Jake's Everything Blog

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Operating the lights for Oh What A Lovely War

This is a short compilation of me opping the show. I got my cues from caitlyn (The dsm), i would let her know i was 'standing by' ready for the cue, then she would tell me when to go.

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Lighting techniques

There are many different techniques used in lighting design and operation. Some techniques used  include:

Fades: Fades are when the lights dim or brighten over a set period of time, this is a lot more subtle and aesthetically pleasing than lights just going on or off.

Cross-fades: Cross-fades are when as one lighting state is fading out the next is fading in at the same time, this is useful as it means that the audience are not looking at an unlit stage every time the lights change.

Snaps: This is when there is no fade to a lighting change and the lights change instantly, this is used for dramatic effects.

Black-outs: Black-outs are when the stage is in complete darkness, this can be useful if large props or bits of set need to be moved around the stage or if you don't want the audience to see the actors entering or exiting the stage. It may also be used if you only want an actor to be heard and not seen.

Down-light: When the lantern is above the stage pointing down, the most common position used.

Up-light: When the lantern is lower than the actors or objects being lit, it catches facial features in a different way that is useful for creating dramatic effects.

side light: When the lantern is to one or both sides of the actors or objects being lit, it can create a different feeling to a location and can be used to show that the light source is coming from a particular place in the scene's setting (eg. an open window/door)

Front-light: When the lantern is in front of the actors or objects being lit facing towards them, this is the most common position for a lantern as it lights the stage well and allows you to see everything clearly.

Back-light: When light is coming from behind the actor or object and into the audience, used for dramatic effects as you can only see silhouettes.

Scrim lighting: Scrim is a material that is opaque when lit from the front and almost transparent when lit form behind, this is useful for changing locations easily and making characters appear on stage without the audience seeing them enter.

Washes: A wash is when you have use group of lights to combine their beams and cover a large area, this is very common for creating settings and moods. 

Cyc washes: This is when you focus lights on a cyc to change the colour of it, this is very useful for creating settings and moods. 

Gobo's: Gobo's are metal discs with holes in that you can put in front of a lantern to create a pattern or image with the beam. This is useful for adding texture to a state and setting locations.

Intensity: The brightness of the beam. you can create different effects by lighting something brightly or very dimly.

Beam size: The size of the area that the light covers, changing this changes what is lit onstage.

Specials: This is when you have a light focused on one specific thing to make it stand out in a lighting state.

Follow-spots: Follow-spots are lights that are not rigged in a position but are manually moved and operated live during the performance, these are useful as they can follow an actor as they move ensure that they are always lit. 

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Research into lighting eqipment

I have been researching into different brands of lighting equipment brands and manufacturers, I have done this by attending the ABTT theatre show and meeting representatives of the companies and also by looking at the websites of some different brands. These are the some of most well known names in the lighting business:

JB Lighting http://www.jblighting.com - JB lighting specialise in moving lights, most of which are LED's, however they also make lighting desk's and gobo's.

Martin http://www.martin.com - Martin are one of the world's leading brands of lighting technology, they make many products including Hazers, desk's and projectors, but they are mostly known for their enormous range of moving lights.

ETC http://www.etcconnect.com - ETC are one of the biggest names in lighting, they make everything from the lanterns to the dimmers they are plugged into to the software that controls them. But what they are most recognised for is their "source four" range of profile lanterns and their huge range of desks. Their Eos family of desks in particular are the most commonly used lighting desks in the country these are the Eos Ti, the Gio, The Ion and the Element. Their desks are known for being very user friendly whilst still being just as capable as any other brand.

MA Lighting http://www.malighting.com - MA Lighting are a manufacturer of desks and dimmers. Their Grand-Ma desks are very common in the industry and are only probably second to ETC.

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Lighting Colour theory

For Lighting there are two methods making colour, one is the additive method where you focus more than one light on the same thing to mix colours, and there is the subtractive method where you use more than one gel on the same light so that they take things away from each other.

The Additive method:

The three primary colours are red, blue and green, The three secondary colours are yellow, cyan and magenta. Putting all three primary colours together creates pure white light as all the colours of the spectrum are present.

Example - You want to light an area with Magenta, so put put a blue gel in one light and a red gel in another. Then you focus both light on the area, the colours mix and you end up with magenta.

