Looking at the Samoiloff effect, an old stage lighting trick using the physics of reflected colour, On Stage Lighting brings together the old with some new technologies in the form of colour mixing LED fixtures.

In our article on Reflected Colour in Lighting we looked at how using saturated colours, particularly the primary light colours (Red, Green and Blue), can dramatically effect the way a coloured object looks to the eye. In a practical example, it meant that my blue LED keyring torch was pretty useless when it came to hunting for cables marked with either green or red PVC tape because the two marking became a dirty brown colour. It also told us something useful about lighting scenery and costumes with saturated light colours. If you haven’t already, check out the article.

Adrian V. Samoiloff – Lighting Magician

In the 1920s “electro technician” Adrian V. Samoiloff developed the use of this colour phenomenon to dramatically change a stage picture in the theatre, costume and sets using simple lighting changes. An article on one particular show in the New York Times describes a scene and then states:

“Then behind the scenes, somebody does something and everything is altered in a flash. The grim mountains become a Hindu temple, the frowning rocks melt into sands and palms and the tall, slender young woman becomes a stout Indian maiden.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C13FC3B5A1B7A93C2AA178BD95F458285F9

The “something” that somebody had done was to change the colour of the light on stage, having carefully used reflected colour theory to hide and reveal different elements in full view of the audience. A lighting magic trick.

Samoiloff apparently took the basic effect further by analysing the chemical make up of dyes and how they reflected different parts of the spectrum. Reports of these experiments suggest the use of minute differences between dyes that under white light look similar, but react to saturated colour in different ways. Samoiloff also stated that he used these effects along with “dazzle”, a camouflage technique. With regard to the science of dyes and their reflection properties, I am not sure how much of the dye analysis part of the story is puffed by the reports but either way, the basic magic trick still works!

Old Tricks, New Technology

With the advent of different forms of colour mixing fixtures, we have an even greater opportunity to use many different saturated colours on stage – and change them in an instant. Samoiloff made use the development of the “compartment batten” flood lighting system that became known as “Sammies”, a version of which can still be found as S63 battens in a few schools halls. Today we have Subtractive CMY and Additive RBG colour mixing in our moving lights and Red, Green and Blue in LED based fixtures such as cheap LED PARs.

As part of a colour theory lecture I take, we look at how different coloured light reflects on different fabrics of a costume. Using combinations of the light primary colours (Red, Green, Blue ) and secondary ones (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow), experimentation shows that sometimes a costume colour reflects well, sometimes not, depending on the spectral makeup of the light shining on it.

An extension of this is using three banners that are specially designed to demonstrate the principle behind the Samoiloff effect. The banners are each a pair of complimentary colours. The pairs are:

• Red / Cyan
• Green / Magenta
• Yellow / Blue

One colour in the banner reflects one part of the spectrum (eg. Red), the other complimentary reflects the other two light primaries (eg. Cyan = Blue and Green). This gives us the biggest opportunity for shift in reflected colour. Using an LED PAR shining at the first banner, outputting white (well, white for a cheap LED PAR) the colour appear to be Red and Cyan. Changing the LED to output only Red, the banner seems to be Red and Black but then changing the LED to Cyan, the pattern reverses to negative in Black and Cyan. Your eye almost assumes that the Cyan portion is, in fact, white fabric with a Cyan light on it. This large shift from +ve to -ve is startling and it doesn’t take long before you can see a whole host of magical reveals and possibilities using the Samoiloff effect.

Taking this demo further, using a colour mixing fixture (or simply gelled conventional fixtures in Red, Green and Blue) we blend light colours on all three banners and adjust, moving through parts of the spectrum where all colours look quite similar, before then snapping out to a dramatic change when they suddenly become different. The interesting thing about LED light sources is that they are quite “spiky” in different parts of their spectral output, throwing a whole extra dimension to this old theatrical effect. Subtle fades between levels of Red, Green and Blue creates major shifts in the reflected colour.

Create Your Own Samoiloff Effect

You will need:

• A piece of white paper
• Marker Pens – Primary Red and Primary Green
• Torch
• Gel Filter Swatchbook
• A dark place to be

Physics teachers use this technique to demonstrate how reflected light works. Take your paper and write “Red” using the red marker pen. Underneath it using the green pen, write “Green”. Finding some primary red and green gels in your swatch book (Lee 106 or Lee 026 and Lee 139 are good), turn all other lights off and fire your torch at the paper. Using no gel, you see both words written on the paper.

Adding a red gel to the torch, the word “Red” gets fainter and, if you are lucky, disappears. Moving onto the green gel, the opposite happens, hiding your word “Green” while making the “Red” writing appear black. Once again, reflected colour theory doesn’t fail us and the magic trick is proven to still be good in 2011…

If you want to move further onto more complex effects, you can try not only the primary filters; L106, L139 and L132 (or L079 or L119); but also some versions of the secondaries in the form of:

• Lee 116 Medium Blue-Green
• Lee 126 Mauve
• Lee 101 Yellow

These are just one take on the secondary colours, there are other gels which fall within the secondary ranges, there are others that you might like to look at such as L172 Lagoon Blue, L128 Bright Pink and Lee 104 Deep Amber. They all produce slightly differing results.

The Magic of Light

But all this is a pretty crude demonstration and highlights the extremes of the Samoiloff effect. Using complex coloured fabrics and patterns on stage, it’s not hard to see what a massive influence we as lighting designers have on how colours are seen, or not, by an audience.

We can create magic on stage using light and colour. We can also really mess things up.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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• Reflected Colour in Stage Lighting Design
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On Stage Lighting takes a look at the curse of the Lighting Designer and some reasons why it can be more of a danger than ever. But you can resist it’s temptations, and we’ll set on you on the road to recovery. Read on.

Technology has the potential to fill our life as lighting designers, as a market for entertainment industry equipment has sprung up and grown rapidly in the last 30 years. At first glance, this seems like we have been give the keys to the sweet shop, all that possibility, the shiny things, the brightly coloured sugary lighting treats. RGB + White, natch.

As the cost of manufacturing technology has dropped, the sweet shop has been open to smaller budgets, not just a few professional shows. The fact that there is a perpetual debate about buying moving lights for schools is testament to fact that technology that once was cutting edge is now available to all.

Who needs stage lighting technology?

The existence of such a market is great for technological innovation, which in turn boosts audience expectation and production demand, and the cycle continues. This is not least due to the multi million pound industry that has grown up around that demand. Let’s just take a moment to look and identify whose interests are irrevocably tied up with the use of technology in show business:

• Equipment Manufacturers
• Hire Companies
• Software Developers
• Support and Accessory Suppliers
• Shipping and Logistics
• Packaging including flight case makers
• Media and Advertising (including this site)
• Training and Development Providers
• Specialist Freelance Staff eg. Lighting Programmers

The above list is not exhaustive, but it does indicate that there are a hell of a lot of people and jobs reliant on your sweet tooth as a lighting designer. But there is a vital element missing, an element not completely connected with your desire for shiny new toys…

The Show

A lighting designer’s role is to work with other key players, the Director, Scenic Designer et al, to create a stage picture or environment that enhances a production beyond that which could be achieved by just leaving the cleaning lights on.

That might involve cutting edge technology. But it doesn’t have to.

There is not rule a written somewhere at ALD headquarters that says “The Lighting Designer shall wrangle all the available technology into submission and mould it to fit the production”.

Nothing is bigger than the show and the audience’s experience. Nothing.

Not you, not the cast, not 20 of the latest nodding buckets that the local hire company has just invested in. Nothing.

Lighting Equipment – Ally or Curse?

Back in the real world, there are often times when as a Lighting Designer you are faced with the burden of equipment. This burden is commonly in two forms:

By others. Having equipment that you don’t need, the show doesn’t need, but that someone somewhere has decided you must use in order to justify their budget. This is more of a professional industry problem and usually stems from the fact that, as a lighting designer, you may be engaged by a lighting hire and production services provider. It’s just life, deal with it. Do your job to the best of your ability and move on to the next show.

But you can avoid the second form.

The second form of the equipment burden is self inflicted and I suspect at some stage in our careers, we’ve all fallen prey to it. It’s particularly obvious when a novice lighting designer at a school or college is given a bigger show, bigger budget, and bigger expectations than they are used to.

Your Worst Lighting Design – ever

The Director/Producer/Client says:

” I want this one to be a spectacular, we’ll give you a ton o’ cash to spend on 30 fancy moving lights, 1000 metres of truss, a Grand MA 2. I wanna see everything, pyro, smoke, dry ice, UV and strobes. I want the entire rig to followspot the main turn, I don’t wanna see a foot of space on that rig – gimme the works! “

Ok, so assuming that the small matter of a bunch of extra infrastructure is gonna be required to control and power just one of yer hired in MaryLite Chunky Boys is not an issue, you might still have a problem.

