Seeking lighting advice, symphony orchestra halloween show

llecount

Member
Our local symphony orchestra is doing a Halloween "spooktakular" show. All of the performers are playing dressed in costumes, and they're playing slightly more creepier and spookier selections for the performance. Instead of playing in our full stage orchestra shell as they usually do, they opted to play with our drapes dropped in so we could do some special lighting for them (our shell really limits lighting capabilities).

I'm feeling a little creatively blocked this evening as I'm sitting through their rehearsal, so I'm attempting to find some advice on how to light the performers, and to have it turn out spooky looking without being too distracting. The performers all have LED stand lights so they can see their music, so a constant light on them is not necessary, but I need to keep a light on the conductor so they can see his directions.

This is what I have in the air at the moment.
1st-3rd electrics have each of the following: 5 S4 Pars w R83, 5 S4 Pars w/ R27, 4 6" fresnels with R99, and 1 S4 26* at the end of each pipe as high sides with a dense leaf pattern.
The 4th LX has cyc lights, and they are loaded with R83, R27, L139, and an amber color (can't remember the exact #). I wanted to do away with the green and use a L181 or something really dark, but didn't have enough cuts to pull it off.
I've got 4 Robe Colorspot 250 AT's, 2 on the 3rd LX, and 2 (to be placed) on the ground by the proscenium.
I've accomplished the basic (even) red and blue wash on stage, and the R99 was just to provide a "white, but not so white" light if needed.
I like what I have right now, but it just feels like it's missing something.
I'm looking to add some colored front light so you can see the performers faces and motions better, and possibly adding some tree gobo's to be presented on the cyc (still unsure about that). I'd also like to add another overhead wash in something really deep, L181, or an equivalent close to UV.

Has anyone ever done a concert such as this? What worked (or didn't work) for you? Their next rehearsal is saturday afternoon before their concert later that evening, so I've got time to work on it. The conductor has no real ideas on what he wants, he's laid much of that responsibility on me to decide. But, my brain is just tapped out right now. :think:
Thanks in advance. :cool:
 
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I haven't done a concert like this but I would suggest doing a purple and orange or really saturated amber wash. For the high side gobos, focusing them to be sharp instead of fuzzy if they are that way may look good too for halloween.
 
I lit a Halloween gig (it was a series of wrestling matches interspersed with numbers from a hiphop troupe!) with washes of purple, green and orange and it worked pretty well....Footlights can also create spooky effects if you get them hitting under people's chins so their eye sockets are in shadow. There are some decent Halloween gobos out there, you could go for hitting the cyc with a few of those - I've seen good witch-on-broomstick and jack-o'-lantern gobos. The other one I'd be looking at using is a "bare trees" gobo - much spookier than regular leaf breakups, particularly if you can get weird angles so the perspective is wrong.
 
parcans in saturated colours on the floor either side of stage sending shadows all around the stage with minimal front lighting will work well, low side lights add to this shadowy effect.
 
And if they let you, putting a bit of haze (or a lot of haze, but a lot might make musicians nervous) in the air and then shooting through some effects through that might be cool, dumping in a lot of low hang fog would be even better, if you can get it to float at a level right around their knees it might be really cool, some par cans shooting up from in there would be really neat looking...
 
I like the green and purple idea, I think I'll give that a try this afternoon and see how I like it.
They have brought up the idea of low lying fog, and we have the means to produce it, so I think that will happen too. I've also got a DF-50 that we plan to use, very lightly.
Thanks for the ideas, I'll post back here after I get a chance to try a few things out this evening.
 
I would strongly advise against dry ice type fog, the humidity will have bad effects on the instruments, the low smoke effect is less problematic but the wind section will probably not be happy with much smoke, working with symphony orchestra musicians is one of lifes more interesting challenges.
 

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