In the usual OSL style of attempting make your life easier, On Stage Lighting takes a look at “Magic Sheets” in performance lighting, their development and how the concept can be used with modern lighting control platforms with some specific examples using the Cham Sys MagicQ.

What is a Magic Sheet?

Although I have heard the phrase “Magic Sheet” used for a few different things, in lighting the term commonly refers to a cheat sheet for the Lighting Designer that is created for a specific purpose: To speed up the business of recalling control channel numbers for areas, colours or jobs around the stage.

The Magic Sheet differs from the Plan (or Plot, in the US) in that although a graphical document, the sheet is not an accurate representation of the theatre or the rig but a sheet of shapes, hieroglyphs, numbers and other visual data set out to provide intuitive and fast access to the required information.

Let’s look at the development of lighting control while understanding what the Magic Sheet is and what it can be now on our way to Smiffy’s Minority Report future.

In The Beginning…

At some point during the work of creating performance lighting, however artistic and visually creative a Lighting Designer wants to be, there is the business of calling up channels of control during the setting up of states or cues.

Originally this was the “Channel 48 at Full, Channel 1 through 7 at 30 percent” world where each lantern or a pair of lanterns has an individual number of dimming control that needed to be set to an intensity level and recorded. Originally this was just documented and later recorded for playback using new fangled “memory” lighting desks.

The trouble with all these handles and numbers is that it’s hard to remember which does what as the channel count increases. In order to recall these numbers and having spent many an hour pouring over the Lighting Plan and reading out seemingly random channel numbers from their position on the drawing, you might find space on the Plan to write down some “groups” of channels that will be used together e.g Warm DS Front = 1,3,7,19, 20-23.

If you have the option, you can attempt to patch your rig in such a way that makes recall of the numbers easier: Warm Front is 1 – 7 , Cool Front is 8 – 13 whatever. This helps you reel off the various numbers without so much “plan-scouring” but is still written in a list format that you have to wade through in order to find out which set of numbers are your US toplight.

(Image: Tharon Musser magic sheet courtesy of the NYPL Database)

Original Magic Sheet

In steps the Magic Sheet. Laid out in a variety of formats to make visual sense, dispensing with lantern symbols and scale, the Magic Sheet puts usability at the top of the agenda. It may be divided up by stage area, colour groups or angles of incidence and each LD seems to have their own preferred method of laying out a magic sheet. Some LDs use colours on the sheet itself, although for me this always comes unstuck when you are squinting by the light of a blue-gelled anglepoise with scarcely better colour rendition capabilities than that of a sodium car park lighting scheme. The only rule of creating your own Magic Sheet is that it must work for you.

In modern times, various stage lighting specific software solutions have integrated some form of Magic Sheet philosophy into their offer including Eric Cornwell’s Virtual Magic Sheet. And lighting console programmers have created their own systems using the available tools on the desk, some of which we’ll look at further on

Group Action

Having already noted that our lovely little lanterns often like to work in teams and listed the team members as a “group”, we developed parts of lighting controls to deal with these. They became Groups as we know them today: “Can I have Group 3 at 50% please?” is great if you know that Group 3 is your Blue Wash or your Balcony Rails. Calling up handfuls of control channels on the next generation of lighting controls becomes a little easier and so instead we not only include channel data on the Plan and Magic Sheet but also Group numbers, ready for instant recall.

I Am Not A Number

Next consoles developed to be controlled in ways that enabled more than keypad number entry of Groups. Hard buttons were able to have Groups assigned to them to be labelled with PVC tape and Sharpie which lends itself to graphical hieroglyphs and Names eg. All Blue which could be laid out on the available buttons in a manner that made sense to the programmer. Perhaps you always put your FOH stuff to the left of the Stage or laid out your group selection buttons according to the real stage picture in front of you.

Following along behind came the use of touchscreens and the now familiar grid of tiles popularised by the Hog II and still the staple of touchscreen lighting control today with the Hogs, Grand MA, MagicQ and now even Avolites Titan. In Hog II-land we were able to label our Groups (and by then Palettes too) with descriptive names and augment them using ASCII characters e.g
>> US <<

It’s worth noting that the ease of use afforded by some of the console interfaces and hands on nature of touchscreens and hardware buttons gives the LD / Programmer a fighting chance to both set up a sophisticated look and evaluate the stage in front of them at the same time. Shows were not only programmed by the LD but were busked live using more complex fixtures and equipment than was previously available. Having this grid of tiles laid out in front of them, the more visual operators started laying out their grids in a graphical way that reflected the stage or venue itself. Back light was placed at the top of the screen, Side at the, er, sides.

The Magic Sheet was reborn as not only a tool for recalling numbers but an interactive selection method that was more intuitive than ever before. This Magic Sheet method of laying out Groups on a tiled touchscreen window is still used by many programmers using the above consoles today and even palettes are often saved to tiles in a visually ordered fashion to make instant recall easier.

Think Visually….

(Image: Rob Lee on Flickr)
It would be churlish to discuss the Magic Sheet and modern lighting control systems without mentioning the Jands Vista. Many software-only disco lighting controllers use the visual approach to laying out fixtures for selection but the Vista is an example of a console designed with professional users that offers the opportunity to layout patched fixtures and select them using a user-designed graphical UI.

Working with the Vista, one trick is to understand the Magic Sheet concept for fixture selection and avoid the natural instinct to lay out the kit out as a rig plan. The thing about a rig plan is that it denotes where the kit is hung, not what it does or where it ends up and it groups fixtures according to their hung position instead of their colour or designed function.

