Color Help: High School Musical

TupeloTechie

Active Member
I am working on lighting for High School Musical, I have never really designed, or worked with color before. I am wondering what color(s) would look good for a set that has the colors blue and yellow, also any other help with color, such as for a general wash of the stage would be helpful, I am not asking for people to design it for me, just guide me, thanks alot!

I have attached some pictures of the unfinished set:
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yes, we do not have many people who do tech at my school
 
Are you in Tupelo, Mississippi?
I can try to make some connections and maybe get you a crash course in design if everything falls in place.
 
OK folks, let's play a game - build a plot! I vote for an R74 downlight wash as part of the downlight system. Why? R74 has a high warm spectrum presence, but still looks really saturated.
 
Backup plan, when do you open?
We open next Friday, with a couple of excellent designers on staff.
I will make sure our press pictures make it your way.
 
We have 3 electrics and one FOH, our current plot has 9 Altman Star-Pars on each electric arranged in groups of three for down lighting, and 8 Altman Shakespeare's, 4 on each side for side lighting, also there are three of these, one next to each group of pars, along with 23 in the FOH, this is the basic plot that they make us focus it into after each production, I am working on a plot that is more detailed for this specific play, but again, I have never designed, but have worked on the lighting crew before.

We open the 17th
 
Hmmm...fun time. I usually don't like taking up the process of design aid on these forums, but this question is a little bit more specific than others, especially with the set pics.

So, one of the Star Pars in each set of three should be R74, IMO. Great color. Another one could be more of an amber color (but make sure that it doesn't clash with the yellow on the set), and then maybe a pink-red color that's not gonna make your yellow look like something out of h*ll. R32 maybe? Or R41 or R42 depending on how pink you want it. You will need to take some design responsibilities with these, because you'll be able to mix these colors to create a number of different downlight colors.

Sidelight: I'm gonna call this a stereotypical musical and say R05 with R119 for high sides (shake's), if you can pull that one in terms of gel. If you want some nighttime sidelight, pull out some R55 and put that in, again with R119. Wow, I'm really assuming a huge gel library here. Well, nothing bad can come from it.

Top Shakespeares: any toplight specials, possibly a gobo wash?

FOH: Amber wash, Light Blue wash, any specials, any gobo specials.

Just to confirm, this is what your hang is so far:

Shake(speare): V
Star Par: O

FOH:
---V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V---


Electrics:
--VVVV---VOOO---VOOO---VOOO---VVVV--


--VVVV---VOOO---VOOO---VOOO---VVVV--


--VVVV---VOOO---VOOO---VOOO---VVVV--

What other fixtures do you have, if any?
 
yes, that is correct, we do not have many other fixtures, we have a few extra Shake(speare)'s and some older ellipsoidals that I'm not sure on the model, we can modify the plot, which we will probally have to do, because there are many scenes that require a split stage also, the upper level of the set sits right under the third electric, thanks again.
 
My favorite color combo for those starting out that you just can't screw up: "Rosco 33 No Color Pink" for your Warm wash, "Rosco 60 No Color Blue" for your cool wash, "Rosco 51 Surprise Pink" for neutral front and down light. Nothing fancy about it but you also can't screw it up. It's all high transmission, low color saturation gels, so it's not going to screw up the color of anything on the set. Yet it's got just enough color to it to make you look like you know what you are doing.
 
I'll play along too. To build on Soundlight's ideas for the Shakespeares downlight. Maybe try throwing in a breakup and making a template wash. Something like the R77811 with no color will help get some texture on the stage. You can focus pretty much straight down, and then run them just out of sharp focus.
 
left/right, two different scenes at the same time are occuring
 
so, you're going to want to be able to use your close high sides to isolate that, as well as your left/right toplight clusters. By close high sides I mean the high sides that are coming from the side that the scene is occurring on, instead of the ones that are shooting across from the other side to that area.
 
When choosing gels, I tend to not pick them based on the set, but both what looks good on the actors and what fits time of day/mood. You can always use a star par or two to wash the set.
 

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