Time and again, what happens in this situation is that a “saturation rig” plan is produced, the local hire companies shelves are emptied and the limits of the school gym snow loading are tested for the very first time. But the real limitations I’m afraid, are expertise and by extension, time.

You and your team of willing helpers have rigged the kit, it’s taken longer than you planned but no matter. Then you’ve had a few problems, rigging and addressing errors, faults to find, all this has eaten into your time and now you are knackered and suddenly faced with an unplanned overnight programming session. Using a desk you’ve never really worked properly on. At 0300. The desk is a lot more complicated than your usual 2 preset, the Chunky Boys take a lot of dealing with and your workflow would benefit from a bit more polish. It’s as much as you can do to get a few colour washes together, set some specials and create a few palettes (it turns out later, you have gobo information mixed in with the Pan and Tilt – bugger)

Every space between shiny hire kit was filled with your trusty generic fixtures, leaving endless possibilities – apart from the fact that you didn’t really get a chance to focus a lot of it, in the end. A 1K fresnel hangs there, impotently, obviously pointing nowhere in particular, a barndoor half closed.

The show happens. Shows always happen. They happen if you are tired or not, ready or not. You busk together some looks, just something, using all that kit, somehow. Maybe you might even get a few slaps on the back for your efforts. But you know, it could’ve been so much better – better if you’d had more time, if those stupid twonks hadn’t rigged half the main truss back to front, better if you were more comfortable with the Grand MA….

The truth is, it would have been better if you’d had less equipment. The burden of equipment has sucked the life from you and your creativity. Cash has been spent at the expense of time to do anything meaningful with the result.

Every piece of kit on a show needs time. Time to set it up, to make it work, time to focus to use it properly in your lighting armoury. The more kit you have, the less time every piece of kit gets from you and your team. This is true, even if you are completely au fait with every technical aspect, can perform miracles on the console and have a team of super professionals around you.

So, what can you do?

If the above scenario hasn’t happened to you yet, I’d love to think that reading this article could stop it from doing so. But it probably won’t. The burden of equipment is something we all have to go through as lighting designers, to emerge the other side with a better understanding of what is important on a show by show basis.

You can mitigate the equipment burden by your own approach to planning lighting for a production. Doing something as simple as steering clear of CAD or equipment inventories until you have a full understanding of the needs of a show can be a start. Make yourself. Decide on not looking at a venue plan or a kit list for a specific time period – a week, or two. Use this time to really consider the elements of the show, scenes or whatever, and set them against what you know of the Director’s vision or the audiences need.

And remember the list of whose interests really lie in your sweet tooth. We want more sweets, the manufacturers make ‘em, we push production standards and possibilities…. All in all, the whole situation is “a good thing”, don’t get me wrong. After all, without technology in lighting, we have very little to work with.

But don’t think for a moment that it comes without side effects.

Image by Mourner on Flickr

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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An up to date look at stage lighting iPhone apps and what they do. July 2008 saw the start of stage lighting’s entry into the world of Apple’s iPhone apps – lighting themed software that you can use with the iPhone (or iPod Touch) and now, the iPad. Since the first few iPhone apps became available, the market has become awash with beam calculators, DIP switch thingies (seriously, just read our article on how to work our binary DIPs without all that technology) and other goodies. Luminair were early on the scene with V1 of their  iPhone based DMX controller and have continued to develop the product, while tradtional console manufacturers have added remote functionality that can be controlled via your phone.

Image by William Hook on Flickr

Gel and Gobo makers have created catalogues and and references and serial iPhone developer Michael Zinman has launched his Genielux platform, a sort of worldwide lighting equipment hire database. We can safely say that the market for lighting calculators is well and truly saturated. The addition of hardware like the Seachanger Color Bug, could bring some extra usefullness to the iPhone in your pocket. DMX testers and continuity checkers are things that spring to mind, not so sure about measuring 415v or using the iTouch to clamp meter yer PowerLoks but anything is possible. Here’s what we know about stage lighting specific iPhone apps, grouped into a few sections with links through to the relevant Apple Apps Store page.  You can click on the image and find out more about each app.

DMX Control and Lighting Control Apps

Luminair DMX

Luminair enables you to wirelessly control, view, record and manage intelligent DMX lighting fixtures, dimmers, consoles, other software and media servers straight from your iPhone™ or iPod™ touch. Using Artistic Licence’s Art-Net protocol over your device’s built-in Wi-Fi connection, Luminair communicates with other compatible hardware and software nodes on your network.

A Lighting control interface on your iPhone, the Luminair software boasts the ability to control DMX lighting fixtures. The wireless DMX signal from the iPhone is sent using the open source DMX over Ethernet protocol, Art Net. This can be routed via a Wireless Access Point/Router into your DMX universe / ArtNet node. The app also has file management capabilities and colour mixing control. “Right, can I have channel 47 @ 50% please” “Where’s the desk?” “Hang on – I’ll call it, what’s the number?”

Get Luminair at the iTunes Store

DMX Lighting Control for the iPad

Update: Luminair is now available for the iPad which larger multi touch surface makes for a much more usable lighting control.  Luminair for  iPad has some great features, my favourite being the ability to easily notate cues etc. with a thumbnail image that can be captured by the onboard camera. Great, set up a colour wash, snap it using the iPad camera and use the thumbnail as a reminder

Find out more about Luminair for iPad at the Apps Store

Zinman TCP/IP Remote

For IT professionals, systems integrators, and anyone looking for customizable control of any software or hardware capable of TCP/IP communications.

A general iPhone application that can be used in stage lighting situations. The software enables customisable remote triggerin of TCP/IP and UDP capable software. This includes professional level lighting consoles like the Grand Ma and media servers. Sounds like the kind of thing that developers dream of Get it at iTunes

Grand MA App

The grandMA consoles are the core of the fully integrated MA system. The grandMA consoles are able to control – in the most elegant manner – moving lights, conventional lights, and effects, as well as LEDs and video. The reliable and proven operational philosophy allows a direct, flexible and intuitive way of working.

The Grand MA app is free at iTunes

Martin Max Remote

MAXRemote is your personal assistant to remotely control lighting devices straight from your iPhone or iPod touch. It is the ultimate remote tool for your Martin Maxxyz™ lighting console and Martin Maxxyz PC™ with a beautiful user interface and original features.

Martin’s Max Remote is free at iTunes

Other lighting consoles

Other desk makers including ChamSys, Avolites (Titan platform) and ETC have their own personal system for remote control of their products, some of which are browser based rather than actual apps.

Lighting Information and Catalogues

Lighting Handbook

Lighting Handbook is a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it provides detailed information about Moving lights, LED fixtures, Scrollers, and more DMX fixtures. It also provides access to the manual.

Get the Lighting Handbook at iTunes

Wybron iSwatch Gel

The Gel Swatch Library by Wybron, Inc., lets lighting production personnel browse, search, and compare more than 1,000 gel color filters made by the following manufacturers: – Apollo (included in Version 1.4 release) – GAM – Lee – Rosco

Buy this app at iTunes

GenieLux

Genielux is a user-friendly application that helps you find the exact model of lighting, audio, film, video, or other production gear that you need. It searches local vendors inventory for rent or purchase and returns a list of results based on your current GPS location. You can also provide an alternate location to search for the nearest vendors who can provide your gear.

Genielux is free for users, hire companies pay to list their inventories The GenieLux app at iTunes

Wybron Moire Gobo Library

The Moiré Gobo Library from Wybron, Inc. lets lighting production personnel browse, search, and experiment with more than 3,600 different A-size gobos from the following manufacturers: – Apollo – GAM – InLight – Lee

Lighting Calculator Apps

ShowTool LD

Simple. Powerful. Comprehensive suite of Lighting Design and Electrics utilities for theatre and film. Showtool LD is a bunch of lighting design related calculators : Beam, Gels cuts, Power Law, DIP switches and DMX all one app.

Buy ShowTool LD at iTunes

DMX Color Mixer

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dmx-color-mixer/id349839425?mt=8 Colour mixing app that you can pick colours and cross reference against dmx values. Get it

Wybron CXI Calculator

The CXI Color Calculator from Wybron helps lighting production personnel find and program colors for the CXI dual-gelstring color changer. Scroll through two overlapping gelstrings of cyan, magenta, and yellow to blend the ideal shade, then plug its numerical values into your lighting control console to have a CXI color changer move to that color. The Color Calculator also gives you the values needed to replicate several colors from the GAM, Lee, and Rosco

Get this app at the iTunes store

Zinman Pocket LD

PocketLD is a photometric database and calculation tool for stage lighting and TV/Film lighting professionals. Simply enter your throw distance, than select manufacturer, fixture and a lamp to calculate beam/field diameter and fc/lux. MZ brings us another neat little iPhone and iTouch app that does Lighting Designer type calculations with a comprehensive fixture database to make life easier. Free database upgrades, so you can get new fixtures for the software as they are added. Get the PocketLD app at iTunes

PowerCalc – West Side Sytems

PowerCalc performs basic electrical power calculations with watts, volts, amps, and motor power factor.