This is completely the opposite to a Magic Sheet which describes what things do for the show and ignores rigged positions as a method of classification. The difference in emphasis is similar to that of the Lee Filter’s Designer’s Edition gel swatch book against the Numeric. One is creative, the other technical.

Another key to laying out the UI on the Vista is to remember that your fixture selection is often going to be best done with the stylus and touchscreen using a marquee (you know, that selection rectangle thingy that PCs use). This is preferred to Shift + Clicking multiple sporadic icons but does mean that two-dimensional consideration must be given to things that can be selected in groups using a rectangle or in pairs using a narrower vertical or horizontal drag without picking up unwanted fixtures too. The tactic is to set out clumps of fixtures in such a way that make sense of their uses on stage or rough geography and without slavish recreation of the rig plan. Part of this is also leaving sufficient “white space” (gaps) between groups and even between sub-groups of fixtures so that all or a part of the useful group can be selected. This ties in with good practice in moving light programming in which you “herd” large numbers of fixtures around before picking off smaller groups and only then selecting individual units for tidying where required. One final note is the difference between conventional lighting and moving lights in the way we think of them.

A Magic Sheet with all conventionals will likely be laid out based on where the units are focussed or their purpose whereas the moving kit can be focussed in different places and be used for multiple purposes throughout the show. In this case, moving lights are more likely to be found laid out with a greater emphasis on their rigged position.

Creating an Interactive Magic Sheet on the MagicQ

Using the Cham Sys MagicQ and it’s touchscreen(s) interface, there are a few ways in which you can create an intuitive and visual programming environment. This is especially true if you happen to run additional touchscreens along with the console.

Op ‘em Hog-nam Style

The old Hog standby for your Groups window that puts your group tiles into some form of Magic Sheet rather than simply inserting them in the next free slot. If you are doing this, bear the following in mind:

The Groups window always displays every tile, whatever the window size which means that the geography of the recorded groups will change if you change from Max to Half to Quarter. Pick whichever window size you like for your Magic Sheet and record the layout along with other windows as a Saved View.

Saved Views will always return to the window settings when recalled including the scroll. This means that you can have different sheets or layouts of the Groups window. One for Max Magic Sheet and one for Quarter List. The first could have G1 at the top left, the second could have G200. This tip is also useful if you are running a lot of different fixture types. I often have a Saved View that zips to the Media Server groups or Spots or Washes etc. in the Group window.

If you want to be old skool Hog, you can get creative with ASCII characters to add a bit of spice to your Group labels such as >>> or ////. If you want to add an icon to your Group label, hold down Shift and hit Set then select the Group window tile and browse the stock of images on the hard drive. OK, it’s not quite the Avolites Titan paintshop but …

If you want to select multiple Groups in one series of stabs, you might need to check the Setup / View Settings to enable this. You can then toggle particular groups on and off with a press.

You can use Move or Copy to create order in your Magic Sheet. Don’t forget you can insert multiple copies of a group if that makes your sheet more useful. You can also create a group with only 1 fixture in it for ease of selection without resorting to the command line.

Hasta La Vista

If you have followed the Slow Start Cham Sys MagicQ tutorials, you will be familiar with how to use a Grid to put together a version of the rig plan for simple visualisation purposes. Choose your grid size and insert fixtures into it in a similar manner to that which they appear in the roof. This grid is set up and used in a version of the Output window called View Plan.

If you didn’t already know, we can also select multiple fixtures using this plan once View Grid has been unchecked after building the layout. Knowing more about Magic Sheet concepts, it’s not hard to see how to put together some ideas on a grid that use individual fixtures in clumps that are ready for selection, similar to the Jands Vista.

MagicQ supports multiple grids that are used in different contexts including when pixel mapping internally, designing Execute layouts and also our fixture selection Magic Sheet in the Output Window. Simply select the grid number, give it a width and height and insert your fixtures. Again, you can insert duplicate heads in more than one grid slot which can be useful depending on how you organise your layout. The output grids can display tiles in a number of different ways including by colour, Name and Head No. too and you can create one rig plan and several magic sheets if you wish.

The MagicQ responds to a few different methods of fixture selection in the Output window including dragging, shift+clicking and there are details in the User Manual of row and column selection too. Once selected, fixtures parameters can be adjusted on the fly by holding the relevant attribute button and using the encoders before letting go of the button returns the view to the Magic Sheet.

Executors

Further experimentation for Magic Sheet style selection and operation can be made in creating Execute window layouts (grids again) which can house Groups, Cues, Macros plus the interaction can be individualised with a choice of buttons, faders, colours and shapes to press and swipe. A background image can be inserted using Set Wall Paper in the Execute View Design mode (the View Exec window is the one you run it in). You can also create buttons for special functions including to jump to another *Exec window.

Back To Basics

If all that is making your head spin or if you are lighting shows with a Tempus M24 then let’s pull it back again to where we started: The Magic Sheet. Even when dealing with 24 channels, there is no harm being able to more easily recall the numbers for plotting particularly when using a traditional keypad numeric entry desk. Do an image search and look at the Theatrical Lighting Database and take a look at how other LDs have formatted their magic sheets. Then get a sheet of paper and some marker pens and go nuts.

Have you got anything to add? Any tips on how you format your magic sheets or how you use the Magic Sheet concepts for setting up your lighting console of choice? Come on over and put your comments in the box below.

* The Exec window on the MagicQ is where some programmers like to spend time getting creative with the interface. Many consoles have their own particular areas where the hardcorse users hang out. With the Hog it used to be the creation of custom lib.lib files, in old Avo land the writing of custom personality text files. Grand MA junkies delight in making screen layouts and writing highly complex macros and the Exec window on the MagicQ is where fans release their inner nerd.

