Gel Choices for Front lighting

[lightingguy1]

Hi guys,



What would you Veterans Suggest for front lighting?


I'm leaning towards a Roscolux bastard amber.


My Application:


a festival that will be held outdoors, on summer nights(Which I REALLY miss), where mutiple "Bar Bands" will play the night away. I have been put in charge of lighting.

For Back lighting I have 4 LED Par cans and 2 panel style fixtures.

My FOH instruments that I have are three PAR 64 cans with one Chuavet Dimmer pack.


I have the ability to Go Purchase three Source four zooms or one Elation Platinum spot 5r Fixture.....


What should I do? Upgrade FOH or get a mover?

Thnx for all the help~!

 

[sk8rsdad]

The only answer to the gel question is "It depends". If you're doing an interior box set and trying to emulate incandescent lighting then the bastard or half bastard amber may be a good choice, but you'd have to coordinate the choice with the makeup, costume and set designers to determine how it's going to react.

IMHO, beef up your conventionals before purchasing movers. Movers are fine, but you can rent them if you need them, and just having one is pretty much useless. OTOH, it looks like you need to solve your dimming/power limitations too before stocking up on conventionals.

 

[Les]

For your situation, I'd probably go with R02 if not open white. No need for a "cool" R60 mix since you're just lighting a band and not really going for realistic skin tones.

+1 on the conventionals. They'll last A LOT longer also, and the resell value will be higher if you decide to go in another direction in the future. One moving head isn't much to look at, and by the time you get ready to add to the system, that model will likely have been replaced by Elation with a newer, non-matching unit. Having one oddball mover would be a fairly awkward deal.

One question. Why zooms? They're not bad, but they're expensive! You could get a five fixed focus ellipsoidals for the same price, and maybe even throw in an extra barrel or two.

 

[lightingguy1]

For your situation, I'd probably go with R02 if not open white. No need for a "cool" R60 mix since you're just lighting a band and not really going for realistic skin tones.

+1 on the conventionals. They'll last A LOT longer also, and the resell value will be higher if you decide to go in another direction in the future. One moving head isn't much to look at, and by the time you get ready to add to the system, that model will likely have been replaced by Elation with a newer, non-matching unit. Having one oddball mover would be a fairly awkward deal.

One question. Why zooms? They're not bad, but they're expensive! You could get a five fixed focus ellipsoidals for the same price, and maybe even throw in an extra barrel or two.

I actually meant to put Jr. inbetween Four and Zooms

 

[bishopthomas]

I would go with the full size S4 rather than the Jr Zooms. I agree that one ML is pointless, but if you have to get one the PS5R is a good pick. I have a pair and am planning on switching out my MAC250's with them ASAP.

 

[lightingguy1]

I would go with the full size S4 rather than the Jr Zooms.

But why?!?!??!

 

[Pie4Weebl]

For front light? No color. Got extra money to blow? I would suggest buying more LEDs pars for backlight. That will give you a lot more bang for the buck than just one 5R and zooms are silly for a music festival. Or, if you took the 2 grand you'd spend on a single 5R, you could get a pair of used MAC250s to put US.....

 

[lightingguy1]

For front light? No color. Got extra money to blow? I would suggest buying more LEDs pars for backlight. That will give you a lot more bang for the buck than just one 5R and zooms are silly for a music festival. Or, if you took the 2 grand you'd spend on a single 5R, you could get a pair of used MAC250s to put US.....

I have 4 LED Pars and Two ADJ LED Panels for Backlight.....


For FOH, I Would NEVER LEAVE IT UN-GEL-ED

It is just WAY to harsh....

(IMHO)

 

[shiben]

But why?!?!??!

