Recommendations for Jazz Show?

[someckguy]

So, I'm running lighting for a friend, and it's a jazz themed night, with a lot of performances. For some of the dances I'll be running some chases to add a bit more movement, and because I'm working with no intelligent fixtures at all, as it's in our school's old small theatre (All it has is full cyclorama lighting, a lot of parcans with faded coloured gel and a few profiles). Does anyone have any tips and tricks for running lighting with Jazz music? I have to stress that this is an amateur event and I don't have a lot of stage lighting experience, as well as a lot of time to get the lighting down (1 more rehearsal next week and then one on the night of the show) which means I may have to fall back to saving a few colour scenes and using the flash buttons to if I don't have time to create some of the chases.

So yeah it's quite messy but can I have some advice on running lighting to jazz music, possibly having to make up effects as I go?

 

[TheLightmaster]

lay off on the chases for the most part. Focus on texture, and creating different effects with light from different angles.
Adding some gobos from the side and back is definitely a good idea, and can add intrigue, texture, and even movement (as performers walk through it).
If you do use chases, make sure they have smooth fades. However, at least one number might require a fast flashing chase.

 

[someckguy]

lay off on the chases for the most part. Focus on texture, and creating different effects with light from different angles.
Adding some gobos from the side and back is definitely a good idea, and can add intrigue, texture, and even movement (as performers walk through it).
If you do use chases, make sure they have smooth fades. However, at least one number might require a fast flashing chase.

The theatre doesn't have any Gobos around because it's almost unused (only used to train drama students). I was kinda thinking chases because as you mentioned a reasonably number of the songs have a lot of flashy parts. I'm definitely thinking smooth transitions will look quite good because there's a good mix of colours that I have to work with.

I forgot to mention in my opening post that we also have one nice followspot that we're using a lot with a soft edge, which is great for lighting up the main singer without really being "visible". I'm a bit embarrassed at how simple this production is, but I basically have no option but to work with what's there right now.

 

[Fountain Of Euph]

Use the KIS (keep it simple) method of lighting. Make sure the acting area is lit. Do some saturated backlight washes with par cans. Use what you got to make it work.

 

[venuetech]

create shadows. fill some of those shadows with saturated color, add just a touch of front to the solo bits, just a touch to see the face.

 

[techieman33]

You don't usually need to be flashy with lots of chases and movement for jazz. Most of the time jazz is maybe one look per song at most, and can sometimes be the same look all night.

 

[Judge]

Keep it simple, make it look nice. Have the performers lit with warm tungsten light from front and have nice nice blue backlight with some deep amber side wash to make the chrome things and brass instruments a bit of zing. Lay off the chases.
Bring up key players when they solo, or back down front light on the others gently.
Nobody is there to see flashing lights.

 

[BryceKastor]

You may also want to think about getting music stand lights on all the performers stands... gives you the flexibility of creating some interesting mood lighting but allowing the performers to see their sheet music. Nothing worse than a shadow on the notes!

 

[someckguy]

You may also want to think about getting music stand lights on all the performers stands... gives you the flexibility of creating some interesting mood lighting but allowing the performers to see their sheet music. Nothing worse than a shadow on the notes!

The performers are actually singers as such, there's not enough room for live music so we have to go with singers using backing tracks (Which I'm running through the theatre's awesome speakers using Qlab).

 

[someckguy]

Just a little update, showtime is in approximately 21 hours, I'm quite confident (this is my first show though!) I have a few more scenes I have to save in the hours leading up to before the show but that doesn't take that much time so I should have plenty of time to mentally prepare myself for anything that could go bad during the show.

What I've done as a sort of backup is I've saved one or two generic washes with a tad of red and yellow which looks really nice, and the lighting board I'm using (LSC Maxim L) has 5 faders right where you rest your left hand (running the show with my right hand, lighting desk runs of crossfading between two scenes, not a 'Go' button) and I've assigned a few colour washes to them, so if we feel the scene is lacking a bit of colour, I can add a bit of colour with the nudge of a fader, which I can definitely see coming in useful at some points. Aside from that I have a feeling it'll go alright. I'll try take some pictures and post them up here after the show.

 

[Fountain Of Euph]

Blow a dimmer! (Good luck)

 

[someckguy]

Hi Guys! The show was just over a month ago, as you may have noticed I completely forgot about this thread.

The show itself went really well for the small production that it was. We made close to $700, which for a show that was organised, performed and managed by high school students (myself and my tech team included) is pretty nice. During the performance the atmosphere was obviously very different to rehearsals, and thus I was really happy that I saved some simple colour washes before the show, because often I found the scenes were a bit flat in terms of lighting, so subtly bringing up one of the colour washes on top of the lighting I already had made the lighting look a lot better.

I personally gained a lot more confidence from the show, as I only had previous experience running a followspot for bigger productions.

So yeah, we're all pretty happy with how our first show as a team went. We're already in the early planning stages for a very small musical next year which I'll be running lighting for, so that's something I'll probably be asking for advice for in about 10 months' time.

Thanks to everyone who answered my questions, I really appreciate all of your help.

Cheers!

someckguy