A calculator for power law, resistance, inductance and other useful stage lighting stuff. Although you could do these sums on the iPhones standard calculator, this little app makes life easier. Requires the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade and is only a few pennies Buy it at iTunes

Beam Calc – West Side Systems

Use BeamCalc to calculate the geometry and photometrics of spotlight beams. Position and direct three light sources (chosen from the included library) to determine lighting characteristics: elevation angle, beam and field pool width, illumination, shadow length.

A handy beam calculator to help you choose spotlight angles for your lighting designs. The BeamCalc needs just a few measurements such as trim height and horizontal distance from the subject. It spits out the beam width of a given angle or can reverse the calculations for you, helping you to decide if you spotlights will be wide enough. Update:  The next generation of Beam Calc is now available with improved functionality and is compatible with the iPad.  More information at the the application’s iTunes page.

DMX Calc – West Side Sytstems

Entertainment lighting equipment uses a control system called DMX512. DMXCalc is a simple and elegant calculator which does address arithmetic for DMX equipment.

DMX Calc on iTunes

Zinman Gel Calc

GelCalc is an iPhone/iPod touch app for stage lighting designers, electricians, and stage hands. Quickly calculate number of sheets of gel, best cutting direction to yield the most frames per/sheet and pricing. Get GelCalc at the apps store

Zinman iSwitch DMX

iSwitch DMX is an easy to use binary DIP switch utility for stage lighting electricians, technicians and programmers. Selecting a DMX address updates the DIP switch graphic with the correct DIP switch settings.

Get the iSwitch DMX app

Zinman ML Finder

For the stage lighting tech addressing a light plot. ML Finder displays the DMX footprint for over 500 moving lights, LED’s and media servers. Know how many DMX channels each device uses, in any mode. Simple to navigate and FREE to download!

Zinmans ML Finder on iTunes

Seachanger Colour Bug

The colorBUG from the SeaChanger group at Ocean Thin Films, Inc. is a wifi enabled, handheld light/color metering device that works with your iPhone or iPod Touch running the colorBUG client app, allowing you to measure: – Color in CIE 1931 x,y space – Illuminance in lux – Color Temperature in degrees Kelvin This software requires a colorBUG light/color metering device for functionality.

The software is free at iTunes

DMX Ref

DMXRef is designed to take the math out of working with DMX lighting equipment. DMXRef includes DIP switch and auto addressing functions, conversion between local and global addresses, and Dimmer Doubler decoding. Buy it at iTunes

Rigging with the iPhone / iTouch

OK, so the actual swaggering around wearing a greasy clutch chain like a scarf is still down to you. But rigging calcs are always something that are better made without mathematical errors, so here’s a few rigging calculators for the tricky stuff like bridles and load distribution.

Bridle

Bridle is the innovative bridle creation app for the entertainment rigging industry with a fresh perspective to the ancient craft of calculating bridles.

Get Bridle at the apps store

iBridle

iBridle is for use within the events rigging industry. It can accurately calculate bridle leg lengths, apex angles and load distribution. There are no set measuring units, so regardless of whether you work to metric or imperial standards you will always get the answer you need

Buy iBridle here

JR Clancy iRigging App

Rigging app that provides tools and reference data for many areas of rigging, including wire rope, battens, arbors, sheaves, stage ropes, motors, curtains, and fleet angles. Available in Imperial or Metric Versions.

The Imperial rigging app is free at iTunes The Metric versions at the apps store

Other useful Apps, not lighting specific

Zinman Portfolio

Portfolio is the perfect app for Photographers, Illustrators, Artists, Designers and anyone looking for an intuitive way to showcase their work on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Includes the same look and functionality as Apple’s Photo app, with improvements relating to an electronic portfolio.

If you’re a lighting designer or have any kind of visual portfolio to organise and display on your iPhone, this takes care of it nicely. Get Zinmans Portfolio That’s pretty all the stage lighting iPhone apps we  know of. If you own any of these apps, let us know if you like them in the comments.  Perhaps you’re wishing for a lighting related iPhone app that you’d like to see the devs working on?  Funny or serious, stick it in the box as usual. If you think we’ve missed some, just add them below and we’ll update the list.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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In the stage lighting calendar, the Christmas season is awash with choirs and orchestras, carol concerts and recitals. On Stage Lighting considers how to light a classical concert ,an orchestra or choir (while keeping conductors and musicians happy) including a simple rig design without overstage rigging postions.

Such musical events might not call for a huge light show of Wobbli Buckettes a-dancing about the place but lighting an orchestra isn’t a walk in the park. Despite what everyone else around you might think, lighting is integral to a successful concert.

In the world of orchestral musicians, “show” lighting is unimportant. Music is all about sound so you can pretty much wave goodbye to any of this “we are all here for the common good” guff – as far classical musos are concerned, you are of no consequence to them. Classical musicians don’t become top class instrumentalists with their ability to see the bigger picture, sometimes leaving you wondering if they would rather even the audience weren’t there.

However, they will know if they can’t see their music in the gloom and are not ones for keeping their troubles to themselves.

The audience, on the other hand, didn’t pay good money just to sit and listen to the CD while not being able to hit “pause” and pop off to the toilet. While not all of the audience delight in watching their favourites warbling or scratching away, seeing the performers is important to the rest and to the management.

Your goal as “person lighting this show” is help the show by making it possible to read dots, not to p**s any musicians off and to light the gig to the satisfaction of the players, concert manager and audience. In the controlled lighting space like a theatre venue or church, there is little ambient light so you are in charge of every bit of light needed.

Lighting The Music

A lot of tiny dots all bunched together – musicians cannot play properly without well lit music. While pit orchestras in theatre use Rat stands (music stands with a built in light), most classical players need a more “comfortable” dot reading environment. Your primary lighting concern should be to enable the musos to read their music easily but you can’t just issue the entire choir with Petzl headtorches – it’d be too expensive for a start.

Lighting the Conductor

The Maestro needs to be lit so the ensemble can see the frantic arm waving that makes sure everyone gets to the end of the tune at the same time. Being able to see music and conductor comfortably is pretty much 90% job done. You might also consider front lighting the maestro for the curtain call, so bows can be taken and flowers received.

Lighting for the Audience

Unlike theatre, intelligibilty of the spoken word is not a big issue but the audience have paid good money to see the show so it would be nice to be able to actually see their favourite artistes at it, a bit of low intensity front light “filling in” helps.. You can also push up the frontlight when it comes to bows and flowers time.

Arty/Mood Lighting. While some Musical Directors will request different colours, moods or textures, we won’t be going into how to achieve this today. The arty stuff comes down to whatever suits the performance which with 90% of these gigs is “Open white and leave it alone” to be honest

Lighting an Orchestra – Know Your Enemies

No, I don’t mean musicians – lighting enemies. The things that are most likely cause members of the ensemble to raise their hand are shadows and glare. Shadows on the page make it harder to read the score – the contrast between the white page and the black notes should be good. Uneven contrast on the page makes the eye work hard and if shadows move (like a violinists bowing arm or a percussionist arms), even harder.

Note about shadows: A light source and an object on stage create a shadow. There is a myth that adding more light sources cuts down on shadows, in fact they just increase. More light sources can mitigate the contrast effect of shadows but can also make them more complex to control. And controlling shadows is our goal, we’ll look into that further on.

Glare in the eyes of the players or conductor is a potential problem. While having lights shone in your face is uncomfortable it also effects the iris of the eye, making it smaller and harder to read music on the page.

We know some potential problems are and how they are caused, so avoid them from the start. Otherwise you will spend your time fielding complaints about the lighting and others will lose confidence in your lighting abilities. Once that happens, the world finds problems even where none exist.

Let’s look look at the practicalities.

Lighting The Scores

To light a choir and orchestra so that they can read their scores with minimal shadow or spill, you would like to use height. Putting your lanterns high up overhead and pointing them straight down means no light in anyone’s eyes, audience or orchestra. It also gives you the smallest, most controllable shadows (if you stand under an overhead light in your house and look down at your feet, you’ll see what I mean). The lower the angle of a light source, nearer horizontal like a sunset, the longer and more unmanagable the shadows become and the longer a shadow is on stage, the more performers it troubles.

The downside of heavy “toplight” is that it can make your ensemble look like they’re being beamed down from an alien spacecraft. A lot of harsh hotspots on the tops of heads and scary gaunt faces. It is also not always possible, quite a lot of concerts setups don’t have the overstage lighting positions required for these angles.

Your options are to bring the toplight a) slightly forward or b) slightly backward. Steep frontside top light can still seem pretty harsh from the audience, especially at levels that light up the music well. Steep backlight can light music while avoiding the hollow faces and foreheads that are too “hot”.

