When Hamilton, Ontario's 2,183 seat 'soft seater' opened in the fall of 1973, the city managed to hire George McPherson, Harry Belafonte's former road manager, to become our General Manager. Due to their past years together, we were able to book Mr. Belafonte in for 8 performances in four days on a yearly basis for some number of years. Upon arrival for his first engagement, Mr. Belafonte instructed our Head LX that he could use any colors he liked but NOT green as it'd make him look ALL MOULDY! Not wishing to offend, we took him at his word. The former Head LX from 1973 paid me a visit only yesterday. Tommy's still catching calls with Toronto's IA58. Our small world gets even smaller as we mature. (I almost typed 'as we age' but, to my aging eyes, 'mature' reads better, much better.)Well... It depends. Surprisingly a darker skin tone can take advantage of a green/purple, but if it's the wrong tint it can look gray....
So, I a related question, would this apply to downlights?
I now have decent downlighting so I'm trying to figure out what to do - cool blues, warm pink...
I imagine the answer is trial and error, isn't it? I suppose if I get it wrong in the first service I can change it for the second!
@Chris Pflieger Depending upon your venue's facilities and inventory, diagonal back lights in contrasting colors can afford some interesting design options. Again, depending upon what equipment, circuits and hanging positions you have at your disposal, you may consider a more translucent warm from the motivating side coupled with a more saturated warm from the fill side.Yes and... you can typically go with more saturated colors in a top/down/back light, but I'm also a large fan of N/C top light in an allowable situation. The design element you're typically going for here is to give the subject definition and contrast against a background.
@Chris Pflieger If I'm reading / envisioning this correctly, you could be shooting from high over your right shoulder in a comparatively translucent warm and high over your left shoulder in a more saturated warm affording a side to side differential in your modelling of warm scenes.Ron, consider my mind blown.
I have three Rogue washes on the left, three on the right, all upstage.
@Chris Pflieger & @MRW Lights@Chris Pflieger If I'm reading / envisioning this correctly, you could be shooting from high over your right shoulder in a comparatively translucent warm and high over your left shoulder in a more saturated warm affording a side to side differential in your modelling of warm scenes.
Similarly you could choose a comparatively translucent cool from over your right shoulder to work with a more saturated cool from over your left shoulder providing you with similar side to side differential modelling options for your cool scenes.
In other situations, dance perhaps, you could go with a more translucent warm from over your right shoulder contrasting against a more saturated cool from over your left which I can envision permitting interesting options during a variety of, primarily, dance situations.
To boringly repeat myself; in today's age you can change color from the board WITHOUT A LADDER and on a per cue basis. Basically, the world's your oyster so feel free to open the 'oyster' along with your mind. It's not like you need to select colors of gel from a swatch book, then order them, wait for delivery then pay the invoice and cut / inventory them.
Bottom Line: The theatrical lighting world's changing and it's not like you need my permission to expand your creative horizons.
I'm tempted to type: "Remember, you read it here first" but I HIGHLY doubt that's the case.
All the best to you and welcome to the world of picking colors with your mouse and then there're visualizers.
Yep! A whole different world from the 50's, 70's and 90's. (1950's young 'uns NOT the 18's)
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
That's between you and your porcelain vessel (or possibly in your case, bedpan), but I WILL tell you you need more fiber (or fibre) in your diet. As does everyone.I'm sure @derekleffew will be along momentarily to tell me I'm full of excrement.
@derekleffew I'm in full agreement with you regarding the negative effects of down lights and also their usefulness when emphasizing isolation. For moi, diagonal BAX are where it's at. Perhaps if you work just a little harder on your fluency when speaking volumes while contributing nothing useful, a career in politics could be in your future.Oh, sure, drag ME into this...
I hope that's enough talking a lot without answering the question.
@steve b. While you're reminiscing and talking "old school", at least Rosco had an order as compared to Cinemoid and their essentially chronological order based more or less on the order in which they developed, released and marketed their gels with zero discernible logic as far as colors, hues or transparency / saturation.
Sorry @JonCarter , I wasn't meaning to knock Cinemoid whatsoever as it was THE GEL MANUFACTURER when I gelled my first frame. A couple of decades later when I matriculated to Stratford's Festival in '77, The Met's Gil Wechsler was their Head of LX Design and their color palette ranged primarily from un-gelled open white, through various degrees of amber shift in mostly 750 / T12's and 500 / T12's with a handful of 500 / T20's in their Strand Pattern 23's through Cinenoid's #17 Steel Blue which Gil was employing extensively primarily as a color corrector when the only people using color correction were cinematographers shooting films. I believe Gil came to Stratford in 1970 when Yale's Bob Scales was the reigning Production Manager. By the time I relocated to Stratford to become Head of Sound in their Festival main stage, Gil was already complaining bitterly regarding various degrees of inconsistency between Cinemoid's production lots and their #17 in particular. Cinemoid was manufactured exclusively in England and distributed in North America by Strand Century Canada Limited and Century Strand in the U.S. As the Festival was a MAJOR client with Strand luminaires, dimmers and dimmer boards in all of their theatres, Strand instructed Gil to send labelled samples of his preferred blends of #17 and they'd do their best to manufacture quantities to his rigid specifications. Upon my arrival in '77, Stratford already had several custom swatch books individually created by hand by Gil's assistants and identified as "Gil's Cinemoind 17 swatches" with the individual cuts identified as #17 [which Gil deemed to be the only true original] followed by #'s 17A through 17E. Gil had multiple copies of his custom swatches created such that one or two were kept in each of the then three theatres (since they're spread out across the city) plus a couple dedicated for his personal use. By the time Gil tired of spending every spring and summer in Stratford, the little custom swatches had grown to 9 cuts per book labelled from 17 followed by 17A through 17H with Gil firmly convinced Strand had NEVER managed to truly duplicate their original #17. You may laugh but plots actually specified which flavors of 17 were to be in which fixtures during which production. All frames were meticulously labelled to ensure their proper placements during changeovers between productions. Realize Stratford runs a rotating rep' in each of their now four theatres.
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