So I'm a noob, and also my high school's lighting designer. We are doing singing in the rain next semester and the director is dead set on making it rain on stage. Ignoring the engineering behind that, I want to get some ideas on how to actually light the rain itself. I talked to some of the guys, one of them mentioned lighting it from above so that it would work like a fiber optic cable, but fiber optic cables get light from point A to point B without allowing any light off to the other 2 dimensions (and thus in theory the audience will never see said light). My current plan is to side light the rain, as I figure lighting it from the front would be completely useless. So far that is all I have. Thoughts?
Making it rain... and making it visible
- Thread starterKurt
- Start date
I've had the most luck lighting rain from above. I flew the pipe that they were on almost all the way out. I've also had success from the sides with movers. However, conventionals just weren't cutting through it on the sides when I last did it so above worked the best. Just depends on your inventory.
Sides were with Mac 2ks
Above were S4 Pars lamped at 750w
Sides were with Mac 2ks
Above were S4 Pars lamped at 750w
JDurnford2011
Member
Hey Kurt. Glad to see another Coloradan on here.
There are many different ways to make it rain on stage by using real water, video, or a standalone gobo. Lucky for you, I created a blog post about how to make it happen. You can read all about it here.
I go into detail about how to make it rain on stage, though the second option I have listed there will really help you out as its very easy to accomplish.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Justin
There are many different ways to make it rain on stage by using real water, video, or a standalone gobo. Lucky for you, I created a blog post about how to make it happen. You can read all about it here.
I go into detail about how to make it rain on stage, though the second option I have listed there will really help you out as its very easy to accomplish.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Justin
JDurnford2011
Member
I forgot to mention.
If you just want to light a rain that you are already using, light it from the side with a few lights as it will catch the reflection of the water.
MPowers
Well-Known Member
Side light and down light from an angle both work well. That's the best I can do for help with lighting. Now, the part I know well, the engineering! First, if you are concidering renting the rig, you might try:
Stage Rain I have not personally worked with these people but have heard good things about the rig.
If you are interested in building it I have an article that I wrote a couple fo years back on rain on the stage. Unfortunately the illustrations did not copy, so as soon as someone tells me how to post a pdf I'll insert them. Or, if it's easier, I can e-mail them the pdf to insert.
TECHIE'S CORNER Hello! Welcome to the Techie’s Corner. As I said last month, this column will cover as wide a variety of topics as possible in no particular order. If any of you readers wish to suggest a topic, I will be happy to give it a try. Bear in mind that I am notoriously weak in the areas of sound design and reinforcement. This month’s topic is RAIN. Rain on stage, real water, wet, sloppy, leaky, runny water! From a small drizzle outside a window to a real downpour. How do you get the water on the stage and more important, how do you get rid of it. When you make rain on stage there are 6 major areas of consideration. Supply, storage, delivery, recovery, control, and water quality. As you will see from reading, several of these areas overlap or become the same in different methods of creating rain on stage. First we will look at these 6 main areas and try to define and explain them, then I will follow up with a few examples of how you might create rain for a few specific situations. The scope of the column is meant to cover effects produced on live stages for a "theatre" audience, not effects for theme parks or large casinos with millions of dollars to spend. Supply: supply is just that, where do you get the water from? What is the most immediate source to the stage? Is it a sink back stage or down the hall? A storage tank like a 55 gallon barrel? If your supply is from city water in some form or another, you have the advantage of a constant pressure source. It is also cheap and easy. On the down side, if there is a leak, there is an unlimited supply of water to feed the flood. A storage tank has to be refilled, treated as necessary, and requires a pump or gravity to get the water to the rain system. On the other hand, any leak is limited by the size of the tank. Delivery: Delivery is how the water gets from the supply to the stage and how is it distributed or spread out, sprayed over the performing area or dripped behind a window. Delivery needs a force to move the water, a "pipeline" get it to where you want and a "rain head" to release the water. Generally if an effect is to last for more than a few moments a pump or municipal pressure is necessary to provide the force. However, if you only have a single window, say two or three feet wide, a 55 gal. barrel with at least eight to ten feet of height above the window, will keep a slow, steady rain going for five to ten minutes, depending on the size and number of holes in your "rain pipe". If the rain only needs to be outside a door as someone enters or exits, something as simple as a Hudson sprayer above