Focus direction on spec sheet

[nygaff]

Hi,

in my portfolio for college, i made a mock lighting design for Bat Boy the musical.

In my hook up sheets i have each instroment, color, template, and focus. I need to know what to put for focus. Like, i have eight sets of repeating areas. One s4 pointing from the upper left corner in, one on the upper right corner in, one in the middle facing the middle, two s4 on opposet sides point at like a >90deg. angle down sideways, with an open parcan as top light. third electric has three parcans as back light.

so it is kind of like this

S4 S4 S4
S4--> Par <--S4
Par Par Par


Now, for the focus. should i call the group in the DL mark focused as DL? or should i put like facing UR for the first instroment?

I really dont know how to do this.

thanks for the help!

Josh

 

[nygaff]

Anyone? My interview is on friday and i am in dier need of this answer!

thanks
Josh

 

[SuperCow]

Well, if you're drawing the lighting plot, then you just point the lights in the direction they would go on the diagram. So, you would draw the ERS at a 45 degree angle, oif you wanted it as such.

 

[nygaff]

Well, i guess.

So it is fine if my instroment sheet just has the #'s of the units (they are labled on the draft, there is no text on it besides these numbers), The color, and the template?

thanks alot
Josh

 

[SuperCow]

You write down dimmer, channel, color for sure. I'm not sure if you wrtie down pattern. Someone with more experience will have to follow up on that one.

 

[chieftfac]

I know most of the touring groups I get down my way do not spec the type of pattern on the plot. They just indicate that there will be a pattern (temp) and spec type/number on the instrument schedule or cheat sheet...of course they are trying to fit their plot to many spaces and some of these notes are hand written on the plot....

 

[SteveB]

The hookup MUST have a column for purpose. This way you can keep track - and the electricians can keep track of what the lights are used for.

I try to differentiate as much as possible my purposes. As example, if I have 4 units focusing into Area A in warm and cool, from 2 sides ea. I’ll indicate in the Purpose column on the hookup an "Area A Wrm" for the 2 units in warm, then "Area A Cool" etc... sometimes abbreviating as "A-A Wrm" or A-A Cool". Ditto back lights as Bax, etc... Sides I sometimes do as "Wrm -> 1-2W" which would be the warms from stage right - the arrow showing it as I see it from the console, with 1-2W being 1 and 2 wings.

The reason for a lot of different purposes is I can then sort the purposes in Lightwright - or any good paperworks program, and once sorted they are now listed in channel order, which makes it very fast to punch in the numbers, as well as colors. Dimmers may come later if a DPC house, as we won't assign till we hang. If it's not a DPC house then you absolutely need to assign dimmers to determine if you have enough and if you've loaded correctly.

Some CAD and paperworks programs, and/or a hand drafting can be set up to have a "Use" field, basically an abbreviated Purpose column to show on the plot what the units are doing. I often put an "A" in this column for the area's, or "Wsh" for units serving as a wash. This Use symbol is just on top of the color and I usually only do this with units on the plot that will not have this symbol interfering with an adjacent unit, thus I don’t do it for side lights as example, as it makes the plot too cluttered. I have my Lightwright and Vectorworks programs set up for a Use field in LW that exports to a User Field in VW that pops the abbreviated purpose onto the plot. Same thing with templates. I'll list the actual template number in the LW template column as "T:R77707", as example, mostly for counting purposes as well as info for the electics to know what gobo goes where, but have an adjacent column in LW called "Temp to VW" showing as a "T" on the screen. This column exports to VW and pops a "T" symbol in the approprate units to indicate it gets a gobo.

Note that this is one way of working and you don't have to be that specific, especially with obvious stuff such as sides and bax, especially in a plot where everythings a wash - a dance plot as example. You know that all the boom or side ladder stuff is side light, so listing as Side works fine. Ditto the Bax.

SB

 

[squigish]

You want to use the area number for the focus. You can use either letters, Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3) or roman numerals for your areas. I use roman numerals, but it's really a matter of personal preference. You should number them from dsr to dsl, the msr to msl, then usr to usl. So if you had nine areas, area I would be dsr, area II would be dc, area III would be dsl, area IV would be msr, etc.

It seems like for your purposes you might want to seperate the focus (where the light is pointed) from the system (what other lights do you use it with, and how is it used.) Examples of systems might be warm FL, or R68 Bx Boom, or NC (no color) Back.

That said, it's perfectly acceptable to combine the two.

Hope this helps!

 

[ship]

I always devided it up into acting areas for focus by letter code printed in the center of a circle upon the stage part of the plot. This way in addition to gel notations at the front of each fixture symbol, you also had it's focus location. This in addition to fixture number and notes about the fixture such as lens type and iris and or gobo inside the fixture symbol. Than a line off the symbol for patch and dimmer number as per USITT standard

Given you have focus location and gel type, one in looking at the plot already should know it's purpose for the most part. Much less in any case, those hanging the plot don't need to know if it's a powder puff verses fight scene intent.

The magic sheet with a more general plot and drections of color in each acting areas as assigned to dimmer channels, when used by me and the board op, in covering for stuff not designed, than used it and the notes of intent of fixture in use sheet to determine what each was doing. Perhaps a seperate sheet that instead of divided up by fixture number is divided up by acting area would be more useful in both shoing intent especially if table in noting such as left/hot verses right/cool, but still in going area by area of each fixture with a purpose in that area, you would have what you need. This in addition to either magic sheets for each scene or in addition to one general one showing all the lights with arrows as to where they are going that are also color coded for intent and what the lights are doing. Or is this a cheat sheet? Still the intent is to quickly find the info you need to re-design a scene on the spot when it goes as not planned.

So it's not really functional to have more than one drawing of the set - one large blue print, perhaps some pipe by pipe cut ups of this, than a scene by scene drawing, and a overall one depending especially on how many fixtures you have. Most cheat sheets however are more rough sketch and 1/4" or 1/8" scale in not needing to be accurate to the inch.

This in addition to what you would or might find useful to draw up for a scene in more or less story board format where you only draw in the scene and lights on during it in noting the same as per the plot, but only those that effect the scene in a small box.

Beyond all of this, you have gel and pattern schedules that by way of simple paper work link fixture to what goes in it. Dimmer and patch hook up sheets, inventory and balancing of load sheets, but above this perhaps also both scene by scene descriptions, and area by area inventory allocation sheets to work on so that if you need to brighten up an area, all you need to do is find the acting area and there is only a few choices to look at.

I'm thinking your intent is to include too much onto the plot itself. The plot has USITT guidelines and while you can do key's and boxes off to the side of the plot, normally it's seperate paperwork because especially I would think it to be easier to change a writing format doccument than a plot with a simple note or change.