Design Upstage Wall Wash

[tyler.martin]

I'm trying to come up with ideas for an upstage wall wash. Currently I have a "Fire Wash" which is two homemade gobo's and red and amber cyc lights on a effect sub slowly changing intensities and positions on the cyc.

I was also thinking about doing a "star wash" with a couple of star gobos and some yellow gel.

Anybody else have any sort of wash like this already set in your theatre? and if you do, what is it?

 

[mstaylor]

What is the show you are doing or is a revue or something. It's hard to know what you are trying to do without parameters.

 

[shiben]

Also, if the star wash is supposed to look more realistic, yellow would be a bad color choice. Most stars are an incredibly high temperature white, rather than yellow. A realistic star wash would be pinholes punched from a pie tin, and then a whitish color correction (R3208 is what I like, if i remember right). Do that on a blue moving towards purple backdrop and you have the milky way. My 2 cents on a star wash.

 

[Goph704]

Have you thought about water? Need more info.

 

[Wolf]

We like to have 2 different cyc break ups available for when we're doing concerts on the fly (which is most time). We have have a boom up stage on both sides and then cross focus 50˚. We also have gobo rotators that we use for these so if we wish we can rotate them, but obviously just because you can doesn't mean you should. The kinds of gobos we use will vary on what type of concert it is. A typical guide line I use is to have 2 sets of contrasting gobos, so one set may be a twig break up (think some kind of lines) and the other set would be more of a holely break up (think something like a leaf break up). But also sometimes one of the sets will be like a star gobo (not like little pin dots but big HELLO IM A 5 POINT STAR HERE kind of thing).

 

[tyler.martin]

Our theatre is 100% rentals, and I usually get between half an hour and 2 hours for tech, including stage set, lighting and sound. So Im trying to set our house hang to make it more on the fly friendly... Our clients consist of Dance competitions, classical music concerts, and some small theatre productions.

So, I am thinking more and more about a pinspot star cyc breakup. I already have a Twiggy breakup top wash, and I kinda want to keep away from that.

I've got gobo rotators on my "christmas list", so hopefully our board members will throw some money my way this year

 

[shiben]

If you can afford it, a nice big projector will give you as many background washes as you could possibly want, and also allow the band/dance company/client to play any content they came with. Youll need a very big one though, enough to punch thru whatever lighting you have.

 

[Dionysus]

Scrollers are a good idea to transform a "fire" to "water" effect as need be with fewer fixtures. Both Fire and Water effects are called for a lot by dancers I find.

Sometimes "pin dot" stars are more desirable, other times 5-pointed starts or a mix are more called for. This can either be static or dynamic. You can also fade between two sets for a "twinkle". This kind of effect is really awesome with a white cyc and a black scrim in front.

A "Acid trip" effect can come in handy for some dance. Lots of funky movement with a tonne of colours. Last time I did one of these, I used a gobo rotator and a homemade FX wheel on 4 fixtures shooting across the cyc at two different angles, with another set of colours with just rotators at another angle.

A "Twiggy" or "forest" effect can be very handy indeed, for dance, kids theatre, etc. Can be "cartooney" for dance and kids, or more realistic for more serious works.

A Snowflake effect can be very nice for Christmas time if you have Christmas/winter themed events.

Flat colour washes are the most flexible thing to have.

If you have all of those, you'll have most possible bases covered.
Seems sufficient to me, if those could all be done. Then if you needed something else for a particular show you can always re-purpose one of them to what you need for the show at hand without hanging new fixtures or anything.

 

[Wolf]

A visual design aspect that I really like on a cyc is "cyc streaks". A leko hung on a batten with 2 foot of the cyc or floor mounts with gobos in them. This can give a very neat effect. I personally like to keep the beam small but still reach as much of the cyc as possible so you will have to play around with different distances and lens degrees. I've included a 2 pictures to help show what I'm talking about. I almost would have liked to keep the beam slightly smaller but this is what I had to go with, it worked nicely in the end.

Sorry I cant get the 2nd picture to upload but, its another set of streaks going on the opposite direction with a different contrasting pattern.