The Subtractive method:

You start with the secondary colours as you are using two gels. These are Magenta, cyan and yellow. These are then subtracting from the light and only allowing their common primary colour through so you can make the primary colours, these are red, blue and green. If you use all the secondary colours then no light can get through which leaves you with the absence of colour, more commonly known as Black. Black is also known as the constant and is represent by the letter K.

Example - You want to light an area with green, so you put a Cyan gel and a yellow gel in the same light. Each gel only allow it’s own colour to pass through, the only colour common to both gels is green and so that is what you are left with.

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Lx 25th June - Second show

Today I came in at twelve to sort out the amendments that needed to be made to the lighting using the lists that I made during both the run and the first show.

Also Denise had cut quite a bit from the longer, duller scenes and wanted to add another state, so Caitlyn, Dan (Sound) and myself had a meeting with her to go through the changes.

The show tonight went a lot better than the previous nights performance and my list of amendments is significantly shorter. The only big problem i had tonight was that the footlights on one side were kicked into the band pit when an actor fell over, the next set of footlights is linked up to it which meant that the set that got kicked were hanging down the side of the apron. We solved this by speaking to the band on cans and asking them to lift it back onto the stage. I then checked them and re-positioned them during the interval.

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Lx 24th June - First show

Today we started by running the through the rest of the second act (making a few changes here and there), as this had been plotted the night before, we expected this to go quite quickly and planned to start a dress run at half eleven. However (In true miskin fashion) this run didn't start till about half past three; it was here that we discovered that both acts run over an hour long and with the interval included aswell this now meant that we had less than half an hour until the house opened.

We raced to get the lighting desk out of the space and in the control room as quickly as possible and whilst i was setting it up everybody else was getting their presets done and taking out the production desk. Unfortunately this meant we had no time to correct the lx notes we made in the run. 

The first show went well, and there were no major catastrophes. There were some clearance issues and a couple of late cues. But for a first show it went quite well, especially since we started teching less than a week ago.

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Lx 23rd June

Today I came in to be told that Mig had left, I am not sure why, but she isn't coming back. This meant that I would be plotting the rest of the show by myself. 

We continued the day with me plotting and designing the lighting states, I did this by looking at the scene (the location, the mood, where people were on stage and what they were doing, etc) and combined this with what the directors were asking for as well as what lights were available. I had some designing help from Alan as he is more experienced, but did do some states on my own. I have kept in with the theme of an old fashioned, pollocks style theatre by mostly using generic lights in the states and trying not to use the movers very much, especially the A7's which have bright LED's.

We spent the rest of the day plotting the second act, we wanted to finish it completely as the show opens tomorrow, so when the actor's left at nine o'clock, Me, Caitlyn, Alan and Denise stayed behind finish it along with a few other techies and directors who volunteered to stay and help by walking the stage. We finished plotting the second act at about quarter past eleven. We will run through it with the actors tomorrow.

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Lx 20th June

Today we came in only to find that we would not be plotting today. This was because the second act had not been worked or blocked yet. We waited until the actors went on lunch and then used the free time in the space to refocus a couple of lamps and change one of the window gobos so that they would both match. Then we went home.

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Lx 19th June

Today we started teching straight away from where we left off, Mig was there to help in the morning but had to leave in the evening so I was left to do It independently (getting design advice form Alan when I needed to.)

We managed to get quite a bit done today and have now finished the first act.

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Lx 18th June

Today we spent the morning getting ready for the tech to start this afternoon. We made more some groups and palletes and I set up a birdie under the rake for the av operator.

In the afternoon the actors came in and we finally started to tech the show, we have made the first 14 cues and covered about eight pages of the script.

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Lx 17th June

The actors did not come in today as the set is not finished yet, so whilst the construction team were finishing it off. We set up the production desk on the seating bank.

I also rigged four birdies on the set, there are two inside each structure to light behind the scrim just in case the directors want to put anyone behind there for a scene or tableaux.

At one o’clock was the final production meeting, I filled everyone in one what we had done that morning and found out that plotting will begin tomorrow afternoon.

After the meeting I led the rest of the team in setting up the footlights and birdies, I did this by linking the footlights into three groups (Center stage, stage left and stage right) and using grelco's to link the birdies together on each side. This meant that only five dimmers were needed and I could fit everything into one spider under the stage, I then ran socapex to the upstage left wall box and used another spider to plug everything into the dimmers.

I then left my team  to put in some A7’s behind the cyc (for back-light) whilst I started making groups and palletes to make things easier tomorrow.

