I like the second one better beacuse it is a lot more watts. I think I am going to order both lamps and see which one works better.
If anyone has any other suggestions, I am open to anything.
More watts doesn't always mean brighter. Especially with devices like these flicker and flame lamps. One other caveat to these lamps is that they aren't really designed to dim. In fact some don't dim at all, if the
voltage gets too low they just go out, but until then they stay lit like they are at full (I have done some testing).
What you are trying to do is what we in
theatre generally
call creating a "Motivated light source." The thing about motivated sources is that in general, in
theatre, they the source itself is not bright enough to carry the scene. So what do we do? We try to imitate the quality of light from supplemental sources. How can we do this? Well, the cardinal rule of lighting for the
stage is that you have to be able to see the actors. If the audience can't see the actors they feel like something is wrong. Therefore if we supplement the light that a single candle emits and actually light a big chunk of
stage (in a manner consistent with how a candle illuminates a room) the audience will believe it.
So now is the part where we do some thinking. How does a candle illuminate a room? What does candle light look like? We know that candle light is warm, and we know that it isn't that bright. Also if your candle rests on a table the light from it comes at a very low, almost
flat angle to everything. Also, set up a candle and note that in general you don't notice all that much flickering except when you are close to the source. How do we achieve this look on
stage? Low angle front and side light in a warm color. You may also have some kind of warm soft focused special that illuminates the area where the candle is as a downlight (or close to down). Mix in a little cool back or top light to make your people pop and you should be OK.
If you have your heart set on having lots of flickering going on you can now write an FX
cue in your
console that randomly changes the levels of the fill lights. Consider though that lots of flickering light will get annoying and distracting very fast. If you end up using flicker lamp (even if you don't) you will convey the idea of "candle" to the audience. The other thing you can try to get the "flickering"
effect is
gobo rotators. Any
TwinSpin style rotator will do the trick. Rotating two organic breakups in opposition will continually change the shadows and highlights in the space and should give a pretty good flicker
effect.
The audience is smarter than you think, you don't need to hit them in the
face with "candle light" for them to believe that is how the scene is illuminated. You also have to think about how far away the audience is from the
effect. In a
proscenium stage the audience is usually so far away that they don't
pick up on the minute details. This is why we can get away with thing like using a
Rosco or CTI Flicker candle instead of a real one, you can't tell the difference when you are in the audience.
So before you go scrounging around the web and buying up different lamps and candles you might want to think about how you really need the
effect to look. What other gear do you have to supplement the
effect in
house? This is one of those things that falls under the art of
theatre. We attempt to mesh the needs of the design with the needs of reality and hopefully come out with art!