The Magic Sheet And You is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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*Update* Have you ever worked with a Lighting Designer, whether amateur or professional, and wondered what they are doing wandering around on stage waving their arms about? Have you noticed an LD, directing the lighting focus standing on the stage with their backs to the rig, and wondered what they were looking at on the floor? This newly updated article sheds some light (sorry!) on how to focus stage lighting, with an assistant, from the stage. We examine the process from the viewpoint of both the Lighting Designer and the Electricians and get to grips with some common lighting focus terminology.

It was Bertie Bassett’s turn up the ‘scope..
Image by PhotoGraham

When you work in small venues with limited resources you may find yourself doing the actual lantern pointin’ yourself. The main reason to not to go up that ladder is:

• You, the LD, can see how the light will interact with the performers on stage.

Other reasons are:

• You can clearly see the lighting plan.
• It is easy to communicate with others in your team.
• It’s hot in the roof. Get someone else to do the hot knob twiddling!

The Shadows

When the lighting designer is standing facing away from you and squinting at the floor, they are actually looking at their shadow cast on the stage, set and whatever else gets in the way. If their silhouette is in the middle of the beam circle, they know that the lantern is centered on them. If their “shadow head” disappears into the top of the beam circle, the light is too low and needs to be lifted and if they can’t see the outline of their ankles in the beam, then they are not lit all the way to the floor.

Seeing your shadow in a pool of light gives you all the information you need about how you are being lit. Using your hands and arms, you can test where the lit area ends, at the side of stage for example. Using your hand above your head can simulate someone taller or show you how much headroom there is in the focus of a spotlight.

Using shadows to get an even general cover.

The secret to getting an even general cover is to get the pools of light from your spotlights to join seamlessly when they are all faded up. You can use your shadow to test this out by walking sideways across the stage and studying the way the shadows appear and disappear as you move between .

If your shadow quickly dips and then reappears as you move across stage you know that there is a “black spot” between the two lights. If, on the other hand, you can see two shadows almost on top of each other then two spotlight beams are overlapping by far too much and should be eased apart.

Watching the opposing shadow angles of your front light change as you move across stage can give you an indication of a large change in throw angles that may well look odd from the audience’s point of view.

The final check for any “black spots” is to hold your hand out just above shoulder level, still facing away from the rig, and to study how the reflected brightness changes on your hand. This is actually easier said than done with a load of profile spots all pointing at you so keep facing away from them.

Backlight

You can use the same techniques to focus backlight and sidelight. When focussing backlight, your shadow should ideally cut off at the top of the seats in the front row. If it extends much higher, the backlight is shining directly into the eyes of the front row of the audience.

Don’t forget…

Using the above techniques you can get most of the lighting focus done without ever having to look directly at the spotlights but there a few focus checks to do before you move onto the next lantern.

Have a peek over the front of your stage to check for spill on the front of the forestage. Also check for spill on the proscenium, tabs, borders or other stage elements that are not meant to be lit. In the trade, the focussing assistant should shutter these off automatically but you still need to check them.

Guide To Focusing Stage Lighting

The following is a guide on the nuts and bolts of planning and taking part in a successful focus session from the viewpoint of both the Lighting Designer and the focusing Electrician.  A glossary of some common focus terms and lingo is at the end.

Lighting Designers

The schedule: You will have agreed your scheduled focus time with the Production Manager. This needs to be your time and not be eaten into by people hammering, sawing or painting things so you can’t walk on them. You also need to ensure that you get to start on time unless you have agreed to move the slot with the PM. Everyone else will be happy to take time out of your focus session to do the things they haven’t finished. You must resist this.

You should understand how many lanterns you have to focus, your time slot and roughly how long you get with each lantern. This stops you taking 1 hour to get the first profile spot perfect, and the second hour doing the 60 others in a hurry. Keep in mind how access to the rig impacts on your time and plan for that. This might be making sure you have two ladder teams working in different places so you can keep going while the other team are moving ladders (in safe lighting conditions).

You should have all relevant information at your fingertips ready for a smooth focussing session. This includes either a full plan or a detail of each bar, with channel numbers and purpose information. You should also double check the correct gel is fitted as you go along.

You will need a pencil and probably a torch in order to make notes, tick off focussed lanterns etc.

The most important thing is the LD knows the rig and has a good idea of what they want each lantern to achieve. The worst LD is one that doesn’t really know what they want. Yes, you can try things and experiment but bumbling between lanterns or being vague is demoralising for the crew and takes up valuable time. Arrive at the focus knowing where you want to start and what the lantern needs to actually light.

If sets or furniture needs to move for the focus, have a plan with the SM as to when and what and try to avoid shuffling things back and forth. If a lot needs doing, insist that you have enough crew/ASMs etc. called just to move stuff when you need it and not have to go off looking for help every time you need to shift a sofa.

Electricians

It is your responsibility that the LD has a fully working rig, with all the correct gels and accessories fitted in time for the focus has to start. You also should have a ready stock of spare lamps and anything else (fuses where needed) so that nothing technical holds up the focus.

The lanterns should be rigged exactly as per plan and tightened up to a working tightness (not completely locked off but done up tight), barndoors fully open and shutters out. If you really want to be a star and the LD always starts with a fresnel spotted down, then rig them with them already spotted down (lamp tray pushed to the rear), profiles tight (lenses far apart) and PAR lamps oriented the way the LD wants (horizontal / up down stage or whatever) This happens, it’s not a joke. I do this when I’m a Production LX. Why not be totally ready with as much done as possible before the focus starts?