The trouble with steep backlight (directly from straight on upstage) is that, particularly for standing choirs, each persons head throws a shadow directly onto their score. For seated musicians, this is less of a problem. Lighting choirs, this can be eased by moving the steep backlight to one side and adding another backlight from the opposing angle – effectively lighting over each singers shoulder. Any shadow caused by a choir members neighbour is mitigated by the light from the other side.

Lighting the conductor is pretty uncomplicated, the orchestra needs enough to be able to see the stick and any facial expressions used to drive the piece. Light could come from upstage ish but mustn’t fly off into the eyes of the front row. Again, bring the angle steeper (more overhead) or from the side as an alternative. If there are no rigging positions overstage to light the conductor, see if you can find a cross light angle that is not going to bother the audience or the players.

Ok we’ve looked at ways of lighting musicians scores and the man with the stick, what about seeing them from the stalls? To be seen from “out front” we need to add some lighting from somewhere in front of the target (muso, singer, harpist etc). This could be from good old fashioned theatre style front light 45 degrees up and 45 degrees apart, but there are other positions that fill in here. The important thing to remember is that our biggest problem here is going to be “lights in the eyes” of players facing the conductor. This often makes the 45 degree angle less than attractive – a cello player sat in the front row will be guaranteed a front light in the face while trying to see the baton.

A more front/side or side light position fills in faces and is less of a nuisance for the majority. In a horseshoe setup, the players most likely to have the sidelight in their faces are sat either side of the conductor, facing the sidelight position. Just bear this in mind when focussing and cut off top edges at chest height on the opposite side to mitigate glare for the those facing.

The principle with this front light, is that that unlike a traditional theatre method for lighting a stage, the front light is Fill lighting that will be used at a lower intensity. If you are lighting the scores with positions from both sides of the stage, the sidelight provides most of the brightness required to see the orchestra from the back row of the audience.

Looking at the image, you can see lighting angles that are useful marked in green while red ones are going to cause problems. The arrows are not fixture positions but indicate direction with stubby ones being steeper (from over stage). As the graphic shows, any lighting angle that travels straight into the face of a player, particluarly via the conductor, is to be avoided. The angles that travel from upstage to down vary according to venue design, just make sure that audience members are not in the firing line when shooting from lower rigging positions.

Lighting a Concert in Reality

Many church recitals and school carol concerts are in venues that aren’t “the ideal world”. So, having looked at how we would really like to light our concert, let’s look at a common setup. Makeshift concert spaces often have no facility for rigging overhead, making wind-up lighting stands the only option.

We don’t have option to use high fixture positions overhead to light our orchestra – we need to be clever and even more aware of our angles, shadow and spill. Common wind-up stands go to a maximum height of 3-4 metres, a lot of our lighting angles are going to be shallower than we might prefer.

The benefit to portable stands is that we can place them pretty much where we like around the perfomance area – within reason. The other key to success is using a decent number of focussable fixtures with barndoors. 650W or 1000w fresnels are fine, depending on the size/throw of the venue ( 750w Source Four PARs/ PARnels are common in my world). The final piece of the puzzle is to use a number of stand positions to get “localised” light around the stage.

The first example here is scaled down version of a setup I have used regularly to light a choir and orchestra. The actual rig version uses double the number of fixtures to cover a larger area, but here we’ll use 12 fresnels for simplicity of demo and to allow for the smallest of budgets. We will pretend that the choir is also stood on one level. Tiered staging is often a feature of professional choir setups. Ideally, each lantern should be individually dimmed to allow for the maximum intensity control. Pairing two fresnels on each stand, while convenient, can cause intesity problems expecially as often the fixtures are working on different tasks and throw distances.

Looking at the diagram, one the lights on one side are numbered (the opposite partner of each lantern performs the a mirror task).

• Light 1 provides some front face lighting and a bit of light for the conductors stand. This is the danger angle that you probably won’t want to use too much apart from the walk-on and calls.
• Light 2 provides music sidelighting for the DS ensemble members facing across stage, lighting their music AND creating friendly front light for the players on that side of stage.
• Light 3 does slightly back lighting for the next US set of musicians. It also lights the conductor for the players.
• Light 4 side lights along the next row and a bit of front fill for the opposite side choir ranks.
• Light 5 creates front fill across the back ranks and is at an angle that troubles no one.
• Light 6 cross lights the rear rows of the choir ranks, far side. Music light, enough for 2 or 3 rows if you’re lucky.

Focus Notes:

Like most lighting, it’s all in the focus.

The FOH face lights are the worst offenders for “in the eyes lighting” of the opposite musos. Don’t forget to run them at a low intensity during the show, you can whack them up for the curtain calls.

Any light going downstage of the conductor must be cut off the front row of seating at chest height. Barndoor off to suit .  Although the conductors face is important to the players, you can cheat this by top dooring lower. There is often enough bounce from the score to see him grimacing.

Downstage crosslight/conductor sidelight – watch the DS b/door and long door off the audience seated.

Far cross lighting along the singers should be top doored off to just above head height on the other side of stage. This sidelight is going to be lighting faces as well as music.

Near lighting fresnels will need to be as wide as poss. Spot the far lighting ones down a touch to get a bit more oomph out of them.

You can let all US back/side lights light as far downstage as they go unless you think that their shadows are going to be a nuisance. Look out for the eyes of any front row audience and the two most downstage musicians.

Keep all barndoors tidy– every door should be in to at least the start of the visible beam.

Check light levels on stage by holding your hands out, squatting down and generally doing things that approximate where the scores and seated players will be. You can’t predict where every shadow will come from when a stageful of players appear, but you know you’re on the right track.

While the basic 12 light version of lighting an orchestra is simple, it’s a pretty blunt instrument that will only really cut it on a smaller orchestra and a handful of singers. A larger ensemble and some tiered risers for the choir mean you could do with some more fresnels (18-20) and a some larger wind-up stands or extensions that lift our rig higher , 4 – 5 meters should give the additional height to accommodate the rear riser lift. But the principle remains that same.

What next? Orchestra Rehearsals

Having set up the kit and a rough focus (often known as the focus in these situations) you await the influx of odd shaped intrument carriers, the rustle of scores and the sharpening of the conductors baton – the orchestra arriving for rehearsals. With any luck you have done your job so well that, after ascertaining that everything is good for them, you can slink off for a cup of tea. But how do you know if your lighting is to the choirs satisfaction?

Although you’d probably like the world to know that you are lighting the show, it is better not to make yourself to obvious and keep a safe distance, while watching players unpack and set up their music. You can easily tell if someone is uncomfortable or having trouble with the light levels on their scores. Often, musicians will adjust their chair position or rearrange their stands to get rid of unwanted bow shadows and you should let them get on with it. Only get involved at the behest of the conductor when there is something that only you can solve.

There is a rule amongst technicians that you never ask a musician if they are OK – they feel the need to find something to give you as an answer which is likely to result in pointless work on your part. Avoid direct questions like that. I usually prowl around the ensemble for a few minutes early in the rehearsal to see for myself if I would be happy with the light levels on each music score.

On a recent show, during this prowl I noticed that the organist had moved the organ into a position that meant no significant direct light was lighting his music. I quietly approached him in a break to see if he needed an Anglepoise or to move his intrument. We discussed the possibilities and he decided in the end that he didn’t want an Anglepoise for fear of knocking it overe during the show, and was happy to live with the light levels as they were. The guy was amazed that someone cared about his personal comfort that, despite my stupidity of breaking the golden rule, it was resolved by his rare “make-do” attitude.

If anything really needs adjusting, you obviously can’t clatter around with ladders during rehearsals so it must wait until rehearsals are over unless the problem is too intrusive to continue. For now, the orchestra and conductor just need space to get on with their bit.

After rehearsal, you can get on with whatever jobs you have left to do. But there is one more person you have to consider, now the orchestra have gone: The Tuner. There are two things that make their life harder – a lot of noise and working in the dark. If you have stuff to do, leave a light for the tuner to work by and keep the clatter of ladders to a mininum. They’ll finish much quicker.

All Done

Hang on Rob, what about the show?

As an On Stage Lighting reader, I am sure you have the show under control. The thing about lighting an orchestra or choir concert is that the rehearsals are the break point. A successful gig in this case is getting to the end of rehearsals with no questions about dimly lit music, glare or your focus.

After that, the show is just the thing between you and the load out.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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The title sounds like an action movie but we are looking at some lighting theory of reflection, the angle of incidence and interaction of light with different surfaces. Plus the comforting constancy of physics and being able to predict what happens to a stage lighting beam once you’ve let it fly.

