Projected Backdrop

[fatfrog]

Hi There,

 

Doing a show in a couple of weeks time utilising projection.

 

Plan is to use a 5000 Lumen NEC Projector to project graphics etc for the various scenes all being ran from Qlab on a Mac Pro

 

The physical backdrop is being painted Magenta with the projector focused onto the Upper middle portion of it.

 

My question is:

 

Should I mask off the area that the projector is focused onto and paint that area white and simply project a colour matched magenta as the background image for all graphics!

 

Or

 

Simply paint the entire wall magenta and project images as I would onto a white wall!

 

Thanks

Alan

[IRW]

I suppose it depends a bit on what your images are, and the style you are going for- for example, a leafy green park image, or indeed, anything landscapey, will probably look rather odd projected onto magenta. On the other hand, monochrome/greyscale images might look alright!

 

Ian

[AHYoung]

Depends on your graphics, if you paint it white, its going to look a bit odd when you have no projection on it, you could be clever and project magenta and try and match it, but you will have your work cut out if you need to dim the wash on the backdrop and projector and keep it looking similar, slow fades to black will be particularly interesting. Personally id try painting the whole thing and just projecting onto it, the nec unit will allow you to change the colour settings and compensate somewhat and the human eye is fairly forgiving. If you project white onto colour, it looks like white as your brain works out whats going on and compensates. Why not try and see and if its a disaster a couple of hasty coats of emulsion will sort it out...