Though I was initially part opf the lighting team my involvment in this side of things was very little till abround a week before showtime. Initially we hasd smoe questions which we need to ask and ascertain when we visited the Brewery Arts Centre.
Lighting Bars – placement and weight limit. We never got a clear answer on weight limit but there is space for 12 lanterns per side of each bar.
They kindly supplied us with their current rig and patch for their lighting desk. From which I’ve extracted the following magic sheet.
I had taken a photo of their printed sheet when we looked around the control room
Which lanterns and how many lanterns could we use, what do we need to provide ourselves. All the Breweries lanterns were available to us. The only lanterns we would need to supply would be moving heads and LED’s if we wanted to use those. At this stage we knew wew were using 2 moving heads for police type search lights, we were told that position of those could be decided when rigging. DMX cables would already be run but we would need to patch these.
Line Of Sight – for lanterns and focusing, by observing where the bars were and taking advice from the Brewery technicians we were able to asertain which bars and where we could focus from.
What lighting desk do they use – ETC Gio – this is the bigger brother of the lighting desk used at college. As such this would mean that the learning curve would be less steep when it came to programming the lights. As mentioned earlier they did provide us with their current patch set-up exported from their desk.
Ideally receiving focus notes at the same time as the gels, so basically when we are then for get in. Rough notes would be acceptable for this suggesting focus notes such as SL, UPSL etc
They were happy to meet with us and be cotacted as much as we needed to.
They gave further advice on the use of each lighting bar
BR1 – 3 stage washes – light actors on stage and supplement BR2
BR2 – colour washes
They told us to bear in mind the consistency of gels and effectively 3 areas to light, Under, top and middle.
Use presets on the desk particularly when it comes to moving heasds.
After this inital meeting my time was used promarliy on the set build so I had no time to liase with the other members of the LX team or attend rehearsals. Louis Pezet took the lead as Lighting Designer and Charlie Pilling was the operative. During the time leading up to the show they thought about what feel and look they wanted from the show based both on rehearsals and how the set was coming together, this process led them to create a Gel Pallette
Urinetown Lighting Gel List Draft 1
from this they also pproduced a more detailed document showing colour swatches and further information about the gels
Urinetown LX Initial 21494527342494
When I was next involved it was at the drawing up lighting plans stage, I used LXfree to help generate a computer version of the handwritten document (unfortunately I do not have a copy of the hand written one, and this was used as they’re working documnet for the show). Further information from my previous blogs about lighting plans can be found here and information about lanterns here.
We aslo cut gels for the lanterns preshow, we were given examples of the frames from th brewery and told which lanterns we would be using.
Frame dimensions
We also used photoshop to come with some locations for focus and what was required of the washes.
1st Revision
After this inistial creation and speaking withthe staff at the brewery it was deciddd that we need more lanterns for face lights and washes. so more fresenels were added and gels in some of the blank ones, we needed top lights as well. This continues throught the iterations produced here. AS time progresses we get the gels and things more locked into place and I start adding focus notes to this diagram. Again unfortunately this is incomplete near the end.
2nd Revision
Final revision with channel numbers
With hand written notes
These changes occured throughout the run up to the show, with changes occurring right up till the last moment, with different focusing a lighting states. Before the cue to cue began Charlie made groups for the various washes to be used, using fresnels, I believe he also group the LX4 parcans by colour.
Basically all the parcans were used as specials and to add a different mood to the show.
USe of gels
Fresnels
L104 – rich colour wash
L156 – Poor Colour wash]L203 – Cpld colour wash
L103 – warm colour wash
L116 – Night time wash
L029 – to add ambience
Gobos – used to add texture
Moving heads – used for spot lights and to recreate police spotlights
The inital pinkthat we had in the parcans was easily washed out so this was changed to a richer shade.
During the Cue to Cue I just sat with Louis as he and the director worked out what was needed for each scene, it was interesting how he spoke with charlie on the comms with good communication and confiring with the director. This was a similar experience I had when he was focusing the lights with the brewery staff. Making sure that requests are clear and consise.
Cue to Cue and Control room
Tech Rehearsal Time lapse
Showtime Timelapse
Reflection
Though we had come up with a sound plan it became appraent at the Brewery that we had not planned for enough lights particularly face lights and washes. As such we had to add quite a lot more fresnels into the mix to allow for this. The brewery has Br1 and BR2 essentially set up for this, with lights working in tandem and off the same channel. This we shold’ve taken more into account at the planning stage.
Also as the cue to cue began it became apparent that some of the gels were not of the right colour and others were getting very washed out due to the other lighting on set. It is quite a task to get face lighting and mood lighting with destroying one or the opther. This will be a technique I will look to work on next year.For instance the pink L153 was too pale so this was changed to L128 a much darker richer pink.
These are certainly issues which could’ve been avoided or at least lessen by planning further ahead of time. If we had submitted out lighting plan quickly the brewery staff would’ve been able to advise us sooner, and we would’ve had more time to adjust accordingly. Luckily we had enough gels to cover the extra lights but it was a possibility that we may have run out.
Also testing the gels before the show would’ve been immensly useful, those colours which weren’t quite right (there was also a green used which didn’t work very well and a yellow/brown) could’ve been tested pre show, and then changed, so maybe order test sheets first, just enough for a small birdie light would probably be sufficient.
It is also bearing in mind that the bulbs in lanterns are often a yellow in colour and this will effect the final output of the gel, the yellow/brown gel I mention in the earlier paragraph when used was too much like the L104 to give any discernable difference. This I think was because that gel had a lot of yellow in it so was passing a lot of that colour.
Overall I think that the lighting went very well apart from these issues, when it came to focusing Louis knew where he wanted to focus and why, we had some profiles rigged but not focused which could and were used for areas which were not lit. AS the actors had been rehearsing in a much smaller space Louis had designed for the space they occupied during rehearsals. This changed as they got the larger performance space. Both Lois and charlie worked very well as a lighting team with obviously clear roles and responsibilites.
Matt Cooper 