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Obsession with backlight


paulears

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I'm starting to note more and more events where their lighting budget gates spent on back light. Yesterday was a good example. Behind the band, pointing at the audience lots of wash lights on vertical truss with truss up lighters, audience blinders, great star cloths, and led bettens. Some hanging spots for hobos and beams, yet just a handful of open white source 4s.from the front. I'm always keen on some open white for mic stand positions but I never do a show with no colour from the front. With just back light you can make the stage look pretty but faces need a bit of effort, and I don't think open white alone really works. Lots of people seem to like the look, so it could just be me?
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No I don't think it's just you. As it happens I was asked by a friend the other day just why 'so many bands' seemed - his words - 'determined to blind the audience'? He'd come out of one recent concert early unable to take any more. Taken togther with comments on another thread about needing earplugs to attend gigs what wonders, if you are going to need a blindfold as well, what are things coming too?

 

 

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I feel it is because that is what people see on TV these days - lots of pretty backlight.

 

Some hanging spots for hobos ...

 

Bit worried about that - not seen hobos being hung on a gig before. Maybe on death metal type jobs?

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It obviously depends on the show but I don't like too much colour coming in from the front, I prefer heavy colour from the back flown or side on the floor. I'm currently designing for Bloodstock's second stage (it's a UK heavy metal festival for those that don't know) and my front truss only has key light fresnels and moles. I do however have wash lights on the front corners of the stage and cross light with colour. The rest of my moving lights are flown on the mid and back trusses, nothing on the floor (tight for space). Bars of 6 rigged are vertically up the legs of the ground support and are focused up and out criss cross style matching the other bars that are flown in the air.

But this is a different situation to other gigs I may design, obviously suiting the type of music. (reminds me to chase up my new ear plugs!)

 

I lit a concert last year where we wanted a heavy floor package to replace the lack of 'set' or risers on stage, so put towers in upstage full of Ipix and Chauvet LED's and used them for pure eye candy. I only ran them at about 25% though and used Avo's pixel mapper to good use. So it looked good and complimented the rest of the rig, as apposed to just flashing a lot of lights and irritating the punters. I think the Atomics only got used 3 or 4 times!

Front light came from 40 odd o/w PARS and 600 LED washes sat on the downstage corners, everything else was mid or upstage behind the artists.

Photo's here

 

 

If I use colour from the front then its usually more pastel's than saturated, it's just my style but everyone has their own way of doing it.

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The purpose of effect lighting is to enhance the performance. The purpose of a PA is to enhance the sharing of the performance among a bigger audience. The purpose of mint sauce is to enhance organic Black Mountain lamb.

 

Neither effects, PA nor mint sauce should be overwhelming. All down to taste, some people have none.

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I'm always keen on some open white for mic stand positions but I never do a show with no colour from the front. With just back light you can make the stage look pretty but faces need a bit of effort, and I don't think open white alone really works. Lots of people seem to like the look, so it could just be me?

 

I can't get on with 'proper' colour from the front, it just doesn't sit well with me at all. I pick something I can live with for that particular show which works well on skin tones, and colour the entire frontlight in that (usually 202, 203 or 702). I also try to use as little frontlight as possible, because as soon as you start throwing lots of it about you make it very difficult to create a visually pleasing look on stage; you just end up with a washed-out mess. Concert lighting more often than not is all about strong colour and contrast - it's very difficult to achieve any sort of contrast if you're blasting the stage with light tints from the front! Followspots and copious sidelight are the order of the day, with most colour as toplight or backlight.

 

 

I feel it is because that is what people see on TV these days - lots of pretty backlight.

 

Certainly I think there's an element of expectation - both from the audience and from directors. Certainly when recently working with a creative team mostly used to arena pop tours there was an underlying expectation that the concert/musical hybrid theatre tour would look like an arena tour scaled down. Making it look 'expensive' and providing spectacle was the order of the day - because at the end of the day that's what the audience expects these days.