the door will work. For a full stage effect a tank won’t and city water will rarely, provide the volume of water necessary. This leaves us with a recirculating system and a pump for most sustained rain effects. How big does the pump need to be? A very quick estimate can be made by figuring the total area of opening you will have in your pipes and multiplying by the height of your rain pipe or sprinkler heads above the stage. This will give you the approximate volume of water you need per second. If you figured in inches, multiply by 1728 to get the cubic feet of water. Now multiply the cubic feet of water you need by 7.481 to get the gallons. Now multiply by 3600 to get the gallons per hour (GPH) needed. The reason for finding the GPM is that most pumps are rated by gallons per hour at a specific "head". "Head", sometimes called "Static Head", is the term for the number of feet the pump must lift the water to the discharge point. For example, if your pump has to lift the water 20’ to pass over an obstruction, but the pipe/hose comes back down to 10’ at your actual rain pipe, your "head" will be only 10’. The reason for this is due to the siphoning action as the pipe hose comes back down over the obstruction. Although this effect is theoretically the same at any height, obviously there is a point where gravity and internal friction in the plumbing system put a maximum on the height you can pump the water over. The pump simply cannot get the water up to the top of the hill to start the siphoning effect. Now that you know the GPH that you need, you can go shopping for the pump(s) that will provide it. A point of importance here, the pump outlet, 1", 1 1/2",2", 2 1/2" etc. actually determines the final GPH. Your system must maintain that diameter of piping, on the average, to achieve that rating. For example, if your pump outlet is 2" diameter, that is 3.14 sq. inches in area. If you have a branch or "Y" in your system, each branch must have at least 1.414" diameter, or about 1.5", to maintain the maximum potential GPH flow. If you need more information for sophisticated systems such as water effects at theme parks, flowing rivers and waterfalls etc., that is beyond the scope of today’s column. Control: How do you make the water spray or fall where you want, and once it hits the stage, how do you make it go to your drain or catch tank? How do you keep the water from soaking the stage (or platform) floor and warping or ruining it? How you direct the spray depends on what kind of spray head or water pipe you use. The three general types of spray devices are: shower head types, including fire sprinkler system heads; rain pipes, basically pipe or hose with holes at regular intervals; modified rain pipes with some additional method of directing the water. For examples of modified rain pipes, see illustrations 1 and 2. Fire system sprinkler heads are designed to spread the water very evenly over an area. They tend to be best for very large spaces, outdoor use and film or video applications. Spray/shower heads can be used pointed either up or down. Pointed up gives a softer, more realistic looking rain, but of course you have to have height above the piping to clear lights, teasers or other scenery. Pointed down will give you a fairly controllable, usually round or oval spray pattern. The round pattern is great in the middle of an area to be rained on but if you have to cut the rain to a sharp, straight line like a shutter cut with lights, it won’t work. Straight lines and tight control generally have to be achieved by rain pipes or modified rain pipes. Rain pipes, like shower heads can be pointed up or down. Again, pointed up gives a better look but sacrifices a bit of control. Pointed down gives better control, but has a tendency to look too regular.....like a pipe with holes drilled in it. Modified rain pipes offer the most precision control but because the control is so tight, it often doesn’t look "real". Which is best? There is no best, only what works for you in a particular situation. It is simply a matter of what you and the director want the look to be and what constraints the set, stage, budget, time, crew etc. place on your realization of the effect. The second aspect of control is how to channel or direct the water once it hits the stage. For something as simple as rain falling outside a window, a small trough to catch the water, tilted to a catch basin like a 5 gallon pail with a small recirculating pump in it is all you need. Rain falling outside the door or over a large portion of the stage is a different matter. The floor, whether a platform lid or the actual stage floor, must be covered with a waterproof cover, linoleum, dance flooring, sheet metal et al. Something like gloss painted masonite won’t do unless you have only one dress rehearsal and 2 or 3 performances. Even then you run a major risk of ruining the floor underneath. All seams and joints must be sealed with caulk or vinyl tape or something similar. Clear silicone caulk is a very good sealant, but you cannot paint it. Silicone caulk also comes in a few basic colors. Acrylic painter’s caulk sounds good but will not last more than a few performances. In addition it does not adhere as well as silicone to a variety of different materials. Basically you need a surface that is completely water tight everywhere except where you want it to drain. The floor must be raked toward your drains and the edges must be either raised like a curb or grated for additional drainage.
