Design Bad FOH positions

[wfor]

I'm working with a system with five basic positions: 3 dead hung electrics, and two house mounted tormentors with 9 26* source fours each.

There is no catwalk, no balcony rail, no nothing. To work with a two color area system, I have to deal with a decent angle from oneside, and an extreme from the other. Like lets say I have to have a DSR area. From house left, I'll shoot a cool and so I have a light thats decent for shooting on the SL side of the frame, but is blocked mostly by the proscenium. Shooting my warm from House Right all the way to SR makes a huge beam (we really need 19 degrees), and is tough to match with its pair.

Does anyone have any suggestions for 1) dealing with this design wise. or 2) a solution to have a cross-house rail on no money? We do have some tripod booms with a T, but its a sloped floor, and that's sort of tacky. Plus, getting circuits there is tricky.

 

[highschooltech]

Play the McCandless game with FOH and shoot color down from the electrics or the back lights. Your options pretty much suck and are limited by the positions. The only option you have is to use shutter cuts and diffusion to blend the lights together.

 

[wfor]

I know. It sucks.

I throw everything out of focus to get blending. The first 15 feet of stage are completely useless from the 1st electric.

By "Playing the McCandless game" do you mean with warm and cools? or no color front of house? I like the idea of handling color only from the stage, but I'm concerned no color FOH would give a flat look.

 

[rochem]

When I did Fantasticks a few months ago, the "stage" was actually a platform located in the pit, so all normal positions were unusable except for the box booms. We ended up setting up two large booms in the back of the house and hanging a couple instruments on them. We had a neutral front wash coming from them, as well as a couple specials that needed to be tight and couldn't come from the box booms. Then we used the box booms for our front color washes and full-stage scenes. If the seating area has a steep slope, or if you have a balcony/elevated control booth, this might work. Ours ended up not looking too tacky because we managed to hide the booms next to large support pillars in the back of the house, so the only way you would see it is if you were seated in the last few rows at extreme house right and house left. We rented dimmer packs and ran DMX to them through the walls, which worked fine.

Does the director envision any split stage scenes, either where two scenes are occurring at the same time or where a scene needs to only use half of the stage? If so, you may have some difficulty accurately controlling the spill onto the other side of the stage. Is there any way you can rent/borrow/exchange some 26* barrels for some 19*s? If you can rent irises, that could work too. Just iris/shutter the larger beam down to near the size of the smaller beam. If intensity is an issue, you may have to throw in some ND filters in the near side instruments to match intensity, something like R398 or so. I would recommend getting some strong washes of back/top and side light to create atmosphere. Really depends on the type of show, though. In some shows, a straight-in neutral front can work well for most scenes, and you just put some saturated colors in the side and back lights to change the atmosphere, and screw McCandless .

 

[wfor]

The booms are almost a no go unfortunately. The tormentors are about midway in the house, so not quite as bad as box booms. In a typical auditorium, they are about where the box seats stop and the balcony begins.

Our auditorium, at one time had a beautiful balcolny and ceiling, probably with some lighting positions. But when fire destroyed the auditorium in the 80s, they decided the balcony would be much better suited for guidance offices. Thus, there is an overhang, but then a wall covering up where the balcony used to be, screaming "There used to be a balcony here, but we're cheap and made it somethign else." We've discussed putting a bar on the end of that, in a position where the balcony rail would be. That's ther sort of position I'd get wit the booms. Its still not horribly useful, as its almost at eye level with a performer on stage, not very flattering.

Yes, I am often required to separate stage areas, which is a pain, and it looks awful. In this production, I'm having to split the stage in half, only once though.

I'l really liking the color only coming from the stage. That way, I'm not dealing with awful color mixing issues involving blending. Now I can focus on just getting light on faces.

It just frustrates me that I can't have perfect little pairs of Source Fours lining a catwalk. Its also mighty hard to focus from a slanted floor 25 feet up, with a one day rented genie.

On that note though- Anyone willing to donate 100,000 for a catwalk system? Or less than that for one of those nifty Vortek automated rigging systems or some truss on chain motors...

 

[highschooltech]

I know. It sucks.

I throw everything out of focus to get blending. The first 15 feet of stage are completely useless from the 1st electric.

By "Playing the McCandless game" do you mean with warm and cools? or no color front of house? I like the idea of handling color only from the stage, but I'm concerned no color FOH would give a flat look.

Sorry for not clarifying exactly but yes, warm and cool from front of house. It sounded like one of you FOH shots sucked so use the cool on that one and the warm on the one that works the best. Since it sounds like down light won't work for color you'll have to use backlight from a high angle on the electrics.
I recently had to do this on a show. Luckily i was able to rent scrollers to put on the back light which made my life easy as i only needed one set.

 

[wfor]

Since it sounds like down light won't work for color you'll have to use backlight from a high angle on the electrics.

Why not? I was planning on using primarily high angle side light and downlight to add color.

 

[rochem]

Since it sounds like down light won't work for color you'll have to use backlight from a high angle on the electrics.

wfor,

I believe he was referring to the statement you made earlier:

The first 15 feet of stage are completely useless from the 1st electric.

The way you say it, it sounds like you're saying you have a 15 foot apron (which is what my theatre has ) and so downlighting won't work there.

 

[wfor]

Oh I see what you're saying, no- sorry, I was very unspecific. What I meant is...

the first 15 feed from the plasterline is unusable for front light from the 1st electric, which I suppose is true of any proscenium theatre...

No, there is a... hang on let me check a floor plan... 7 foot apron, so not a huge deal.