You will need to have ready control of the dimmers, either using a reliable remote unit or have the desk accessible with an operator. If you have already worked out Fixture Groups with the LD, having these programmed and available is good so the LD can call for the “Blue Wash” as well as checking the focus of individual channels.

Whoever is going to be controlling the desk should be totally conversant with bringing channels and Groups up and down and has a good communication system with the LD. This can be cans / comms or a good shout, but “pardon?” gets old pretty quickly. For good communication, it’s also important that there aren’t additional sounds or distractions in the space such as power tools use or chattering from others not connected with the focus. Poor communication or concentration makes the whole process take longer.

The Focus Process

The purpose of the focus is to direct and control all the conventional light sources as the Lighting Designer and the show requires them. This will involve aiming a lantern, adjusting it’s controls such as focus, barndoors or shutters one at a time. Sometimes the Lighting Designer will wish to review how more than one lantern interact on stage, so will ask to see a group of lanterns together so they can evaluate the light.

Lighting Designers

Having prepared as much as you can including having a clear idea of what each lantern is for, how you think it will be focussed etc. you can grab your plan / notes and a pencil and start.

Before people disappear into the rig it is often a good idea to have a quick briefing as to how you would like to run the focus. This might include information as to how you will call for channels, where you would like to start and maybe even how you like to focus (“All lanterns brought to 80%. I want all doors and shutters out. I will ask for a fresnel to be spotted down on my head first, then we will set the size…”) so that the electricians are clear what they will need to do. You should also ask them if there is anything you should know about the rig such as lanterns that are unavailable because they are still to be rigged or are not working. This is not ideal, but it happens.

Before you call for the working light to be switched off, check you have your first electrician in place and that you have your list or plan with you. Don’t look into any lanterns that are on or about to come on, but check you have the right one and that you are happy to call for darkness. From this point, you should be using only clear instructions to communicate with the electricians focussing or operating the desk. They are acting as your hands on each lantern as if by remote control. They should also keep a wary eye out for things you might not see such as spill on the masking, but it’s not their primary function.

Make sure they are ready to start.

Stand on stage where you would like the first lantern directed, using the system you have discussed with the team such as Spotted Down, Centre On Head or your preferred method. Once you are happy with the initial position, make it clear to the electrician that you would like it in that place. This means that if you decide to move out of the light, they don’t follow you with the beam around the stage like a followspot. Use clear hand signals and your voice and don’t assume that the person focussing can see and hear from where they are. Build up a clear and standard series of arm movements and body language that you use over and over again.

Don’t look into the lantern, keep your back to it but remember that your voice is harder to hear if you are talking directly away from the listener.

After setting an initial position, the next step is usually to set the size and beam edge focus. While you are doing this, keep moving around the area to make sure the unit is lighting everywhere you need it to. For a cover unit, this is usually checking that I am fully lit in the most upstage places I wish to stand, both left and right. Also check the downstage points too so you have an idea of the entire lit area with a person stood in it. Ignore what is happening on the floor if you are trying to light a person. At this stage, you might find you need to move the centre of the lantern a bit until you get into your stride. Alternate between directing the lantern, waiting for it to stop moving and then walking around the space again. If you are trying to join up two cover areas seamlessly, you may wish to have the next area lantern brought up so you can check the join.

Once happy with the position, size and beam edge or focus you can move on to getting rid of spill or unwanted light with the shutters or barndoors. Check every edge. Start with the most obvious such as the front of the stage, the top of the pros. and the offstage masking. When bringing in doors or shutters, indicate with your arm where you would like it to be and the angle it should be set at.

It’s OK to change your mind or ask to look at things again if it means you don’t have to return to the lantern. However, you need to be aware of the time and have done a quick mental calculation along the lines of: Focus Time Allotted / Number Of Lanterns = Rough Spent Time Per Lantern. There is no point getting halfway through your front cover only to realise that you need to start plotting in 20 minutes and everyone still needs a break. The things that the Lighting Designer can avoid so as not to eat focussing time include:

• Not having the information you need to hand.
• Unclear direction or weak calling.
• Indecision.
• Not moving on at the appropriate pace.

When it comes to the focus, you are the Lighting Designer, you know why the lanterns are there and what they should do. You should know the blocking and the scene changes and have a fair idea of what you and the Director would like to use in each scene. The electricians probably don’t and they don’t need to. They aren’t there to make decisions so don’t keep canvassing their opinion on what lanterns should do, if they think you should extend this one upstage or whatever. You can ask them for information on things such as symmetry or shutter cuts you they can see better than you, but it’s bad form to ask for their thoughts on the design or how you should use your fixtures. Working with a good focus electrician that understands lighting design can be speed things up but, ultimately, the art is up to you.

The Lighting Designer should dictate the pace of the focus, even allowing for the movement of access equipment between fixtures. This means making it clear you are happy and wish to move on and suggesting that you work around a technical issue that has arisen while it is dealt with. While pushing the focus along, you do need to be aware of the problems that a focussing electrician might have such as stuck shutters, droopy barndoors, PARs that won’t spin or even what it’s like to be working in a tricky position. As you get more experienced, you can tell what the issue is by the particular clanging sound or the wobbling of the light on stage. If everything falls silent and there is little sign of a struggle, they are probably waiting on direction from you.

