followspotting

[gherriott]

Just watching the eurovision dance competition, and something about it was really starting to bug me; the followspotting was carried out differently to the way I would have thought. When following two people with two spots, is it not common practice to keep both spots on the dancers even when they are together? Just layer the spots one on top of teh other to make it seem like one spot, but still keep the shutter of both spots open so that when they seperate you can follow in different directions? Well on this show whenever the dancers came almost together, you could see the 2nd spot snap off, and then restore again when the dancers seperated. I don't know about anyone else but that was quite distracting for me. Can anyone comment on whether this is standard/what they would ask their followspot operators to do?

 

Greg

[Neil Hampson]

I would have thought it was a TV thing, having both spots together would be quite a jump in intensity for a camera to pick up, the eye copes very well but cameras aren't that good with the contast ratios.

I can't think of a better reason, however I've never noticed it before on shows like that.

[son of lx dad]

I would say that neil is correct - it will indeed be for the benefit of the camera. Two followspots together double the intensity, then when they move apart the light level halves thus making for some very nasty iris/rack work. it may be distracting to you but is the lesser of two evils to achieve a ballanced shot.

 

Having not seen the broadcast (other than flicking past it) I cant comment on this show directly, but the followspot and therefore the people also have to be kept in ballance with the backround; the backround being colourweb (or similar) and high res strips of LED screen. LED sources generally read very Hot to the lens and so the people in the foreground have to read hotter. This would require high levels from a followspot which would give a noticable snap fade out when the couple came together.

 

The ballancing act required in terms of set design against key lighting is a very narrow battle ground sometimes lost (in my opinion recently on Grease Is The Word where the whole show was just too hot) and sometimes won (like in Dancing On Ice where the backround shots during the routines was projections onto ice, far more subtle and contollable therefore less followspot level and more smooth changes).

 

As I do more and more tv work I take my hat off to Lighting Directors and those on vision control, a very precise craft indeed.

[dbuckley]

As I do more and more tv work I take my hat off to Lighting Directors and those on vision control, a very precise craft indeed.

 

Yaas, the human eye is very tolerant of massive changes of intensity, but the camera picks it up. I find using just an ordinary camcorder whilst focusing and plotting to be beneficial, as it's much easier to see level imbalances.

[gherriott]

Ok so far the consensus appears to be that it is due to intensity balancing for the cameras...slightly drifting off my original post, but I am now intruiged how do cameras cope with movers then? For example 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' a straight forward shot of the seating when the movers do their trademark tilt up from floor to ceiling, some of them pointing directly at the camera whilst doing so, how do the cameras cope with that? Do designers have to take into account camera positions, even on moving cameras? Surely that soon becomes an almost impossible task to keep on top of?

[David A]

to answer your original question, the spot operators were using the normal theatre procedure for follow-spotting, this is the method I was taught and always used.

[gherriott]

oh right. Well I have never been officially taught a method for spotting which is why I am curious for the reasoning behind it, whether it be TV or theatre. Thanks

[hookiefreak]

to answer your original question, the spot operators were using the normal theatre procedure for follow-spotting, this is the method I was taught and always used.

 

I have followspotted numerous shows in various theatres and have never faded off completely when two characters are together. Yes there may be a slight fade but certainly not a full BO from one spot. Also, it's only on a few shows that it has been a requirement to fade slightly when two characters are together (The Phantom of the Opera being one) but most shows don't do it.

[David A]

The reason behind doing things this way particularly with ballet is that 2 spots on a duo can not keep in perfect synchronization and the 2 spots trying to keep up with each other is a distraction.I used to watch the Royal command performances a few years ago which were spotting perfection.I'm not saying that there's a right way or wrong way only that this was the normal way over many years, 30 years ago the lighting rigs were mainly battens with relatively few fresnels and profiles all with glass bulbs and low colour temperature, so the carbon arc follow spots were a crucial element of the lighting in a way that is not the case today.

[Tomo]

The reason behind doing things this way particularly with ballet is that 2 spots on a duo can not keep in perfect synchronization and the 2 spots trying to keep up with each other is a distraction.

They can if they're good, and have seen the ballet before.

I'm disturbed by the amount of poor-to-rubbish followspotting I see around the place, but I do occasionally see some really excellent examples of near-perfect spotting.

 

That said, at the end of the day the correct way to followspot is the way the lighting designer tells you to - if they want one of you to blackout as you merge, then that's what you do!

(Just be sure you know *who* is going to blackout...)

[son of lx dad]

yes designers do have to take the camera positions into account though it is more accurate to say that they take the 'shots' into account. the tv designer only has to light what the lens can see there is no 'bigger picture', like in theatre, - in tv we only see what we are dictated to see.

 

in the example you mention of 'Millionaire' consider what is the focus of the 'fly-in' shot. the focus is the beams themselves they are the foreground and the brightest thing, contestants and host are at a low level. All the op/designer has to do is keep that level in ballance with the other foreground levels later in the show to give the racks man an easy ride.

In shots where you see the camera pointed into a moving light it is not because the camera happened to randomly stop there, it is because that was the shot that was designed by the director of the show. TV is very manipulative with its view point, virtually all tv camera shots are mapped out before hand at least in the directors head but more usually by the sequence number that camera ops have a copy of. Even in very large live broadcasts such as the Brit Awards the shots are called cue to cue as rehearsed. Obviously there are exceptions to the rules as always eg sport broadcasts but even these have a formulaic approach to them. So the racks op knows that on (eg) shot 27 he can expect a lot of flare on camera 6 so he closes the iris slightly.

 

As tomo quite correctly points out there is no proper way to followspot other than the way the designer wants you too. IMHO it is incorrect to say that anyone was using the "normal" theatre technique as there is no such thing, its what works creativley for theatre, but its actually more what works technically for the camera in tv.

I would also add that there are still followspot ops out there you work very hard to "perfectly" op ballet and opera and do a dam fine job.

 

In answer to your original question greg, it is standard to need to keep light levels ballanced tho how the designer achieves it is his/her artistic choice. In this case the LD seems to have asked the ops to make sure that when the beams crossed go down to one spot only. If it didnt look like the designer wanted it to he\she would have had plenty of time to change it.