(curb picture here)
How much rake? For a light rain two or three degrees will do. For a very heavy rain five to eight might be needed. If there is dancing on the floor, more than eight degrees will pose a slip hazard, five degrees is better. To state the obvious, the size of your drain(s) must equal or exceed the capacity of your pumps or the water will quickly over run your catch basin. Recovery: Recovery is the single, largest item to consider when doing any kind of water effect whether rain or a kitchen sink or a waterfall. A full stage rain effect uses a LOT of water! For example, a recent effect for "Singing In The Rain" on a very small stage, 16’ x 24’, used over 1,000 gallons for the title song number! That amount of water is a major reason why large rain effects on live stage are almost always of the recirculating type. What do you do with all that water after it hits the stage and you get it to your drain? The simplest method is for your drain system to actually be your holding tank for a recirculating system. Other possibilities include draining the water to a building drain or a sump pump in the building. If your catch basin cannot be the reservoir for your water, you might need to have a secondary pump system to pump the water back to your main holding tank and the primary pumps. The main thing with your recovery system is that it must be able to contain the entire, worst case scenario, volume of water that your delivery system can provide for any given length of time. Storage: Where and how do you store the water before the storm, and if you use a two part recirculating system where and how do you store the run-off in order to pump it back to the main tank? If you have a single stage recirculating system, how large does the tank have to be to fill the delivery system and start the rain before the tank runs dry and has no more water to pump into the effect. As you can tell, storage is closely tied to, indeed is a part of, supply and recovery. Our concern here is the actual container(s) that you use and need. Containers can be 55 gal barrels, wooden troughs etc. They must be lined or made of a material that won't add color or dangerous chemicals (rust , etc.) to the water. Steel barrels must be lined with plastic or painted (with a non lead paint) to seal and prevent any chance of corrosion. Wood containers or troughs must be coated with several layers of marine spar varnish. The storage tank needs to be strong enough to handle several hundred pounds of water. Remember, water is heavy! Water weighs 8.322 pounds per gallon or 457 pounds for a full 55 gallon drum. In addition the tank(s) need to be protected from the dirt and dust that is present on every stage. Contamination can come from many sources, cigarette butts tossed away, sodas or coffee placed on top of the tank, etc. In other words the tank has to be covered and the recovery basin needs to be covered in-between shows. If you have a steel grate stage area, the entire surface must be covered with a drop cloth or similar. In addition, the piping to and from all containers, pumps and tanks should be PVC, plastic, galvanized pipe or some other type of piping suitable and approved for potable water. Why potable? See the next section on water quality. Water Quality: Quality refers to the temperature, the purity and the cleanliness of the water. Temperature is self explanatory. Purity and cleanliness may seem to be the same thing but they are not. Purity is the absence of harmful chemicals or organisms such as bacteria, mold etc. Cleanliness is the amount of particulate matter in the water, mud, dust, lint, etc. Because a performer doused with water from any source, will at some time ingest some of that water, it is inevitable. As a result you must treat the water as you would a drinking source. When you recycle water, heat it and store it for a period of time you are creating a perfect breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria. The simplest way to treat the water is to use a non-chlorine treatment for a swimming pool or spa, usually available at most home depots, builders square etc. Why a non-chlorine? Chlorine is a bleach, think about that on a costume. Also think about the chlorine smell you have experienced from an indoor pool or spa and expand that to a theatre from a partially atomized source of chlorinated water. While the treatment may not make it a particularly tasty source of water, it will be safe and pure. Just because the water is sanitary doesn’t mean it is clean. If your supply is directly from a city main, then you know it is both clean and pure. As mentioned earlier, contamination to a storage tank can come from many sources. The water needs to be replaced on a regular basis and strained in the interim. The final area of conditioning is the temperature. Once again, if you are using an open system with city water, sanitation, purity etc. are taken care of, temperature is not. If you can hook up to a sink rather than a hose bib, then you can use the hot water in the system. If you can't hook up to a sink and you need the water to be warmed, then you might as well be using a closed system. To heat the water, you simply install a water heater element and a thermostat in the holding tank and heat the water to the desired degree. Why heat the water? If an actor gets drenched every show for 8 weeks in an air conditioned theatre you can imagine the result if the water was cold. On the other hand, too hot might have been very comfortable but the steam rising from the stage might have spoiled the illusion, that’s why you need a thermostat. A thermostat unit from a hot tub or spa is perfect as the settings are in a relatively cool range. Up to now I have be describing very general systems and requirements. Now I am going to describe the effects from a