Assorted Scenic Stuff

We have neglected our scenic friends in our enthusiasm for lighting products.  Sad, because there are a TON of really cool scenic products out there that will make your life easier. These are a few of my favorites.

Foamcoat
How many of you have had to make scenery or props out of Styrofoam?  That stuff is so useful and yet always a hot mess.  The little white pebbly bits get into everything and trying to paint it is an exercise in futility.  I once carved castle wall panels for a local theatre.  Those suckers were 14' tall, 8' wide and about 2' thick.  I carved stones for weeks and weeks and it was loads of fun.  The downside is that I sucked Styrofoam pebbles out of my car until the day I sold it and I'm pretty sure that for months my washing machine was growling at me when I approached with my paint clothes.  Appliances can be crabby like that.

The biggest problem of Styrofoam though is that it doesn't like to accept paint.  There are all sorts of ways around this from draping it in muslin that has been soaked in watered down glue to doing some sort of funky paper mache thing.  There is an easier way.  Foamcoat!  Foamcoat is this nifty product that looks like grey sludge in the bucket.  It is the consistency of runny clay and looks slightly gross.  The cool thing is that it is a runny sort of clay with tiny fibers in it.  When it is painted on a Styrofoam surface, those fibers lock together and make a hard coating that paint just loves.  You can even mix your base color into the Foamcoat if you like.  If you put a thick enough layer of that stuff on there you can even go back and carve fine details into the foamcoat once it dries.  I used it as a base coat on my castle and turned my pebbly Styrofoam walls into rock almost instantly.  A couple of paint treatments later and you would have sworn we had built the set out of huge chunks of stone.  You can get it in gallon size up to 3.5 gallon buckets and can brush or roll it on (although brushing it on gives you more control).  It is a life saver!

Flexcoat is a similar product used for the same reasons.  It has a little give to it though.  If you load a foamcoated rock on a truck and then ram it with a road case, that surface is going to crack.  Flexcoat will give a little, so your rock is saved.  It also takes paint well.

Tough Prime
Tough Prime is just what it sounds like- a really tough primer paint.  It comes in black and white, and the white can be tinted.  The joy of Tough Prime is that it sticks to everything.  Really.  PVC, metal, wood... you name it and it will stick.  It is the best paint for your stage floor since it will resist scrapes and scuffs (because seeing the hot pink you used for Seussical leaking up through your black floor is festive, but not fun).  I love the Tough Prime line!

Crystal Gel
Crystal Gel is a thick goopy clear product that is about the consistency of hair gel.  You can pipe it on with a pastry bag or trowel it on with assorted tools.  It also will stick to almost anything and it takes paint.  This is a great way to add details to props and scenery.  You can also tint it and use it on Plexiglas to make really interesting stained glass effects.

Flamex
Fire is bad.  Especially in a theatre, fire is bad.  There are all sorts of rules about scenery and fire in schools and on stage.  Flamex will very quickly become your best friend.  This stuff can be brushed, rolled, sprayed or dipped.  There are formulas for bare wood, synthetic fabrics, natural fabrics, blends and paper products.  There is even a paint additive that can be stirred into a gallon of paint.  Flamex makes surfaces flame retardant.  They might still smolder, but won't burst into flame.  There are MSDS forms and flame resistance paperwork on these so you can make your local fire marshall happy.

Clear Flat/ Gloss Acrylic
Rosco makes this nifty product that is similar to polyurethane, but not quite as stinky and toxic.  It can be added to paint to extend it and to change its final sheen.  Scenically it is a lot easier to paint with flat or matte paints.  This product allows you to change it to gloss or semi-gloss after the fact.  One of the most spectacular times I remember seeing it utilized was on a Romeo & Juliet set years ago.  We had plastered  the whole thing with joint compound (before the days of Foamcoat) so it looked like old stucco.  The scenic designer then had us wash it with about 8 different colored glazes made of thinned scenic paint.  The final coat was with the clear semi-gloss acrylic.  While we were working on it the whole deal just looked kind of muddy and blah.  I was a young scenic artist at the time and was not impressed by what we were doing.  Quite frankly, it looked kind of ugly.  We brushed that final glaze on though and the whole thing just glowed.  It looked like a Renaissance painting.  I have been a fan of the gloss acrylics ever since.  It can be brushed, rolled or sprayed.