Electricians

The Lighting Designer will lead the focus, but you should play your part in making sure it goes quickly and smoothly. This means not keeping your mind on the task, reacting to the LD and others in a timely manner and communicating well. This also means that if other departments have to continue work they should be asked to work quietly as communication over distance is harder when others are sawing, hammering or talking.

Let the LD know that they have a fully working system, have any access equipment (ladders, tallescope) ready to go and that you and your team are prepared to start the focus. Find out where the LD would like to begin focussing and if they have any special instructions or systems they like to work to. If stage management look like they might need help setting any scenes up for focussing, it doesn’t hurt to lend a hand if it gets you started earlier. Everyone on the electrics team should take their positions and let the LD know they are ready. A big time waster in a focus session can be everyone waiting for everyone else so saying your are ready, or finished with something, keeps things moving along nicely.

Always being ready is also the key to a speedy focus. If you are waiting at a lantern for the LD to finish with another focussing electrician, get the next lantern ready in position and check the shutters or barndoors are good to go i.e fully opened. Tighten loose bolts where required, tidy the cable if you need to. Do something useful while you wait such as tape up or tidy but be ready start as soon as the LD is ready. Don’t get chatting or let your mind wander off, if everyone stays with what is happening then there won’t be all of those dull “What? Oh, hang on..” moments when you are asked to do something.

Work in the way the LD requires, adjusting the lantern as directed. The order for this may be beam position on stage, followed by size and beam edge, finishing with shutters / barndoors and finishing. You should act as the Lighting Designer’s hands at the controls of the lantern but you can add your brain to the procedure. If the LD has just wanted the last three spots a certain size and you can see they need the same again, use your initiative and do things as they ask for them, rather than waiting for every instruction. However, don’t make everything slower by incorrectly second guessing the LD’s wishes. Make an adjustment, stop moving and adjusting and ask “How’s that?” to indicate that you have carried out the last instruction and they should check the result.

If the LD asks for information from your vantage point or to check something they can’t see, be helpful but also allow quiet breaks in between communications while the Designer thinks and stop moving things around and keep quiet. It may surprise you to know that running a focus at a decent pace takes quite a bit of brain power and the LD has quite a lot of thinking to do while you are pulling, pushing and tightening things up.

The main thing is to say when you are done. Then everyone is clear that you aren’t struggling with a barndoor or looking for your spanner and we can move on.

Once the Lighting Designer is happy with the focus of the lantern, they are finished with it. However, you are not. On a unit with barndoors, it’s good practice to “tidy” any doors that the LD didn’t specifically call for. This involves pulling the barndoor in to the point where you can just see the result on stage then backing it out a touch, so it before the dimmer channel is killed This keeps unwanted light spill to a minimum and creates a tighter package that may be less likely to be knocked by flying pieces of scenery. It also looks better and is a sign of good practice when focussing. Take a look at a rig next time and see if you can see wayward barndoors anywhere.

Before you are done you need to check a few things including locking the lantern controls and bolts off tightly and checking the safety bonds and accessories are all still fitted correctly and cable is hanging properly and isn’t going to be heated up or crushed etc.

Stage Lighting Focus – Common Terminology

Flood / Flood Out – Beam width larger. Also can use “bigger”
Spot / Spot Down – Beam width smaller. Also can use “smaller”

Long Door – Widest two of the four barndoor leaves
Short Door – Narrowest two of the four barndoor leaves
Barrel – The lens tube, often rotable on modern profile spots.

Shutter to… / Long door to… – Indicated with arm or similar.
Sharp to Shutter – Focus so that a shutter edge is focussed sharp. Requires at least one shutter pushed in.
Hard / Soft – Beam Edge
“The Other Side Of Sharp” – indicates the soft side of sharp with the lens away moved in opposite direction. Due to Chromatic Aberration of the lens, there is a detectable blue tinge or a brown tinge and some LDs will ask for the Blue side or Brown side.
Blow – A term sometimes used to describe the softening of focus on a profile. “Blow the focus on that breakup gobo”

Run The Barrel – US expression for blowing the focus to one side of sharp or the other.  Or general lens movement on a profile spot.
Flag – When an LD says “flag it” they mean move your hand back and forth across the light output so they can see where the edges are more clearly.
Peak – Adjusting the peak/flat control on a profile spot.
Hotspot – The bright point in the centre of a spotlight beam.
Kill – Turn the channel off
Check – Used as “reduce” including Checking the channel (turning it down very low while a lantern accessory or is being worked on so as not to

Spin – Rotate. Often Barndoors. Spin the bubble / lamp / lens
Swing – Pan the lantern / Horizontal direction movement.
Lift / Drop – Tilt / Vertical direction movement

Lock It Off – Tighten everything up and move on.

Calling Up Channels

An LD might want to see a lantern on it’s own or with the previous one or it’s “partner”. When calling up channels, everyone should be clear which is required. A term taken from lighting boards is “Rem Dim”, but it’s just important that the LD is clear on “with channel 50” or “as well as” or “just channel 72” on it’s own.

Directional Terms

Usually it’s better to describe direction using relative terms rather than absolute terms: On Stage / Off Stage / Towards Centre / Downstage of the treads etc. instead of Stage Left / Stage Right etc. This is because then it doesn’t matter which way anyone is facing on stage and also because the person focussing might be hanging upside down! Saying “this way” isn’t helpful if the lantern operator can’t see which way the LD is pointing.

