Conventional colours

[Light Console]

Hi All,

I haven't forgotten about you, but things have been busy at work and at home.

 

I work in a school which offers the BTEC in Performing Arts (Production). BTEC have recently updated the course, and part of it is on the use of colour.

It suggests that for a distinction, the student should use unconventional colours.

 

So, What is an unconventional colour to you?

 

The guidance notes do not say. I have my views, but I will post them later so as to get other's opinions first.

[Albatross]

BTEC have recently updated the course, and part of it is on the use of colour.

It suggests that for a distinction, the student should use unconventional colours.

 

So, What is an unconventional colour to you?

 

To me an unconventional colour would either take it out of the standard rig colours we've already chosen, in other words a different blue or red or amber; alternatively it would be to use a colour outside of the standard colour choices of red,blue or amber, or warm versus cool, which are very usable and versatile. Somthing like a dark brown, or a pale green.

 

slightly Off topic;

I would wonder at marking criteria that would reccomend that using unconventional colours would give better marks. Understanding the use of common/conventional colours is far more important in my opinion.

I'd give higher marks to someone who used what was already in the rig to best advantage, as this would usually be a significant time and cost saving !

[Caldair]

Is this in general for the course, or for a specific production? I was wondering if it was theatre or concert, for example... I don't know if using saturated concert-y colours are that unheard of for theatre anymore (though you may decide that lighting a farce with deep and heavy boxing-gloves-on-colours and making it work counts), but thin theatre-y (or even television-y?) colours for concerts, perhaps (except classical and black metal, where they like their lights white with varying amounts of haze and flashing).

Come to think of it, saturated colours for camera counts. Think CSI as opposed to everything else...

 

Unconventional colours really comes down to everything except what the school standard rig has / other colours that get used a lot / what they see everyone else using these days, doesn't it?

If the "house red" is L781 that's quite an unusual colour for me, but they see and use it all the time and L106 will open a new world to them. L106 won't be very unconventional for the outside world, of course, so maybe the house red would be the unconventional choice in that case and you should fill the standard rig with unconventional colours. Hmm.

 

 

And of course there are things like using somewhat saturated colours from the front (though you seem to do that more in Britain than we do here), which may not be unusual colours in itself but unusual from that angle.

I saw a play where the designer had decided "sod filters, I'm doing this exclusively with open white and dimmer levels" and made it look quite nice. Took a lot of lights to wash the stage at 20%, though. And he may have cheated a little bit and used frost. Anyway, if they're used to filtering everything...

 

Sillier ideas that spring to mind are all-covering blackwrap (for the blackout cues) or lighting the whole show in the glow from fire exit signs. You'd need a lot of practicals... And perhaps shutters? =)

 

 

To continue the slightly off-topic:

I'd say both the ability to not make your show look like everyone else's (at least colour-wise) or This Year's Colour Fad and the ability to take what you get at short notice in the standard rig and run with it is of great value. For visiting tours I love the latter in time and work and hassle saved for everybody (including non-lampies, as we won't bring the whole rig down and be in their way so much), but changing the filters isn't that big a job nor cost. If you can come in at a mid-sized venue for a tour, use whatever configuration of parcans they have to wash the stage, and just refilter them, that and refocusing the front if it's a concert is done in an hour with time for coffee and half a biscuit. Refocus the parcans if you have to, that's not a lot of trouble to refocus to standard later. With luck the standard rigs you encounter on the whole tour are set up intelligently enough that you won't have to move many lights or move them very much, nor replug. Well, with luck... My point is that flexibility to adjust your rig design to whatever you encounter on a tour is a great professional skill to have and will save you hours and hours of work for every single job. Using the house colours versus bringing your own and refiltering, however, is pretty trivial.

[Just Some Bloke]

Firstly, what's wrong with conventional colours? Have they not heard the old truism "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? B-)

 

Secondly, the show must come first. If the right colour for the show is 103 then using 013 instead just because it's unconventional is just wrong and shouldn't get more marks.

 

Thirdly, I would like to hope that the written work provided by the student should be able to say soemthing along the lines of "I considered using 013 but felt that it both contained too much orange and was too saturated for the production. 103 contained just the right saturation and lit skin in the precise way required for the play"

 

I could go on with several more points but I'll let someone else have a go now!

[GaryM]

I too teach the course and am somewhat perplexed by this criteria. Lighting, above all else, should be appropriate for the performance and to try to push students towards using 'unconventional' colours in order to achieve a distinction is wrong in my view and could lead to something inappropriate. Perhaps they could have suggested 'using colours in a highly creative way'.

[MrBoomal]

Stage a production of the Wizard of Oz.

And get them to 'follow the orange brick road'

[Light Console]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Sorry for taking a while to reply.

 

I understood conventional to be a 103/201 or 152/117 or similar warm/cold wash. We've had some previous people have a go, and used 206 (two pages away from 103 in the swatch) and 061 (one page away from 202). These were not too dissimilar to "Conventional" Colours, but we ended up doubling the 061 to make it blue enough to show.

 

I am thinking that Conventional colours are in this area:

Red, 106

Green, 139

Blue - interestingly, LEE do not list a Primary Blue - they do suggest 120, I've always used 124

Lavender, 137

Warm 103/152

Cold 201/117

I guess these could be considered our hall's house rig. I also tend towards the same gels for similar effects - 007 for early summer sun for example.

 

Albatross' point is of interest. Having designed a rig with a palette of colours, do you select a different colour if the action changes from the majority of the production?

[themadhippy]

Blue - interestingly, LEE do not list a Primary Blue - they do suggest 120, I've always used 124

I likes 079 for a nice blue,124's a bit too green for my liking

[J Pearce]

My conventional colours at the moment are 053 for cold (I find 201 et al too green) and 156 or 763 for warm (I find 205 etc a bit orangey-red and 152 too weak).

Red would normally be 106 and my stock deep blue 079 (deep enough but you still get plenty of output).

 

As someone working in a school I'd take an exam board saying 'unconventional colours' to mean getting away from the drama student's angry=red, sad=blue, forest=green, sunny day=orange etc. More as a unconventional USE of colour rather than the actual filters themselves.

[vinntec]

Hi All,

I haven't forgotten about you, but things have been busy at work and at home.

 

I work in a school which offers the BTEC in Performing Arts (Production). BTEC have recently updated the course, and part of it is on the use of colour.

It suggests that for a distinction, the student should use unconventional colours.

 

So, What is an unconventional colour to you?

 

The guidance notes do not say. I have my views, but I will post them later so as to get other's opinions first.

Had a quick shufti at the specification - the summary for D3 says unconventional, but the "detailed" part further down suggests only the use of a range of suitable justifiable colours. I wonder if "unconventional" is a misprint because as an assessment criteria is doesn't seem to make sense. Green sunlight, red moonlight, purple streetlght are nonsense out of context - but for a particular show they might make sense! What LD in his right mind would start out to deliberately use "unconventional" colours - except where a particular production (and Director) needed it in the first place. What do they mean by unconventional, and for what purpose? Do you have a forum or contact at Edexcel you could query what this requirement actually means (or if indeed it is a mispint!)?

Peter

[charl.ie]

I find this is a problem with exams as a whole. In order to gain marks, students are expected to do things that would make no sense in the real world. Another example is in A2 Computing coursework: In order to gain marks for "complexity", we have to re-implement many things that have already been written (accessing databases, sorting lists etc.), and could be done with a few simple libraries.

 

But then again, exams as a whole bear no relation to the real world (when are you going to sit down for a set amount of time, with no reference books, and do a piece of work?)