Breakaways
'Fess up.  You have ALWAYS wanted to wonk someone over the head with a bottle, right?  I mean, how fun is that? Breakaway bottles are made to shatter realistically without killing the actor.  They come as wine bottles, beer bottles and whiskey bottles.  You have to buy them six at a time, but let's face it, you are going to want to smash more than that.

Loose Pin Hinges
Do you know about loose pin hinges?  They look just like a regular hinge, but the pin that holds the thing together comes out.  You can assemble flats together like you would with a regular hinge, and then pull the pin to take them apart for scene changes or storage.

What is this"addressing" you speak of?

Techies sometimes speak in code.  It can be intimidating for sure.  It is "DMX" this and "XLR" that and "digital" and "analog" and "address" and "universe" and "5-pin versus 3-pin".  ACK!  What is a non-techie to do?

Well, here you go.  We will break the code for you.  All of those words have to do with how dimmers or fixtures talk to the console.  It is all about control language.

Way back in the day when we just had dimmers and consoles, there was no universal language.  If you bought dimmers from one company you had to buy a console from them too or they wouldn't communicate with each other.  In the mid-80s people started thinking that it was silly to have so many different control languages and gosh, wouldn't it be cool if everything would talk to everything else?  So the engineering commission of the United States Institute of Theater Technology (the body that governs technical theater standards) developed DMX 512 (digital multiplex with 512 pieces of information).  Finally there was an approved standard for the control language between dimmers and console.

So how does it work?  Before DMX, everything was analog.  Analog dimmers had to run a cable from each dimmer to the console.  That's a lot of cables.  DMX512 uses one cable and sends little packets of information down that cable.  The trick is that each packet of information is directed to a specific address.  Your dimmers all have an address.  They ignore the directions flying down the cable until they hear their specific address.  They they perk up and do whatever the next direction is.

It works just like the post office.  Under the analog system each house would have had their own mail carrier.  Under DMX protocol each house has an address and only gets mail sent to that address.

So with dimmers, you don't have to worry about much usually.  Most school theaters are set up where the circuit/dimmer/address are all the same.  Dimmer one is address one and so forth.  Where it gets tricky is when you add LEDs and moving lights to the mix.  LEDs and moving lights are not plugged into dimmers (or they shouldn't be.  Doing so will pretty much fry them.).  You have to set the address on LEDs and moving lights.  This isn't hard.  Just figure out what your last dimmer number is (including house light dimmers) and start from there.  So if you have 24 dimmers in your dimmer rack and then another 6 dimmers in your house lighting system, you have used up your first 30 addresses and would start your LEDs/moving lights with 31.  I'm lazy though and want the math to be easier, so I would probably start with 35 or 40.  I might even start with 100 depending on how many LEDs and movers I was using.  Skipping address doesn't matter.  Each fixture sets them a little differently.  Make sure to check your manual on which buttons to push to get that sucker addressed.

Keep in mind that LEDs and moving lights need more than one address.  They need an address for everything that they can do.  So an RGBW LED would need anywhere from 4 to 9 addresses and a moving light can take several dozen.  Your fixture manual will give you the DMX options for that fixture and will tell you what each address does.  The new fancy schmancy consoles will take care of this for you.  You tell the new consoles what the starting number is and what kind of fixture you are using and it will automatically take as many addresses as the unit needs to function.  The other weirdness is that you sometimes have to pick a "personality".  Sometimes there are options about how many functions you want to use on each light.  Go read the manual and pick which one works for you.  As long as you use the same personality on the fixture and in your console you should be fine.

But what is this "universe" you speak of?  Have we gone all Star Trekkie on you?  Nope, although we are huge Trekkie fans.  A universe simply refers to a line of DMX.  A DMX cable will only send info to 512 addresses.  Not a problem when we first started with this stuff, but now we use piles of LEDs and moving lights that just suck up DMX addresses.  So we started adding more lines of DMX.  Each line is called a universe and is numbered accordingly.  First universe is DMX 1-512.  Second universe is 513 to 1023.  Third universe is 1024 to 1535 and so forth.