General Tips

Bring up the new channel before killing the old one to avoid darkness and so the LD can still see the plan.
Fading up channels with the wheel heats the lamp element slowly and reduces wear and blown lamps. With larger wattage fixtures it also reduces the likelihood of tripping a circuit breaker or blowing a fuse.
Don’t get tasty with a stubborn lantern, control knob or accessory with the dimmer up full. Check it (reduce the intensity) to 20% before whacking things (20% means you can use the light from the lantern to see in the gate etc.)

Stage Lighting Focus Guide – Updated is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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• Lighting Desk Basics – Beginner’s Guide to a Stage Light Control – 1

As PLASA London waves goodbye to it’s Earl’s Court home to seek new pastures at ExCeL in 2013, On Stage Lighting guides you through the retina burning LEDs to see what 2012 show had to offer.

The trade show calendar is filled with places to see and be seen and PLASA London could do with some spit and polish. The more intimate PLASA Focus in Leeds and the much larger Pro Light & Sound in Frankfurt bring different vibes to the trade show world in our neck of the woods and the US based LDI will come even hotter on the heels of PLASA in the autumn season next time around.

The Professional Development programme of free seminars seemed to have expanded again this year. Bookings for an increased number of free seminars appeared strong, particularly for the London 2012 Olympic Games related content and sound enthusiasts especially were treated to a wide range of audio presentations this year. The downside to this expansion was that the temporary theatres in EC2 were not always conducive to good listening or a decent blackout. You have to feel sorry for the sound technician battling with intelligibility and feedback in a room full of professional sound guys. It must be like drowning in front of the Team GB swimming team.

More For Less

In the Age of Austerity, everyone is looking for ways to get more from what they have. Manufacturers have seized upon this aspect of the zeitgeist, along with the continuing “sustainability” theme. Certainly the “S” word comes up a lot.

The actual meaning seems to be rather, erm, flexible, depending on how you like to spin your particular new piece of kit with it be ETC Dimmer Doubling or everyone with LED based kit making a huge assumption that LED = “Sustainable”. One long standing Chief LX remarked that his regional rep theatre got their 1K fresnels in 1970-something, something to bear in mind if you badge something “sustainable” just because it doesn’t use a tungsten lamp.

Everyone seemed to have come to Town with their LED profile following on from last year’s early attempts, with the now finished ETC LED Source Four being the most feted with a PLASA “Sustainability” award to add to it’s collection. The ETC unit uses the 7 colour Lustr+ collection of LEDs from the Selador and is optically exactly the same as the rest of the Source Four profile from the gate forwards. The awkward iris fiddling by the rep did cause a certain amount of amusement plus reassurance that the familiar quirks continue in the new product too. Apparently, the LED back end can also be used with the ETC Source Four Zoom units, if you’d like to increase your range of design faults in a single unit and we’d suggest adding the yoke balance kit to really frustrate your gobo or iris fitting activities.

Plenty of LED profile spot action in other camps including the Robert Juliat range, the Selecon PL4 and the Prism guys in the White Light zone adding a LED fresnel to their leko of last year. The Ilumo Zoom LED Spot we looked at earlier in the year now had it’s own stand. Not everyone was boasting full colour mixing with their warm / cool white LED driven fixtures, instead pushing the sustainability angle and the thorny issue of Lumens Per Watt which usually prompts the question: “Ah, but Lumens Of What?”, relating to challenges in colour rendition with LED light sources.

It seems that in the world of LED stage lighting we are still talking “less for more” when it comes to light quality and purchase cost. And we should be careful when we hear “sustainable”, despite the current climate where policy makers and those with the purse strings seemingly sign off any specification with LED in the document while basking of the ignorance of not really understanding about light quality or what the numbers mean.

Design LED Development?

With the continuing activity in the LED space, PLASA 2012 was memorable in part for what seemed like the final public unveiling of the solid state Elephant In The Room in which the challenges of using LED in performance lighting were candidly faced by many stand reps and in seminar presentations including ETC’s visionary CEO Fred Foster. No longer were punters treated to straight faced spiel about lumens per watt, “white” light or the fact that LED fixtures could reproduce 16 million colours and cure cancer. While in a seminar theatre, attendees were treated to a well presented debunking of LED myths by Mike Wood, on the show floor the reps felt able to ‘fess up to stuff while warning buyers about the dangers of published photometric data. Of other manufacturers, natch.

A key issue is that LEDs emit colour that is hot at certain frequencies and deficient in others which gives rise to unexpected results in all sorts of situations. While LED dimming may have improved, costs of manufacturing been brought down and optical issues worked through, the plain fact is colours produced are not the same as, say, a tungsten halogen with a colour gel in it.

Lee Filters have cleverly crunched some numbers to produce a small range of their traditional filter colours specifically for LED products and were showing a comparison using L126. It’s inescapable that even “white” LED light sources don’t produce colours in the same way as incandescent and even if the hue looks correct reflected on a white wall, the actual colour components are quite different. This was easily revealed to anyone that cared to stick their hands in the standard L126 light vs. the corrected LED L126 to see that even the great Lee Filters can’t suddenly produce light that isn’t there to start with. The tungsten / L126 combination wins hands down.

This problem is not news to anyone and is the reason the ETC Seladors and the new S4 profile use 7 different LED colours to mix their output instead of the common 3 or 4. If LEDs are to be used for much more than cyc lighting and eye-candy, or even general purpose lighting in your office, the issue of colour rendition will need to be resolved.

Polluting The Ambersphere

Last year, On Stage Lighting noted that stands at PLASA were getting harder to be around due to the number of light “shows” that assaulted the eyes on every corner. The 2012 show actually had an identifiable problem with light pollution, made most obvious by those exhibitors keen to show off their latest strobes but also any other stand packed with waggling, high brightness sky junk. Over the years, the exhibition organisers have somehow clamped down on sound systems pelting at the poor trade show goer – now the problem is lighting.

