Concert lighting with acoustic shell

[tech2000]

At my school we have an acoustic shell that varies from 14-16 feet tall and also has two "lids" (tops) that folds out from the fly system.

Here is a link to our music department website with pictures:
Spring Band Concert 2008

What is the best way to light it to look decent?
As you can tell from the pictures, facelight with R33 and some basic downlight doesn't make it look very appealing. Do we just need a little more color?

 

[highschooltech]

For something like that i would recommend looking into renting LED pars and using them to floor bases to light the walls.

 

[tech2000]

I was thinking of lighting from the floor, but I didn't think of using LED pars, I will have to look it that, thanks!

 

[MNicolai]

Ideally, those clouds should have S4 PAR's mounted into them, but because you're not about to buy a new shell system, I'll tell you what we did, as we're in the same boat.

We tried to drop our electrics down as far as possible, aiming to drop them right between the ceiling pieces, and then blasted the area with downlighting from 7 S4 PAR's per electric. That didn't work too great for us, so we ended up using every fixture on our catwalk to blast it with a no-color wash front light. It's not ideal, because musicians hate front light, but we're dealing with it until we come up with something else.

 

[FMEng]

As lighting designers, we want to do cool things for every show. However, band concerts and choirs often don't lend themselves to anything too fancy.

Musicians hate really bright front lighting for good reason. In order to perform well they need to easily read their music and see the conductor. Down lighting helps those goals. The music is the most important element of the show, so we as lighting designers have to do whatever it takes to support that endeavor, not detract from it. Sometimes that means boring lighting.

I wind up doing quite a few choir and orchestra concerts, and I give them as much down light as I have available, and then add just enough front lighting to enable the audience to see the musicians, which isn't very intense.

If you go into purpose built concert hall in any major city, you'll find mostly down light on the stage, and a fairly boring appearance.

I think color washes on the shells and maybe even some leko patterns, or moving gobos would be the best things you could do to liven things up.

 

[MNicolai]

As lighting designers, we want to do cool things for every show. However, band concerts and choirs often don't lend themselves to anything too fancy.

Musicians hate really bright front lighting for good reason. In order to perform well they need to easily read their music and see the conductor. Down lighting helps those goals. The music is the most important element of the show, so we as lighting designers have to do whatever it takes to support that endeavor, not detract from it. Sometimes that means boring lighting.

I wind up doing quite a few choir and orchestra concerts, and I give them as much down light as I have available, and then add just enough front lighting to enable the audience to see the musicians, which isn't very intense.

If you go into purpose built concert hall in any major city, you'll find mostly down light on the stage, and a fairly boring appearance.

I think color washes on the shells and maybe even some leko patterns, or moving gobos would be the best things you could do to liven things up.

The problem is whether or not it's physically possible to down light that area. The only reason we even have a fighting chance is because our rigger was conscious of the problem ahead of time and spaced everything just enough that we could slip an electric right between each of the clouds. It still looks butt ugly though because it's a difficult focus.

If you look at the examples here (http://www.secoa.com/SpecsBrochures\OrchestraShell.PDF), you can tell there's quite a bit of evenly distributed lighting via S4 PAR's mounted in the ceiling panels. It's extremely hard to replicate that effect when you have to angle lights in between ceiling clouds.

 

[SteveB]

Some basic rules of lighting orchestras:

1) The basic requirement is to light the music on the music stands with No Color down light, so that the musicians do not have to strain their eyes to see the music. That usually means straight down washes to provide an even wash at high intensity.

2) No light in the eyes of the musicians and/or conductor. Pay attention to angles of front light so that when a musician is watching the conductor, there is no glare from front/side or any low angle lighting.

3) If possible, some sort of lighting on the face of the conductor so that he/she's face is visible to the musicians, paying attention to rule number 2. Hi side Box position is useful here, but this light is usually not neccessary of the overall intensity of the wash is sufficiant (But is needed for a TV shot of the conductor from US).

