Amy Worrall
Member
Hi! I'm doing a lighting design for a play that takes place entirely on a game show set. The problem is we're in a venue with a very low ceiling (maybe 3m from stage level), and they have a couple of specific requirements.
I made a sketch above of the set. There are 13 contestants, and they stay on their stools most of the time (but sometimes stand to engage each other). The host is either centre stage, or walking on the raised walkway (about 45cm high) behind the contestants. The backdrop is calico canvas, and will be projected on at times. (I'm not making the visuals for the projection, but am in communication with the person who is.) Note that the backdrop is essentially ceiling height, give or take a few inches.
The bars available for hanging are drawn on the diagram in blue. As well as these, I can ask the venue tech to mount things directly on the ceiling at locations I specify — I guess I'd rather minimise this if possible, as it seems quite a bit of effort, but the company are expecting that we'd at least mount a lantern per contestant (such as a birdie or PAR36) in this manner.
Note that this is amateur theatre and they're not expecting miracles, but I've got a bit of hire budget and would like to do something as awesome as possible.
So here's some of the looks I need:
- We're in a dystopian future. They want an effect where the candidates are "in their pods" (their words) — they want to draw inspiration from the surrounded-by-lasers type of scifi prison. But I'm not going to use lasers, and I can't possibly mount enough pinspots to actually surround people. So some creative lighting effect for showing "frozen in stasis" would be great.
- Facelight to illuminate each candidate (so it can get brighter when they're asked a question, etc).
- I'd like a state where the candidates are not illuminated (like in a game show when the opening credits are happening, before the facelight comes up).
- The host will need to be lit, when he's either centre-stage or walking on the walkway. For the latter, it'd be great if I could have him illuminated but not the contestants, and also not wash out the projections too much!
- We'll need some game show type effects, such as between each round, when someone gets a question wrong, and for the 30 seconds duration whenever the audience get to vote.