DMX 512 cable has five pins inside.  Thus it is sometimes called 5 pin cable.  There is also three pin DMX cable that will work for certain gear.  Some fixtures need a DMX specific three pin XLR cable.  There is also 3 pin microphone cable, but it isn't the same thing.  While it might work okay some of the time, the cable is actually different and will not always work the same way.  Certain LEDs absolutely cannot run off of mic cable, so you are well served to buy the real thing.

So there you have it in a nutshell.  DMX isn't as scary as you thought.  Bring on the LEDs now!

To LED or not LED

Ahhh... LEDs.  The really snazzy new lights that everybody wants to add to their hang.  LEDs are cool and awesome, right?

Yes and no.  As a designer I must admit that I am divided when talking about LEDs.  I love the color output.  You cannot believe how lovely these things are when they start scrolling through colors.  They pretty much blow conventional lights away when it comes to color.  We did a shoot out with the Source Four LED ellipsoidal and a regular Source Four ellipsoidal gelled with Rosco 27 (a deep, dark red).  To make the outputs match we had to pull the LED fixture back to about 40% output.  Gel works by filtering out part of the visible spectrum.  That means that gel is blocking light output.  If you will look in your handy dandy gel swatch book somewhere there will be a transmission number.  For Rosco 27 (that deep, dark red), transmission is 4%.  That means that 4% of the light generated will make it through that gel.  Not a lot, huh?  With LEDs you can match the color and still get 100% of the intensity output.  It is bright enough to make your eyes hurt.  What is not to love?  For a designer, the color of LED fixtures is the biggest selling point.

A Source Four LED ellipsoidal with a gobo

There are, of course, other things to love.  LEDs don't generate the heat that conventional lights do.  Your actors will love you for that and your HVAC costs will go down.  LEDs pull nominal power compared to a conventional light.  If you assume that most of your conventional lights pull at least 575-1000 watts, an LED pulling 80-140 watts is pretty fantastic power savings.  To make life even better, instead of hanging a three color down wash, you hang one set of fixtures that can be any color you want.  Your hang and focus costs are cut by two thirds.  Again I say, what's not to love?

Well.... there are still a few downsides to the LED.  The industry is working on the kinks and most of these babies are tons better than they were even two years ago.  But there are still flaws to keep in mind before you go crazy and throw out all your conventional lights.

My biggest gripe as a designer is the dimming curve.  LEDs have a different dimming curve than conventional lights.  We expect lights to fade evenly to zero percent when we tell them to fade out.  For the lower end and some mid-range LED products the curve is still problematic.  They fade to 1% or even a half percent and then they click off.  While small, it is still noticeable and, quite frankly, annoying.  I find it to be distracting both as a designer and as an audience member.  The higher end LEDs don't do this.  With LED fixtures you totally get what you pay for.  A $2500 light will just work better than an $800 light.  The $800 lights aren't horrible.  They just aren't as smooth as the $2500 lights.  

Which brings up problem number two- cost.  LEDs are substantially more expensive than conventional lights.  Are they worth it?  If you put in a good fixture they are definitely worth it in the long run.  You will save both time and energy.  The cheap LEDs will probably be more hassle than they are worth.  The exception there would be in special effects LEDs.  American DJ is making some interesting special effects that aren't horribly expensive and that work fairly well.  They have the best water effect I have seen in a while and it is super easy to use.  Plus it really truly looks like moving water.  You can also use it for a pretty easy fire effect.  Very nice.

Problem three is control.  You need a fairly smart console to run LEDs.  An old slider board or two scene preset isn't going to be enough.  Unlike conventional lights that just use one address, LEDs take multiple addresses.  The newer, nicer consoles see LEDs as one channel with multiple attributes or parameters.  Older consoles will see each attribute as a channel and thus a slider.  The LEDs will eat up your channel space.  If you are just using a few LEDs you possibly can limp by with your old console.  You would be better served to plan to upgrade your console when you purchase an LED package.