Given the above, what we do for a similar configuration with Wenger shells and ceilings, is to use an electric DS of the DS edge of the first ceiling as well as a 2nd electric between the 2 ceilings. On ea. we use 6-8 S4 Pars with wide lenses (40ft. stage width), focused straight down and having diffusion to blend the wash. That's combined with DS Pit overhead PAR64's as well as hi-angle FOH, also from S4 Pars to top light the DS areas of the pit/playing area.

If I have a chorus on risers US of the orchestra (typical setup), I will add an additional 6 S4 Pars as a front wash to light the faces of the chorus, usually from the #1 Elec. Also with diffusion.

My typical focus for the down light S4 Pars on #1 & #2 Elec, is to do a straight down focus, with the beam SL to SR, then an R104 linear diffusion to diffuse US to DS.

I also do a front special with an iris to light the conductors face when they turn around to bow, or address the audience.

I have at times (TV shoot) lit the shell walls with soft shaft vertical washes in alternating colors (Red/Blue/Lavender) to brighten up the shell to reduce contrast. I also put snowflakes on the walls during the holiday concerts.

Just some thoughts.

 

[tech2000]

Our electrics can fit between the clouds too, but it's not quite even. Plus our downlight isn't always evenly spaced across the stage in relation to the walls of the shell. (We don't have spikes on the stage because we are to repaint the stage soon)
SteveB, thanks for that advice, I will keep that in mind.
We used snowflakes for our concerts last month, and man, neon blue does not always look so good.

 

[bestboy]

In our middle school they just got a whole new auditorium with those types of shells put in the flys. When the Buffalo Philharmonic came and played, a few of our tech guys along with our TD went over to try and light the stage because no one over there knows how to run the system or has any experience with lighting.

What we ended up doing was using as many Parnells as we could gather and aim them straight down from the 1st and 2nd electric (i think we used 8, 50 foot stage span) along with using the 1st 2nd and 3rd white border strips. Since the stage was so huge we even had to aim our CYC lights down and take the color off. Like stated before in many posts its the down light, as boring as it is, that you need. And to liven it up a tad so the kids don't look like zombies take your downstage washes and put those at about a 35-45% (pinks and blues)

 

[lieperjp]

What lens are you using in your S4 pars? Make sure it's not the narrow one(s). Perhaps try adding in some extra-wide dispersion lenses and see if that helps. Concerts are one reason I like my scoops.

At my high school we aimed four pin spots (from an old and broken mirror ball...) just in front of the director. This lit up the baton extremely well (I played in band for seven years) and the director could see the band well enough, or at least he never complained. Then we would light him from behind with whatever we had left after lighting the band and choir. (Usually an old Altman ERS.) We'd then set that level at about 50-75.

 

[photoatdv]

I somehow missed this thread. We have a similar problem. We can take care of the down light and stage wash just fine (our shell has lights built in), but the director want's 'cool lights'. In the past it has comprised some gobos, the strip lights on the rear electric (because it is behind the shell), a couple of strip lights on towers at the back of the stage, and the cyc with different colors. It looked pretty cool, but wasn't quite as much as she wants. What else can I add (the front electrics are impossible to use-- the clouds actually touch each other)? Thanks guys (and gals).

 

[CBR372]

At my Performing Arts Center we have a full acoustic shell with 3 or 4 clouds (the caps).We basically turn everything on. We have two full cat walks with S4's with a pink and a light blue. On the electrics we have about 4 sets of Multi-PAR-3 and a couple 6" Fresnels along with two sets of 3 S4's for High sides. We fit the electrics in between the clouds, about 4 of the 5 electrics and turn everything on. The way that the wood on the clouds and shell picks up the light is gorgeous. It's just uber bright, 1 thru 400 @ full*

 

[MNicolai]

Another option for you, or any other venues with this problem, is to bring Wenger, Secoa, StageRight, or whoever built your shell system in, and have them install S4 PAR's in the clouds. Our shell system was screwed up when the architect told the consultants that the electrics would be able to fly between the clouds when they're in, but as it turns out, they don't line up. That's only one of the many things our architect screwed up. Anywho, we've got Wenger in this week to drill the holes in the clouds and install the mounting brackets for the PAR's, and then our electrician is going to wire them up as a proper shell system should be. Then our clouds will have cut and dry down light that's as simple as it gets.