House to Half … Lighting |
CHAPTER
|
IN THIS CHAPTER
Interesting Quote:
McCandless … he’s dead, let’s move on!
—M. L. Geiger
From all things scenic to lighting, this chapter discusses lighting. In the same format as other chapters, we will discuss some of the history for lighting through a variety of developments straight to today’s fixtures. Automation is the biggest overall change the lighting industry has seen since electricity. Conventional lighting (meaning nonmoving lights) and intelligent lighting (meaning the fixture can move in some way) are both viable options in today’s theatre. In some ways this is one department where both old and new technologies coexist on the stage seamlessly.
As with other chapters, let’s start by taking a look at theatrical lighting in history. So, I guess we all know it started with the sun. The Greeks and Romans performed all their shows outside. They based the starting time for the show on the position of the sun. Once the theatre was moved indoors, in Shakespeare’s time, the use of candles started to come into play. The candles were used both as props as well as for overall ambience within the theatre.
FIG. 11.1
Candle, the original indoor light.
The first footlights were candles. Footlights were named for exactly what they sound like: lights near your feet. Footlights are traditionally located on the downstage edge of the stage and/or apron. They focus upstage toward the back wall, pointing up into the actors’ faces from below. The “invention” of footlights was a changing point for lighting in the theatre. Suddenly there was some control over the lighting. Putting candles on the edge of the stage wasn’t enough. It was figured out pretty quickly that if you put some sort of reflector behind the candle (meaning between the audience and the actor) the light would be brighter. It also wouldn’t blind the audience. These reflectors became decorative, and that is how we primarily remember them.
A little taste of lighting control wasn’t enough. The next step was to put a glass of colored liquid between the footlight and the actors. This changed the color of the light that was projected. Then, of course, the audience wanted it brighter, in different locations— more control, more control, more control. What a surprise! Enter the wonderful world of gaslight. As gaslight began to be piped into buildings, people working in the theatre suddenly got some great ideas. And this leads us to the invention of limelight. It was first used at the Convent Garden Theatre in London in 1837. Limelight is an intensely bright light created when a gas flame is directed at a cylinder of calcium oxide. Let’s hear it for chemical reactions!
FIG. 11.2
Vagabond Stars production using footlights.
Enter Thomas Alva Edison to shed some additional light on the subject. Or rather Joseph Swan. Who, you might ask? Well Sir Joseph Wilson Swan was a physicist and chemist in England, born in 1828. In 1850 he began working on a lightbulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was able to demonstrate a working bulb, and obtained a U.K. patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lightbulb. However, the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate electric source resulted in an inefficient bulb with a short lifetime.
Fifteen years later, in 1875, Swan returned to consider the problems he had with the lightbulb. The most significant feature of Swan’s improved lamp was that there was little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the filament. This allowed the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching fire. However, his filament had low resistance, thus needing heavy copper wires to supply it. Swan received a second British patent in 1878, about a year before Thomas Edison.
Useless Factoid: Ghost Light
Many theatres have ghosts, according to resident theatre personnel who will tell you they’ve seen or heard uncanny visitors, and some insist that to ward off bad-luck spirits there must always be a “ghost light” illuminating the stage when it is not in use. It is turned on as the actors and crew leave and burns all night. If the stage is dark, the superstition has it, ghosties can run free. Or perhaps we leave a light on so they can perform.
To me, the reason is less ghostly and more a statement of intense belief: We must be sure that a real light is always on so that the metaphorical light of the theatre never will disappear. “Dark,” let us recall, refers to a time when there is no show (i.e., “We perform Tuesday through Sunday, but Monday is dark”.). We want our art never to become “dark,” but instead to remain brightly alive. Or, the stage should never be left dark. A light should always be on to keep the ghost company as well as happy. The light left on the stage is referred to as the ghost light. Or, a burglar fell off the stage, broke his or her leg, and sued the theatre. Take your pick!
FIG. 11.3
Diagram of how limelight actually worked.
In America, Edison worked from copies of the original Swan patent, trying to make them more efficient. Though Swan had received a patent in England, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light. In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, as had Swan. At this point, Edison’s main goal was to improve the longevity of the lamp so that it would have commercial possibilities. Edison took the early features and set his workers to the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. By 1879, he had produced a new concept: a high- resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. Edison said, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
Edison then started an advertising campaign claiming that he was the real inventor. Swan, who was less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain. To avoid a possible court battle with Swan, Edison and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain. And you thought it was simple! Well, Edison wasn’t done yet, read on.…
FIG. 11.4
Khovanschina at the Metropolitan Opera. Director, August Everding; Scenic Designer, Ming Cho Lee; Costume Designer, John Conklin; and Lighting Designer, Gil Wechsler.
FIG. 11.5
Thomas Edison’s original patent.
Making a Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein Offers a Look at the New Face of Off-Broadway Musicals David Barbour
Excerpt 1:
Subhead: The operating theatre
Jeffrey Jackson’s libretto retains Shelley’s storytelling method, even keeping the framing device, in which a sea captain discovers Victor Frankenstein’s diary in the Arctic Circle, and recounts its contents in a letter to his sister. For this reason, much of Mark Baron’s score (lyrics by Jackson) consists of recitative solos and choral numbers, giving the piece, at times, the feeling of an oratorio.
This structure, consisting of dozens of short scenes in many locations, helped influence the production’s look, says the set designer, Kevin Judge. “We knew that we couldn’t do, say, a bunch of wagons, as in a traditional book musical,” he notes. “Then, at one point, we were inspired by images of Victorian surgical theatres—those rooms where people would sit, watching a doctor dissect a corpse.” This idea, plus the fact that Victor Frankenstein is a man of science, at ease with the most modern ideas of his time, convinced Judge, and the director, Bill Fennelly, that the set should be wiped clean of ornament in favor of a shiny metallic surface. “We wanted a space like a knife,” the designer says, succinctly.