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At least I know I'm not alone. I'm quite happy with closely focussed profiles on band members glued to mic stands or keys - but sometimes I like to be able to pick out one person, and drop the others, and then let the colour from the front tint the others - but they are mood lit, not OW. I spent a while with a dozen LED battens that I could arrange in various patterns behind the bands, looking towards the audience. Then I tried them in the old footlight position and since then, they've been out front, not at the back. Now I have flown LEDs too, I've split them - 4 out front and 4 upstage where they can be backlight, or provide some useful light towards the cyc - where I've always been short of light.

 

It's interesting to see the pattern of liking backlight over front light - lots clearly like the look. I'm not against backlight of course, but in addition to front light - what gets me is the balance, a few profiles out front v a pile of expensive stuff for the backlight!

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See, I'd much prefer to 'mood light' people who we don't want to pick out with sidelight - I feel the sculpting aspect of lighting them from the side is far more visually interesting than turning them [pink/red/blue/etc] from the front. Frontlight has absolutely no character, and I treat it like the enemy the majority of the time. It's useful sometimes, a necessary evil others, but when given the choice I'll be using it sparingly at best.

 

I've found that doing effects-type things with the expensive stuff from the front generally looks somewhere between entirely ineffective and appalling, so again I tend to avoid it. When it comes to effect lighting I'm essentially using the space as a canvas on which to create something interesting; I prefer to isolate the performers from this, which isn't possible if you're throwing that sort of stuff at their faces.

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Isn't this the complete reverse of all the lighting techniques we have used for years and years - McCandless, Bentham and Reid all favoured the modelling that front light gives. With dance we favour lower sidelight angles, but sidelight with little or no front light is simply unpleasant and unrealistic to my eyes. Each to their own, I guess. TV with their 3 point techniques need the front light from at least two directions in different types.

 

Maybe music has just drifted into the backlight is the essential aesthetic feature, with seeing faces secondary. I guess the white light from fixed or follow spots helps the Imag. The one thing I know is that standing in just one beam feels underlie - and if you can see the audience because they're lit from behind, yet the front light doesn't make you squint - then are you lit properly. Just feels wrong to me - but I defer to better judgement by the music people.

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Isn't this the complete reverse of all the lighting techniques we have used for years and years - McCandless, Bentham and Reid all favoured the modelling that front light gives. With dance we favour lower sidelight angles, but sidelight with little or no front light is simply unpleasant and unrealistic to my eyes. Each to their own, I guess. TV with their 3 point techniques need the front light from at least two directions in different types.

 

Did they? Frontlight provides absolutely no modelling whatsoever - it flattens people and things and creates a boring 2D depiction of the stage. That's why we do use sidelight (and toplight, and backlight) for dance, and why we mostly use very little frontlight to light dance. It does absolutely nothing for the form of the dancers.

 

If I was lighting a concert naturalistically I'd concede the point about it being artificial - but I've yet to be given that brief by any director. I'm trying to create something visually interesting which supports the concept of whatever is happening on stage - and more often than not that is a lot of movement or dance.

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I'm starting to note more and more events where their lighting budget gates spent on back light. Yesterday was a good example. Behind the band, pointing at the audience lots of wash lights on vertical truss with truss up lighters, audience blinders, great star cloths, and led bettens.

Do we need to differentiate between what you've described above (lighting directly behind the band shining directly out towards the audience) and what I would normally understand from the term backlight - high level lighting on the rear truss / bar that gives the halo type effect on performers' heads so beloved of the TV folk? Personally I really like the effect that that high level back lighting has - both as washes (that don't affect faces) and for beam effects in haze. Ground level "back" light that just serves to dazzle the audience - less keen on that.

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Do we need to differentiate between what you've described above (lighting directly behind the band shining directly out towards the audience) and what I would normally understand from the term backlight - high level lighting on the rear truss / bar that gives the halo type effect on performers' heads so beloved of the TV folk?

 

That's a fair point - I'm referring to Shez's version of backlight. Things to stab at the audience have their place too of course - but the skill is in using them appropriately!

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