recent production of "Singing In The Rain" at a very small dinner theatre. It isn’t the largest rain effect I have done or the most complicated, It just happened to provide a very wide range of problems to solve. The stage was a 16’ wide x 30’ deep platform, 12" high. The stage is a motorized, rolling platform that moves forward and back to provide additional audience access during intermissions and a dance floor for special events. The floor under the stage is concrete slab. Storage back stage is very limited so whatever systems were used, they had to be in place the entire show. The ceiling of the building is only 10’ above the stage. The stage and the rain were only 18" from the front row on three sides of the stage during the title number. The final straw was that the delivery system had to be semi-permanently installed into the ceiling while the recovery system moved 30’forward and back several times during the show. The system I designed was a closed loop, recirculating system. I used a 55 gallon lined drum as my main storage/delivery tank. The tank had a1500 watt heater element and a hot tub thermostat to maintain the water temperature at the desired level. Two 1/2 horse pumps delivered the water to the stage through a 2" braided plastic hose rated at 200 PSI, to a modified rain pipe. The catch system was a trough across the front of the stage with two smaller 1/4 horse(read quiet) pumps to return the water to the main tank via a 2" flexible water hose mounted on a pulley system that would lift and fold the hose when the stage retracted and lay it out flat when the stage was in the forward position. My main delivery system around the perimeter of the stage, consisted of two PVC pipes one inside the other:
(Full Tube section illustration here)
The outside pipe was 4" schedule 40 PVC. There was a slit 1/4" wide along the entire length. The slit was at the bottom of the pipe and a 4" strip of screen wire was inserted into the slot. The screen wire was "frayed" three or four wires along the lower edge and snipped or "pinked" to a ragged edge. The inside 3/4" tube was drilled 1/8" on 3" centers, aimed straight up and connected to the supply line. The water sprayed up inside the outer tube and ran out the slit at the bottom. The slit controlled where the water fell and the screen wire broke up the "sheet" effect back into droplets. In the center of the stage I used the same basic method except I cut away ¾ of the outer pipe:
(Half Tube section illustration here).
This created a shallow curved trough, over the pipe with the spray holes drilled in it. The spray went up and the curved trough spread the water in all directions. But no water went above the pipe system. This was important as there were lighting instruments as close as 6" to the side and above the piping. The reason I didn't simply one small pipe with holes drilled in the bottom is that it would look more like a lawn sprinkler with a steady stream of water, not droplets, coming from each individual hole, it looks very regular and fake. If you have at least 20' above the stage you can do it that way as the steady stream starts breaking up into drops by then. If you noticed earlier, I used two pumps to deliver the water and two pumps to return it, why? Simple redundancy, if one pump failed, I would still have rain, maybe not as much but still rain. I also ran one delivery and one recovery pump on the same breaker. That way if a recovery pump failed a delivery pump would also shut down and maintain balance in the system. You may have noticed that the recovery pumps were half the size of the delivery pumps. Why didn’t the delivery pumps empty out the barrel faster than the recovery pumps could put the water back? The answer is GPM at a specific head. The delivery pumps had to lift the water about 15’ to clear HVAC ducts etc. in the ceiling before arriving at the rain pipes. The recovery pumps only had to lift the water 36" to return to the tank. The 1/4 horse pumps were rated at 2750 GPH at 3’ head and the delivery pumps were rated at 2800 GPH at 15’ head, almost equal. The way I controlled the water was to install a shallow rake on the stage under the area where the rain was to fall. I rose only 1" in 20' but it was enough to make the water run down stage. The stage was covered with Marley floor and all the seams were vinyl taped. Another method is to make a raised stage with a steel grate floor and a catch basin under it. In my case, the height restriction made any added elevation undesirable. As a result I had to attach the catch basin to the front edge of the stage. The catch basin was a 1' wide trough across the front of the stage. It was 6" deep at each end and 11" deep at the center. The covering for the catch basin was a steel grate similar to that used on fire escapes and catwalks. The rain along the front of the stage fell directly into the catch basin and so there was very little spatter on the audience only 18" away from a downpour. At the sides of the thrust stage there was a street curb 6" high and 18" wide. It channeled the water down stage to the catch basin. The rainfall on the sides was directed to fall just inside the curb so that it blocked the spatter on the patron to the sides This has been a rather basic over view of what needs to be considered when putting rain on stage. I hope I have covered your questions and given you enough information to start out on your own.
Until next month, stay safe. ---
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As far as lighting the rain goes, as people have said, top and side light are best. I suppose you could uplight it as well, but if you were using real water, this could b problematic and it also looks less natural. This is basically true for anything that you may precipitate on stage (snow, confetti, rain, etc.)