This strategy was also a way of dealing with the peculiar dimensions of 37 Arts, which features an extremely wide stage with a shallow audience space on two levels. More than one designer notes that the set is masked 15 feet on either side—and there’s still room for a big stage. Judge notes that the deck is 45-feet deep. The set features a large downstage playing area, with a staircase and a second level located at stage right. A stage-left staircase rises to meet a projection screen. Upstage center, the back wall slides open to reveal another, larger projection screen. Above the stage is a square ceiling piece, called the chandelier, which contains several dozen lighting units. The look of the set is dark, smooth, like brushed metal. The layout is designed to facilitate the show’s traffic patterns, as characters come and go quickly. (Judge also created a backstage area with quick-change booths, to keep the cast members close to the action.)
Judge adds that the idea of using scenic projections was incorporated into the design at an early stage. “We wanted to suggest that the space is also, at times, the inside of Victor’s mind,” he notes. “Sometimes, the projections represent locations in the physical world; at other times, they’re used to show how Victor is at odds with the world.” Another key scenic aspect is the chandelier. “Thom [Weaver, the lighting designer] had done another show with a lighting wall in it,” says Judge. “He wondered if we could do something similar—he thought it would be an interesting way of doing the scenes of re-animation,” when Frankenstein experiments with enlivening inert human tissue. “I was taken with the idea of putting a lighting wall overhead—like most good ideas, it was presented by one person and developed back and forth.”
For that matter, Judge suggested to Weaver that a series of seven light towers, ranging along the side and upstage areas, be incorporated into the set. “They work really well,” the set designer says. “Thom was looking to add some booms, then we had the idea of putting these into the space in a foreboding way.” (The scenery was built by CCT, Inc. Rigging is by Stone Throw Rigging.)
One idea guided them all, the designer notes. “There are a lot of conceptions about the story that are not necessarily in the novel. We’re doing the novel in a way that isn’t updated, but that is relevant.”
________________
(Source: Originally published in Lighting & Sound America, December 2007.)
The next development we’ll talk about is the fluorescent lamp. A fluorescent lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses electricity to excite mercury vapor. The excited mercury produces short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light that then causes a phosphor to fluoresce, producing visible light. Ugh, what a description. But you get enough of the idea, so let’s move on. Unlike incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps always require a ballast to start and properly control the flow of power through the lamp. A fluorescent lamp converts electrical power into useful light more efficiently than an incandescent lamp. Compared with incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps use less power for the same amount of light and last longer.
Thomas Edison briefly pursued fluorescent lighting for its commercial potential. He invented a fluorescent lamp in 1896 that used a coating of calcium tungstate as the fluorescing substance, excited by X-rays. It received a patent in 1907, but it was not put into production. Edison had little reason at this point to pursue an alternative means of electrical illumination. Nicola Tesla, from Croatia, made similar experiments in the 1890s, devising high-frequency-powered fluorescent bulbs that gave a bright greenish light, but as with Edison’s devices no commercial success was achieved. Although Edison lost interest in fluorescent lighting one of his former employees, Daniel Moore, was able to create a gas-based lamp that achieved a measure of commercial success. In 1895 Moore demonstrated lamps 7–9 feet in length that used carbon dioxide or nitrogen to emit white or pink light, respectively. As with future fluorescent lamps, there are pros and cons to each type of lamp.
After years of work, Moore was able to extend the operating life of the lamps by inventing an electromagnetically controlled valve that maintained a constant gas pressure within the tube. Although Moore’s lamp was complicated, expensive to install, and required very high voltages, it was considerably more efficient than incandescent lamps, and it produced a more natural light than incandescent. That is right, fluorescent was more natural than early incandescent! The next development is the halogen lightbulb. It is an incandescent lamp with a tungsten filament. The filament is sealed into a compact transparent, quartz envelope, filled with an inert gas and a small amount of halogen. The halogen increases the lifetime of the bulb by depositing tungsten from the inside of the bulb back onto the filament. Another benefit is that the halogen lamp can operate at a higher temperature. Thus ends the age-old question: Is it tungsten, halogen, or quartz? Well, actually it’s all three!
Today, bulbs come in all sorts of options. The envelope shape has a whole bunch of possibilities and so does the base. Then there is the wattage. When you combine these three parts, you will find that bulbs are actually very specific for the fixture you want to put them in. They are also specific for the purpose you have in mind. It is important to know the options so you can properly choose what you want, and also so that if you need to replace a bulb you will know which one to use. Take a look at the next two figures to see charts of envelope shapes and base shapes.
The next thing to talk about is the Kelvin scale. Color temperature is a part of all visible light. It is important in lighting, photography, film, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is determined by comparing the quality of the color with that of the perfect black. Yellow-red colors are considered warm, and blue-green colors are considered cool. Well that is nothing new. Confusingly, higher Kelvin temperatures are considered cool and lower color temperatures are considered warm. Cool light produces higher contrast. Warm light is considered more flattering to skin tones and clothing. The scale ranges from 1,000 to over 10,000. There are some basic benchmarks along the scale as follows.
FIG. 11.6
Lightbulb diagram showing individual components.
| Kelvin Temp | Benchmark |
| 1,700 K | Match Flame |
| 1,850 K | Candle Flame |
| 2,800–3,300 K | Standard Lightbulb |
| 3,400 K | Theatre Lamps, Photofloods |
| 4,100 K | Moonlight |
| 5,000 K | Horizon Daylight |
| 5,500—6,000 K | Typical Daylight |
| 6,500 K | Overcast Daylight |
Fig 11.7 Various envelope shapes.
