St Georges' cross (England Flag)

[JohnMac]

I've been asked to light a stage as a giant St Georges cross (White background with red cross).

I have limited height, power and lantern budgets.

 

The following idea's have been thought about, has anyone got other idea's or can see pit-falls.....

 

1. Glass gobo? if available.

2. Pacific Profile with overhead transpacency in gate.

3. Pacific with cut colour filter frost / red (used as 2 above)

4. Slide projector

5. Individual profiles focused as rectangles

(problem with limited supply & equipment)

 

Since the stage is tongue & groove wood, how can you achieve 'White' as opposed to 'Bright'?

 

Suggestions on an electronic post-card please ;)

 

regards

 

John Mac.

[Light Console]

I have had some success with the DHA range of composite flags. This required three lanterns pointing to the same point, and rigged as close as poss. One red with a gobo of the red bits of the flag, one blue with the blue bits gobo, and one white, ditto. However, they do not make a St Georges cross one according to my old catalogue. So you might want to consider gobo 866, the red part of the cross gobo, but you will need to shutter off the diagonal parts to make it work. Then another white lantern to form the main white bit. Another gobo could be the slotted cross, 8064.

I don't know how you can solve your interesting question about white not bright, if you have time, try a white sheet, or different gels.

DHA live here

search here for my numbers above

sorry I can link direct from a search.

[gareth]

Glass gobos? Slides? Transparencies? Whoah!!!! All you need is a big white rectangle with a red cross in the middle - you can do it simply and cheaply with shuttered profiles. First of all, tell us how high your rig is, what area you need to cover with the effect, and what profile lanterns you have at your disposal ....

[Just Some Bloke]

Ok, 3 things:

 

1. I agree entirely with Gareth about the profiles.

2. Don't worry about the stage not being white. The lack of colour in the lantern will imply white so everyone will know what you mean.

3. Don't forget that any audience who are lower than the level of the stage (e.g. in the stalls) won't see the effect at all. Wouldn't it be better to project onto a cyc or gauze so everyone can see what you're doing?

 

Oh, and (4) split gel red/frost won't work at all cos the frost will blur the edges (which, frankly, will aready have been blurred by using a split gel.) You are probably thinking of clear (no. 00) rather than frost but, as I say, it still wouldn't be ideal.

[andy_s]

I agree with gareth and some bloke, but you might have problems making the red gel read very vividly if you point it at a matt black surface. you might have to try a few different reds, or better, get them to paint the floor matt grey, and fill the corners in with square profiles with Lee 202 or 203 in. (blue colour correction)

[Djbarryblue]

If its a tongue & groove wood cant you just paint the floor ? Its going to be quite trickie to get the red cross to been seen over the white! A glass gobo would probley work but if you ait got much hight you will need to get a profile with a good degree on it ! or try the slide projector. Best way would be if you have got time to experiment. I have used a slide projector to project someones logo on to the cyc before and it worked a treat !

[Jivemaster]

As always its cost / effect / value. What size stage how high and how bright?

 

You could use 8 shuttered profiles one for each rectangle of the flag. or one pacific with a gel or ohp or you could use a gobo cut from thick tinfoil to make the cross and another to make the four white rectangles two profiles one gelled red.

 

If its for a run build some redundancy in or the one critical lamp will fail at the worst moment

[JohnMac]

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions please keep them coming.

 

Working height is about 14ft (Sorry 4.26m, [I'm still a Feet & Inches man ;) )]. Stage is actually the floor of a school hall, so I don't think the caretaker will take a shine to painting his highly polished floor. Size of image to cover as much as the floor as possible.... realistically probably 16ft (say 5m).

 

Lanterns 500W Quartet 25, possibly 22/40 and the good old faithful patt23 does have shutters.......

May be hiring in the odd Pacific!

 

Power extremely limited as racks are 3 Pulsar 6x10A but on 5amp plug tops!, with a 75A circuit breaker for all three racks for good measure. Hall has a very nice stage (for a school), but typically they want to sit the audience on the stage, and perform where 'bums on seats' should be .

