Night Sky Cyc

[agermich]

Hi There

 

I'm currently working on a design for a production of Women of Troy at uni which will have a cyc lit as a night sky for the backdrop. Now I dont think that I'm going to have any problems creating the the image. I was intending to use coda's with primaries to create the colour washes from top and bottom, and then probably use gobos or an fx projector for the clouds. My problem is in chosing the right kind of material to project onto. I think that a canvas tab will be too heavy so there won't be enough diffusion in the image. I'm leaning more towards either light cotton or gauze (maybe a filled gauze) but I'm really not sure what rout to go down. If anybody has any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers

 

Mike :)

[woody74]

Our cyc is white and a heavy gauze-like material, it reads color great, and stretches so there are no wrinkles. I have also seen cycs that are a very light blue (around a Lee 203) which compensates for some of the yellow of incad sources. My biggest recommendations are 1) seamless material and 2) able to stretch when weight is applied to the chain pocket.

 

-w

[Rich newby]

Hi

 

There have been lots of topics on cycs, do a quick search and you should find the info you want.

 

Rich

[paulears]

do you want diffusion or clarity? If you want it to be softish, how about a simple gauze in front of a black? will soften up the clouds nicely. One nice trick if you have enough depth is a white gauze in front of a solid cyc, with up lighting from groundrows and downlighting from asymetrics. you can get a nice solid background, with amazing depth.

[Tomo]

One nice trick if you have enough depth is a white gauze in front of a solid cyc, with up lighting from groundrows and downlighting from asymetrics. you can get a nice solid background, with amazing depth.

This really is a beautiful effect - let me add my recommendation!

[david.elsbury]

Just to clarify- Paulears, do you have the lights between the guaze and the cyc, or backlighting the cyc (if you can), or frontlighting the gauze?

 

lighting the cyc, or the gauze?

[gareth]

Working from downstage to upstage ..... gauze ; floods ; cyc.

 

Or, if you have a cyc that'll take backlighting, reverse the last two of those. :)

[agermich]

Hi

 

Theres some great suggestions here. I'm gonna try out a few different things tonight. I've got a decent white gauze and some old bits of black and grey gauzes to try out to see what colour will work the most effectively. Behind the gauze I've either got the blacks or the solid cyc wall which is kind of a duck egg blue colour. Theres a fair distance between the bar and the wall but not between the bar and the blacks so If it will give me better depth I might consider rigging a bar a little further downstage for the gauze. I've got some old groundrows as well as the codas so I'll try using those for the uplight.

 

Mike :)

[Grahame]

I agree the gauze/cyc combo looks fantastic, but I usually use a black gauze, not white. I think that gives more impression of depth, and when the cyc isn't lit you have a passable black backcloth.

 

Another trick I've used a few times is to hang a starcloth immediately upstage of the cyc (if it's not being backlit). This works with any type of starcloth, but fibre-optic probably works best due to the small size of the light sources. You have to ensure that the 'stars' are actually touching the cyc to get a clean image. If there is any size-able gap you will get fuzzy 'stars'; although this in itself can be quite nice for a foggy evening effect:

 

http://www.dogstar-design.co.uk/shows/falstaff_forest_m.jpg

 

In that shot some of the pea lamps are in better contact with the cyc than others, so there is a mixture of sharp and fuzzy stars. The moon was a simple moonbox also hung so that it was in contact with the cyc. Sadly, I didn't have a gauze in this instance, but we did have a smoke gun. :)

 

So if your starcloth is strings of fairy lights (as in the above shot), hang them on the same bar of the cyc and make sure the strings come off the downstage side of the bar to touch the cyc; if it's a full starcloth hang it on the next bar upstage; you can then strap the two bars together and pull the bottom edge of the cyc upstage, holding it in place with weights so that the whole assembly is pulled upstage at an angle with the starcloth physically resting on the cyc. This next shot was done in that way with a fibre-optic cloth (sorry it's a pretty crap picture):

 

http://www.dogstar-design.co.uk/shows/Wc1.JPG

 

You can get some gorgeous dusk sky looks by lighting the cyc from the groundrow only, with the stars just showing through at the top. In the above shot, the scenic groundrow masked the lighting one, and a black gauze was downstage of all that.