ELECTRICITY
OK, before we go any further we have to talk about electricity. I can’t put it off any longer. It won’t be that bad, so let’s just do it and get it out of the way. Let’s start with current. There are two kinds: direct and alternating. Direct current (DC) is an electric charge that flows in one direction. DC is produced by such sources as batteries and solar cells. DC may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also be through semiconductors and insulators. On the other hand, alternating current (AC) is an electric current whose direction reverses cyclically. AC is the most efficient transmission of energy, and is the type used in residences and commercial buildings.
FIG. 11.8
Standard theatre lamp types.
FIG. 11.9
Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Director, Dieter Dorn; Scenic and Costume Designer, Jurgen Rose; and Lighting Designer, Max Keller.
Electrical power, in general, is defined as the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The unit of measurement for this is the wattage. Voltage is the difference of electrical potential between two points of a circuit. In the United States the standard voltage is 120 V and 240 V, but can range anywhere from 110 V to 240 V. In Europe it is almost exclusively 220 V. The ampere, usually shortened to amp, is a unit of electric current, or amount of electric charge per second. Every theatre will have a different amount of amps available for you. It is always good to know what is available before you begin to plug things in. You will often have two of these three measurements and need to determine the last one. Consequently, the following three formulas apply to electricity for our needs. They are often referred to as the “West Virginia” formulas for somewhat obvious reasons.
There are two different power types you’re likely to encounter in your travels. First is single-phase power. You probably have this in your home as it is most often used in residences and in more rural areas. You can tell single-phase power by looking at the main power feed coming into the breaker panel. You’ll find two hot wires (typically one black and one red), a neutral wire (the white one), and a ground wire (the green one). Each hot wire, when measured with the neutral, equals the two halves of AC, and can be metered around 120 V. If you were to measure the two hot wires, one to the other, you’d get around 240 V. When I say around 120 V or around 240 V, this is because in a perfect world it would be exact. In actuality, you’d likely find between 110–120 V and 220–240 V, depending on how much power is being used, and, well, how the local power company is getting power into the building. The ground wire is there as a safety in case there is some sort of short circuit.
FIG. 11.10
Hedda Gabler at NYU’s Department of Graduate Acting and Department of Design for Stage and Film in 2005. Director, Cigdem Onat; Scenic Designer, Veronica Ferre; Costume Designer, Sarah Greene; and Lighting Designer, Dans Sheehan.
Next is three-phase power. You can tell three-phase power because it has three hot wires (black, red, and blue) along with the neutral and ground. Three-phase power is found more often in urban areas where there is industry or manufacturing. This is because there is a greater likelihood of motors and other equipment that requires more overall power. This justifies the extra expense of installation. Each hot wire measured to neutral will be around 120 V, while when measured to each other (black to red, red to blue, black to blue) will be around 240 V. The neutral and ground wires work the same way here as in the single-phase system. Always be extremely careful around breaker panels since it is possible for you to be the short circuit. This would be bad!
Let’s move on to types of cable, or more specifically the wire that makes up a cable. Since we’ve chatted about lamps, wattage, voltage, and ampere, now we need to figure out how to plug in this stuff. The AWG, or American wire gauge, is a standardized way of measuring wire and determining how much current it can carry. Following is a table of the most common wire gauges used in the theatre. When a zero specifies the gauge, it is pronounced “aught.” For example, the first line in the chart would be “four aught.”
| AWG Gauge | Max Amps at 120 V |
| 0000 (4/0) | 400 |
| 00 (2/0) | 200 |
| 0 | 175 |
| 1 | 150 |
| 2 | 125 |
| 4 | 100 |
| 6 | 80 |
| 8 | 50 |
| 10 | 30 |
| 12 | 20 |
| 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 10 |
FIXTURES
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork with all this background information, we can move on to fixtures. Let’s do just one more thing first, but don’t worry it will be much easier than electricity was. Let’s talk about the basic parts of a fixture so that we can reference them throughout our next discussion. At the front of the fixture is an accessory holder. Directly behind that there may be a lens. Similar to the lens on a camera, the lens on a fixture helps to focus the light coming out. Each style of lens is a little different, and some fixtures don’t even have them. The main body of the fixture is next. It may be completely open and be the only way the lights gets shaped. Or it may have additional lenses to help shape the beam. The middle of the fixture has mounting hardware attached, either a yoke for hanging or a grunion for sitting on the floor. This is the place in the fixture where most of the locking bolts exist that you will need when you focus. Focus is the process aiming the lights to the place the designer wants. This can include a number of different adjustments depending on the type of light involved.
FIG. 11.11
Lighting load-in.
If there is a yoke it will have a pipe clamp bolted on that allows you to hang the fixture on a pipe. Continuing further back there is a reflector. Again, shapes will change but the premise is the same. The reflector bounces the light from the lamp around, gaining brightness, until it comes out the front of the fixture. At the very back of the fixture is the lamp housing. The lightbulb, or lamp as they are called in the theatre, obviously lives here. So does the socket for the lamp. On the outside there is a power cable with a plug on it.
FIG. 11.12
Diagram showing fixture parts.
There are some basic categories of fixtures based on their individual qualities. I do have to put in one more bit of techno-speak before we go on. When you are looking at the product specification sheets supplied by manufacturers about their fixtures you’ll see the phrases beam angle, field angle, and beam spread. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, it is actually pretty simple. First, the easiest part: Field angle and beam spread are the same thing. Every light fixture has a beam of light that comes from it. It is shaped as the light comes from the front of the fixture. These terms are based on a percentage of the maximum intensity of the beam at its center. The beam angle, where you get the best quality of light, is measured at a level of 50 percent of the maximum intensity of the beam. The beam spread (wider than the beam angle) is measured where you get down to 10 percent of the maximum intensity of the beam. In the case of an Altman Lighting 20-degree Shakespeare®, the beam angle is 13 degrees while the beam spread is considered to be 20 degrees. Keep in mind that there is usually some light beyond the measured beam spread (that last 10 percent). The quality of the remaining light is unpredictable at best, so just ignore it for now.