Last week, a Project Manager sent me an email asking for my thoughts on forthcoming plans to use white PVC covered flats to back an award show, rather than using their usual finish material of felt. The question was specifically asking about successfully uplighting the shiny PVC from the floor using LED battens to create a changing coloured background. A pretty standard technique for this kind of show, making a pleasing backing for things to happen in front of.

The set designers of today, whether creating environments for the TV studio, award shows or exhibition stands, have access to a wide range of materials. As well as traditional wood, paint and cloth finishes, they love to use polymers and glass. Perspex plinths, PVC wall coverings and glass table tops all have one thing in common. They give the lighting designer a headache.

Let’s take a look at the basic physics behind the problem.

What happens when you light a diffusing material like felt?

A felt covered flat or a Cyclorama has a diffusing surface that scatters light in many directions because at a micro level it’s, well, bumpy. A light source skimming across the surface is reflected back in many directions, including “out front” to the viewer. In fact, the useful viewing angle of reflection for a diffuse material is pretty wide meaning the effect works for the audience, wherever they are. The light reflects off the side of the bumps and out to the eye. Not having a really obvious nap or grain (like velour or suede) such a diffuse surface is pretty forgiving in terms of both lighting and viewing angles. It has a similar look from everywhere.

The light that reflects from a surface in this way is called, surprise surprise, Diffuse Reflection and is instrumental in the perception of reflected colour.

Because light spends some of it’s time pinging around on and shooting off at different angles , the lit surface also appears relatively even, with quite a lot of the original light doing it’s thing for everyone. Hooray for felt and other fluffy surfaces.

How Shiny Surfaces Take Light

By contrast, high gloss surfaces such as shiny PVC based fabrics, are very flat at a micro level. Less bumps equals less diffusion . Shiny surfaces seem like they should reflect light well, they do indeed reflect it well. So well in fact, that any poor photon unfortunate to hit this material is instantly twanged off again in a reasonably straight line based on it’s originating source. This kind of reflection, the window shape reflected in the cauldron of Meg and Mog or a cartoon bomb, is specular reflection.

Surfaces have an element of both diffuse colour and specularity about them, including our white PVC.

So how do we predict the actual reflective behaviour of shiny things, including what the specularity will look like and where the dreaded, ghost like reflections will appear.

Bring on the angle of incidence.

The Angle Of Incidence and Light Reflection

In lighting, the angle of incidence (x in the image) is measured between the angle a light source strikes a surface and 90 degree vector to that surface (called the surface Normal, if you are into 3D CGI graphics you’ll know that). The geometry tells us that using a theoretical perfect surface, the angle of reflection opposes the angle of incidence. A lighting angle of 30 degrees will bounce back of at 30 degrees, the other side of the surface normal. This knowledge can also be used to calculate the set up of mirror effects, including Pepper’s Ghost.

This geometry is actually what makes a shiny surface less diffusing than a bumpy one. The surface normals of material like felt are actually all over the place, even though the flat is.. well, flat.

Back to Uplighting PVC

OK, so we know why skimming light across a diffuse surface works for us and what happens to the reflected light because of the relationship between the angle of incidence and the surface normals.

Lighting a shiny surface from a “straight on” angle, the small source is reflected in high def back in a similar direction toward the viewer, meaning they can see a reflected image comprising of every light source in the entire rig. Frankly, a bit of a visual mess. While the area of the source reflected is extremely bright, the rest of the flat doesn’t diffuse enough to create that pleasing coloured background we are after. Using RGB colour mixing LED fixtures, the individual LED light sources are not given a chance to mix on the surface as they rely on diffuse reflection for this to happen successfully.

Uplighting and skimming the light at a shallow angle across the surface, the viewer “out front” doesn’t get to see the source reflected because of the angle they are viewing from – not the opposing to the angle to incidence. Well, not unless they are clinging to the ceiling , the place which ends up being the brightest part of any low room due to all the lighting flying up there and diffusing it’s little butt off.

Lighting a shiny surface in this way, a large proportion of the light is wasted on things other than the viewer. So all in all, both physics and experience tells us that uplighting PVC flats with RGB colour mixing LED fixtures doesn’t work as we might hope.

Another dimension is added when dealing with surfaces that diffuse qualities that vary in different directions, such as brushed aluminium. The stripey bumpiness diffuses light and colour well in one direction while light from another angle of incidence is reflected in a specular way.

This is called Anisotropic Specular Reflection and is what gives these brushed surfaces their characteristic look.

Other shiny materials and the reflection of light

Other materials popular in the conference and exhibition industry may not all be as shiny as our PVC flats, but can exhibit reflective behaviour that leads to questions such as “Why is that graphic brighter than that one? “ or “What can you do with the lighting so that we don’t get that bright spot?”

Foamex boards, vinyl graphics and even polystyrene lettering all have their own level of specular reflection, though they appear reasonably matt. The result can appear to be a discrepancy in intensity or a particular highlight, which of course alters depending on where you look from.

Perspex lecterns and glass coffee table are capable of pinging your well aimed front light all over the backing, screens and even back into the camera lens. Ranks of chrome and glass awards trophies cause havoc by muck spreading light in all kinds of unwanted places.

What can we do?

Understanding the different behaviours of specular and diffuse reflection, the angle of incidence and how colour mixing fixtures create their light on the surface, we are armed to make design choices about lighting positioning and angles. We might even be able to make helpful suggestions about set materials while in discussion with the production designer and the rest of the creative team.

But the chance to take preemptive action, like advising against the merit of white PVC flats for LED uplighting, might not always present itself. The important thing to remember is how light behaves once we release it and that we work with a medium that, unlike smoke, is basically predictable.

As predictable as the likelihood that, when those truck doors open on another day, white PVC flats will be glinting back at you.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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Live lighting is making more appearances in an increasing range of performances and show types. Put the edge back in your lighting design with the fear of uncertainty.


Before tiny electronic lighting controls and predictable fade times, the theatre world relied on the physicality of men in coats pulling levers, twiddling dials and a direct connection between them and the light seen on stage. The reason that early modern lighting consoles looked suspiciously like they were based on a pipe organ, was that the real time connection of an lighting technician and his lights was highly regarded.

Along came the predictability of electronic systems and the growth of the international lighting designer, and lighting in the mainstream theatre became a “set and forget” gig. LXQ2 Go just as x moves to y, 3 seconds with a 1 second follow on, DSC special at 33.3%. The Director and Lighting Designer wanted to know that the vision they had worked so hard to create would not be messed up by mere operators. Many theatre shows today still run under such factory default conditions, it manages the risk of unpredictability.

As concert lighting has grown up and commercial lighting for all kinds of live events has become a job for many, the old direct connection between an LD and his illuminating proteges has returned. The time and planning restrictions on many shows (particularly one offs) has meant that creating lighting “live” is even more the fashion.

This is great, not because running a show with no rehearsal and a similar quantity of information is apparently cheaper, but because stage lighting is an art that shouldn’t stop just because the punters are in.

I enjoy playing music and was trained read the dots at an early age. But there was a recurring theme in my young musical career that was a clue to my future love of lighting shows live. “Robin, that sounded nice but half of what you played isn’t on the page and you stopped looking at the music after the first eight bars”. Apparently, “making it up” is not main part of the traditional musical education so passing grade examinations took a back seat while I got interested in improvised music such as jazz.

We are taught that it is better to have live musicians in the pit (and not just by the landlord of the pub next door), live dancers, live actors and a sound mix that is presided over by a real human. Well, a sound engineer anyway. Keep it live, they say!

So why is so much stage lighting taken from the artist and given to the lighting equivalent of a backing track?

Before a recent concert we were focussed up, paintbox programmed and ready to go. While the stage sat empty, doors closed, waiting for the evenings performance, I was asked “Let’s see what you’ve got then?”

A simple enough question and one that is often asked of a Lighting Designer by Directors, Producers and other associated bill payers. What lighting have you got for us today? Just give us an idea, y’know, whistle a few bars or whatever. This question seemed inappropriate for a live show that was about to happen, we had never done the show before and would never do it again.

The question jarred because:

• The stage is empty
• There is no music or action
• The performance has yet to start

Now, I am not an overly sensitive artistic type, but it struck me that you don’t wander up to the Courtney Pine and casually wonder what notes he might be using today. I don’t suppose many people asked Monet for a peek in his paintbox, to see what colours he had mixed up.

The innocent question received the usual pushing up of faders, lighting the backdrop and cheery chat about what kind of show it might be tonight But it started me thinking about my favourite approach to lighting and the parallel with live artists such as those playing improvised music.

Lighting is a creative outlet and doing it live can build an interaction between performers of a show both on stage and those of us in the dark. As a jobbing lampie, a lot of events can sometimes seem mundane – light the stage, change the colour, look out here comes a big flashy bit. It is surely a lot less mundane that pressing Go at exactly the same time 3 times a day when someone else tells you to. Perhaps the reason I was drawn to events over theatre was the same reason I never really got interested in sight reading music – it seemed like the difference between a riffing comedian on song and a TV presenter grimly plugging away at the autocue.