As far as the rain itself, in a high school , I would recommend that you stay away from real water solutions. Why? Well, water and theatre can be a very bad an dangerous combination unless executed with very extreme care and knowledge. Even doing a simple garden fountain set piece can turn into a big mess, but you are talking about dropping a significant amount of water from a height and not having it turn into a big mess. Don't get me wrong, you may have a theatre department with a well qualified staff TD who is completely capable of creating the effect, which is fine, but most high schools don't have that.
I would suggest that you look into and mention this really cool solution that I have seen and mentioned here on CB before. You can use unfilled pharmaceutical gel caps as your rain. You load them into a snow cradle or snow drum and release them. When lit, they look like rain, when they hit the deck they sound like rain, there is no wet mess to deal with, and you can sweep them up and use them again. If you design it so they fall into a catch container, it is easier to clean up and re-use them. IT also requires significantly less engineering to build the effect than a water system would.
As an aside, JDurnford2011 you should check the spelling in your blog post about rain... I am fairly certain that you meant trough, troth...
As far as the rain itself, in a high school , I would recommend that you stay away from real water solutions. Why? Well, water and theatre can be a very bad an dangerous combination unless executed with very extreme care and knowledge. Even doing a simple garden fountain set piece can turn into a big mess, but you are talking about dropping a significant amount of water from a height and not having it turn into a big mess. Don't get me wrong, you may have a theatre department with a well qualified staff TD who is completely capable of creating the effect, which is fine, but most high schools don't have that.
I would suggest that you look into and mention this really cool solution that I have seen and mentioned here on CB before. You can use unfilled pharmaceutical gel caps as your rain. You load them into a snow cradle or snow drum and release them. When lit, they look like rain, when they hit the deck they sound like rain, there is no wet mess to deal with, and you can sweep them up and use them again. If you design it so they fall into a catch container, it is easier to clean up and re-use them. IT also requires significantly less engineering to build the effect than a water system would.
As an aside, JDurnford2011 you should check the spelling in your blog post about rain... I am fairly certain that you meant trough, troth...
We have a highly experienced guy who is overseeing the rain. I'm not sure what the plan with the water pump is, but rest assured there is a plan in place. The director has his heart set on real water, we try to raise the bar with high school theatre, and this is one of those things that we are dead set on raising the bar with
My recommendation is to make sure you have a dark background for the rain. I did this show last summer, and the scenic designer made a primarily white backdrop of the street for the scene. In front of the light colors, it was nearly impossible to get the water to show up even with a heavy downpour.
On a side note, I really wish I had seen the information in this post a year ago, because it would have made my life 100x easier with some of these suggestions!
On a side note, I really wish I had seen the information in this post a year ago, because it would have made my life 100x easier with some of these suggestions!
Regarding lighting rain, front light snow, back light rain. A high, 3/4 back light (2k scoops or sky pans) should do it. The farther back the better. Mount a sprinkler or nozzle on a stand outside on a sunny day would give you a chance to walk around the spread of water in relation to the sun as your back light. Also good rain involves low pressure high volume water. You want drips or drops not spray or most that turns into a milky curtain. Finally, if you don't have alot of time to dial in the rain look and alot of time to light it don't bother with any of this. Just wet down the actor before going on and add a rain track to the sound track. After all it's not a show about rain. If you'd like a fairly cheap way to put together a rain effect contact me.
Esoteric
Well-Known Member
Bingo. High back is the best angle with a dark background. We did a production of that same show about two years ago and used projection along with the empty gel caps trick and it worked like a charm but it caused me to alter my normal water lighting to a high front (more like lighting snow).
lwinters630
Well-Known Member
Directors do not always understand the full capabilities of technologies. That's why we have TD's. As to raising the bar for HS theatre, I fully agree! However this is theatre and is an act of illusion, having the audience believe it is real. When I saw "Wicked" the audience believed it was real rain and did not realize it was a projection. I am not saying not to use water, just don't limit the height of the bar by not looking at all options because of the perception of the director.
Business is slow, the show is only just starting up so we are only... I dunno, about 3/4 done with the actual set construction (we used a lot of parts from our last set). I've been focusing a lot of my recent efforts on learning CAD and getting a working model of our theater put together. The tech director that's supposedly got a plan for making the rain happen hasn't come in for it yet. I will keep you all posted as things start happening.
Thanks for the update. Dude, it sounds like your school has an advanced Drama Dept. on a level of some better colleges or even pro theatre groups. My high school had 3 electrics of boarder lights,(12) 6" fresnels and (4) 6" Lekos. We didn't have a a budget to rent a Trouperette. How fortunate you are! By all means keep us updated or at least me!
We have one of those collecting dust right now, I'm dead set on finding a way to use it.
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