Now, back to lighting fixtures. The beam projector is still one of my favorite fixtures even though it is not in common use today. A beam projector is an open-face fixture that produces a narrow beam of light. It does this through the use of two reflectors. The primary reflector in the back of the fixture is a flattened parabolic reflector. In front of the lamp is a secondary reflector that is spherical. The spherical reflector reflects light from the lamp toward the parabolic reflector in the back. The parabolic reflector organizes the light into nearly parallel beams. The result is an intense shaft of light. Beam projectors have a history of creating a “fingers of God” effect. They were made in two sizes, both of which were defined by the size of the front opening.
The scoop light is our next fixture. Scoops are open-face units, meaning they have no lens. The housing for the light has an ellipsoidal shape. There is no reflector in a scoop, however the inside of the housing is usually painted white to help reflect the light forward. The lamp, as they are called in the theatre, enters at the narrow end of the ellipsoidal. In order to focus the scoop, you only have two options. You can pan the scoop, and you can tilt the scoop. The quality of the light from a scoop is very soft and gentle, creating an even wash. It has often been used as a work light. Scoops come in a number of different sizes from 10 to 18 inches.
The Fresnel is a soft-edge light. It can create an even wash or small, focused spot. The Fresnel has a spherical reflector in the back that is attached to a slide in the bottom of the fixture. Also attached to the slide is the socket and lamp. This slide is what allows the Fresnel to be focused. By adjusting the slide forward and back, you change the relationship of the reflector and lamp to the lens. And speaking of lens, the Fresnel lens is what makes this fixture special. A French physicist by the name of Augustin-Jean Fresnel invented the lens that carries his name. He was trying to make a thinner lens that would be lighter and less expensive. He divided the lens into a series of concentric circles that step in toward each other. Take a look at the figure below. This design achieved his purpose, making the lens much lighter while light output is not sacrificed. The original use for this lens was in lighthouses. Fresnels come in a wide range of sizes from as small as 3 inches all the way to 24 inches!
Our next fixture has an “official name” that almost nobody uses any more. It is the ellipsoidal reflector spotlight or ERS. But like I said, almost nobody calls it that. Everybody calls it a leko, more on that later. Its official name tells you a bit about it. For starters, the leko has an ellipsoidal reflector. This fixture also has something new for us to talk about. It has two lenses. Yes, two lenses! This means you can focus the beam by changing the distance between the two lenses, just like changing the focal length on a camera’s lens. Depending on this focus, the light coming out of the leko can have a hard edge or a soft edge. This feature makes this fixture one of the most flexible in our inventories. It is probably the most-used fixture in all of theatre.
Lekos come in a range of focal length possibilities, including zooms that have an adjustable range. There are differences between manufacturers, and between newer and older styles. But the basic idea and workings of the leko remain the same. Lekos are capable of projecting various designs, known as templates or gobos. We’ll talk about these later in the chapter, but just remember this great option when you use them. Another feature that makes the leko unique is that it has shutters. Shutters are shaped pieces of metal inside the leko with a handle attached on the outside. By pushing the shutter into the leko, you can mask a portion of the light that comes through the lens. This allows you to frame objects or people. Some of the newer lekos have a lens barrel that rotates. This is awesome for getting the perfect shutter cut at a truly weird angle.
Bear with me through a little more history. Century Lighting opened in New York by Edward F. Kook and his partners, Joseph Levy, Saul Levy, and Irving Levy. Century Lighting created their version of the ERS in 1933. By taking the first two initials from the last names of the founders you get LE-KO. Who knew it was an acronym? Pretty cool!
The PAR is a fixture named for its lamp. Actually this is the first fixture with a very different kind of lamp. The PAR fixture takes a PAR lamp. Duh! PAR stands for parabolic aluminized reflector. The lamp and the reflector are sealed together with a lens. Think car headlight. This combination is then inserted into the back of a tube, or “can,” to help shape the beam of light. The lamps come in a variety of configurations with different lenses from very narrow to very wide, meaning that simply by changing the lamp you can get a variety of beam sizes from the same fixture. Most PAR beams have an oval shape that can be rotated to change the direction of each beam’s axis. This makes them very useful for creating alleys of light on stage. These fixtures have been around for a long time but are still used extensively today. There are some newer varieties which separate the lamp from the lens, making it very similar to the other fixtures we’ve discussed so far. This means you can now change the lamp independently from the lens. The optics on these newer fixtures are much more efficient than their older cousins, and by only having to keep thin lenses around they save you a ton of space. It’s also way more convenient, and a better quality of light!
It used to be that if you wanted to light a large area like a cyc you’d have to use a whole bunch of fixtures and a boatload of cables. Well someone clever figured out that if you take several fixtures and build them together into one fixture you could save a lot of time and cost in your set up. This led initially to fixtures called far cycs, but they were huge and very bulky. They required a lot of space to hang them. Next the strip light is invented. Think of one long fixture with several lamps in it. Most strip lights come in one, two, three, or four circuit. They can be hung with clamps on a pipe over the stage or put on the floor using trunnions. In the multiple-circuit fixtures you can have access to several colors from one fixture. Cool! Strip lights are great for creating large swaths of color and wonderful for color mixing too. Since it’s one fixture with several lamps you know they’re all going to be on the same angle making your focus way faster too! There are many different lamp options here too. Depending on what strip lights you use they could vary from 20 watts per lamp up to 2,000 watts per lamp. WOW!
