Creating a lightbox

[alistermorton]

I'm not sure if this is entirely a lighting question, but here we go. I've been talking to a director about a show coming up in a year's time, and one of the ideas we had was to create a light box that we could light from behind to give the impression of just a wall of light. We would have a top row and ground row, probably LED, so that we can colour mix top to bottom. Think people walking off into the distance with the sky slowly turning to sunset, that sort of thing

 

 

I want to have a continuous wall of light about 4m high and about 8m wide. I could just light the white cyc, but the idea of the light box is quite appealing, and there are entrances from the set onto the upstage area and we want the colout to reach all the way from floor to ceiling.

 

 

What I'm after are suggestions for a white material that could be stretched onto a braced frame and can be lit through without too much transmission loss. Something better than plain cotton if anyone has suggestions, which we've used before for shadow puppets and it sort worked but getting it flat and even all the way across the stage might be problematic. For the shadow puppets it didn't matter that creases were visible, almost adding to the comedy, but here we're after something smooth.

 

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

 

[Andrew Edwards]

Have you considered using Rosco Twin White (or similar front/rear screen) and then you can double up for projection?

[alistermorton]

That's certainly worth looking into.

 

For this production there's no need for projection, and there isn't really enough depth to be able to rear project without moving the box way downstage, but as a big, even light source that could work. The cyc is painted with something which makes it suitable as a projection screen (I am told) though quite what I don't know.

 

Thanks, I'll look into it.