Follow spot Advice

[smalljoshua]

Next year in February I will have the task of lighting the Student Dance Production and this year it is going to be big. We (Myself and the Teacher in change of the Production) thought it would look nice if for the Solo ballet and for the other solo numbers we had a follow spot accompanied by dim Sidelights.

 

My Question is how would I go about using a follow spot where there is no room for a real one.

I was thinking along the lines of Profile with wooden handle in lighting box type of thing.

 

 

A couple of things to consider with the Space

Point A is a Fire exit and cant be blocked

Point B is an Open-able window to the incredibly cramped lighting box

The Seating extends the full width of the hall but is not shown as such here.

The room is 12m wide and 13m deep.

All they have access to is what I can beg/bey/borrow/steal + my Cheap scanners.

Ignore the lights at the top of the Pic as the rig plan is not finished.

 

http://tm-web.dyndns.org/Drama_Studio.png

 

Ideas I have had so far

1. Place A real follow spot at point A... not possible because it is a fire exit
   
2. Make a deck to seat a real follow spot on... not possible due to health and safety concerns
   

Any* advice gratefully received

 

Thanks in advance

 

Josh

 

 

*but not if it is along the lines of make the doorway bigger etc etc.

[gareth]

How cramped is "cramped"? Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a followspot has to be a profile. At that sort of short throw, you could get away with using something like a 1200w PC spotted right down (as long as you were happy with a soft-edged f/spot rather than a razor-sharp light ent. type of look - but I personally think a soft edge looks nicer most of the time anyway) - surely you could squeeze something like that into the control area? If not, then perhaps you should have a think about your housekeeping! :** laughs out loud **:

[smalljoshua]

The window is just under 2m wide, on the right half of the desk behind it there is a flight cased frog and on the left there is nothing on the actual desk but just above the window there is a rack unit with audio equipment in it. the room is just under 1.9m wide and 40cm is taken up by a desk on the left.

 

I like the idea of using a 1200w PC instead of a profile but we don't have any 1200w lanterns the brightest thing we have is 2 PAR64s most of the rig is comprised of 14-18 650/500w Fresnels and 8 Patt23s I will Dig around but I think we only have 2 Mini PCs.

 

<rant>

keeping is a problem what is ment to be a tech store is a changing room. The Patch bay isn't accessible because of 3 foot of boxes stacked against them.

</rant>

 

Thanks for the suggestion

 

Josh

[paulears]

are the seats permanent? If they are simply separate ones set out, then lose a couple at one end of the top and hire in a small follow spot. If you don't have the kit to do either a real followspot, or Gareth's nice alternative - you have to get something. Is there a convenient lighting bar above the top row? If so with a drop arm of some kind you could hang a profile - many even have a heat resistant handle - all you need is an iris and you are away.

 

If you have nowhere for one to go, and/or have no hire in budget, then - nice idea or not, it's out the window.

 

If you are thinking of using any kind of moving head or mirror fixture - then expect pretty dismal results - usually attempts to do this are doomed!

[Just Some Bloke]

Personally I'd never use a follow-spot in ballet anyway. :P In fact, in any kind of dance I'd do my level best to avoid them. They wash out the features and concentrate the eye on the face and torso rather than the arms and legs. If you do need to use F/S in dance then you need loads of backlight to undo the damage caused (on top of the mountain of sidelight you'd have anyway).

[smalljoshua]

The Seats are the pull out style but it may be possible to have a drop arm.

 

What would you suggest for a drop arm, we do have a T-Spot that we could use.

 

We could have a Drop arm from the roof on the control room with a Profile or a PC on it.

 

This space is also used for Assemblies.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

 

Josh

[boatman]

In our new Community Theatre here, the installers have fitted a couple of Kee Klamp Type 66 Ground Sockets to the top row of the bleacher seating, as follow spot mountings. They have supplied two lengths of standard scaff bar with sockets to take a standard follow spot spigot. It means that no seating has to be removed to accommodate a normal tripod, just space allowed for the operator and a few seats left unsold. The ground socket remains in place permanently.

 

Do not attempt to do this yourself but call in a specialist contractor as there needs to be some reinforcement underneath the seating.

[tij5987]

Hi there,

 

A few things don't make sense to me so forgive me if I make some silly comment but bearing in mind the info I have read I think that the most logical position for this followspot would be in the window - it is a nice central position and at a nice angle to the performance space. A 2m wide window (or just under) is more than enough room for a followspot beam to pan from PS to OP of the stage so my advice would be to place the lantern on a tripod in the centre of this window and move the table and lighting board away from the window to give you the necessary space (and set up a simple CCTV camera and monitor to view the stage if necessary - If the table is too big to move out of the way then a smaller table for this show perhaps???) As for which lantern to use? Personally I think a Pani or RJ Foxie would probably suffice for this area and best of all they are both compact units with a small footprint - I would then drop some R132 frost into them to soften the beam. If you dont have the budget for hire, then you have to make do with what is in your lantern stock - This has already been discussed so wont go into this much - If you dont have budget for a followspot hire but might be able to afford £20 or so why not hire a Strand SL profile and an iris? (Normally I wouldnt advise Strand SL's, I'm a S4 guy, but they have convenient 'knoby' focus handles which aid in the operation of using the unit as a followspot) I have used this technique in smaller spaces and it works quite well - especially as you mention the general state when using the unit will be pretty low.