FIG. 11.13
Beam projector.
FIG. 11.14
Scoop.
FIG. 11.15
Fresnel lens diagram.
FIG. 11.16
Fresnel.
FIG. 11.17
Old and new lekos.
FIG. 11.18
Old and new PAR cans.
So, now that we’ve gone through the conventional fixtures, are you ready to have some real fun? Over the years folks have said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could only …?” To answer this question manufacturers have come up with a variety of specialty fixtures. We’ll discuss some of them next to get your creativity flowing.
FIG. 11.19
Old and new strip lights.
UV lights get a lot of use in the theatre. They make things glow. You’ve probably seen this in use many times. UV gives a special glow to white gloves or other garments in what looks like a dark stage, or adds an extra punch to a lit stage where costumes or set pieces have been treated with UV-sensitive paints or dyes. There is even special UV makeup. If you’ve ever seen any of The Blue Man Group© shows or commercials you know what I mean. Very cool! UV fixtures come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes to provide many different uses. UV can be a small or large fluorescent or a high-intensity discharge type to be used in larger areas. They are made in flood styles and spot styles. UV lekos can do all of the things a regular leko can do but with the added benefit of being UV. Fresnels can be made as UV fixtures as well giving you a variable-size beam of light from one specialty fixture. I’ve even seen followspots with UV filters on them so you can move the effect from place to place on the stage.
Fluorescent lights, when they’re not being UV lights, are more versatile than many people give them credit for. They can be used to fill in tight areas on a set such as behind windows and doors or maybe on Juliet’s balcony. Modern fluorescents can be dimmable for added flexibility. They can be lamped with different color-temperature lamps to make the light cooler or warmer. They can also be gelled to make them even more useful.
LED fixtures have become the wave of the future. Although LED (light-emitting diode) technology has been around since the early 20th century, building them into theatrical fixtures is fairly new. These fixtures can come in a single color or several colors. The most common type today is the three-color fixture. The three colors are—and this should be familiar—red, green, and blue. If you recall the color wheel we discussed earlier you can mix these three colors and get pretty much any color. The math tells us that you can get approximately 16.7 million, yes, million colors. How is that for a versatile fixture? Some companies are also adding amber for more mixing options and so you can alter the color temperature.
Interesting Quote:
So much modern scenery is about how you light it. Many plays are written with 20–40 scenes and you really can’t make all those places with hard physical scenery so you’re dependent upon creating a lot of those places with light and color and shapes.
—Derek McLane
LED fixtures can come in a variety of sizes and shapes—from small fixtures, to hideaway fixtures in very tight places, to strip light versions that are incredible for color washing cycs. There are even some companies building them into automated fixtures. Some are even flexible so you can go around curves on a set. Some can be set up to run on their own, but most are controlled through your light board. Possibly one of the coolest things about LED fixtures is that they are very low wattage, which means that you can put a lot onto one circuit. They operate at a low temperature because of the wattage, making them perfect for use where heat may be a problem for people, or scenery, or soft goods. LEDs don’t eat up dimmers since all the dimming is digitally controlled. The only drawback, sort of, is that they are fairly expensive these days. However, what they save in electricity and dimmers makes up for that.
Another fairly expensive, but versatile and fun fixture is the automated light or moving light. These fixtures come in a wide variety of styles for particular purposes. The two main types are spot versus wash fixtures. This means pretty much what it sounds like. Spot fixtures are focusable fixtures that can produce a hard-edge beam like a leko while the wash fixture is designed to cover an area in a soft-edge beam. If you’ve ever been to, or seen, a rock concert you’ve certainly seen these in use. The main differences in these fixtures are in their features. They can be as simple as a leko or PAR mounted into a moving yoke like City Theatrical’s Auto Yoke®, or they can have so many bells and whistles that it would make your head (and the light) spin.
FIG. 11.20
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at NYU’s Department of Graduate Acting and Department of Design for Stage and Film in 2005. Director, Michael Sexton; Scenic Designer, Matthew Allar; Costume Designer, Arnulfo Maldonado; and Lighting Designer, Stacey Boggs. Four different photos from the production and a photo of the empty space!
Some of the fixtures have color mixing built in so you can achieve virtually any color (similar to LEDs) as well as a bunch of gobos to project different patterns. You can even spin the gobos for some great motion effects. All of the fixtures pan and tilt remotely. They can be programed to do all sorts of movements. Some designers keep them moving almost all the time (usually with a whole bunch of fog flying around so the audience can see the light beams) while others will use them to create specific looks on the stage. Think of it this way. Scene one takes place in a castle so you use the gobos in the fixture to create the look of stone on the stage floor and maybe the walls as well. Then you go to scene two, which takes place out in the forest. Simple. You take the next cue and the fixtures readjust focus and change their beam size and color. The gobos change to a leaf pattern slightly out of focus and there you are in the middle of the forest. The possibilities are endless.
FIG. 11.21
Selador X7 LED strip light.
DIMMERS
Now that we’ve covered the basics of lighting fixtures, we have to talk about what you plug those fixtures into. I am talking about dimmers. Dimmers come in almost as many configurations as light fixtures. Their essential function is to raise and lower the brightness level of a fixture. Modern-day dimmers are rated by their capacity. This capacity can range from 600 watts to 12,000 watts, but the most common ones you’ll find in a theatre are 1,200 and 2,400 watts. The number of dimmers in the system can be as little as one or as many as several hundred, up to well over 1,000.
FIG. 11.22
City Theatrical’s Auto Yoke®.
