the two act, not the one act). The director showed me some pictures of what other people have done for lights. She likes the ideas.

Anyway - she showed me a couple of pictures from another production. They used a ground row or bottom cyc light to illuminate the backside of a painted partially translucent panel. She wants them controlled by the light board, i.e. dimmable.

What are some reasonable, less expensive ground row lights? Each "panel" or flat would be ~3-4' W and 6-8' tall. Cheap is good - we don't have too much money to spare on more lighting fixtures as we need to spend money on everything else right now.

If you're going for cheapest and simplest: an enclosed worklight (or "painter's light"), like from Home Depot. 250w would probably give you enough punch, but you could go with 500w. Just plug it into one of your dimmers. Since it's behind the set, looks don't matter.
The Par38 idea works just the same.

 

[avkid]

If you're going for cheapest and simplest: an enclosed worklight (or "painter's light"), like from Home Depot. 250w would probably give you enough punch, but you could go with 500w. Just plug it into one of your dimmers. Since it's behind the set, looks don't matter.

Just be careful to keep flammables away.