LED pars as foot lighting for front lighting a stage ?

[stonehedge99]

Hi,
Its mostly a 25' wide and 15-20' deep stage. No runways/ramps. Any particular colors to adhere to ? Or its all just a question of taste ?

 

[seanandkate]

Mostly a question of taste really. I generally want my backlighting to be a bit punchier than my front lighting, so if you use a really saturated colour, the frontlight might wash it out. By way of coverage, it's hard to tell not knowing the photometrics of your particular lights. The easiest way might be to set one up in the position you propose (or in another space, but at the same distance it will be in the new theatre) to give yourself an idea of what kind of coverage you will get when you throw in three more.

 

[JonathanHarpur]

Another thing to keep in consideration is that footlighting is generally much closer to the subject than other sources - subtle changes can make huge differences, and intensities can be a fraction of what they'd otherwise need to be. This can be used to your advantage, though, as you can be much heavier-handed with your use of diffusion materials - if necessary or warranted.

Context is also crucial - you can get away with very creative colour palette usage on some shows, and be obliged to use just a single colour selection on others. It depends on whether you're using them as dramatic colour accents (Hey! Wacky! Do your thing. Woo!), or for keylight fills. Sometimes it's nice to wash out the wattle a bit.