Picking out gobos

gafftaper

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So I get to pick out 120 gobos for the new theater. It sounds cool at first then quickly turns overwhelming. Obviously I want a bunch of leaves and clouds... but when you start looking at breakups and other bloby things it gets a little dizzying. So do you have any special tricks you pull with gobos? Is there anything you would say... hey don't forget to get a couple of___ they looked really cool for____. I've got two GAM twinspin indexable rotators coming. The winning bid vendor chose Rosco gobos so that's the catalog I have to choose from (Sorry Keith... I am getting 4 Right Arms and two 400 watt power supplies from Apollo, so that's a good chunk of change).

Thanks.
 
Grids, you have got to have grids. And I have a great mesh full moon which is stunning.
 
Rosco 7750, Arcadia, great gobo for breakups. I HATE flowery breakups, Arcadia fits the bill. Also, you can never go wrong with construction B-D. Just be sure to get at least 15 of at least 2 patterns so you can fill out an entire system with them. And... all A sized! (if you have a full S4 inventory, which I believe you do).

http://www.rosco.com/us/gobocatalog/gobos/pages/77750.html
 
I'm partial to what I call the "brain breakups," in large, medium, and small. My favorite gobo of all time is Jungle Leaf, although Rosco's isn't as good as GAM's, which was based on Jo Meilziner's design for Death of a Salesman in 1949.
 
The gobo that seems to come up all the time is GAM 520, and also the "Moonscape" templates.
 
First off it occurs to me that budget wise in the future it's going to be a lot harder to buy 10 matching breakups. I'm also thinking that it's unwise to spend a lot of money randomly guessing which realistic elements I'll want for a show 4 years from now. So it seems my best call is to go for several full sets of things and limit the show specific realistic elements that I can pick up two or three of later.

So Here's what I'm thinking as general list:
-15 leaf breakups
-15 brain breakups
-15 geometric breakups... Arcadia?
-15 geometric breakups... something different... grids?
-15 Clouds... a variety that I can use to build a couple of different sky styles
-12 fire/water collection
-12 a variety of radial breakups in pairs for the two rotators.
-20 A few each of the following realistic elements: Branches, trees, realistic leaves, stained glass windows, lightning, city lights, window frames
That's 120

Also note I'm already getting the following Rosco Colorizers:
8 Green/yellow stippled
6 Amber/red stippled
4 blue/lavender stippled
2 red/blue/lavender stippled
6 green/blue/lavender stippled
4 midnight free flow

Thoughts. Additions? subtractions? Changes? If I cut back on those breakup collections to 10 I can buy one more collection of 10.
 
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15 seems like a lot to me, although i dont recall your stage area. My feeling is that getting two different leaf sets would be a good idea, my personal favorites fall in the summer leaves area, I feel like you could get away with 10 per and then build on those with any left over budgets on a show by show basis, one at a time or so, since they will burn out eventually.

also, i like the choice of colorizers, i try to use them often, but we dont own too many so it does get difficult. Also, i find that the red/yellows are harder to use then the cooler tones, they stand out a lot. I would actually say fewer green/yellow more blue/lav, but it all depends on what you imagine them for.
 
The space is a 55' square black box So if I'm in the round the stage is about 22' square but other layouts are significantly larger. I like the idea of getting 8-10 of each instead and purchasing a wider variety of sets. If I need 12 it's easier to buy two more than it is to buy a full set.
 
The space is a 55' square black box So if I'm in the round the stage is about 22' square but other layouts are significantly larger. I like the idea of getting 8-10 of each instead and purchasing a wider variety of sets. If I need 12 it's easier to buy two more than it is to buy a full set.

Wait, wait.

Get 20 assorted foliage gobos, and mail the rest to me. Problem solved!

(I hardly use gobos, or have them... :( But I want to add texture.)
 
As I said, I've got to pick from the Rosco catalog. Mottle Breakup looks fairly close to Moonscape
What do you think about the substitution? It does like like a nice organic alternative to a really leafy breakup.

Here's what I don't like about Molted...you can tell its round...I'm a big fan of gobos that don't seem round when they're on by themselves.
 
It is too bad that you can only pick from the Rosco book. I was going to suggest some of the Apollo crushed dichroics, they are often useful. I also don't remember if you are getting any rotators (i.e. Twinspins), if you are, then you migh want to pick up a few patterns that work well for rotation.
 
I'm getting two indexable Gam Twinspins... However I forgot to put gobos for them in this package. I've got another smaller package of lighting stuff to purchase still and I'm going to add some rotator specific stuff in that order. So this is just static gobos at this time. Grog that colorizer you linked to is midnight freeflow and I've got four coming... may need to purchase a few more.

Thanks guys this has been a very helpful discussion.
 
Essential for your application.

Yeah I had a good time with some of the more unusual gobos in the collection.
I like this one best. Could be an interesting breakup. If my very rusty German is correct that's roughly "heartfelt happy gratitude"
 
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