Lighting outside

kingfisher1

Active Member
Okay, so i get to light a rock concert! "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, this'll be fun" i though, yet then i realised that it was in the middle of the day in bright sunlight.

"so much the better" i though, i won't need to you dimmers to light the stage, i can just use them for fun effects sorta stuff.

so, my question to everyone is, with s4 and s4 pars, what works in broad day light and what will not even show up?
 
Well, allow me to help Ian's questions along, since he left out some info that would help:

First, its a concert outside from 12 to 7, so all daylight. We were thinking that tbe 'back wall' set would be scaffolding with two pipes forming an X inbetween them. From this X and from the scaffolding we would be able to hang fixtures.

My inital thought was mainly to hang something like this

Code:
\             /
  \         /
    \     /
      \ /
      / \
    /    \
  /        \
/            \

Each pipe would have 4 colors, twofered going inwords (due to dimmers everything must be twofered)
So it would look kinda like:

Code:
f4\             /f8
 f3 \         /f7
   f2 \     /f6
     f1 \ /f5
     f5 / \f1
    f6/    \f2
  f7/        \f3
f8/            \f4
f1 is twofered with f1 f2 is twofered with f2 and so on.
These lights would be aimed stright out at the stage/audience so we see the beams of light, since the lights won't win the fight with the midday sun.
There would be a no color source4 par, so this way we can do chases into and out of the X plus swap pipes, and some other cool stuff that can just be programed into a few pages of subs.

Power-wise, we have 12x1.2k dimmers and 5x600w dimmers.
Sadly, I can only easily find 80 amps of power, though i may be able to find another 15 amps, if I have the power to run.

My biggest question is what lenses do we want in the S4PAR's. I was thinking put the VNSP lenses in them, as this way the audience sees the brightest beam, plus since we're lighting for senic reasons, it would look best IMO.

From what I hear, we have acustic acts, ska acts, regee acts, rock acts, and god knows what else we'll get to deal with.
Color wise I was thinking a basic red/blue/yellow/orange to kinda cover me for most acts, but I an open to sugestions for colors.

Oh, i'd probably also set up 10 egg-strobes that just came into my posession as well as a 50' source4 shooting up from being the drum kit, just for the hell of it. Any other cool sugestions?
 
Putting in some shins my give ya a bit of color... as well if you could do some sort of footlights.... is the stage going to be covered?... and which way is the sun coming from at lets say 3?
 
Astronomy? well, down stage approximatley faces west. uncovered stage. we have some alman strips, but they aren't very powerfull.......
 
Our strips are R40's, which arn't exactly powerful (I wanted to get a nice set of the Z3 strips, but **** are they expensive...) and combined with a west facing stage...

I was thinking about putting a strip light on each side of the stage, just for the hell of it, and I think I will if I can find enough power, but as I said, power is kinda hard to find right now.

Also, I hear I have at least one ska act. What colors works for ska? I personally can not stand that genre (which sucks that i'm mixing the show) and know nothing about what works for it. Just some crazy backlight chases?
 
Haha, what's wrong with ska?? Ok, ok, so not everyone can like just about every genre like I do. Ha.

Sounds like a sweet gig, even if there will be a few sets you don't like. Is that 80 amps dedicated to lighting or do you have to share with audio? I have no idea on colors, it kindof depends on the song and talent and such.
 
i would do a simple frontlight system, then use everything else for a bax system... you really are not going to have enough punch to fight a setting sun so you might as well and cut your losses and at least make the lights look good... ie good chases staying with the beat and that kinda thing... i would stay away from saturated colors... also i would make sure the audience can see every fixtures lense.... your not going to be light the stage... you are going to be making an atmosphere....
 
I have 100 amps available, and of that I figure I can give 80 amps to lighting. I am thinking that the amps will use 15 or 20 amps, so I'll chuck them on a 20 amp breaker to make them happy, and then other miss. things such as a booth and boards and whatever else needs power....

However, I also think I can get at least another 15, maybe 30 amps from a separate building if I (or Ian) decides we want it.

And I'm not going to put anything up as front light for two reasons:
1) there's no easy way to do it with the location we have, I would need to get scary stands and put them in the middle of the audience area
2) I am planning to use a big flaming ball of magma known as the sun as frontlight.... I think that is more powerful then the 3 or 4 source4's I'd set up...

and that glow tape stuff is really cool. I wish I had a budget to play with some of that stuff....
 
I like how the truss was used there. What were those movers?
 
Thats a nice pic. I would love to cover the stage, but sadly I lack the time and equipment required.

I do have a smoke machine, granted its a cheep baby one, it does make smoke. I would have to find a longer control-cable, but I may look into hanging the smoke machine on the back wall as well... Give me some cool beam effects, maybe chuck some cool gobo's into a Source4 or two...

Things to think about, thanks!
Zac
 
with only twelve dimmers its difficult to get quite as crazy as that pic. :D Funny enough our set design perfectly matches the posters for the event. (coincedence? nope...that was soooo intentional. (if i were a wodden puppet my nose would be longer now.)) so because of this i'm trying a little to mastch teh colors. my thougs were
a red
a liughter blue
a yellow
and for kicks, a green
and a fixture or two n/c
 

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