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LIGHTING HELP!!

Mon, 10 May 2004, 03:58 am
Walter Plinge5 posts in thread
Hello everybody
I have a question about lighting that I am havign a really hard time finding the solution to. If you have any idea how to do this or where I could find out how to do it that would be so great!
I need to find out how to have two boxes onstage be one color the entire play until the very end when we will use a lighting/painting effect to make them really stand out and change colors but we dont want to see this change until the very end. The director said that if they glowed it would be cool but it doesnt neccessarily have to be a glow effect. ANy suggestions would be great THANKS SO MUCH
Dramanut

Re: LIGHTING HELP!!

Mon, 10 May 2004, 08:34 am
Hello Dramanut

You need to think about how light and colour work.

The gels used in theatre lighting are subtractive, so we start with a white light from the bulb and put a gel in the beam path using a colour frame holder and all of the colours except the desired one are subtracted from the beam of light, being absorbed as heat in the gel. If you look at a swatch book they have a Y or luminance component, some colours such as Congo Blue have less than 6 percent Y component so for a 1000 wattt lamp we get 60 watts of Congo Blue pass through the filter, hence the need for hight temperature gels.

With the box, it's surface is painted and the paint is a subtractive process so coloured light or white light will illuminate it's surface but only the desired colour is reflected off the surface of the box.

As light travels in straight lines, apart from black holes, the light reflected off the box will travel at an angle which may be away from the audience.

So the colour of the box will be a product of the colour of the gel used, the colour of the surface of the box, and the amount of light that actually gets to the audience's eyes. It is inside the eyes that the sum of the individual colours is mixed to make up the end result.

In order to get the box to change colour, you need to choose a colour for the box and two colours for the lighting that illuminates the box, taking into account that this may also be your acting area light so remember it will also light up your actors unless you are using a narrow beam profile with shutters to light the box.

You can light the box with it's normal gel colour and then change to a gel that will change it's surface (reflected) colour to something darker as a contrast or start dark then go normal.

You can paint the box with ultraviolet poster paint and when the time comes for the box to stand out you can do a colour change to enhance the box and turn on the u/v's, but you will need to reduce the stage lighting to allow the u/v light from the box to stand out.

These effects have to be tried out well before the show to make sure it works, but you can get it to work with the correct choice of colours and deciding if you will use acting area lighting for the box or tight specials on the box, that are focussed off the actors.

Using two gels to change a surface colour is used on sets where you choose the colour of the wall paint and your two acting area gels to allow the set to be dominant or inconspicous as the scenes change, or for musicals on a tight budget where you can wash the set with floods to get a different look during songs.

Does that help ?

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Thread (5 posts)

LIGHTING HELP!!Walter Plinge10 May 2004
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