Getting down to business, you’d better enjoy a facefull of strobes or flying Sharpies whizzing past every few seconds and huge LED wall playing bright, fast cut content. ETC had cunningly rigged up the black drapes of their demo area between them and some of the worst offenders but many of the smaller booths just had to put up with their neighbours driving interest from their stands.

While some of the world’s most celebrated lighting designers congregated in seminar rooms, out of the show floor not one major stand evidenced the touch of an actual lighting designer. One wag from one of the biggest names in lighting equipment reminded us that “The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.” and certainly some of the best lit areas were shell scheme stalls using those unsustainable tungsten PAR38 track lights. Stands with “real” lighting equipment were bathed in vile scrolling LED hues in between huge black holes and the skin tone of the masses in Earl’s Court were as bad as you’ll see in a multi-storey car park at night.

It is perhaps telling that the lighting product industry can annually produce further versions of the LED articulated frying pan and yet apparently can’t find anyone to light their stands properly while LDs like Paule Constable still perform wonders with the PAR64 in the theatre.

But the PLASA show isn’t about actual light or even sound, it’s about things with shiny buttons and slidey faders that light up…

A MA For All Seasons

In the knobs and sliders department, the race to backfill every corner of the lighting control that you currently don’t occupy continues. The enormous desk makers like MA have even started to proffer PC wings and Avolites presented the Titan One single universe dongle, while at least one software only lighting controller maker brandished a front panel blank of some soon-to-be hardware. Philips brand Strand persists and offers the new ML250 which seemed to be aiming at the SmartFade ML / Huge Frog market in case someone, somewhere needed a small-medium moving light controller and couldn’t find one. Anyone ML programmer that remembers the short lived Zero 88 Sirius 250 or the Jands Hog 250 may find that particular integer brings back too many memories.

Cham Sys (a contraction of Chameleon Systems, as the pronunciation always seems to cause confusion) continue to dangle the ethereal MQ60 (and 40 and 70) which they have done for over a year, this time with a facelifted box. The dev toolkit for the Cham Sys software has been changed in order to bring the free Cham Sys Visualiser to the table. Because everyone has to have a visualiser bundled with their wares these days, this in turn forces the dedicated vis guys to downscale with single universe options and free student licenses as with Capture Polar.

Hopefully the developer’s move will mean that the MagicQ software gets the shiny bits treatment to keep the iPhone generation on side. The look of lighting control la mode is rapidly becoming the MA2 / Titan / Martin – esque grey grads everywhere and desk makers need to keep up appearances.

Speaking of which, the LSC Clarity-LX was put on our radar and so prompted a demo. LSC haven’t always had the biggest name in the UK, appearing to us to make lower end lighting desks and be lumped in with the Jands type consoles of the past. The big and shiny Clarity has got some Vista lineage which shows in parts of the interface and the desk looks to be aimed as a GrandMA killer, it certainly had a lot about it and could be worth watching.

The Clarity also sported the de rigeur dark grey gradients, as does the M2Go from Martin. The M2Go is playing in the small, portable and powerful niche and, despite having never used a Martin desk before, I walked up to it and managed to record groups, palettes and cues with a few button pushes. The M2Go’s clean hardware interface seems to make it simple to use, with plenty of touchscreen opportunities for powerful programming.

Continuing the simple but powerful, Zero88 have rebadged the Leap Frog as the Solution in an attempt to move away from quirky Frog-like names and free themselves from the schools market. The Solution, like the Orb and other iterations, all use the ZerOS 8.0 software which, like Zero 88 products of the past, has a lot of thought put into it and is better than you probably think it is.

It’s gratifying to know that the best features of the latest software version are still able to be used on previous Leap Frogs that used ZerOS and that your old green desk with the 3 Tonka wheels could have a new lease of life. Treat it to a touchscreen, for a start.

Zero88’s biggest brand strength in one market is also their weakness in others and while the Orb may be gaining the odd bit of traction in the ETC Ion world, perhaps Cooper Controls will steadily try to reposition or spin off a new brand. The rebadging of Leap Frog consoles could be the first shot in a bigger campaign.

When every LX control shoemaker is trying to fulfill “all of the colours in all of the the sizes” and leave no user or situation without a solution, deciding on a platform to buy into or even learn is becoming increasingly onerous in a crowded market where even Soundcraft have tacked DMX lighting control into the Si Performer digital audio console. Lawks a mussy, whatever next?

So, Farewell Then…

As the familiarity of Earl’s Court and the September diary entry comes to an end, the PLASA London show has the opportunity to build on it’s strengths in professional development and conferencing and the chance to create a new show floor in a different space in 2013. With any luck, this will be a lot easier to attend than the shows of recent years, including this one. Perhaps we can even wish for the odd lighting design on a stand and rules in place to combat the light pollution issue.

The show this year was fairly muted by a difficult economic picture and a bumpy performance landscape despite the odd Jubilee or Olympics to keep us going. Everyone seemed to be going through the motions to a certain extent, attending or exhibiting. In some ways, technology development has been driven in the last few years by trying to shoehorn an LED into everything and backfilling across your current market.

Now we finally have an LED in everything, and everyone makes every size of everything, what are we going to do next?

Go back to the basics of light, perhaps. And dark.

Toodle Pip.

This article has been brought to you in partnership with Trace Lighting’s Limelight – Lighting Control Software.

If you attended PLASA London 2012 and have any thoughts, pop them below in the comments as usual.

