Light Lab

[LavaASU]

Hey guys!

We're going to be holding a day in the nearish future where we have a sort of "light lab" with small rigs set up for less experienced and new technicians to get some hands on time with colors, programming, ect. This will be open to anyone high school and up as well as middle schoolers with an adult. I'm wondering if anyone has specific suggestions. For any Phoenix members I'm also open to date suggestions. It will probably need to be on a Friday or weekend as there's a fair bit of setup involved for my crew.

This will require RSVPs but will be free, and I'll post a link on here once a date is nailed down. We're also looking for any area experienced amateurs or pros that would like to help.

Thanks!
LAVA Staff

 

[rochem]

I used to do a mini light lab every year with the new-but-already-learned-the-basics lighting techs at my high school, in conjunction with the technical theatre class. Basically, I set up a dress dummy and focused lots of lights on it from lots of angles - straight 45 front, mccandless fronts, flat front, footlights, top, hi sides, head-his, shins, back, and a few special angles. Everything was on its own dimmer, and I brought the console down to the front of the stage and made everything easily accessible on subs.

I did it in two phases. First, everyone took a turn with no colors using only dimmers and angles. This was great in teaching about using angles instead of just relying on color, but was also a great hands-on demonstration of amber drift. Then, everyone made up a simple light plot by just assigning colors to each light (from a given pool of colors - we had already gone through basic color theory and how to choose colors). In between each student, changing color over took only a few minutes, especially with everyone helping and the colors all laid out in advance.

We didn't have a dedicated light lab, so we just did this in our proscenium theatre with everything at very low trims. Because of the scale of the space, we couldn't trim them so low that we could reach from the ground, but in many instances it just took a tiny ladder to be able to change out gel, which was quick. Also, hanging two or even three lights in each system will allow you to leave one or two of your most-used colors in the air, so that you don't need to change color in every unit every time. Obviously, this only allows for one person to work at a time, but that was fine for us, and it let the other people watch and make their own observations. This may not be applicable if you're trying to get 3 or 4 stations set up. Good luck!