Lighting A Circular Space

[poteen]

Hello All. Just a post about a production I am involved in. Ill give some background.

 

The play is set in a field. A grassy meadow. I have an idea to either back the set a 16ft diameter circle. The circle will alsmost be like a disc on its edge...ie. rising to the back to about 4ft and constructed within a flat stage in the centre. I was hoping for an effect of just lighting this circle within the stage and leaving a gap between the flys and the circle. Would it be hard to specifiaclly light this and have no spill. In going for thsi effect will I be able to light the Cyc with ordinary daylight blue amber effect. The play requires that a distant hill with a ruin of a building be seen as a sillouette. I had an idea to cast a black shadow on to the cyc with a gobo for this over the sky effect. Am I way off the mark. thanks guys.

[Just Some Bloke]

I'm afraid I can't realy see what you're suggesting in my head, which is a problem. Some of what you write is difficult to understand (for instance you say "either" but no "or" which doesn't really work). Likewise I don't really understand what you mean about a gap between the flys and the circle. I'm assuming you just mean a raked circle, 4ft higher upstage than downstage.

 

If so, then yes you can light this with no spill but that will require toplight only which means your audience won't really see any facial expresions at all. You could try adding some face-level sidelight (tank traps in the wings?) to light the faces from the sides with the spill going off into the opposite wing which, assuming they are masked off so the audience can't see them, won't matter.

 

If you kept the light off the cyc then yes you can light it any colour you want except "daylight blue amber" which doesn't exist, as a colour can't be blue and amber at the same time! You could light it in blue from the top and amber from the bottom, if you like, but watch out for the half-way-in-between colour as you don't want it going pinky at any point. You may have to try a few ambers to get the right one.

 

Finally, a distant ruin as a silhouette sounds like you need a groundrow to me. A piece of 2 dimensional set cut out as the required silhouette and placed on the stage just in front of the cyc. A french brace would stop it falling over, or you could screw it to the deck, if you're short of space.

 

Hope that helps.

[andy_s]

if your disc is a light colour or tone and the stage floor surrounding it is a very dark colour with a non-reflective surface (eg black carpet) then any spill over the edge of the disc will be less likely to be apparent - the eye will be drawn to the lighter areas.

 

I think achieving your silhouette effect with a gobo will be very tricky, as you might have difficulty blending the light area of the gobo surrounding the silhouette shadow with any other cyc lighting, so you could end up with a circle of light with a ruined building in the middle. JSB's suggestion seems to me a good way to go.

 

Or opt for a painted backloth with a beautiful cloudscape incorporating the building on the horizon, which you can then light in similar way to a cyc cloth.

[poteen]

Sorry for some of the confusion in my post.

 

If I were to go with the disc idea, then yeas what you say is correct - 4ft higher upstage. You are correct though when you say that the faces will be poorly lit and this would be a problem as it is supposed to be a nice sunny day, outdoor in a field. What I meant was that there would be stage that was dead/ not used between the side black curtains and the circle grass platform in the middle. I guess the look I was trying to get was that the audience with be looking in a this one point / segment in time. Another option I will have is to just construct a gradual rake of grass with mounds etc rising to upstage. I am unsure of how to light the scene as it is all grass. the play is outdoors and so would I be btter to use no gels?

 

The silhouette of the distant hill I felt was a good idea. Instead of having any physical staging I would just light the cyc from the floor with flood lamps. Probably just a blue gel. Then from the Front bar cast a shadow onto the cyc . a shadow in the shape of a hill/ruined building in the disance. I thought that using a gobo would be clever for this and that the shadow would just "overwrite" the flood lamps light?? I am not a fan of painted backdrops . I find them tacky.

 

Thanks for your help so far guys.

[Junior8]

I assume you want to light the disc as if it's a bright sunny day while also being able to use projections etc on the cyc from sources positioned in the space between the back of the disc and said cyc. Andy-S is right the darker the background to the disc the easier you will find the task but the real trick is to get the relative intensities of the areas right. We've got so used to having 1kw and above lanterns available in saturation rigs that light gets everywhere. Here you'll need to use as few lanterns as possible on the disc focused incredibly carefully and the more powerful sources on the background. I probably wouldn't rake the disc but use some blocks etc. to give different levels. At first glance it looks as if top light would do the trick but actually that might cause you problems. The more I think about it the more interesting the idea becomes and if you weren't worried about slightly rough abstract type projections home made shadow-graphs mixed with a bit of old fashioned colour mixing the cyc could become very atmospheric and a character in its own right.

