WrecksCars
Member
I offer the following comments on dance light---sidelight with straight-on fill---as applied to concert lighting for anyone who may not have experience with it. This will certainly be elementary for all the lighting gurus out there; however, my two young assistants last year, straight out of a high school drama program, had never seen it before.
My background is in theatre and television lighting: BFA, lighting design, North Carolina School of the Arts (forget the year!); The Nashville Network. I have found that dance light---sidelight keys with straight-on fill separated on dimmer for specific key areas---provides the best modeling and key area separation available for concert performance in venues where money, intelligent lights, and lighting positions---namely backlight---are limited.
Jean Rosenthal invented sidelight for dance in the early days of her career, and it hasn’t been improved upon since. Sidelight models the body better than any other direction from which you can light the stage, and it lends itself well to concert lighting.
When I came to the City of Albuquerque in New Mexico as Production/Stage Manager for their BioPark concert performance venues, I faced a challenging lack of positions from which to hang lighting instruments, and a critical shortage of instruments and money. The Band Shell---an open-air venue designed for live orchestra performances, had a single, short, FOH truss that had no power on it. However; this FOH pipe proves that God is in fact real and that he loves me more than anyone else---the pipe was on two motorized hoists, allowing me to bring it in. I later corrected the lack of power on the pipe with a concept that I’ll explain in a later post. That was it---no other lighting positions were either there or possible as far as something mounted to the band shell proper, and there was no place for spotlights out front. Solution? Dance sidelight with straight-on fill.
I erected portable 10.5’ “Torm Pipes”---so I could reach them with little effort---three on either side, and used the existing Par 56s for sidelight. They are called either “torms” or “booms”, depending on how you were trained. I hung ETC Sour Fours on the FOH for the front Keys and separated them on dimmer. The term “front keys” is somewhat of a contradiction. The front light is of course necessary for faces in concert if you don’t have spotlights, but the sidelight is the actual “key” light that defines form on stage. I use only enough front “fill” on each performer to erase distracting shadows and bring out the face. Cardinal Sin # 1: Never allow the front light to overpower the sidelight!
That’s it: Sidelight with straight-on front fill separated on dimmer for control. It’s simple, easy to set up, easy to focus and cue, quick, and effective.
My background is in theatre and television lighting: BFA, lighting design, North Carolina School of the Arts (forget the year!); The Nashville Network. I have found that dance light---sidelight keys with straight-on fill separated on dimmer for specific key areas---provides the best modeling and key area separation available for concert performance in venues where money, intelligent lights, and lighting positions---namely backlight---are limited.
Jean Rosenthal invented sidelight for dance in the early days of her career, and it hasn’t been improved upon since. Sidelight models the body better than any other direction from which you can light the stage, and it lends itself well to concert lighting.
When I came to the City of Albuquerque in New Mexico as Production/Stage Manager for their BioPark concert performance venues, I faced a challenging lack of positions from which to hang lighting instruments, and a critical shortage of instruments and money. The Band Shell---an open-air venue designed for live orchestra performances, had a single, short, FOH truss that had no power on it. However; this FOH pipe proves that God is in fact real and that he loves me more than anyone else---the pipe was on two motorized hoists, allowing me to bring it in. I later corrected the lack of power on the pipe with a concept that I’ll explain in a later post. That was it---no other lighting positions were either there or possible as far as something mounted to the band shell proper, and there was no place for spotlights out front. Solution? Dance sidelight with straight-on fill.
I erected portable 10.5’ “Torm Pipes”---so I could reach them with little effort---three on either side, and used the existing Par 56s for sidelight. They are called either “torms” or “booms”, depending on how you were trained. I hung ETC Sour Fours on the FOH for the front Keys and separated them on dimmer. The term “front keys” is somewhat of a contradiction. The front light is of course necessary for faces in concert if you don’t have spotlights, but the sidelight is the actual “key” light that defines form on stage. I use only enough front “fill” on each performer to erase distracting shadows and bring out the face. Cardinal Sin # 1: Never allow the front light to overpower the sidelight!
That’s it: Sidelight with straight-on front fill separated on dimmer for control. It’s simple, easy to set up, easy to focus and cue, quick, and effective.