LIGHTING HELP!!

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

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 ?

[%sig%]

Hi There.

Just an idea, but you may wish to paint your box in Nocturn UV Paint and then at the end, when you want your colour change, hit it with a blacklight source and a new colour will come up.

I havent explained that very well so email me if you want more info but thought it might be the start of a realistic idea.

Cheers,

Tom Warneke
Production Manager
Mainstage Technical Services
twarneke@mainstage.s5.com
www.mainstage.s5.com

Can you perferate the box and place a lamp inside them ? the glow would them come through the holes created in the box?

Just a thought

What do the boxes have to be made of?
if they didn't need to be structurally sound, then you could make them of a temprature-resistant, transulecent material, and put a small light inside (remembering that your material will absorb some of the light, and any structure on the inside will cast a shadow)
That would give oyu one colour and the glow effect.
You've then got a couple of options for the colour change. Firstly, do what everyone else suggets, and hit is with an external light, or simply put another, gelled fixture inside the box.

Whilst this is probably goign to be more of a pain than just hitting it from the outside, what with having to worry about shadows and such, it would probably be a touch cheaper (espically if you haven't made your boxes yet), and free up a couple of your all-important profiles to deal with the "improtant" acting areas. (Plus, you wouldn't get pesky actors walking in the way of your beam).

Just one final thought on the structures casting shadows, you could use perspex as a support structure- it's pretty cheap to buy raw sheeets of it, and is workable to a degree.
Or you could get that whole "border" effect on your glowing box.

For more help, contact me at cpl_crud@shagtech.com