Gobos for Sweet Charity

[jexjexjex]

Hi all

 

I have it in my head that this was spoken about some time ago, but I can't find anything on it in the archives so...

 

One of the local groups are doing Sweet Charity later this year and, rumour control has it, there is an 'almost standard' set of gobos that are used throughout the show's duration.

 

Can anyone shed some light on this, or better yet, sell me a used 'set' of the various gobos?

 

All ideas gratefully accepted.

 

BTW, I haven't been around here for a while. How is everyone? :)

[woody74]

there is an 'almost standard' set of gobos that are used throughout the show's duration.

 

Why would you want to do this? It hurts my little designer heart...

[Ian_P]

There are indeed a lot of 'messages' or 'titles' written into the show. These sometimes denote the location, or express time moving on or add a gag!

 

In the original production (I am told...) these were painted onto small flats which were flown in at the appropriate moment, and/or were uv or lit with lamps.

 

The problem is there are lots of these, about 20-30 I seem to remember. Having these as gobos will sure use up stacks of channels, lanterns and cost a fortune for custom gobos, as to my knowledge no standard gobos of these exist.

 

In the amateur world, this problem is a factor for this musical, and having recently directed a production of Sweet Charity, the issue of the 'signs' was an interesting one, and I was convinced that projecting them using a data projector was the answer.

 

Until I saw a production that did this.

 

Frankly IMO it just didn't work. I was watching the action on stage, and these signs flashing up above the pros arch were at best a distraction, and at worst, ignored.

 

And also the modern powerpointy thing didn't sit well with a 60s feel even though 60s type fonts had been used.

 

My answer to this was to use signs that were hand painted on thick white card, always in big readable red fonts, and they were always presented differently,.

 

Sometimes carried on by the chorus (Splash! Which always got a great laugh), one on Sweet Charity's suitcase (Just Married) and the other (At Last!) on her other suitcase, one as a menu in Barney's Diner (The Proposal), one inside a briefcase (the First Kiss) and so on.

 

One comment was - 'We liked the signs, as you didn't know when and where the next one would appear from'

 

So my advice would be - go for the low tech approach, rehearse the cast with the signs and work them in the show directly.

[Rob the Spark]

A very similar thing was done on channel 4 programme 'teachers' to convey which day of the week it was

[Suzette]

I agree with Ian P - go for the low tech method .... unless you are updating the production to 2006 then the modern video projection method doesn't sit well.

The only other option, if you don't do video, gobos or low tech, is possibly the old red-dot scrolling screens - but not sure where you get one of them from.

[ptheboris]

I assisted with this show in 1997 and for that we used a set of slides run off of a good old fashioned slide projector. Timing though was an absolute git and it was tricky if you got it wrong as there was no back slide option on the projector being used.

 

Paul

[Shez]

We just did this show a few weeks ago. The first few at the start ("the story of a girl...") were on hand held signs; the rest were cut - the director didn't like them. Easy :)

[Liam FitzG]

Afternoon,

I'm lighting Sweet Charity in a weeks time, I flatly refused to entertain the proposal at the origingal meetings. To put that amount of gobos in would make the FOH bars look like hedgehogs. We are going with the cards brought on by pretty ladies. We decided that any other attempt at using "electric signs" as the script calls them, would end up looking tackey.

Definatly the low tech vote from this jury... besides we like the pretty ladies!

 

Liam

[P. Funk]

We did a production of this a few months back - powerpoint onto nicely dressed up circular screens worked really well! Mind you, the production as a whole wasnt very '60s' (except the rhythm of life scene of course), so it didnt stand out too much.

[Tomo]

Another vote for signs carried by beautiful, nubile young ladies.

 

My view is that the writer's original vision was for the signs to be neon tube lights, however this approach is exceedingly expensive and needs a huge amount of flyspace - neither of which is going to be available to an amateur production.

 

The last time I did it, we had a flown lightbox for some of the signs, and the cast carried the rest.

 

One method that might work (if you want actual, light-up signs) is a red LED screen, similar to the yellow ones you see on motorways.

This would be fairly expensive as well, and I really don't know where you'd hire one from.

[dbuckley]

Im not familiar with the slogans, but a possible lowish cost but huge amount of work would be build a sign out of lots of bulbs, 40w or something, bought by the boxload at TLC or B&Q, making up 7x5 or 9x7 letters as a larger version of a dot matrix display.

 

Then build a big diode matrix, so either a diode for every bulb that is on for every slogan, or work out which letters need to go where and then steering words into letters. Dont know which would use less diodes, but probably the two layered approach.

 

So the you would have one common negative for all lamps, and a +ve for each slogan. Big (or maybe several) multiway switch or something to select slogan, and a bridge rec to convert dimmer AC to DC for the lamp matrix.

 

The end result would be something that looks at bit like the Chicago bulb sign, but can show many different slogans. Bulb displays are big and bright, certainly quite dramatic things.