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Help - lighting effects in a daylit room!


Sunwitch

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We're mounting a production in June - the venue is a local cafe: nice interesting space and mostly good for what we need BUT b-I-I-I-g windows and no way of screening them. The cast are all children 8 - 13, so there's no way we can push back till later than 7.30pm ie broad daylight.

 

Main issue is that we'd like to use a scrim. In an ideal world this would be front lit for most of the show, but at three crucial points we'd switch to back lighting. There's one scene in particular which we'd love to play out entirely behind the scrim.

 

I've never lit a scrim in daylight.!

 

  • Will the scrim appear opaque when front lit?
  • Will there be too much light for any back lit effects? The area behind the scrim is under a large balcony and I am hoping that this will provide some shadow back there when front lighting... It doesn't matter if the scrim isn't particularly transparent - in fact, that's the effect I'm after, kind of dreamy and almost silhouetted
  • What would you do? What would you use? Or should we just give up and try something different? I'd hate for us to invest in this and then for it not to work.

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If your hanging the scrim under a balcony then, dispie the daylight it will work.. Front light the cloth with some floods to be sure of no bleed through and then use a few more under the balcony itself, behind the scrim.

Your other issue may be power, but you could quite happily run 6 x 500w floods off a 13amp supply.

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Screening the windows would seem the obvious answer, and can be done cheaply if only reduced daylight is required rather than a good blackout.

If this cant be done, then to be able to see through the scrim with daylight on the audience side will be a challenge. A previous poster states that it cant be done.

To be strictly accurate it certainly can be done but will require an extremlely high light level behind the scrim.

The light levels required may be beyond your budget or power availability, and remember that a lot of heat will be produced.

For a small space, daylight flourescent lighting might be worth considering, you will need several KW of flourescent even for a small space, which is a lot of fittings. Cant readily be dimmed, though of course crude control is possible by selective switching.

 

For a larger area it might be worth considering the hire of HID film location lanterns, ARRI or close equivalent.

These give several times the light of halogen for a given power use.

 

Neither option will be cheap or simple and I would suggest trying to block most of the daylight as being likely cheaper.

Something as crude as black or very dark coloured bed sheets hung over the windows, internally or externally should help a lot.

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A previous poster states that it cant be done.

To be strictly accurate it certainly can be done but will require an extremlely high light level behind the scrim.

 

OK that's what I meant. Most things are possible with a big enough budget!

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Just out of interest, WHY cant you blackout the windows ? Is it because you think it cant be done or is someone saying your not allowed to black them out?

 

The scrim is a lovely idea and it will be cheaper to obtain material and even have to hire a ladder or whatever to do that as compared with hiring a load of gubbins to compete with daylight!

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Hi all and thanks for the responses - very helpful, if not altogether encouraging. I think we are going to move to plan B at this point and abandon the scrim. We'll be in there Saturday pm, so will be doing some experiments with other options.

 

For those of you who ask why we can't block the windows - several reasons for this:

 

1. Practical - they include skylights and a glass door which we need to have functional for the production as characters enter through it from the street. I know we could screen it, but these are not terribly experienced child performers and it's already quite a complicated space.

 

2. Timing - the cafe shuts each day at 5.30. We will have around an hour each evening to set up. We're a small team and I can't see us screening the windows as well as setting everything else up. There is absolutely no way they will let us leave the window screened and the cafe dark all day!

 

3. Cost - our budget doesn't include this and there isn't anywhere we can take from to cover it.

 

Anyway, thanks once again for all the information!

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