 

As a consequence also limited on FOH bars and circuits. The effect is wanted for one four minute number in an 'two hour plus' show.

 

Glass gobo has been ruled out on cost...

 

Possible three lantern solution with pacific doing white rectangle and shutter down two red profiles for the cross, I like... but will the open white wash out the red crosses.

 

The individual elements would be my first choice 8 lanterns, but constrained by lack of resources.

 

Pacific with home made colour filter gobo has appeal of simplicity and given available rigging time achievable. Alternately the good old fashioned slide.

 

 

Thanks for your contributions.....

Regards

 

John Mac.

[Ike]

Possible three lantern solution with pacific doing white rectangle and shutter down two red profiles for the cross, I like... but will the open white wash out the red crosses.

Yes it will. I wouldn't have thought the rectangle needs to be 'white' however. Simply making it lighter than the rest of the floor should give the right impression and allow a red cross to show up. You would then only need a couple of profiles or one profile and a cross gobo with suitable gel in for the cross.

 

The individual elements would be my first choice 8 lanterns, but constrained by lack of resources.

Why 8 anyway? wouldn't it be four for the rectangle and two for the cross?

[Tom Baldwin]

Possible three lantern solution with pacific doing white rectangle and shutter down two red profiles for the cross, I like... but will the open white wash out the red crosses.

Well, since the shapes involved are so simple (large rectangles) you could cut yourself some gobos for an improved 3 lantern solution. 2 gobos are for the white lanterns, and are simply a pair of stacked rectangles. One is used for each side of the flag. The third lantern is then the red cross. Since the "stacked" rectangles gobos don't transmit light where the red cross is meant to be, you won't get any problems with the white washing out the red. In the ASCII art below, the white gobos are 1 and 2, the red gobo X:

 

 

111111XX222222
111111XX222222
111111XX222222
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
111111XX222222
111111XX222222
111111XX222222

 

However, there's still a problem:

 

the red profile is lighting the area of the entire image, in a lower transmission gel, while the white profiles are lighting only half the area, without the light loss associated with the red gel. If the profiles used are all the same power, this will obviously cause brightness problems. A couple of workarounds: either cut the red cross gobo as two gobos (one for each half of the image), or cut the white stacked rectangle gobos so that the profile is zoomed out to full flag size, but the gobo only lights half the flag - something like:

    XXXX   
 XXXXXXXX 
X   XXXXXX
X   XXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
X   XXXXXX
X   XXXXXX
 XXXXXXXX 
   XXXX  

 

You could also try using the 23s for the white, and the Quartet for the red, although a Pacific would be better for the red (purely because of the increased brightness).

 

HTH,

 

Tom

[gareth]

Any of the simple solutions that have been mentioned in the last couple of posts would work fine for you, I think.

 

My choice, if you have enough kit, would be eight separate profiles - four in red, four in o/w. The four white ones each shuttered to do one of the four white rectangles on the flag, and one red one to fill in each of the gaps between a pair of white rectangles.

 

The home-made gobo solution is also a good one, and depending on how big you want the effect to be (bearing in mind your limited height) you could do it with two lanterns (a couple of wide-angle Pacifics would be ideal). Just cut two gobos, one with four rectangular cut-outs for the white elements, and one with a cruciform cut-out for the red elements. Rig the lanterns as close to each other as possible, and overlay the two patterns on top of each other. If you know a friendly printer, litho plate is great for making simple gobo patterns like this. Otherwise, buy some of those tin-foil pie plates and cut your gobos out of the base.

[Ellis]

I have found that even with mat surfaces, you get more bang for your buck if you use the gobo(s) as back lights rather than from the FOH bar. The light reflects off the stage into the audience's eyes, rather than scattering back into the audience's eyes.

[Jivemaster]

Simple gobos can be cut from catering aluminium foil or the container from an ethnic take-away, A scalpel is fine for the cutting. The open white will wash away the gelled red so register of lanterns will be important say 500s for white and 1K for oversize red lines

 

You could of course get a 35mm glass slide mount and cut gell to fit use a primary red and 1/2 ctblue (bit of density) or an ohp proj with an extra mirror