 

Have fun!

 

Grahame

[agermich]

Hi All

 

I did some testing last night which went really well although there were a few problems that I hope you may be able to help me with. I found that a black gauze in front of a white cyc worked really well. I tried a white gauze but it was too reflective and just didn't give the depth that I got from the black. One of my problems was with gel colours - the gel store was a mess (as usual) and I couldn't find any good primaries so the colour mixing was a little difficult (the green was awafull). I'm going to order some new sheets tomorrow so should I go for the colours that Lee list as their primaries or does anyone know if there are any other colours in the range that will mix better? My other problem was with the groundrows. Our groundrows are some very old strand 8 cell compartment batterns fitted with 100watt screw in lamps, which did what I wanted them to do but the output just isn't high enough. I tried using some codas for the footlight but they needed to be a long way back from the gauze which won't be possible. So can anybody recommend me some good groundrows that I would be able to hire in? Thanks for the help.

 

Mike :)

[Grahame]

I would have thought that Codas would be ideal for the groundrow job; why did you have to place them 'a long way back from the gauze'? Were they spilling light onto the upstage side of the gauze? If so, you can cure that by using a scenic groundrow, which also masks the units, or at a pinch, a lot of black wrap to soak up the spill. It's also possible that you have the Codas the wrong way up as they have assymetric reflectors. IIRC, the lamps should be at the top of the unit if you're lighting as a groundrow - it's the opposite of what you would think intuitively.

I think the second picture I posted used Thomas 4-cell units for the groundrow (although it was quite some time ago) - I really like the Thomas floods for their output and even light distribution; however the colour frames are a complete pain and tend to burn through the gel in nanoseconds. Much better not to use frames and just stick the gel on with black tak or something.

 

As to colour, that will depend partly on how punchy your units are and what colour effects you're trying to achieve. Darker blues won't show at all unless you have reasonably powerful lamps (I'd say 800W minimum). I like Lee 363 for a 'medium blue' as it doesn't have a lot of red in it and also mixes well with other colours. For an ultimate deep blue try Lee 071 (Tokyo Blue), but you really need to have two circuits of this to get anything out of it. Reds - try Lee 026 or 027. Green - well firstly, ask yourself if you really need a green? Might be better with a lighter blue or an amber like L135.

 

Grahame

[agermich]

The problem that I was having with the codas was that I was getting blocks of each of the primaries at the bottom of the cyc. I tried using a heavy diffusion which helped a little but the colour was still mixing a bit too high up the cyc. I didn't have this problem with our old groundrows (but then they didn't have a high enough output). Maybe a horizontal brushed silk might push the light accross more? If I was able to make the codas work for the uplighting it would be better because I would have less to hire in. The codas worked fine for the downlight because there was enough distance for the colours to mix successfully. As for the colours I think I'l just have to keep playing. The colour section in "Light Fantastic" suggests 164-Flame Red, 124-Dark Green and 132 Medium blue. I wanted to use colour mixing for this to give myself the flexibility to acieve a sky that gradually moves from a cloudy night with hints of colour into a colourfull yet still cloudy morning sky that can move throught further changes into a red sky that has the feel of troy burning in the background while retaining the feeling that this is a real sky (my god what a stupidly long sentence).

[Andrew C]

Our groundrows are some very old strand 8 cell compartment batterns fitted with 100watt screw in lamps, which did what I wanted them to do but the output just isn't high enough.

The old Strand 8 cells would take 150W lamps. That would give you an increase in light, or you could try the pressed glass spots (but they would probably be too 'spotty' for your application).

 

Silk would help but remember that the light spreads at 90° to the striations.