Design Focusing a new stage

[Graham Darnell]

Hey my school just finished our new auditorium and this next couple weeks we are focusing lights for our competition play, and we are hosting one of the meets. It’s for UIL One Act Play, and you have to have a 15 area plot(5 areas upstage, 5 mid stage and 5 doen stage on the apron) we are have a little trouble with blending the areas and the lights from our catwalk bleed pretty far into the stage.

Just looking for some tips and advice on going about focusing a new auditorium from nothing

Thanks!

 

[NateTheRiddler]

I have nowhere near the level of experience that some of the experts on here possess, but as the LD of my local PAC, here’s some questions I’d ask myself before setting up a new plot (I take down and restructure my rig every year “spring cleaning” style).

1) Bridges? How many? Throw to stage?
2) Fixture availability? I presume Lekos in your catwalks, but what lenses? 26? 14? 9?
3) Do you have electrics above your stage that can provide a Fresnel wash? Lekos with 36s? PARs?

My PAC has two bridges. Near Bridge mounts Lekos with 36ºs. Far Bridge has Lekos with 26ºs and some 14º specials. Electrics use a 3-Fresnel wash, cool/warm/neutral, and I have spare Lekos on my downstage electrics with 36º for emergency fill.

Getting rid of bounce or spill upstage will require you to steepen the angle between catwalk fixtures and your stage. If you’re using a bridge/catwalk to throw lighting midstage or upstage, you’re going to get a tremendous amount of bounce because of the shallow angle between fixture and deck. Electrics are wonderful for wash opportunities.

If all you have are bridges/catwalks, some bounce/spill will be unpreventable. That said, there are some clever people on here who probably have ideas to eliminate that anyway!

 

[RickR]

There are three ways to keep light off part of the stage. Point it elsewhere, use a narrower beam, and block part of the beam. If these fixtures have shutters the you can make an arbitrary line across the stage for the transition to the next set of lights. Many designers do this in purpose to avoid the unevenness of circles overlapping.

You may also be seeing the beam edges so a softer focus or frost gel is in order. If one set is brighter than the other then adjust the dimmers levels. You'd be surprised how many people throw everything to full without thinking about it.

Does any of that make sense to you? Can you fill us in on more details? Pictures??

 

[TheaterEd]

Keep in mind when you are aiming that your goal is not to light the 15 sections of the stage, but rather to light a performer standing in those 15 sections of the stage. Make sure you have someone walking the stage to see that they are lit when standing where they should be. Without knowing your exact FOH locations, my guess is that you will do face light for the Down and midstage sections from the catwalk, and the upstage section from the first electric.

From a competition stand point, the vast majority of places I have gone to did not have 3 different face washes. They had a down stage face wash, and then a 'rest of the stage' face wash. Do what you can and the visiting acts will make it work. Because of the shallow throw from my catwalk, I do one face wash from the catwalk that hits the down stage portion of the stage without hitting the cyc, a second from the catwalk that hits the vast majority of the rest of the stage as well as the cyc, and a third from the first electric that generally hits my upstage platforms for musicals, but otherwise doesn't see much use.

Most important thing I found was to make sure you have a board op on hand the day of the competition who knows your facilities patch, or at least how to look up circuit numbers. Also, if you have follow spots, assume that someone will want to use them. For one competition we were told that both locations would have follow spots which I confirmed before we went. Both locations were surprised we needed them on the day and needed to scramble to get them up and running and a headset to the FS op....