Live show lighting moves a large chunk of the creative process from the pre show and technical period of a production and drops it slap bang in the middle of the show itself. Modern lighting equipment and control systems allow for even more interactivity than levers and a bit of wood ever did, so why not use all that power? We’re not talking about taking your own cues and firing off pre recorded looks but actually deciding on, balancing and changing the lighting right here, right now.

The trouble with leaving the design process so late, is that other people don’t like it. “What’ve you got for us today, then?” “Er, well I’ve mixed up my paints, cleaned my brushes and when we get going you can have a look.” It’s too risky.

If you work backstage, you don’t need the attention of a crowd or applause for your performance – hell, you probably don’t feel the need to earn much money! The job satisfaction of being part of a show is your own personal, real time input to the moment, not just pressing a button like Pavlov’s dog in show blacks.

So take a break from thinking in Cue Lists and start thinking of yourself as a “stage lighting performer”.  Join the campaign around the slogan Keep Lighting Live!

Take to the streets and burn your show disks.

Do you enjoy lighting shows live? On Stage Lighting has a few articles lined up on the basics of creating live lighting including rig design and use of the lighting console as a paintbox. Let us know your thoughts in the comments as usual.

Update://  Hat tip to OSL reader Carlos who reminded me of  work by Nick Hunt.  Nick wrote a paper in 2001 that I hadn’t seen before.  It’s on this very subject and well worth the short read – The Play Of Light.

Image with apologies to the Musicians Union.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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A guest post from Lucas Krech, a Lighting Designer with a passion for lighting dance performance. An great introduction to dance lighting that looks at some history, theory and the use of side light in particular.

Dancers live in light as fish live in water. The stage space in which they move is their aquarium, their portion of the sea. Within translucent walls and above the stage floor, the lighting supports their flashing buoyance or their arrested sculptural bodies. The dance is fluid and never static. Designing for the dance has been my most constant love. I have designed the decor as well as the lighting for a good many ballets and I have installed the basic systems with which I have worked in dance repertory. If I leave anything to posterity, it will be, I think, most importantly in the field of dance lighting. My extraordinary good fortune was that I came along at a point in time when Martha Graham was creating and when Lincoln Kirstein was backing George Balanchine to create new and fresh uses of the ballet form. ~~Jean Rosenthal, The Magic of Light

Lighting the Dance

These first few sentences are perhaps all one needs to understand the dance. The rest is style and historical aesthetics. “Dancers live in light as fish live in water.” If you have ever seen a truly first rate dancer glide across the stage effortlessly and with infinite grace, you know what this means. The relationship between a dancer and their light, between a choreographer and their lighting designer, is unique among artistic collaborations. Perhaps the closest analogy would be the relationship of the composer to their conductor. So much of dance, even when dealing with classical story ballet, comes down to the lighting that one must almost unlearn everything you know about lighting in order to learn how to light for the dance.

Dance lighting is unique among performance disciplines in large part because dance is concerned first and foremost with movement. While in all performance mediums our focus is on bodies in space, it is the dance where we focus on where and how that body moves. Perhaps there is a large sweeping arc of an entrance that spirals to center for a pirouette where our dancer is joined by a partner who then jaunts about the stage with her. In short, we are concerned with the whole stage and the quality of movement rather than where someone is standing for such and such a monologue.

My background and training as a designer is in modern ballet and post-modern dance. The following essay is written primarily from the perspective of designing for modern dance forms. While many of these principals can be applied to classical ballet and some post-modern styles, those forms are not the focus as they demand their own unique approach.

For the purposes of this essay I am assuming the use of a conventional modern dance space. This typical dance space has several wings, perhaps four per side, with a boom placed in the center of each just out of sitelines. Sidelights are hung on the booms and point straight across stage. These low hung units allow for color changes between pieces in repertory and allows the entire stage space to be filled, with very few lights. The wings and dance floor are black and there is often a white cyc in the background. Should the cyc not be used for a particular piece, there is a black curtain immediately downstage of the Cyc.

The Angles of Dance

Because our interest in dance is based first on movement, the lighting must be grounded in an approach that seeks out interesting ways to reveal that moving body. While in a play, where our concern is dialogue and plot, we focus on faces through the use of frontlighting. In dance, to show off the musculature and movement, we rely primarily on sidelight positions.

While sidelight is a primary tool in dance lighting, at a more basic level the use of different angles in dance is often treated in a more minimalist or poetic manner than one finds in a play or musical or television. While in a play or television, you might have a key light that is brighter than the myriad other lights used in the scene, for a dance, you might only have that one light or a very few lights from a tightly controlled palette of angles.

Sidelighting

The sidelighting conventions for dance developed out of the twin needs of a body’s movement in a kinesthetically focused art form and a touring repertory. As such this system was devised to achieve the maximum variety in lighting looks with a minimum of instrumentation.

The first lighting position to consider are the shinbusters or shins. As you might infer from the name, these are lights hung at or about shin height. They are typically elipsoidals with shutter cuts taken off the floor and focused to head height at the centerline. With these, it becomes possible to brightly light the dancer without illuminating the floor. The effect is one of making the dancer appear to float as if by magic.

After the shins, the next most important position are the head highs, or heads. These are lights hung at or just above typical head height. They are also focused to centerline, but unlike the shins they do not cut off the floor. While the light does graze the floor, the effect is minimal and allows the dancer to be brightly light while keeping a minimum of notice on the floor

These two positions are so fundamental to dance that many designers, should they find themselves in severely limited situations, would utilize only them. This system of sidelighting was developed by american designer Jean Rosenthal and is covered in more detail in her seminal text The Magic of Light.

Through the use of low angled sidelighting like this a designer may fill the entire stage space with light using as few as 8 or 10 lighting instruments. In a touring situation where venues range from having large compliments of lighting fixtures to incredibly limited options, this system allows the basic integrity of the design to be maintained in virtually any performance space. I discuss the implications of designing in repertory for tour in more detail here.

While Shins and Heads are the two primary angles utilized in dance, larger companies and dance venues will have a much more extensive lighting system for their home season if not also on tour. A more expanded low boom might have Low Shins, High Shins, Mids, Low Heads and High Heads. Classical ballet companies will also have high booms, typically in a pink and a blue that hang at 3-4 meters above the stage floor. Pipe-ends and other high-side lights may also be employed.

Other Angles and Lighting Options

Dance may begin with sidelight, but that is not to say that other options are unavailable to the designer. Backlighting, toplights, frontlight and foot lights should all be considered part of the designer’s tool kit. In addition to all these, lighted drops and cycloramas play a critical role in dance lighting.

Backlighting and top lighting often play a very prominent role in dance. Because the primary lighting angles keep the majority of light on the dancer and off the floor, the floor is left relatively dark. From this place, the designer has at their disposal any combination of overhead lighting positions to design shadows and patterns on the floor itself. Through the use of color, texture, shadow angle, and intensity, the designer can cause the dancer to appear to traverse entire worlds, while merely crossing the stage from down-right to up-left. For a more detailed exploration of lighting floors, see my essay here.

The use of a cyc in dance, or painted drops in ballet, can be quite effective as well. The color variety afforded by a three color cyc can give limitless variety to a designer when combined with the color options in the low booms.

Beyond the Basics and a bit of History

The advent of modern dance brought with it several changes that would rock the dance world and significantly impact the lighting designer in the process. The first was the elimination of toe shoes and ballet slippers. While not directly impacting lighting, this did lead to radical new explorations of form and movement, thus shifting the aesthetic center of the field. The second change, and one directly relevant to lighting, was the elimination of scenery.

With scenery gone, or relegated to a few gestural sculptures, lighting no longer had to contend with pesky walls that would block it. This freed the lighting designer to use whatever tool they saw as necessary to light the dance. It also shifted lighting to a more primary role in the creation of a visual space.

Lighting now had double duty of creating mood and atmosphere as well as setting. Lighting as scenery is commonplace in the dance world today. Be it through the use of toplight boxes, texture and color, or a partially obscured cyc, there are limitless ways to define the dance space architecturally with light.

Dance, in many ways, allows light to exist in its purest form. With little to no scenery and a focus entirely upon lighting a body in space, the medium lends itself to the poetic essence of what stage lighting can be. While theatre production can use quite a number of lighting instruments and angles to construct the various looks, dance is often content with a few clean, clear, simple gestures. Dance is an opportunity for the lighting designer to let their inner poet run free. To take light as a formal art and dance on stage with the performer. The lighting designer constructs the aquarium wherein a dancer may swim in their light.

Images are courtesy of Lucas Krech. The main photograph is copyright Julie Lemberger.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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A look at lighting design in the new millennium and how the lighting designer’s job has been changed by
market forces and a growing entertainment industry.