Interesting Quote:
It’s exciting that the computer age is allowing us to realize the kind of movement in light and the flexibility we want to achieve. We can make light move in ways we never could before. And we haven’t even begun to tap what computers can do.
—Tharon Musser
Dimmers, like light fixtures, have a history. The first dimmers were mechanical devices that lowered in front of candles to dim them. By the time we got to 1900, saltwater dimmers were developed. These worked by increasing or decreasing the salinity in a vat of water to increase or decrease the conductivity and thereby raise or lower the light level. Be glad you don’t have to do this anymore. It was inexact and could be pretty messy, not to mention the whole water and electricity not mixing thing. Then around 1910 resistance dimmers were developed. They were huge Frankenstein-looking things that worked by changing the resistance on the wires using a big lever.
FIG. 11.23
Martin MAC 2000® wash moving light.
Interesting Quote:
Any monkey can light a show with 900 lights all individually controlled. That’s not doing your work.
—M. L. Geiger
Ring in 1933 and ring in the advent of autotransformers. Autotransformer dimmers, which really aren’t much different (in concept anyway) from the wall dimmer you may have at home that works by turning a knob, came in different capacities and configurations. When you move the handle on an autotransformer, inside it moves a brush along a coil varying the amount of electricity getting through to the lamp. On a larger system, which could be 24–30 dimmers, you sometimes needed several people to run a show and move all the handles. There are still some places today that are using autotransformers. They’re pretty tough to kill.
In 1958, we got the SCR, or silicon controlled rectifier. This innovation allowed manufacturers to make things much smaller and lighter by comparison. The big difference is that this required a separate controller. We’ll talk about these soon. SCR is basically the same technology used today. Today’s dimmers have gotten even smaller and much more clever. Actually the dimmer itself isn’t necessarily all that smart. It is the way it gets controlled. The newer dimmer racks have electronics installed in them that can do all sorts of things from turning on an individual dimmer to giving you readings on exactly how many volts are coming into it and exactly how much is going out and so on. The long and the short of it is that when you ask the dimmer to raise the brightness of the light it should do it, no matter what type of dimmer it is.
FIG. 11.24
Martin MAC 2000® profile moving light.
CONTROL
Controlling dimmers has changed over the years. The concept, however, has always been the same. The first dimmers were manual, meaning that you had to raise and lower a handle to raise and lower the brightness of a light. Eventually that handle evolved into a signal cable and a separate controller. These controllers used a low-voltage DC signal to tell the SCRs what to do. The DC signal was raised and lowered by moving a potentiometer (pot). Sometimes these were moved in a circle; sometimes they were straight. With the straight ones, and these are still used today, you would literally raise and lower the handle to raise and lower the level on the light. In the 1970s the DC signal was changed to a multiplexed signal called AMX, or analog multiplex. This was essentially a computer signal. Modern controllers use DMX, or digital multiplex. While DMX is pretty much the standard control signal today, some manufacturers have started using Ethernet for controlling dimmers and lights.
While we were getting upgrades in control signals, the complexity of the lighting controllers grew by leaps and bounds. Early control boards could only control the pots. Granted, this was a huge improvement over several people wielding 2 × 4s and using both arms and a leg to be able to move multiple autotransformers at one time. Today, controllers are computers capable of anything you can think of. These newer controllers have really opened up possibilities for designers. Ideas that designers could only imagine before can now be accomplished with the push of a button. Keep in mind that there is a whole lot of programming that needs to happen first though. There are technicians that specialize in certain types of controllers since the complexity of each can be so great.
FIG. 11.25
Very scary old circuit panel.
FIG. 11.26
ETC Sensor+® installation dimmer rack.
FIG. 11.27
ETC Eos® lighting console.
PERISHABLES
Even the best set up theatre needs to replenish their supply of gel and other things on a regular basis. These things are officially called perishables. Perishables are any of the items that are used for one show, and then discarded. This can be gel, gobos, tapes, tie line, batteries, etc. Some theatres will have a supply house they work with to order perishables or they may purchase them from a lighting rental shop when they get rental equipment for the next show.
Interesting Quote:
It’s been very exciting to see that happen. It’s exciting to see that lighting is becoming known as an art form and not just a director saying to an electrician, “Can I have some moonlight through that window?”
—Tharon Musser
ACCESSORIES
We’ve discussed all sorts of fixtures, both old and new. Designers have a tendency to first see their designs in their heads. Thankfully there are many manufacturers out there who make a good living from translating those visions onto the stage. As Gary Fails of City Theatrical says, “It’s all about the accessories.”
FIG. 11.28
Whole Hog II® moving lighting console.
Each and every one of the following accessories are great in their own right. There may be other ways of accomplishing the effect, usually higher-end ways, but sometimes the simpler ways are best. Let’s start small. There are many products made to add onto or into light fixtures that help us do fun things with the light beam. First is the color frame. Simply put, this is a metal or cardboard frame that holds gel in place. It goes into the accessory slot on the front of a fixture. The next is a donut, a piece of metal the same size as a color frame with a hole. It is designed to help a sharp leko look even sharper. The top hat, or high hat, gets its name because it looks like an old-fashioned gentleman’s top hat with the exception of being open at the top. It helps to reduce flare and cut out some of the excess light, such as the light beyond the beam spread.
The Beam Bender® and the Image Multiplexer® are pretty cool tools. The beam bender goes in front of a fixture and has an adjustable mirror on it. The idea is to light some of those hard-to-reach spots by focusing the light into the mirror. The mirror then bounces the light out at a 90-degree angle, making it seem like you can light around corners! The image multiplexer goes in the accessory slot of a leko. It splits the light beam into several beams, sort of like a kaleidoscope. Just add a gobo to the multiplexer and see what happens!
