house lighting

[WJProctor]

Hi,

 

Just a suggestion, thats really simple and we do it for our productions. Get two or three paper global lights, about £5 each, but some 150 Watt bulbs into them, and a dimmer switch, then plug them into the mains. I know its not running of your desk them, but its simple and effective, and it gives a very soft light that adds a bit of atmosphere.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Kind Regards

 

James

[benweblight]

Do you reckon I could get away with using some patt 137's for this? (as we have plenty spare with 15a's on)

[Wuddy]

137s a bit bulky, a bit harder to site but not knowing your venue, I don't see why not.

 

You're the LD, you've asked for advice, we've given it, apply/adapt the ideas to what you've got available or within budget.

 

Anything dimmable will most certainly be better than direct switched lighting.

[J Pearce]

I have used 137s before. Stick a pastely gel of your taste in (I normally go for a peachy-pink, but I've seen lavender work well) and if you have a white ceiling bounce them off that.

[DaveBeattie]

Just a suggestion, thats really simple and we do it for our productions. Get two or three paper global lights, about £5 each, but some 150 Watt bulbs into them, and a dimmer switch, then plug them into the mains. I know its not running of your desk them, but its simple and effective, and it gives a very soft light that adds a bit of atmosphere.

I'd be a little concerned about the flamability of such lights, especially with such large bulbs. I would expect that 150W is beyond their stated maximum. I would guess that you would also have to flambar them. A greater number of lights with smaller bulbs would look quite fun though, so long as they didn't drop into the followspot path.

 

Dave

[Tomo]

Frost is your friend.

Houselighting should (usually) be soft, and that means reducing lens/lamp glare as much as possible.

 

Asymmetric floods (eg Coda 1K / 500W) bouncing off the walls are good if the walls look nice.

I don't like bouncing it off the ceiling as most small venues have horrible looking ceilings.

 

If you have bars far FOH, narrow beams that only directly light the aisles are quite good, but they must be from overhead/rear of house - scatter take care of lighting the seats themselves.

 

If you're building the houselighting from scratch, then you can make it fit the theme(s) of the show.

Don't be afraid to experiment, even with breakup gobos a fair bit - I remember a Little Shop Of Horrors where the LD put "Little red dots all over the auditorium" for the interval.

I have worked on a couple of shows where we put up temporary self-illuminated 'lightbox' walls around the auditorium, decorated with the theme, and used the 'glowing walls' as the house lighting.

[Big Jay]

Hi Jayke93, I have encountered this problem on many occasions, what I did was use S4 Jr. 25/50 and have it on a slightly hard edge with a cool blue facing upwards to the wall and as close to the wall you can get, hope this helps, By the way, what school is it in Newcastle doing this show at.

[Chiefy]

Another consideration with adding your own house lights and switching off the main task lighting is the licencing authority may ask for a secondary form of emergency lighting should the be a power failure to the temporary lighting. We staged a show in-the-round in the Playhouse earlier this year where we added additional house lighting on stage to cover the audience sitting there. We had to add extra secondary lighting in the form of non maintained twin head spots which had to share the same power supply as the temporary lighting, so in the case of a power failure to the temp lights the secondary lighting would activate.

This might not apply to your situation, but it might be worth considering if the authorities ask...

[CARWYN]

hi what seems to work is fix 1 x sorce 4 parnel in each corner of the room pointing to the opposite corner, make sure the flood is as wide as possible and put a bit of Gel Col Lee 106, this seems to work well for me