what to say when calling followpsots

[02jamesdaniel]

in a couple of days my college is competing in competition and I'm designing the lighting for it. what I would like to know is when asking follow spot ops to do a searchlight effect is there a specific word which you professionals use?

[woody74]

In the states it's called a "ballyhoo" (or at least that is what I have always heard it called).

 

-w

[Seano]

In the states it's called a "ballyhoo"

Its the same this side of the pond.

[David]

Any one know what ballyhoo means? and where it derives from?

 

David

[Jamtastic3]

Doesn't it come from the idea that the light is made to seem like it can 'dance' all over the room in a ballyhoo (flamboyant) manner ???

 

Ballyhoo reminds me of figure of 8 motions.

 

Why don't you ask the followspot operator to do a few good Lissajou's figures :huh:

[paulears]

If the ops are not drafted in from somewhere who do it 'right', then there isn't much point in using vocabulary that has to be explained. "Ballyhoo" might just as well be called as "fig-8" as it describes it far better. Many theatrical terms confuse anyway, so is there much point in promoting it to people who may well never have to do it again. I guess you could explain that ballyhoo=fig-8, and claim they've learned something?

[jfitzpat]

Alledgedly, the term Ballyhoo comes from Ballyhooly, Ireland, where the residents are supposedly well-known for arguing over the most trivial of matters to an extreme degree. Members of the British Parliament started using the term "Ballyhooly" as a dismissive term against political rivals' arguments, as in 'you are blowing this out of proportion'. There is actually a double edge to this, since the term was also used to indicate that certain Irish claims were greatly inflated.

 

The ly appears to have been dropped by US journalists, who started to use the term as 'a big fuss over something in public, but which is fundementally superficial'. I have no idea how the term jumped to lighting, but I would have guessed that it happened in the UK, despite the western spelling.

 

As to the original question, I say "prison search lights" when I want search lights moving around the stage and "big figure 8s on the stage and arch..." when I want a ballyhoo.

 

-jjf

[andylights]

From Wikipedia...

 

The ballyhoo or bally, Hemiramphus brasiliensis, is a baitfish of the halfbeak family (Hemiramphidae). It is similar to the Balao halfbeak (Hemiramphus balao). Ballyhoo are frequently used as cut bait and for trolling purposes by salt water sportsmen.

 

Ballyhoo is also used in colloquial English to refer to brashness or flamboyance. The term Ballyhoo is used to indicate that one is using any means necessary to inflate an object or idea to a status to which it does not rise. This references the bait fish in that selling ballyhoo requires deceitful advertising.

 

Also in Live Event Production, Ballyhoo is a verb that describes randomly flashing and moving lights around the room to create, add to or amplify the excitment of the moment.

[jfitzpat]

FWIW, I used:

 

THE MOTHER TONGUE, A REFERENCE GUIDE and then, when I saw an Irish reference, I looked in GREENSPEAK: IRELAND IN HER OWN WORDS.

 

I don't see any linguistic references in the Wikipedia article, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. There are often multiple stories about word and phrase origins.

 

-jjf