Barn doors go in front of soft-edge fixtures, like fresnels or PARs, to allow you to block parts of the light beam. This works great when you have a fresnel or a PAR that is spilling onto a border and you want to block a little of the light without having to lose what that light is doing on stage. This works sort of like a leko shutter, it’s not as crisp but it works in a pinch. Another great product that goes on the front of the fixture is the color scroller. This is a machine that holds a long string of gel in different colors. You then use your control board to digitally select the color you want and the scroller will move through the gel string and stop at the right gel.
There is an accessory slot, also known as the drop-in slot, in lekos right near the framing shutters that will accept a wide variety of things. The mulitplexer we just talked about uses this. Fixtures used to have an iris installed but most of the ones made today do not. You can use a drop-in iris to make the projected beam of light smaller while still keeping it round. There are special gobo holders that fit in the drop-in slot to allow you to use glass gobos instead of metal ones. To have even more fun and create basic moving images you can use a gobo rotator that will spin one or more gobos around at variable speeds. Rotators are, of course, DMX controlled!
A step up from the drop-in slot gobo holder is Rosco’s Image Pro®. This accessory allows you to project photographic images that have been printed on acetate. This is awesome for projecting realistic images like an actual forest or a picture of someone or, well, pretty much anything. GAM Products makes a really cool device for the drop-in slot called the Film FX®. With this, you can project moving images like clouds floating through the sky. As you can see, these accessories really open up options for lighting design and effects.
A twist on the accessory slot idea is City Theatrical’s EFX Plus 2®. This very cool accessory takes large discs, made like very large gobos, that rotate to project a wide variety of patterns like rain, clouds, snow, and flames. The speed and direction are variable. Very cool. Check out the figure at the end of this chapter for a variety of accessories.
For the most part, we’ve talked about hanging lighting fixtures on pipes. While this is the typical situation, you didn’t think I’d leave it at that did you? There are many options for mounting a fixture. You can use extenders that will hang a fixture lower or higher than a regular pipe clamp to give you maximum flexibility in making the light go just where you need it. These are also good for those times when the set is high and you need to get above part of it with a fixture. Another option for this is the pipe and base. While the pipes normally found in a theatre are hung horizontally, sometimes you need to go vertical. Do this is called a boom. Typically you will use a 50-pound base that is threaded to accept a pipe of whatever length you need. You can then hang a fixture anywhere along the height of the pipe. To keep the light consistent with other lights hung on regular pipes, you can use a sidearm. This is a small piece of pipe with a C-clamp. This gets used a lot for dance where you want a lot of sidelight at several heights. It is also great for putting lights out in the auditorium or somewhere there is no hanging position already. Some bases even have wheels on them so they can be moved around during a performance. Take it one step further. Use two booms with a horizontal pipe between them. Now you’ve made a goalpost! The possibilities are endless. You can mount a light anywhere you can safely figure out how to hold it in place!
Occasionally you come across an accessory made for a particular purpose and then once you get it in your hands you say to yourself, “Hmmmmmm, I wonder.…” The good folks at Meteor Light and Sound Company make a nifty little gadget called the Puppeteer®. This device allows you to create a temporary moving light. It clamps onto a horizontal pipe. You then hang a fixture from the Puppeteer®. You can now remotely pan and tilt the light. They are often used with lekos but you can also use fresnels, PARS, projectors, and as I said, just about anything. There is a weight limit, but after that just use your imagination.
Making a Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein Offers a Look at the New Face of Off-Broadway Musicals David Barbour
Excerpt 2:
Subhead: The clinician’s light
Thom Weaver’s lighting plays into the production’s spare-is-beautiful concept, using lots of highly angled looks and backlight washes, most of them in a restrained color palette, to create a series of directional looks that cinematically fold into each other. “Bill [Fennelly] used words like ‘sleek,’ ‘sexy,’ ‘clean,’” says Weaver. “It’s meant to be a show that doesn’t have any dust on it. Kevin Judge and Bill both talked about surfaces, sharp edges, and sharp angles. The lighting is about sharp angles and bold, clean light cutting through space. There aren’t really any washes. As for the colors, my assistants jokingly call them the shades-of-Yale colors—a little bit blue and a little bit green. It is funny; I have all these wonderful Vari-Lites in the air, with their luscious colors, and I’m mixing to Lee 161.
“The backlighting,” he continues, “helps to make the background really black, so you have bodies floating in the darkness. Also, the lighting reflects into the audience’s eyes so beautifully. Because of our truss system, I couldn’t have traditional front light or side light; this was the only traditional angle that I could work from; I ended up using it a lot.” Referring to the rows of light trees, he says, “They’re useful for single-source ideas. Each has a system of templates in two colors—Lee 161 [Slate Blue] and Gam 842 [Whisper Blue]—that focus across the stage. They’re flexible, interesting positions, and, with all the haze onstage, they create an interesting architecture.”
The chandelier over the stage is fitted with 88 ETC Source Four PAR Very Narrows within a 12′ × 12′ grid; all focused straight down to make a white-hot effect. “Somebody in the show said that, when the units are on, there’s a 40° temperature spike underneath it,” says Weaver. “The piece is individually circuited, so you can do a lot with it.” This includes single-source looks that isolate characters, as well as hot washes of light and chase effects. The chandelier units are tungsten-based, which, Weaver notes, “makes a strong color contrast. Some of the moving lights are tungsten, too—there’s a lot of bouncing back and forth between tungsten and arc sources.”
