The last I wrote regarding lighting effects for The Sisterhood was in an article back on Aug 11 where I discussed getting the equipment ready prior to design.
Working with the equipment is a whole other story.
The set really wasn't ready for use by the actors until about Aug 29. All I could really
do in the meantime was get most of the basic lights mounted and pointed in the right
direction. I lit the stage with cells of three lights, with the three lights each of a
different color: amber for a warm wash, a blue for a cold wash, and a lavender for part of
the wash with a black actor.
In my previous article, I wrote about obtaining a second USB-DMX box so I could use the
sliders on the existing lighting board as input. It did arrive, and I did use it. It was
interesting to work with LightFactory to figure out which was the input and which was the
output, based upon the flashing activity light on the convertor. I also found that the
input channel froze every once in a while (perhaps the light board was set to send too
fast). In any case, I found that I really didn't need slider input once I discovered that
one can layout channels on a canvas in LightFactory. This turned out to be even better
than trying to cross-patch channels in some sort of meaningful layout. By arranging the
three color cells along with a no-blue blue downlight in how they lighted the stage,
adjusting dimmers became easy. I simply control clicked (for selecting the amber
channels) or box-selected dimmers (for the channels in one or more cells), then used the
mouse scroll wheel to increase or decrease intensity as desired. I have no desire to use a
lighting board after experiencing the ease in which the software allowed me to make changes
on the fly.
I did spend a couple long days trying to tame the color changers though. The software
made it easy to select colors and intensity, but it got in the way when trying save and
retry groups and palettes. I ended up submitting five or six bug reports one morning after
figuring out how to work around my frustrations. I was surprised when I received responses
back that same day from the vendor to say that they had fixed the bugs. That was excellent
turn around. However, that does cut both ways: why did the software have these silly bugs
in the first place, but when encountered, they did fix the problems quickly.
I did spend quite a bit of time in the grid for light focussing. The PDA based remote
focus software worked well in conjunction with LightFactory. I just wish it had a slider,
and a better scroll back buffer. I had to turn off power management on my PDA so it would
remain on, otherwise I'd have to restart the remote software as it would lose the connection
to LightFactory.
For lighting, there were five major areas: an outside patio up stage right, a hallway
with red wall on stage left, a bar down stage right, two sofas up stage center, and main
stage area down stage center. I used three color changers in the patio area at various
angles to provide various day time color changes and mixes. I used a single color changer
in the hallway to cast a purple light over the hallway phone. The bar had a Source Four
angled and shuttered to give a hightlight to the liquor bottles as a kind of ornamentation.
For the remainder of the stage, there was one light cell (three colors plus down light)
for each of the two sofas, one for the french door entry way, three cells for down stage
center, and one for the bar. I ended up having to do three long throw Source Fours to get
stage left as regular lights cast a bad shadow into the hallway (only 8 ft walls).
The director decided to highlight certain parts of the stage by dimming cells in other
parts of the stage when no activity was being undertaken. Ten and fifteen second fades were
used to make the transitions subtle to the audience.
This play was used to come up to speed with the software. The usual excuse, if I'd had
the time, I could have done more interesting things with the fades more often. As it was,
it was good. A photographer took some pictures of the set as lighted for intermission set
decoration. I hope to get some loaded here soon.