Blinders - risk assessment

[Charlotte_R]

I'm currently doing a lighting design for a play that my drama group is putting on. There's a loud bang (like thunder) and at a dramatic part of the play.

 

My original thought was a big strobe to give a flash of light and then turn all of the lights off for a few seconds, but my drama group are worried about people with photo-sensitive epilepsy and stuff so they've asked me not to use a strobe. My next thought was to use blinders (well, some of our many floodlights pointed at the audience) to give a big flash of light, or (just as I started to write the post) put them behind the character who disappears to silhouette them against the blinders.

 

My main question is what the risks are from pointing the lights into the audience. I used to do it at uni all the time, and I would suggest that the risks were greater as people were drunk and standing up rather than (generally) sober and seated. However, I am just trying to pre-empt people who want to say no.

 

My next suggestion is to turn the lights off entirely save for a single practical and the (dim) light shining through the window gobo and do a couple of lines by the light of a torch and a lantern (think tilly lamp) until the characters locate the light switch. Does anyone have any experience of this, and what tips and tricks can you give me (for example, tiny little bits of light from overhead, perhaps, to soften the harsh torchlight)?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Charlotte

[Stuart91]

Blinders won't look like lightning - the way the filaments behave it won't be nearly "staccato" enough to be convincing.

 

The Epilepsy Society say that sensitivity to flash rates of under 3Hz "is not common". And only one out of every hundred people has epilepsy, and around 3% of those have photosensitive epilepsy. (5% in younger people).

 

So if you are using a single flash of a strobe to simulate a lightning strike, I would confidently suggest that it's more likely for one of the audience to be struck by real-life lightning on their walk home, than suffer a seizure brought on by the effect.

[Brian]

A single bright flash of light, followed by a small number of dimmer flashes ('cos that what lightning is) won't trigger a PSE episode.

 

If you have the budget, hire an Atomic strobe, they have a lightning simulation mode.

[Charlotte_R]

The script calls for "a loud bang, like thunder", when the mystic makes her prophecy. So it's not actually thunder, which gives some good artistic (albeit not budgetary) licence.

 

We don't have the budget to hire a strobe, unfortunately, but I think that this will be a good compromise.

[ImagineerTom]

Shining a light in the audience's face isn't very comfortable for an audience and doesn't look in the slightest bit "magical" to them. You should go right back to the source text and reconsider what the effect would be / what it would look like and then try to recreate that, not simply shoe-horn lighting in to the show. From what you've described so far a good quality sound effect and a subtle "wobble" or tremble lighting effect is much closer to what the text calls for than a rock-n-roll blinding of the audience

[vinntec]

Last year I had to simulate the flash of an old fashioned camera flash pan (When We Are Married). I did this with a fairly bog standard manual control strobe set to a very low speed so one press of the control button gave one flash. At the same time, the LX cue cut all the lighting except for the (LED) backlighters which were changed to arctic white and there was the sound effect of a period flash. After a second or so the normal lighting crossfaded back.The LX/sound operator had to be a bit of an octopus but it worked fine and was perfectly safe.

 

Now your original requirement was for a loud bang (like thunder)? What is this bang supposed to be caused by? A lightning flash would only make sense if it was thunder, in which case a single flash of a strobe, possibly with a change of lighting, would do.If it is not thunder then this makes no sense.

 

So let's go back to basics. What effect has the director asked for? If a loud bang, then this sounds more like a sound effect to me. You could go for a pyro solution to make the bang but something really loud needs a lot of care and someone who knows what they are doing. The most appropriate solution all depends on what this particular production is asking for - and can afford.

[Whiskers]

the BEST lightening effect is photoflood lamps 500wES in your old Patt 137s two or three in the "top" circuit through the window, anything high on the set, three more on the "low" circuit under the plants , in dark corners or just uplighting the talent. must use copper push button switches not dimmers - rise time is very fast start with two top flashes, then two bottom then two top, total time 2 secs You are mimicking the down flash and ground return of real lightning,

 

the double flash is the same reason as police type strobes, the first pulse attracts the eye, the second one is seen, also looks brighter as the eye has settled on it.

 

regarding photo sensitivity, the slightly random hand firing changes the rate between each pair of flashes thus less danger of triggering attacks

 

 

Now has anyone seen my thunder sheet and wind machine.

[Don Allen]

Does your lighting desk have flash buttons (an Australian invention back in the sixties) with a Kill function, so that when the bang occurs, the operator presses the flash button of a special which lights up when the rest of the stage blacks out. It is probably easiest for this to be a manual cue in conjunction with the sound operator. The special can be a gobo shining through a window, or a red flood in a hallway to simulate an explosion, depends on your set and the atmosphere of your lighting. You could program a cue that has the stage blacked out except for the special, then have the stage lights come back on in stages as follow on cues to simulate a power cut, then power coming back on.

[Charlotte_R]

I perhaps didn't explain properly.

 

The play doesn't feature thunder and lightning at all. It's about a mystic fortune teller who makes a prophecy and there's a loud noise. My director wants something a bit more dramatic than just a noise.

 

As I said, my first thought was to try and recreate a lightning effect; but given our lack of equipment (and no budget to hire) I decided to try a different tack.

 

To clarify, I'm not trying to recreate lightning with blinders. I'm trying to surprise the audience with a sudden change from the normal lighting which mirrors the disorientation that the characters feel.

 

My question is trying to pre-empt the questions that I know the producer will ask: is there any health and safety risk from using blinders. From personal experience, I can't see any; but I wanted to ask more experienced people as I only ever used them in nightclubs and concert events, not theatre.

 

Also, where should we mount these too give the best effect? Clearly, they need to be pointed in the audiences' eyes, but would it be best to mount them just above the proscenium arch? On the lighting bar seems too high? Right at eye level would be good for the first few rows but then would be blocked?

[paulears]

If you want to just shock the audience, then blinders of any kind can look good, or a brief fan towards he centre or out. If you have no budget, but have blinders, then use them, and a one off like this isn't going to even require a risk assessment as it's just another state. It's uncomfy to look at, but many illusions need them to shut down the audiences iris's to make the illusions work.

 

Why not try out a few effects and see what floats the directors boat. VERT loud sound and away you go. They do this in the Bodyguard - no house light fade, just a bit of a late start, and then a huge bang and into the first lighting state - makes everyone jump, and does the job.