Small Stage Lighting

[jameyp]

We have a small church about 200 people and have a stage in front of our sanctuary. We use a projector to display lyrics to songs on the wall with no screen directly behind the pastor.

Both of our pastors wear glasses and like to see the congregation so we typically only use the house lighting on Sunday mornings. Unfortunately this is not really adequate if we want to video the pastor to display on a screen in the nursing mothers room. If we use the stage lighting the head pastor says it reflects off his glasses and he can't see.

Anyone know a good way to light the pastor without throwing too much light on the wall where we project yet not so direct that it bounces off his glasses blinding him from the audience?

Can you diffuse par cans? Would that help?

Should I just get better house lighting? Right now we just have recessed cans with 100 watt incandescents that are not spaced very well. And since they have fairly direct lighting it shadows the face.

Any wisdom on this subject would be much appreciated.

[Esoteric]

Okay, you are dealing with two different issues here.

1. Intensity - You will need far greater intensity to video than for the general congregation to see. 100W incandescent lamps are not going to do the trick. End of story. You will have to supplement it with something. My choice is always ERS units, but Fresnels will work (and PARs will work in a pinch but you will get flare everywhere). You will have to increase the intensity of your lighting.

2. Angle. Here is where your main issue is. Typically you want lights on a 45 degree vertical angle from the face of the subject. However some people not used to the bright light of the stage feel that this light is "in their eyes" and they "can not see". Any angle lower than 30 degrees and it takes a lot of experience to know how to handle the lights. So the solution is to increase the angle. You can get away with up to 60 degrees of vertical angle without people appearing odd. At this angle there should be no issues with light being in anyone's eyes. The problem with using house lights to light the pastor is that they are 90 degrees off of vertical (what we call down lights), because they are meant for general illumination and to read (think about the way you hold a book). They also leave shadows in peoples eye sockets and all sorts of other things.

Diffusing the lights will not help.

And I see you have already noticed the dark spots that are accentuated on video. House lights are not meant to be used for video illumination. There are dark spots (light from these units travel in a cone and if there was not a lighting designer involved in the house lighting then they were not concerned about the cones overlapping, they simply used a formula to figure out how many lights were "needed" and spaced them evenly around the room). Thus as people walk through they room they pass from one cone to the next.

Mike

[waynehoskins]

I agree the problem is the vertical angle. Bring that angle up to somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees above the horizon -- relative to the pastor's head, not where his feet are on the floor. That means bringing your lighting position closer.

A reasonable estimate is that the plan distance of the new position to the focus point should be the same as the vertical distance between the head and the position -- so if the ceiling were 10 feet above the stage floor and the position were sucked up close to the ceiling, the light should be 4 feet downstage of where the guy is standing (perhaps three feet if you want to include the dropdown from the yoke, etc.).

[jameyp]

Thanks for the tips I will give it a try.

Excuse my ignorance but what is an ERS?

[Esoteric]

ERS = Ellipsoidal Reflector Spotlight

ERS

Mike

[jameyp]

Ooh thanks. One more question. What angle should the light be left to right?

[waynehoskins]

Depending on who you ask, either 45 to both sides or straight on.

The 45-degrees concept was popularized nearly a century ago by Stanley McCandless in his book A Method Of Lighting The Stage. In educational theatre, the McCandless technique is often adhered to as the only right way, being the only method that many educators are familiar with. His book is often misinterpreted as The Only Method Of Lighting The Stage.

In theatre, I'm a straight-fronts guy. The only purpose of that system is to light the face, not provide the illusion of outdoor sunlight -- the way I design, there are other systems that handle the task of making it look like the scene is where it is: outdoors, indoors, etc.

[Esoteric]

Well, just a little clarification on McCandless.

The point of two lights each 45 degrees off center is not really to provide for time and place or anything like that. While McCandless does provide the ability to "push and pull" with warm and cool colors (usually blue and pink or amber) if all the units of a particular system are on separate channels the main purpose of the system is to sculpt the subject. To give it dimensionality. For example if I am in a crunch for units, I will use straight on front light. The problem is that while this provides illumination, it flattens out the features of what you are lighting. It takes away depth and you are left with a very two dimensional looking figure (as much as any three dimensional figure can look two dimensional). By moving the lights out on those angles it sculpts and gives depth to the face. Then by adding a 3rd light behind and above the subject you can provide a sort of "halo" around the head and shoulders, separating them from the background.

Now the best system of all is a set of colored down lights (or top lights), with back light, a two color system of front light, and a straight on neutral color front light, with a system of side light "fills", and then various effects lighting.

But how often does one get to work with the "best" system?

Mike

Interesting aside, one of my lighting professors and my mentor in college studied under Stand McCandless.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

But how often does one get to work with the "best" system?

Not very often, certainly at the community theatre level. I usually go with straight fronts, sides, and tops/bax; then specials, templates, etc. as necessary (or sometimes, available) -- but that's just me.

I agree that the McCandless technique has its place, and of course some guys prefer it and others prefer other techniques.

For a preacher-wash system, an added benefit of pulling the fronts out from straight-on is that when the speaker is looking straight out, he's not looking into a light. Also, if it's the only system, you do get light on more of the sides of the person (which isn't an issue if you have sidelight systems as well, but...). Ideally with either technique you also want backlight to separate the person from the background.

With Lekos (ERSes), you want to select the appropriate beamwidth for your application, and then with any fixture you have to select the appropriate number of fixtures to cover the area. You generally want an odd number of areas so that center (the most important place on stage) is right in the middle of one area.

[jameyp]

Well I really appreciate the crash course in lighting. With this info I realized our stage lights are too far away. They are more like 15 degrees than 45. Would you guys recommend closer to 45 for most situations or is 15 good for anything? I want to light the pastor better but we also have plays. So basically what I am asking is should I move the racks closer or add lighting just for the pastor?

BTW I love practical examples like this. I can better learn from a book or class when I have seen things in practical example first.

[Esoteric]

The only thing I would use anything that low angle for is effects. For example once I wanted a sunset to happen over the second act of a play. So we started with really high front light (60+ degrees) which transitioned to normal front light angles (40 degrees) which eventually ended up with very low front light (10 degrees) and finally to night over the course of 40 minutes.

Mike

[jameyp]

Well this leads me to another question. Our roof is not high so how close can a par can be and still work well?

Btw thanks again for the help I love this type of help.