It can be much brighter, its more versitile. Source 4 Jrs are cheaper, but generally considered to be a lot less useful. IMO, screw getting zooms unless you really need spotlight type things. Get yourself some more LED PARs, Conventional PARs, and some dimmers. If your looking at blowing 2000 bucks, you can get 16 channels of dimming and 32 PAR cans. Why bother with 2 or 3 ERS instruments when you can build yourself a pretty cool backlight truss type thing. Or you could buy 16 cheaper but still decent LED PAR 64s. You could probably afford stands too. Something like 32 conventional PARs could give you 24 lights in the back on 12 channels, so you could do a 3 color wash with 8 lights per wash, or a 4 color wash with 6 lights per color, and still have 8 more front PARs to light up faces. All this for around 2000 bucks. Otherwise, we recently got 16 PAR 38s, 8 LED PAR cans, 16 channels of dimming and 4 T stands for about that price as well. Toss in decent lamps on those things and you have decent light in a smaller place, and 8 LEDs to add, so you can probably wash the stage pretty nice in color and see everyone. Im with everyone else on the mover being a poor choice.

 

[shiben]

I have 4 LED Pars and Two ADJ LED Panels for Backlight.....


For FOH, I Would NEVER LEAVE IT UN-GEL-ED

It is just WAY to harsh....

(IMHO)

Then toss R119 in it to soften it. Plus, whats it too harsh for? Is it too bright? If so, thats what a dimmer is for.

Also, as a counterargument for never doing it because its too harsh, view this image. Is that too harsh on the front-light?

http://www.leighanneevelyn.com/p507608147/h3faac67b#h31071a92

Or better yet this:

http://www.leighanneevelyn.com/p507608147/h3faac67b#hdc5fc6

in that second one there is not a gel in a light thats on right then.

 

[DuckJordan]

The whole way too harsh thing probably comes from the distance. Right now I have a par 64, no gel 6 feet away from my friend. Yeah it creates massive bright spots but its a MFL and its only 6 feet away from the subject. Distance = magic, and with pars you can always bring down the dimmer level and of course you'll get amber shift but it does bring down the harshness...

Not to sound blunt but, what happened to the lost art of coloring with dimmer levels? granted you can't get blues and other hues but honestly if your looking for a nice dim amber, why not just pull the dimmer back?

 

[WooferHound]

I hope your friend is wearing Sunglasses . . .

If I'm doing front lighting that doesn't change, I always try to do 2-point lighting with pink 33 from one side and blue 60 from the other side. It makes things very three dimensional and the talent will stand out from the background. If it musical acts I will darken the colors considerably and use something as saturated as magenta 44 and blue 68.

 

[kicknargel]

My go-to frontlight color (for a one-color system) is R52. Good skin tones, blends with a lot of color washes. For a concert, though, I may use something whiter, like R54 or R53. Or even 55. Takes the amber edge of the color temperature and makes a nice white, without risking a green shift like R60 can do. I guess it's a personal thing, but I HATE R02 and most light ambers as frontlight. I think they look sickly. I almost always go light lav or pink.

 

[Pie4Weebl]

I have 4 LED Pars and Two ADJ LED Panels for Backlight.....


For FOH, I Would NEVER LEAVE IT UN-GEL-ED

It is just WAY to harsh....

(IMHO)

Sheesh, I can't believe the suggestion of ungelled front light caused such a reaction! I used to be a house guy for an outdoor venue and my base rig was 60K of par. For the first few months I did a a system of red, blue and amber pars downstage. What I found was in the dusky hours, any front light I put on stage in color turned into a real mush, so I used N/C to try and cut through it. Worked great.

Also unless your stage is all of 15' wide, I think you might find it enjoyable to have more than 6 LED as back light. You could get a much better wash, and be able to chase between lights of different colors as opposed to just changing the color. You could then bump the LED panels to the DS and use them as a poor man's crowd light.

 

[Anvilx]

I agree there is nothing wrong with no gel.

Now If I were to gel my fronts I would probably use R05 or R60. Hmm, Put R08 in my order yesterday and I'm curious how it look, Ill probably just end up using it for the wash on the ceiling and something else for my front lights...

Is renting ellipsoidals an option?

 

[KevinJohnston]

For a 1 color front system, I use R54.

 

[briancon7]

First, what are you using for control? Second, why don't you buy more pars? They are cheaper so you can get more of them and have a few washes.