 

Don't want to put retro ideas in your head but I've just remembered how years ago we used to use translucent white material and project/colour from direct behind and to hell with the hotspots.

 

I'd make a model if I were you and play around with it.

[poteen]

Atmospheric is exactly what I need! The play is almost fantasy in its own right. The situation which occurs between the characters on stage could never really happen. I feel I need to make the field natural and real looking. The idea of creating this circular acting space in the middle was to create focus and atmosphere. the script outlines that the field rises to a gentle slope. I thought that I could just install this circular raked acting space covered in grass in the middle of the stage and thats why I am anxious not to light the remaining stage that surround s the disk. Its hard to put into words my vision!

 

Another idea I had was to just pull the black curtain and the back and instead of using the cyc, hang 3-4ft long strips of scrim from the back bar. ie. 3 strips in fron that are spaced. then behind these strips, 2 more strips in the gaps which would create a layered effect. A major theme in the play is time so I thought I could create somne kind of layered time thing in the scrim. perhaps these could be painted then to create the silhoutte and then light the remaining scrim with non specific colours (random).

 

Does this make any sense or can any of you help to guide me / firm up my idea.

 

Thanks

[Just Some Bloke]

the play is outdoors and so would I be btter to use no gels?

No. Have a look at this short but interesting article on colour temperature to see why.

 

Then from the Front bar cast a shadow onto the cyc . a shadow in the shape of a hill/ruined building in the disance. I thought that using a gobo would be clever for this and that the shadow would just "overwrite" the flood lamps light??

 

What colour would your gobo be? Black on black? If you used the metal part as the building's shadow then you need something else around that metal section or you may as well have just not had a light on. That would give you a circle of whatever colour you put in the profile's gel-frame. Do you really want a blue (?) circle on your cyc? As has already been pointed out, if you add a black shadow to another colour you won't remove the existing colour as, in lighting, black is just the absence of light so nothing will change - if the rest of the cyc is blue then a black shadow projected onto the cyc will still give you blue. Your image needs to be brighter than the base colour or projecting onto a cyc isn't going to work, I'm afraid.

[andy_s]

Sorry for some of the confusion in my post.

 

I am unsure of how to light the scene as it is all grass. the play is outdoors and so would I be btter to use no gels?

 

The silhouette of the distant hill I felt was a good idea. Instead of having any physical staging I would just light the cyc from the floor with flood lamps. Probably just a blue gel. Then from the Front bar cast a shadow onto the cyc . a shadow in the shape of a hill/ruined building in the disance. I thought that using a gobo would be clever for this and that the shadow would just "overwrite" the flood lamps light?? I am not a fan of painted backdrops . I find them tacky.

 

Thanks for your help so far guys.

 

It is really not as simple as "daylight equals no colour filters required". Look outside in the morning. Then look outside at midday. Repeat the exercise late evening. I think you'll notice a difference in the quality and colour of the daylight. Experiment with colour filters to suggest the differences as required by the play. You can aim for realistic or stylized, the huge range of filters available gives great scope. Open White is also an option, you can also achieve a lot with placement and intensity to suggest time of day or season, as well as using colour. For instance late evening in the winter, the sun is at a low angle compared to midday, so find a way of positioning some lights to suggest this. then use appropraite colour to heighten the effect as you see fit.

 

I dare say there are some tacky backcloths around. Perhaps I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to point lights at cloths painted by some top UK scenic artists. I can assure you they can be beautiful, subtle scenic devices when well designed, properly painted and well - lit.

 

Personally I'm not convinced by the idea of the gobo from the front bar (for similar reasons to JSB), but try it and see if it works for you. It sounds like abstract or non-realistic may be a viable approach for your play, so go for it. But have a plan B just in case...

[poteen]

Thanks again guys for all the input. I understand what ye are saying about the pitfalls of the gobo and say I may have to distance myself from that idea. What do you think of the 2nd idea I had in relation to the scrim and layering it . I could go with an abstract approach to the painting of the silhouette in that....

[fennell-p]

If you still want to do top-light only, it does have its looming and spooking looking merits.

 

You could try floor lighting around the base of your stage which rectifies the shadows and also allows you to swop your state to an uplighting effect. If you have an uncluttered wall around your performance space, the shadows cast by your actors on the walls would look immense.

[Just Some Bloke]

As the question was asked 6 months ago, I suspect the production has been and gone!

 

It would be interesting to know how it went, though.