Amateur theatre group

[grays85]

Hi.. New to this area of theatre,, we are a new group, and have a small area to act in, at the moment we are painting and hanging 8'x4' sheets of ply for backgrounds. Id like to modernise the process by using a projector. the stage baking is about 3.5-4m wide my 2.2m high with ceiling space available for a projector. at the moment the back wall is used to hang the boards with no space for rear projection.. (projector behind the screen) The theatre is about 10m wide by 20m deep in total (not massive seating 60ish so..

firstly I assume we could be talking a lot of money? prefer not to ...we do have LED lighting 3 lights...which can be bought down a bit to prevent (washout?)

has anyone done this successfully?

I again assume long throw wouldn't be suitable as the ceiling height is not great and actors would be blinded!!

so we are talking short throw or ultra short throw?

 

any advice greatly received

[MarkPAman]

Two questions.

Is the stage deep enough to not get actors or props etc between projector and the wall/screen? If not, you'll get their shadows in you backdrops?

 

Can you light everything you need to, from where your lights are positioned, (or by getting them higher up) without the light hitting the wall/screen?

[Grays851]

Thanks for your reply

The stage is about 3m deep we could lose a metre at the back leaving us 2m to act in and hopefully avoid light hitting the back screen as the lights will be rigged just above and slightly in front of the actors

[Don Allen]

It will help you understand how to avoid stray light getting onto your rear flats and avoid actors shadows appearing on your rear flats if you make a scale side elevation drawing of your stage showing the location of your lighting bars and the lights you are using.

 

This Lighting and shadow article may illustrate what I am referring to.

 

Although it is usefull to make a scale lighting plan for each production, you usually only have to make one side elevation as the lighting bars and rear set walls do not move in a lot of amateur theatres. Have a look at Stage Lighting Guide or try and get some lighting books from your local library.

[Grays851]

Nice article... any ideas on projectors..due to lack of height I think we'll end up with a back lit screen hope we'll have enough room!!

 

Nice article... any ideas on projectors..due to lack of height I think we'll end up with a back lit screen hope we'll have enough room!!

[vinntec]

...we could lose a metre at the back leaving us 2m to act in...

He he he - if any director is willing to lose 1/3 of the stage depth I'll eat my hat!

 

 

What height can the projector be, as 2.2m for the background is only a little over 7ft so only just above the actors? Assuming you want the "set" to be full height, make a simple side elevation drawing as Don says although Mk 1 can be simplified a bit. Draw a line from the projector as high as it can possibly be to the bottom of the background. Now work back 6ft tall and see how much you will lose as you don't want the background to be projected onto people. You can compromise by moving the bottom of the set up so that the painted background might turn into a set of re-used pieces - a row of fences, some bushes, a wall etc along the bottom to some common height. Now draw the line to the top of there and repeat. That's your basic problem and one for which there probably isn't an answer as I suspect the actors would need to be way downstage to be projected over. You can get away with projecting on the actors for short periods for effect, but not if you are using it to be the set itself in my opinion at least.

 

Lighting you can do things with by making the angles steeper but this will be at the expense of how well lit the faces will be. The normal solution is to have multiple rows of face lighting cut off to the bottom of the background (or the bottom of the projection) each further upstage and getting more and more steep (so the downstage area is more or less at a normal face angle but doesn't cover very far upstage). if you only have one row, which it sounds like might be the case here, then your priority is to light faces. You can add these to your drawing - front of lighting bar to 6ft of the most upstage actor you want to light. Then look at where the beams hit the background and they are probably much higher than you would want if you are projecting.

 

We use projection fairly regularly at my tiny theatre but we have the facilities to do it quite well. Our projector is nothing special but by corralling the actors to be 1m away from the cyc except possibly for entrances and exits and not projecting to the bottom we can get over them well enough. Here are two examples: The first one has actors about 1m from the background but look how high the bottom of the projection is and even then we are getting a lot of bounce off the yellow floor. The second one is more ambitious as a distorted photo is used for the set background and the actors can use all the acting area and be properly lit. There is about 0.8m gap to the cyc and again the picture doesn't go to the bottom (we have fudged that with cyc lighting to make it appear taller). If you look closely you might be able to spot that some of the picture is on the window frames of the set (although we carefully adjusted the keystoning to minimise this).

 

Our projector is on LX1 and slightly lower than the normal lighting. The LX bars upstage of this are slightly higher than normal to give a clear run for the projector. Using the projector is a lot of extra work to get it to look right, as at least decent so there has to be a darn good reason for it.

[Grays851]

Thanks I'll get the tape measure out

[Jivemaster]

The price of a projector (+ screen material etc) would buy you a LOT of paint.

[Grays851]

** laughs out loud ** yeah. But it's time.. and they're never look professional

[Joe Fernand]

A few of the Projector Manufacturers were showing very wide images using multiple wall mounted, Short-throw units with external edge blending at ISE - https://www.epson.co.uk/products/projectors/short-distance/eb-535w#manuals

 

Joe

[pmiller056]

Consider using a short throw projector. Depending on the type, about 0.5m from the screen is typical. Because of the steep angles involved, any screen used must be flat and rigid. Any billowing or wrinkles in the screen will be instantly very obvious. The actors will be able to go far upstage without casting shadows or being blinded, however keeping their faces lit can be hard.

 

For any projector, a smaller projected image will be much brighter than a large one. Depending on audience sight lines and the production, you probably will be able to get away with a projected image that does not go below waist level, which makes coping with spilled light from downstage much simpler.

 

Peter

[paulears]

Even with short throw - a metre won't give a very big image - you'll struggle to get an image more than a persons height that close, as most modern projectors can go quite wide, but not high. You'd end up with a row of projectors firing down, and then more on the floor firing up, and then all the alignment problems - and huge expense.On a 3m stage, it seems a no go idea?