As stage lighting has moved from the theatre and into the commercial world, the title “Lighting Designer” moved with it. Theatre job titles and the “system” that grew throughout the 20th century still remains largely intact (unlike many of the theatres). Richard Pilbrow’s excellent book Lighting Design – The Art, The Craft, The Life describes the world of a 20th century lighting designer in detail.

Newer parts of our industry, awards shows or industrials, the lighting design workflow that started in the theatre tradition has mutated under the pressures of commerce. In an industry that now largely competes on price, I have witnessed big changes first hand in the last 15 years.

In the Disney version of Lighting Design, you work as you were trained to: Consider the show, go to meetings, carefully design and plan every detail, choose every gel. The long winter evenings fly by as you sit with your Lee swatch book, trying to find the three best colours to simulate fire light. Along with the art comes the planning – Producing plans, spreadsheets, schedules and even pre programming your show using a simulator like WYSIWYG. While thumbing through the Vari*lite catalogue, you carefully compare lumens and beam angles while wondering if it would be ok to ask the lighting company to swap out every gobo in 50 WaggleSpots ™.

For every West End production or meticulously planned tour, there are 50 award ceremonies such as the “UK Sausage Growers Quarterly Awards 2009” or another weekend rock festival with an improbable name like “N20”. For every .wyg file there are 100 fag packet sketches scrawled on the back of production emails. For every carefully scheduled gel call, there must be at least 10 phone calls that go “just make sure there’s some blue and some frost in there, Dave”.

Are you a Lighting Designer?

Surely LD’s design stuff, choose things and plan in the traditional manner? They pick angles, colours and once in the venue lead the team in focussing and plotting while painting with light, right?

I am often introduced as the Lighting Designer on gigs where I have neither chosen the kit, the colour or even had any say in the rigging positions. In the 21stC world, being tagged as the Lighting Designer can mean a number of things:

• You are the head of the lighting crew and will be programming the desk.
• You are the only one here who knows which end the light comes out of a Source 4.
• You are responsible for the stage not looking crap and we will be asking some pretty serious questions if it does.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you spent hours of pre production on “designing”. Some will say that you are not a Lighting Designer but a Lighting Do-er – turn up, do it and FOH (industry acronym for going home). The Lighting Designer can still bring their own brand of art to this brave new world of Bish Bash Bosh eventing. Just make sure that you bring it with you on the day.

Where does the Lighting Designers art fit into this?

Let’s take a typical commercial lighting scenario. Every week, I take at least one phone call like this:

PM “Hi Rob, we’re doing the [insert something you've never heard of] Awards at the [insert ghastly London hotel] next week. I have provisionally booked a load of Pixelline, 6 Spots, 6 Washes and a few Source Fours, few Fresnels. Oh, and some cheap LED PARs for uplighters. Do you need anything else?”

Me: “Well, given that the niceties of pre production and all those other luxuries I learned about at drama school don’t seem to be on the table, just make sure there is a couple of irises and some frost. Don’t suppose you can describe the set to me? No? Ok, what desk have we got. No, I definitely don’t want one of those!….”

And so we establish that there’s no rigging and only 3 hours from truck unloading until rehearsals. We have also circumvented the need for a lighting design fee(!) or any time faffing about in the office trying to import a DWG with seemingly random scaling. This is not a specifically shocking example or a complaint about how the business works, it just gives us a typical scenario that we can pick the design bones out of.

Where’s the design?

Fixture Positioning – In common with traditional theatre design, many fixture position decisions are largely a double Hobson’s Choice. Either it goes here or there or it doesn’t go anywhere and in our case of limited rigging we don’t have a lot to play with. But there are small decisions related to placement that can make your lighting better or worse .. where the lighting designer skills are required.

The Focus – In our example we don’t have hundreds of conventional fixtures. This makes the focus of the few we have even more important. Perhaps the biggest challenge for the next generation of lighting designers is learning how to do a good focus without the distractions of complex fixtures and controllers. Making design decisions to produce a good focus makes a decent lighting designer invaluable. I have seen perfectly good rigs ruined by bad focussing.

Colour – OK, so we didn’t get to flick through our swatch books hunting down exactly the right gel. The rig we have has two different kinds of RGB LED fixtures (more than that if the Pixelline is a bit older ;-[ ), some CMY, some fixed colour wheels, tungsten. The colour choices may not have been made beforehand but you better make them now that the client is breathing down your neck. Good lighting designers know which colours to use and how to get them using the array of colour mixing kit available these days. (Top Tip – the colour you require is usually the one in 16 million that those LED’s can’t do).

The Looks – Using the range of very flexible kit in this kitlist, this is the opportunity to really create. No different to traditional theatre plotting. While good fixture positioning and focus make life easier, the balancing of light and use of intensities are what creates the final result. The 21st century Lighting Designer also gets to choose angles, movement and the interaction of dynamic lighting. OK, so today we only have 20 minutes to do that but still…..

The Cues – Looks are important but transitions between them are no less integral to a good show. Having our Pixelline not crash through some horrible pink while going from blue to red is part of the modern lighting designers remit.

The Design

While the mechanics of lighting design in the new century can use different work patterns and processes, the hallmarks of good lighting hasn’t really changed. And while some people might insist that drawing a plan is prerequisite to be given the title “Lighting Designer”, we have seen that design decisions are integral to good lighting whenever they are taken. If you have to take those decisions (and if you’re in charge of the lighting not being crap), you are the Lighting Designer. Simple as.

Why should I bother to learn how to do lighting designs the “traditional” way?

Educational establishments teaching lighting design still work on traditional theatre lighting design and workflow for good reason. This method teaches you essential skills such as:

• The basics of light, angles and it’s interaction with subjects.
• Good methods of lighting a stage
• To use the pre production process wisely and communicate with other departments
• To clearly communicate your intentions using recognised drafting techniques
• How to organise equipment inventories, budgetting and other paperwork
• Working in an organised team structure and mastering time management
• Tried and trusted methods of focusing and producing a useful rig to plot with
• Plotting lighting in a favourable enviroment (ie, not with the working lights still on, rehearsals in progress, sun blasting in the front of the stage etc)
• Keep visually evaluating your work during the final process of rehearsals.

I’m sure there’s a load more. Learning how to do things “properly” is a fundamental of good education in any business. I love hearing stories of college students lighting their shows, using Lightwright, getting their hands on Vectorworks and going through the process guided by experienced tutors. It reassures me that these guys are getting the education they deserve.

Back in the real world The UK Sausage Growers still need someone who understands how to make the host visible on stage, how to make the environment look good and how to use lighting to add to the sausage based excitement of winning Banger of the Year (!?). All the crew, equipment and CAD in the world don’t necessarily guarantee that. This time you didn’t get to choose the kit, the rigging, the colour or do many of the things that a “real” lighting designer might do – avoiding a lighting suckfest is still in your hands for the next few hours.

In a fast paced, cost driven lighting business, the stuff hidden inside the head of a good LD is still where the real value is.

Image based on a photo by Deapeajay on Flickr

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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Stage Lighting (clue in the name), lighting the stage would seem to be it’s primary function. The question “How to light a stage?” seems to come up frequently among beginners. On Stage Lighting looks at basic front lighting for any venue or show.


Talk of lighting the stage, we really mean lighting the subjects (actors, furnitures etc) so they appear natural and can be seen clearly. This applies to “naturalistic” lighting, theatre stage and seating but the ideas also apply to conference lighting or products on an exhibition stand. In theatre, this lighting is part of a “General Cover” – general lighting around the stage for visibility. While there are no rules, there are some traditional theatre “methods”…

Image from gonc._a on Flickr

The McCandless Method and “Jewel” Lighting

If you are really new to stage lighting, you probably haven’t heard of Stanley McCandless who wrote the book “A Method of Lighting The Stage” in the 1930′s. The book describes angles and positions used to light the stages of professional American theatres, and McCandless is credited with recording “the method”- though perhaps not inventing it. The McCandless method for lighting the stage became the basis of lighting design in proscenium theatres and is still taught to students today.

The McCandless lighting layout is based on division of the stage into areas, with each area lit by two front light sources. Each light source arrives on stage from an angle roughly 45 degrees from the stage floor, and are seperated 45 degrees either side of “straight on”. Other lighting angles such as backlight and sidelight fill in, giving the actors on stage some form. Warm and cold colours are used in opposite sides to create key and fill lights that can be balanced depending on the scene.

If you want to learn about the McCandless method of lighting the stage, pretty much every book on stage lighting design has details. There are also some notes at Larry Wild’s An Approach to Stage Lighting.

The thing to keep in mind is that the subject is front lit from two positions, from an audience point of view. Light arriving at 45 degrees up delivers lighting that is not too harsh, steep or flat. 3 dimensions are sculpted by light from positions at the back and side of stage.