ETC Ion console in action

The last thing to keep in mind when contemplating an LED addition is that it is not a conventional light.  It is an entirely different type of fixture.  It’s not bad.  It’s just different.  The majority of LEDs are wash fixtures, but they are not fresnels or PARs and they don’t work like an incandescent source.  Unless you are going with one of the higher end units you can expect there to be more spill light than you are used to with a fresnel.  They just are not as controlled as a single source filament fixture.

So are LEDs worth dealing with?  Certainly so.  Technology is growing by leaps and bounds.  It seems like every day a new fixture is coming out that is bigger, better, stronger and cheaper.  We now have LED wash fixtures, LED ellipsoidals, LED zooms and even LED moving lights.  Eventually, the incandescent will go the way of gaslight and candles and we will all be using 100% LED rigs.   Won’t it be pretty?

 Live on the Green, an all LED concert rig

Live on the Green, an all LED concert rig

Fresnels and Pars and Floods, Oh My!

Yesterday we talked about ellipsoidals and I said that they were the workhorse of the conventional lighting world.  So are fresnels (pronounced "fruh-nell", with the accent on the "nell".  If you call it a "frezz-nell" on stage you will be mocked.  I'm sure the techies will be laughing with you and not at you though.)   Fresnels throw a nice, soft, round pool of light.  You can manipulate the circle to be larger or smaller, but that is all the control you have.  Fresnels are great for down light and back light because it is easy to blend multiple fixtures together.

Fresnels have spherical shaped reflectors and a Fresnel lens.  

A fresnel showing the lens

Fresnels are measured by the diameter of the lens. There are small fresnels commonly called “inkies” (short for inky dink) that are about 3” across the lens.  Most theatres use 6” or 8” fresnels that use 500 watt or 750 watt lamps.  There are even large fresnels that use 1000 watt and 2000 watt lamps. 

Fresnels sometimes use an accessory called a barn door.  Barn doors have flat panels that fold out to block the light spill.  A barndoor slides into the gel slot at the front of the fixture.  Other than the barndoor and perhaps a scroller, there just aren’t any other Fresnel accessories.  It just does what it does with no frills.

A closed barndoor on the left and an open barndoor on the right.

Bonus Jeopardy information- The Fresnel lens was named for Augustin Jean Fresnel, the 19^th century French engineer that created it.  The Fresnel lens was originally developed for use in lighthouses. 

PAR cans are a type of flood light.  PAR stands for Parabolic Aluminized Reflector and refers to the shape of the reflector.  PARs are unique in that the lamp, lens and reflector are all one unit. 

A PAR 46 lamp showing the lens, reflector and ceramic

PARs throw an oval shaped beam of light that can be rotated to provide light in paths.  There is very little control of the light (unless barndoors are added).  It just floods the stage with light.  PARs were originally used in the concert touring industry.

For concert tours a truck would be loaded with a ton of these (Pre-Rigged Truss loaded with parbars of Par 64s).  This loaded truss will fit in a truck just like this.  At the venue it can be flipped over on its casters and easily rolled inside.  Once in place it bolts to the PRT next to it, is rigged up to motors and flown up to height.  The bars will unlock and drop down below the truss.  It's easy peasy, right?  Insta-lighting rig.)

Pars come in a variety of sizes.  PAR16s (sometimes called “birdies”) are small, 100 watt fixtures.  Par 16s are great for tucking up in scenery or under stair units to provide a little fill light.  They are inconspicuous, lightweight and inexpensive. 

Par 16s on kupo clamps

PAR 36 and PAR 46 fixtures are a little bigger and use higher wattages.  PAR 56s can be lamped as 300watt or 500 watt units and are often used theatrically.  PAR 64s are the largest of the par fixtures.  Par 64s are generally lamped at 500 watts or 1000 watts.

Par 56s

PARs can be lamped as very narrow, narrow, medium, wide and very wide beam spreads.  When you buy a PAR lamp you will need to specify which one you need.  Very narrow beam lamps look like clear glass.  A narrow lamp has a pebbled look to the surface of the lens.  Medium lamps have vertical lines about a quarter of an inch apart and horizontal lines about an inch apart.  On a wide lamp the horizontal lines are about half an inch apart. A very wide lamp has lines about a quarter of an inch apart.  It looks like a grid.