 

If I have missed something and the above isn't possible then I would consider ditching the idea of a followspot - If you can't block the centre door your followspot is always going to be off centre which will give a strange angle to the stage and the subject you are lighting (unless you are doing this for some 'arty' reason - how gullible is your director?? hehe) - You could always offset this with a second mirror image spot of course. However if you cant loose seats or create decking this becomes very tricky. If you have a bar below the window at the rear of the space you could rig down from that with scaff etc or just consider other techniques - floods on the deck DS always work nicely for dance creating some interesting shadows if you are clever about it.

 

Hope this is of some use.

 

TJ.

[paulears]

If it's a school, then there'll almost certainly be glass and no air-con, so inside the room will be very hot and very bright with the light reflecting off the window - might well look ok outside, of course, but unpleasant inside.

[smalljoshua]

If it's a school, then there'll almost certainly be glass and no air-con, so inside the room will be very hot and very bright with the light reflecting off the window - might well look ok outside, of course, but unpleasant inside.

Up until the end of November this was the case but I managed to have the window removed when I took the head Teacher Up after the run of a show and showed her the thermometer 26deg C, she asked the caretaker to remove them the next day.

 

<snip>

my advice would be to place the lantern on a tripod in the centre of this window and move the table and lighting board away from the window to give you the necessary space (and set up a simple CCTV camera and monitor to view the stage if necessary - If the table is too big to move out of the way then a smaller table for this show perhaps???)

</snip>

The table is bolted to the wall just under the window and as such cant be moved.

 

What I could do is use a small tripod on the (very sturdy) desk and put a SL on that.

Is that a good idea?

Is there a handle on the back of the unit or similar that I could use to move the light?

How hot does the case of one of these get during operation?

Would an S4 be better?

Why is an iris needed when I can use a dimmer channel?

 

Sorry about the continuous barrage of questions. :P

 

Josh

[david.elsbury]

An iris is used to control the size of the beam (not for dimming, in this case)

 

(OT: but I guess you could use an iris to dim if you wanted to avoid the shift in colour temperature to amber as you dim the lamp)

[paulears]

What I could do is use a small tripod on the (very sturdy) desk and put a SL on that.

Is that a good idea?

- fine if you can find such a thing

Is there a handle on the back of the unit or similar that I could use to move the light?

There are some bits that don't get too hot

How hot does the case of one of these get during operation?

- some of it gets VERY hot

Would an S4 be better?

different, not better

Why is an iris needed when I can use a dimmer channel?

because a dimmer dims, and an iris gets bigger or smaller without going dim. - as they get closer to you, you have to open up, and as they get further away you need to make the beam narrower - an iris does this, but as it's in the hotest part of the luminaire, it's always diffcult to find a hand position that is comfy, and cool. Many people would find some suitable gloves.

[smalljoshua]

Thankyou for that In depth reply paulears :huh:

 

I will have a look for a table top tripod but may end up making one in engineering class.

Would I use one of these to mount the profile to the stand?

 

Thanks

 

Josh

[paulears]

Well, you could, but then you'd have to weld up something with a 35mm prong to stick into the socket. Me - with workshop facilities, I'd just look for anything solid that will sit on the worktop and then drill and tap, or even spot weld a bolt to the top. It just needs to be rigid, stable and cheap!

 

 

To be honest Josh - the reply wasn't meant to be in-depth and certainly not that serious. You could have answered all those questions yourself - is there a handle (google images, or the manual, or other sources), how hot? Fahrenheit, Celcius, kelvin? Hot as in burning is very possible is the answer, isn't it? Have you felt others after they've been on a bit? As for the S4 being better question - well neither is a proper follow spot, so the only real point is beam angles - and they both are useful - maybe a zoom profile of any make could be good? The iris question, I'm afraid was the clincher - big/small, bright/dim - a pretty important difference.

 

Lasty - you mention the teacher in charge. If he's in charge, and wants a follow spot - why don't you have a chat with him. He might be a bit miffed you've done all this quite publicly - when he may well object to his collage (I suspect you might want to edit your profile) being promoted as the kind of place where they don't know their followspot from their elbow.

 

One of the things here on the BR is that this is not the best place to show how little your college know about technical theatre.

[boatman]

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Would I use one of these to mount the profile to the stand?

 

Thanks

 

Josh

 

One of these together with one of these would be a good combination.