“Jewel” lighting refers to a phrase coined by Howard Bay, who described a method of lighting the actor like a jewel display – from as many angles as possible. This method could use more front light angles, colours and face shadows were often filled in using floats (footlights). This multi angled approach is what we in the UK sometimes think of as Broadway lighting.

Both these methods of lighting a stage have an emphasis on “front light” – lighting arriving from the audience. Light that comes from an audiences viewpoint, reflects back to them making it easy to see detail in faces and read lips speaking. Natural warm and cold colour filters such as straws, pale blues and lavenders provide some simulated sunlight and skylight in traditional theatre methods. Lighting a choir or a graduation ceremony the lighting designer may not need this colour flexibility, keeping front lighting in Open White – no colour at all.

Lighting Any Stage

Stages, whether in a theate or a field, are all different. Auditoria and available lighting positions are all different too. Given the task of lighting the stage for a performance, front lighting is usually the most important. So how do you decide where to put your lights and what to do with them? Do you even get a choice in your venue?

Dividing the stage into different areas such as Down Stage Left, Down Centre, Down Right, or Catwalk 1,2 ,3 start to indicate how many front lighting fixtures you will need – 2 per area in the McCandless method. If you are in a traditional theatre environment with auditorium facing the stage from one direction, the choice of overhead position is can be easily estimated. Taking the height from stage to lighting position and moving into the audience by the same distance gives us a rough 45 degrees up.

Having decided on a rough distance from the stage our lighting fixtures should be placed, we need work out how to spread them across the venue for an even coverage. The desired outcomes are:

• No gaps in the cover where faces disappear as they move around the stage.
• No harsh changes of angle between the different stage areas.
• Lighting on subjects should look natural and complete from all audience viewpoints.
• High enough angle to minimise people/things casting big shadows on each other.

In our ideal theatre, we would stretch out both arms forward at 45 degrees from centre and pick two spot positions for each area. This is unlikely to be possible, especially in old theatres with more fancy plasterwork than actual rigging positions. So, what do to do if you are not in the perfect venue? The answer is always a compromise.

Each audience member should have at least one lantern providing them with reflected light from the their side of the auditorium. In some situations this might mean widening the angle, pushing the two front lights further apart. Other times, a third or fourth fixture might be needed, particularly if the audience sits right round the stage.

Note about cameras: In a live situation to be recorded/relayed by cameras, remember that the camera is also a member of the audience too. Camera positions often view the stage from very different angles to the main seating – just make sure that you know where the camera positions are. Lighting the stage with Open White frontlight and high blue backlight might look great from the stalls, it might not be so helpful for the camera shooting from a Down Stage Right wing position.

You might have a theatre full of spotlights or a just couple of stands with 6 PARs to light a show. Front lighting the stage for audience visibility is important and can be achieved in different ways with a regard for where the audience is actually viewing from.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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All kinds of lighting design software are available today, the benefits of CAD and visualisation tools are undeniable. On Stage Lighting regularly hears from first time lighting designers including BTEC students, asking the best way to draw lighting plan. This article looks a the basics of planning a lighting design and the real purpose of drawing a plan.

Image by JohnandKeturah on Flickr

A Stage Lighting Plan is…?

The lighting plan is the Lighting Designers tool, planning the location of lighting equipment and communicating information to everyone else. Originally drafted on paper (cave painting of fire beacon designs have yet to be found) CAD has taken over but let’s forget about grids, snaps and polysplines for the minute.

The plan (some people call it a “plot” or the “Desperate” in Lampie rhyming slang) is the bird’s eye representation of the venue, lighting positions and fixtures. During the design stage, the LD uses it to experiment with angles and placements. After the design is finalised, the lighting crew use the plan to rig, plug up and focus the fixtures while the LD refers to the plan to find dimmer channels when setting the light levels.

What form should my lighting plans take?

I have probably drawn as many plans on the back of tour schedules as I have CADed and Wyg-ed up full english breakfast drawings. The plan doesn’t need to be complex, it just need to fulfill it’s purpose. If it’s to show the local crew where to hang up stuff, a fag packet sketch is going to be fine. It’s all you can do in half an hour while they’re unloading the truck, anyway.

When learning stage lighting, it’s tempting to try to use every available tool at your disposal to create a drafting masterpiece that could cut it at Tate Modern. That’s fine and a good way of learning the software. Don’t forget that drawing a lighting plan is not the same as doing a lighting design – try not to let your struggles with symbol libraries become the entirety of your day.

A nice compromise between a blunt pencil sketch and multi layered, block ridden hell is a tidy scale drawing of the venue with some standard lighting symbols and clear text. Scale drawings are important, even if they are only simple line representations of bars and fixtures. It’s impossible to use the lighting plan to make design decisions if the bars are not the right length (or in the right place) and the lantern symbols are way out of proportion.

You could do a simple computer drawing with something like Sketchup or just use a pencil and paper. 5mm squared paper is great as a quick aid to scale drawing using something like 1 square to 500mm or 1 ft – whatever fits your venue on the drawing. If you’re going to draw, start in pencil and don’t ink anything in until the last minute. Using tracing paper “layers” can keep your venue / set drawings seperate from the LX plan.

It’ OK to “cheat” some of your rigging positions to within the sheet limits if they are a long way from everything else. Just remember to take this into account when planning throw distances and angles.

Below is an example of a lighting bar, showing lanterns and data.

Using Fixture Symbols

A critical element when drawing a lighting plan is the representation of lighting fixtures. Before CAD, the lighting designer drew with plastic stencils and this method reminds us that complex pictures of lanterns with every nut and bolt are pointless. The symbols need to be clear, recognisable and have some room to insert vital information such as gel colours etc.

The scale of the symbols, although not always an exact footprint, should represent how much room a lantern might take up on the bar. When drawing lantern symbols, it’s good to “point” the lantern in the direction of focus rather than plonking them all in the “straight ahead” position. This show up any potential problems with fixtures rigged too close to each other – another reason why symbol scale is important.

There are some recognised generic lantern symbols that clearly show profile spots, fresnels and floodlights and you can add to these with your own depending on the different types of fixture of your show. It’s just important that the lighting crew can easily tell one fixture type from the next. This is often a problem with using manufacturer’s CAD symbols – they are complex and look too similar without close inpection – Spots vs. Washes for example.

Other Information on the Plan

A good lighting plan should have all the available information for the electricians and crew to work from when rigging the equipment. This makes it a little annoying when the crew ask you a question that they could’ve found the answer to on the drawing but…..! Communication with the lighting crew is what it’s all about. The lighting plan will also contain aide memoirs about other Lighting Designer-y information for you to use during the focus and plot.

Each fixture might have the gel number, circuit hook up, dimmer channel, DMX address and job/focus as well as details of accessories such as gobos or irises. The important thing it so keep these number and notes clear and uniform. Some LD’s put their gel number in the centre of the lantern symbol which is where others might insert the control channel. Some symbols have the beam angle of a fixed profile spot on the lens tube, on other plans this might be where the gobo number is. Just make it make sense and the same for every symbol on your plan.

Other areas of the plan might show particular infrastructure notes, patch panels, multicore numbers or details of power and dimming positions. Laying out technical details will also help you or your electrician create the equipment inventory needed for the show. Cable runs calculated and extra kit ordered.

If you are looking for more information on conventions, search for  ”USITT Theatrical Lighting Design” to see their document outlining their take on the standards and conventions for the ways to show lighting plan information, many of which are use throughout the theatre industry and beyond.

Here are some examples of generic symbols and some conventions to show data such as channels or gel numbers.

Create Your Own Lighting Plan

Drawing a lighting plan is not lighting design. Using drafting techniques to communicate ideas is part of the lighting designers armoury. If you are doing your first lighting design, create a simple scale layout of your venue and using symbols to represent your lighting equipment. And maybe break out the CAD on a rainy day.

Footnote: BTEC Level 3 Stage Lighting Design Unit

This note is for students working within the UK BTEC Production Arts at Level 3  in the UK.

According to Edexcel marking criteria for the lighting design unit, in order to achieve a PASS, the learner must demonstrate the ability to communicate a lighting design and and at least “produce accurate manual drawings using established conventions.”  This means working carefully to scale, using technical drawing tools to ensure clean and accurate drawings, using standardised lantern symbols, all marked up with gel numbers, dimmers or other information using conventional notation recognisable by a lighting team.  There is plenty of information on these techniques, both the USITT guide mentioned above and any good book on stage lighting.

In order to gain a MERIT, the guidelines tell us that the learner must evidence both an level of competence in both hand drawn and some form of CAD, while a DISTINCTION also includes some level of visualisation using either CAD or an actual model.

The next step on the road to a good mark is to make sure that you understand scale and elementary technical drawing, can draw accurately and neatly and have researched conventions for representing theatrical lighting equipment and design ideas on paper.  Good Luck.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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