 A narrow lamp on the left with a medium lamp on the right

The majority of the pars out there are a metal can with a lamp in the back.  The lamp fits down on a ridge and has a metal retaining ring to keep it in place.  When you put the retaining ring in make sure that you position it so the lamp can still rotate around.  The lamp connects to the body with a ceramic base that is wired to the plug.  To rotate the direction of the beam shape you reach in through the back of the fixture (wearing gloves!), grab the ceramic and twist.  It will rotate the whole lamp around.

ETC PARs are set up a little different.  They use a separate HPL lamp (like the ellipsoidal uses) and the fixture comes with a lens kit so you can change the lenses out as needed.  To rotate the lens there is a wheel with ridges at the end of the fixture.  That wheel spins the lens around.

ETC also makes a version they call the Parnel.  It is a mix of a par and a Fresnel.  It has an oval shaped beam that you can make larger or smaller.

Other flood lights include the strip light, cyc light, and scoop.  Strip lights are a long unit with a bunch of small lights in a row.  There are three cables per unit with each cable controlling every third light.  Usually they are gelled in three colors or small colored circles of glass (called rondels) are used.  Strip lights can be used for down wash or for cyc lighting.

Cyc lights are used to light the cyclorama (the big white fabric upstage used as a backdrop).  Cyc lights come in a variety of styles, but all have reflectors specifically designed to throw light in a smooth wash.  You can use cyc silk gel (Rosco 124, 125 and 126) in your cyc lights to help spread the light as well.  Cyc lights do not use a lens.

The scoop is a large light that just throws a bunch of light around.  You have no control over it.  It does not use a lens. Scoops can be used for general wash light or work light.

A plethora of scoops

Most facilities will have some combination of these conventional fixtures.  In our next “How Do You Do That” we will look at LED lighting fixtures.

What are theatrical lights?

There are four types of theatrical lights- conventional lights, LEDs, intelligent moving lights and special effects.  Most schools and churches use conventional lights, but more and more are starting to use LEDs and moving lights.  This post will focus on conventional lighting.  We will cover the others at a later date.

Conventional lights are made up of four parts- the body, the lamp (or light bulb), the lens train and the reflector. 

·         The body is the shell that holds all the other parts.  These are usually made of metal and are designed to protect the rest of the parts and to channel heat. 

·         The lamp is what puts out light.  There are a variety of lamp styles and sizes.  Each has been specifically designed to function best in a particular light.  Lamps are generally not interchangeable (except for changes in wattage).  They go by the ANSI code stamped on the base of the lamp (HPL, HTI, BTL, etc).  This is handy information to have, so making a list of what types of lamps you use will make reordering easier. 

An HPL 575 lamp

·         The lenses redirect and shape the light, much like how lenses in a pair of glasses work.  Lens types are particular to the type of fixture.  Lenses are made of glass or Pyrex. 

 A double plano-convex lens

·        The reflector redirects the light from the lamp forward through the lenses.  Reflectors come in three shapes (elliptical, spherical, parabolic) and are made of metal or glass.

A Source Four ellipsoidal cold mirror reflector

There are three main forms of conventional lights.  Ellipsoidals (sometimes called Lekos, ERS or Source Fours) are long and skinny and use an elliptically shaped reflector.  The lamp sits at the back of the fixture and pokes through the reflector.  There can be either one or two plano-convex lenses inside the body.  A plano-convex lens is flat on one side and curved on the other.  These lenses are positioned in a certain relationship to each other in order to create a certain angle of beam spread (how wide the light is when it comes out the end of the fixture).  

These lenses mean that an ellipsoidal can be sharply focused.  It is the only conventional fixture that can hold a sharp focus.  Thus it is the only fixture that can use gobos (gobos are a piece of metal with a pattern stamped out of it, allowing light to be projected in an image.).

 A breakup gobo projected on the floor.

Assorted custom and standard gobos

Ellipsoidals have metal shutters on all four sides.  By pushing these shutters in and out you can block light from certain areas onstage.  You can also shape the light into squares, rectangles and triangles (or perhaps a parallelogram if you are feeling feisty).