I also created this floor plan to show the location and channel numbers of the birdies, footlights and the two new A7's:

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Lx 16th June

Today we focused the rig for “Oh what a lovely war.” I called the focus, whilst the others took turns up the tallescope focusing the lanterns. We did bars 2 and 3 easily, bar 4 was a bit more tricky because of the thrust, but we managed to do it using the tallescope where we could get it and the zarges where we couldn't.

The lamps on either end of bar 5 we managed to reach by climbing the front structures. However we couldn't get to the middle of bar 5 or bar 6 Because of the raked stage, so we had to use a technique called bounce focusing.

We also had to bounce focus bar 1 as the only ladder we have that can reach it has gone missing.

Bounce focusing is when you lower the bar to ground level, then attempting to guess the focus of the light without being able to see our in position. You then have to fly the bar back out to see if you got it right, if not you have to lower it and try again. Bounce focusing is not the preferred way of focusing, nor is it good industry practice, but we couldn't find any way around it.

To do this focus I learned to use the riggers remote, which allows you to perform basic operations on the desk without having to be near it, this was helpful as it meant we could have everyone down on the stage helping instead having to keep someone by the desk.

The actors did not come in today as plotting has been pushed back to tomorrow.

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Lx 13th June

Today was our last day in the space before the actors come in on Monday. We were supposed to be in there focusing, but due to two members of our department being absent we didn’t have enough people to carry out the job. This has now put us behind and we are going to try and focus very quickly first thing on Monday, before the actors come in. It also means I do not have any time on the desk before we have to start teching the show which was time I wanted to set up some groups and palletes and familiarise myself with the rig in general.

I instead used this time to  learn about colour calls. A colour call is a document created when by going through the lighting plan and deciding what colour gel should be in each light (or if it's open white.) You then note down how many pieces of gel are needed in each colour and and which size. This is the colour call Mike and I made for the show:

We then went to the Lx store to source and cut all of the gel. After accurately cutting all of the gel to the right size i used a special pencil tom mark the gel with a number. Gel's all have a specific number to represent the colour that they are. I labelled them so that after the show we can file them and they can be used again.

In the afternoon I practiced the bowline knot and went through the brief. I also learnt about the relationship between amps, volts and watts.

Wattage - a measurement of electrical power.

Voltage - a measurement of the strength or force of the electrical current.

Amplitude - a measurement of the size of an electrical current.

You can work out any one of these by multiplying or subtracting it from the other two:

Watts = volts x amps

Amps = watts / volts

Volts = watts / amps

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Lx 12th June

Today we went to the ABTT theatre show in London:

It is an annual event in which many business’s and companies show off their new ideas, equipment and software. There are also many stalls selling products, universities showing off their courses to potential students and crew hire and equipment hire/sale companies looking for new business opportunities.

As well as this there are also seminars held over the course of the two day event, on all sorts of theatre related subjects and departments.

This event is held every year by the Association of British Theatre Technicians.

Whilst there we spoke to many different people representing their companies / universities, including:

The ABTT, who were advertising training courses. Mountview academy of theatre arts, who were advertising their courses (where I am going next year) ETC, a lighting company who showed us new software updates for our ION desk that will be available on Monday. And who also had some mini source fours. Martin, a lighting company who demonstrated an enormous moving light and showed us it’s built in effects and gobos. And many more.

We also attended a seminar on apprenticeships in the tech theatre industry:

Overall it was a good day, and gave us opportunity to look at other equipment than we have at the Miskin and meet people and business’s who work in the industry. It has helped to further our research into the different types and brands of lighting equipment as well as the options available after leaving college or university.

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Lx 11th June

Today I started by turning on the dimmers and desk; Harry and I then patched in all of the movers, he patched them in on the desk whilst I wrote down the addresses he was giving them onto the plan:

We then brought the bars down and addressed all of the moving lights. Altogether there are four mac 250 washes, four mac 250 entours and four JB A7’s. While we were doing this, the rest of the team moved some lights around on bar 1 so that the legs can be hung from them. We then had to leave so that set design could come in and paint.

Later on we took the birdies, a7’s and other bits and pieces out of the venue, then we tidied up some loose cables in auditorium.

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Lx 10th June

Today we rigged in the auditorium for oh what a lovely war. This is the lighting plan:

After we had rigged everything, I got the Ion from the venue and set it up in the auditorium. I then patched in all of the generics.

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Different types of stage lights