Audience Lighting (not house)

[sem6727]

If you thought putting scrollers on an ETC source 4 was a pain, wait until you’ve put scrollers on 8 lighters! Indeed crowd blinders with color scrollers are wicked cool, but a PITA.

Now I am a fan of the traditional no color crowd blinders. However, you might have the issue of your cyc lights having too much spill, in this case you should gel them. If you do gel them, blind with 1 color at time, like Pie4Wheebl said.

Red, white, and blue chases are awesome especially if your band is... oh I dunno, All AMERICAN Rejects? lol nice one Derek! Definately a hot, a neutral, and cool gel combo would work really well (like red, white, and blue.)

If you decide to go old school and use parcans, thats awesome! You can get some amazing looks by playing with the geometry of the beams while still lighting the band. I really hope you haze this show.

It kind of seems like some people are only adding to the confusion, I’m sorry but thats what happens when theater techs try to talk rock n roll. (Crowd warmers? really?) Wow.

 

[J0rdster]

I think the term you're looking for is "audience blinder," and they're technically a bank of anywhere from 6-12 lamps, and they can do one or multiple things: bump to the beat of the music at a low intensity, literally blind the audience at certain parts in certain songs, or just make the crowd visible for the performers. Cyc units work very well for this, but my advice would be to frost it. You generally want a white light when employing blinders so you get the most bang for your buck.

As for a hanging position, if you're already lowering your 1st Electric, by all means, hang your blinders from it. If, by a slim chance, you have a proscenium downlight position you can hang them by sidearm, which would be more effective positioning. If not, the 1st Electric would be great. If they're hung on a FOH position they're likely to be focused at the stage unless you have a less-than-common open catwalk structures. Even still, a FOH position would act more like a pulsing house light, which doesn't as fully involve the audience, and wouldn't be a true blinder.

So, in short: focus the cyc units in the audience's faces, be sure and frost the units (for protection and distributive purposes), and get creative with them.

Have fun!

 

[Anonymous067]

I think the term you're looking for is "audience blinder," and they're technically a bank of anywhere from 6-12 lamps, and they can do one or multiple things: bump to the beat of the music at a low intensity, literally blind the audience at certain parts in certain songs, or just make the crowd visible for the performers. Cyc units work very well for this, but my advice would be to frost it. You generally want a white light when employing blinders so you get the most bang for your buck.

As for a hanging position, if you're already lowering your 1st Electric, by all means, hang your blinders from it. If, by a slim chance, you have a proscenium downlight position you can hang them by sidearm, which would be more effective positioning. If not, the 1st Electric would be great. If they're hung on a FOH position they're likely to be focused at the stage unless you have a less-than-common open catwalk structures. Even still, a FOH position would act more like a pulsing house light, which doesn't as fully involve the audience, and wouldn't be a true blinder.

So, in short: focus the cyc units in the audience's faces, be sure and frost the units (for protection and distributive purposes), and get creative with them.

Have fun!

Thanks so much for the advice!

sorry, I'm not usually the main light guy, what does frosting the light mean?

 

[avkid]

sorry, I'm not usually the main light guy, what does frosting the light mean?

Using a color media such as Rosco 100-103, which does not modify the color.

 

[MNicolai]

Just as their are colored gels out there, such as red, blue, green, etc, that are used to change the colors of the lights, you can also purchase gels for diffusion that cause the beam of light to become softer and more spread out. They are usually not colored but are textured anywhere from very finely to a whole heck of a lot of texture. It's like shining a light through a window with icy frost on it instead of just a clear window which causes the light to spread out more evenly across the area its focused on and removes any hard edges the pool of light may otherwise have had. If you have a gel swatch book (by any manufacturer) you will be able to find an entire area of it dedicated just to different textures of frost and diffusion gels.

Adding frost will widen the beam of light, but will also reduce the intensity of it. Frost can make one really bright narrow-beam fixture into a sort-of-dim wide-beam fixture.

 

[J0rdster]

Thanks so much for the advice!

sorry, I'm not usually the main light guy, what does frosting the light mean?

I recommend using Rosco 104 Tough Silk (R104). When you cut the color (you'll most likely need one sheet per fixture) make sure you place it in the frame so that the lines in the texture are running up and down, which will spread the beam of light from left to right.

 

[Pie4Weebl]

I recommend not using frost for blinders, softening their punch defeats the purpose all together. Those kind of units will get the coverage you need even with out the frost. You probably want to have at least two sets, one SR and one SL.

 

[northcoastlts]

We needed some audience lighting, and ended up putting up four groups of six PARs above the audience-each group was tied to a multiple-outlet strip. This gave us pools of lights throughout the audience. It actually didn't take too long to hang them, either since we could hand six at a time. Good luck!
Dave