A company named ETC makes a fixture called a Source Four ellipsoidal.  Calling an ellipsoidal a Source Four is tricky though because ETC makes a Source Four par, a Source Four parnel and a Source Four fresnel.  Many people persist in calling the ellipsoidal the “Source Four” though so it has kind of stuck.  The Source Four ellipsoidal was a unique fixture when it first came out.  It uses a dichroic coating on a glass reflector.  This dichroic coating reflects the visible light energy to the front towards the lenses while allowing the heat energy to pass through.  This means the front of the fixture stays cool to the touch.  Before ETC began using this technology it was impossible to touch the front of an ellipsoidal without getting burned.  A technician had to use thick leather gloves and even then would eventually burn through the leather.  Now a technician can manipulate the end of the fixture without gloves.  It gets warm, but not hot.  (The back of the fixture still gets really hot and care should be taken when working back there.)  This dissipation of heat allowed for all sorts of new accessories.  We now can use glass gobos, gobo rotators and reel rotators without fear of them burning or breaking from the heat.

The other innovation developed by ETC was the rotating shutter barrel.  By loosening a knob at the front end of the fixture the technician can rotate the end of the fixture and the shutters in order to make those difficult shutter cuts. 

Source Four fixtures come in a variety of lens degrees (5, 10, 14, 19, 26, 36, 50, 70, 90 degrees).  This variety allows a designer to pick exactly the right light for the need.  ETC very cleverly designed the Source Four ellipsoidal so that these lens tubes are interchangeable.  This allows for you to have a set inventory of bodies and an extra inventory of different lens tube degrees.  This makes your ellipsoidal inventory very flexible.

While ETC is certainly the leader in the ellipsoidal field, Strand and Altman also make similar ellipsoidal fixtures with similar attributes.  Be aware that all ellipsoidals are not created equal though and care should be taken before purchasing new fixtures.  Cheaper isn’t always best.

There are many accessories for ellipsoidals.  Gobos made of metal or glass will fit in the gobo slot or the accessory slot at the shutters.  Gobos throw patterns on the stage.  Gobo rotators (like the GAM Twinspin or the Apollo SmartMove) are units that spin patterns around a central focus point.  A GAM FilmFx uses a pattern reel so there is no central focus spot.  It provides a continuous flowing pattern.  Iris kits fit into the accessory slot and allow you to iris down the size of the pool of light. Top hats fit in the gel frame holder and are used to prevent the spill of light.  Scrollers fit in the gel frame slot and allow you to do multiple colors in one fixture.  There are many more accessory options that allow you to turn the ellipsoidal into a followspot, a moving light or a gobo changer.  More accessories are developed every year!

The ellipsoidal is the workhorse of the theatre.  As a lighting designer, I use more of these than anything else.  It works for front light, side light with pattern and specials.  They are the most expensive of the conventional lights, but still very affordable.  Check out the links for ETC, Altman and Strand at the right for more information about their ellipsoidals.  We have a gazillion of these in our rental inventory as well if you would like to just try them out for a show or special project.

Coming up next- fresnels!

Welcome to "How Do You Do That"!

We love theatre! We at Bradfield Stage Lighting have a combined total of over 160 years working in theatre doing lighting and scenic work.  Our skills range from rigging work to lighting design to set design to scenic art.  There is a good chance that if a product is out there at least one of us has used it before.  We just love this stuff.  Now we want to share our knowledge with you.

Every so often we will add a post about a lighting fixture/product or scenic product and explain how it is used.  Many of these fixtures/products are in our stock and we would be happy to show them to you in person.  Swing by for a demo!

Do you have a specific question about a specific problem for a specific show?  Send us an email at anne@bradfieldcompany.com and we will try to cover it in the next installment.  Since there is a really good chance another school, church or drama program has had the same problem, we would love your comments on how you solved the problem in your space.

Have you found a random, weird piece of equipment in your storage room and want to know what it does?  Play "Stump the Techie" and send us a photo.  We will see if we can figure out what it does.

Check back often to see what is up in our world.  We are happy to have you at "How Do You Do That"!