The show’s moving light package includes six Vari*Lite VL3000 Wash units, four VL1000 Tungstens, and seven VL2000 Spots. In addition, two DHA Light Curtains provide many of the most evocative backlighting effects, along with a 4K HMI unit. Twenty Martin Atomics provide abundant strobe effects. Because there is so little front lighting, Weaver relies on two Robert Juliat Heloise followspots, mounted on the front-of-house truss. “There’s a third spot—we call it the creature spot,” he adds. “It’s a Source Four on a City Theatrical yoke, with its own gobo and color. It’s an almost imperceptible spot for the creature only.” An MDG Atmosphere unit provides haze. GSD Productions supplied lighting.
The show is run on an ETC Obsession II, not the ideal board for a rig that combines conventional and moving lights. “Programming the show was difficult,” Weaver confirms. “But I had a godsend of an associate designer, Paul Toben, and a great programmer, Jessica Shaw. Still, we maxed out the board’s potential.” (Completing the team are assistant designer Graham T. Posner and master electrician Justin McClintock.)
“Everyone thinks it’s a really big plot,” Weaver says. “To me it’s a small hang—but then, I think of the chandelier as a single idea, even if it is 88 units. I was taught to be a minimalist, but you end up with so many more units when you have that much square footage.”
________________
(Source: Originally published in Lighting & Sound America, December 2007.)
The light plot, as you know from Chapter 5, shows all the fixtures in their exact locations. This must include the front-of-house (FOH) hanging positions. Front-of-house means anything downstage of the proscenium or over the audience. Since the FOH is usually quite large, it is common practice to compress the space between the FOH hanging positions, as well as between the pipes and the proscenium. This is done to help all the pipes fit onto one page of drafting! If the FOH is extensive, it can be moved to its own page of drafting.
The light plot shows more than just the lighting fixtures. It shows the centerline … in case I forgot to mention how important that is! The lighting equipment, each individual fixture, and any accessories are shown. The symbols used to represent the fixtures are approximately the correct shape and size, in scale, of the real fixtures. This is very important. If you use a symbol that is 6 inches to represent a fixture that is 18 inches, chances are your lights won’t fit in the air when they are being hung. The standard default spacing for fixtures is 1–6 inches or 18 inches. This is commonly used and based on fixture sizing, and the ability for the electrician to get his or her hands in between everything to focus and tighten the lights. If larger fixtures are being used, you will obviously need more room.
The light plot will need to have a key to the symbols so that everyone will be able to understand what each symbol actually means. Without the key, the light plot is almost useless! Dimensions need to be on the light plot as well. Critical dimensions include spacing between units, as I’ve already mentioned, but also dimensions to locate all the pipes, not only US to DS, but also in terms of height. Take a look at the two previous figures for more details.
FIG. 11.29
The Belle of Amherst FOH light plot. Lighting design by Ken Billington.
FIG. 11.30
The Belle of Amherst onstage light plot. Lighting design by Ken Billington.
Interesting Quote:
If I’m a good designer today it’s because I learned so much from Tharon—I always say I went to Musser U.
—Ken Billington
Once the lighting designer gets into the theatre, he or she and the assistants will make magic sheets. A magic sheet is sometimes called a cheat sheet. It is a quick reference for the design team to be able to find the channel number quickly and easily. A cheat sheet is usually a compressed number list, and a magic sheet is more of a visual reference.
The more complex a design, the more drawings that will be needed to get all the details across. There are often several drawings that are needed to fully indicate the placement of all the built-in fixtures. The following figures should give you an idea of this.
Interesting and Useless Factoid: Dark Suckers
For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don’t emit light, they suck dark. Thus, they now call these bulbs “dark suckers.” The dark sucker theory proves the existence of dark, that dark has mass heavier than that of light, and that dark is faster than light.
The basis of the dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. Take, for example, the dark suckers in the room where you are. There is less dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the dark sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, dark suckers don’t last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot on a full dark sucker.
A candle is a primitive dark sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the path of the dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive dark suckers have a very limited range.
There are also portable dark suckers. The bulbs in these can’t handle all of the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit. When the dark storage unit (or battery) is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable dark sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles present a special problem, as the dark must travel in the solid wick instead of through glass. This generates a great amount of heat. Thus, it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle.
Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim deeper and deeper, you notice it gets slowly darker and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately 50 feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top.
The immense power of dark can be utilized to man’s advantage. We can collect the dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through turbines, which generate electricity and help push it to the ocean where it may be safely stored. Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean.
The Indians recognized this problem, and tried to solve it. When on a river in a canoe traveling in the same direction as the flow of the dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of dark, but when they traveled against the flow of dark, they paddled quickly, so as to help push the dark along its way.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed, dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet, but since the dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.
In conclusion, dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb, remember that it is indeed a dark sucker.
—Author Unknown
FIG. 11.31
The Belle of Amherst lighting designer Ken Billington’s magic sheet.
FIG. 11.32
The Belle of Amherst associate lighting designer John McKernon’s magic sheet.
FIG. 11.33
Julius Caesar detail drawings: (a) downstage, (b) downstage right
FIG. 11.34
Accessories, it is what separates us from the animals!!
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
STUDY WORDS
Accessory slot
Alternating current
Ampere
AMX
Autotransformer
Auto Yoke®
AWG
Ballast
Barn door
Beam angle
Beam projector
Beam spread
Cheat sheet
Conventional lighting
Dimmer
Direct current
DMX
Ellipsoidal reflector spotlight
Filament
Fluorescent
Focus
Footlights
Fresnel
Fresnel lens
Front-of-house
Gel
Gobo
Ground
Halogen lightbulb
Incandescent lightbulb
Intelligent lighting
Kelvin
Lamp
Lamp housing
LED
Leko
Lens
Lighting controller
Limelight
Magic sheet
PAR
Pipe clamp
Quartz envelope
Reflector
Scoop
SCR
Shutters
Single-phase
Strip light
Three-phase
Top hat
Trunnion
Voltage
Wattage
West Virginia
Yoke