PLASA 2012 Show Report is a post from: On Stage Lighting

You May Also Like:

• PLASA 2010 – Show Report
• PLASA 2011 – Show Report
• PLASA 2007 – Was It Worth It?

With a newly updated article on a popular topic at On Stage Lighting, we look at stage lighting design software and CAD options when it comes to planning and communication in our lighting world in an extended Guide To Choosing Stage Lighting Design Software.

Uses Of Software In Lighting Design

Whilst being no stranger to scribbling a lighting plan on the back of a tour schedule with a biro (usually as the first few rigging boxes are coming out of the truck), you may want to present your ideas and technical information in a clear and more professional way. As the complexity of the design increases so does the number of people involved in making it all happen and the consequences of a planning or communication mistake. If you have ever swapped out more than 150 Source Four Par lenses from a massive 20” box truss trimmed at a height of 7m because the LD should have specified ‘wides’, then you’ll know the cost of shoddy calculations.

Using a computer to help the lighting design process has many advantages over traditional hand drawn lighting plans and manually collated data methods. These range from A for Accuracy all the way to Z for, well, Z: The 3rd dimension in 3D CAD modelling (a useful part of getting those calculations, angles and distances right). There are also great possibilities in digital storage and collaboration, reuse of previous hard work and just generally getting a computer to take the donkey work of repetition or maths when planning lighting design and system.

The pitfalls to using software in lighting design are similar to the use of computers for any other purpose. The dangers of digital file storage, crashes or file compatibility are familiar to most in the modern world, along with the steep learning curve required to be able to work as effectively using the software as with paper and pencil. Even in an age of seemingly “free everything”, the cost of owning and updating specialist CAD software must be a consideration, particularly with the most comprehensive packages. We will also look at some software with extremely specific uses with which the cost of ownership must be weighed against the amount of actual use for a given user.

This article will refer to this use of digital software tools as CAD in the “Computer Aided Design” sense, as not all the tools available to us a lighting designers are used for drafting. It will consider specialist stage lighting software, and also look at more generic applications that can be used for parts of the design process.

What Do We Need From The Software?

Different users require different functionality from their lighting software along with things that are important or workflow areas that have to be easier than others. Let’s look some possible requirements:

• Drawing and presenting lighting plans (or light plots, if you are in the US)
• Creation and sharing of lists such as equipment inventories, gel cuttings lists, cable allocations etc. (a relevant US term would be Shop Orders)
• Noting of data and, as important, changes such as cue lists, focus notes, equipment shortages.
• Calculation and communication including power requirements, circuit information, weight loadings.
• Lighting Designer tools such as beam angle calculation and experimentation, design choices such as gobos (templates/patterns)
• 3D lighting visualisation and presentation of CGI virtual lighting design
• Pre-programming of data into a lighting console using visualisation software

You may notice that, while a few requirements are planning tools simply for the Lighting Designer, the majority of items in the above list centre around communication with others. If you are going to be designing a show, owning and preparing the equipment, rigging it and operating the lighting system in isolation you could get away with nothing more than a few Post-It notes and making it up on the day. Even this would assume that you didn’t have to agree with the Sound department where their speakers would go or show the riggers where to put your points before you arrive.

Putting on shows is nearly always a collaborative effort, and successful collaboration comes from effective communication.

Lighting Design Software And Collaboration

It’s a good time to look at collaboration in lighting software, as ‘cloud computing’ is becoming a buzzword throughout a wider world than simply the early adopters. Before we even consider ‘software as a service’ in specialist stage lighting applications, we might reflect on the benefits of digital file sharing that doesn’t involved pinging emails backwards and forwards and wondering if you have the latest version or can even open it. Using services such as Dropbox, our stage lighting partners can easily work on the same files in a single place and always have access to the latest version of the lighting plan or the equipment inventory. For a while now, I’ve been a huge fan of Google Docs (now generically called Google Apps) which not only allows for such file sharing but also puts the software functions of word processing and spreadsheet firmly in ‘the cloud’.

The collaborative possibilities of this kind of workflow are currently changing the way many of us work in all walks of a life and lighting design communication is no exception. Being able to work directly in a cloud based spreadsheet while the Production Electrician is also accessing the latest version is the kind of real time collaboration that makes Google Apps great for me. I must add that as a web publisher that is against monopolies and market domination I have plenty of issues with Google as a whole, but currently still find myself at the mercy of the free crack that is Google Apps (with Gmail etc.)

Providers of stage lighting design software are moving into thecloud computing space and functionality that puts the emphasis on the collaborative nature of stage lighting planning. By way of example, Vectorworks (the base production of the Spotlight lighting design software) has specific cloud services and John McKernon’s Lightwright was always designed with a portion of it given over to the concept of different ‘users’ and tracking changes, not just presenting the current state of play.

While Lightwright has some great lighting design specific tools and a huge amount of thought has gone into it, such a collaborative concept can be also be found generically in a shared Google spreadsheet. Different stakeholders have access at different levels, changes can be made and are and can be reverted to. All in real time and for free in the case of Google Docs, if you are prepared to put in the time create your own. Perhaps in the future On Stage Lighting will do a series of tutorials on using Google Docs in lighting design.

The Cost Of Software In Lighting Design

Or “The Benefits of Being Born Free”

When considering the choices of stage lighting design software for any or all of the above requirements, the issue of cost forces one to ask some tough questions. While there are a range of software options ranging from free to mega-expensive, some of those questions might be:

• How much of my time do I spend using ‘x’ function?
• Do I get paid directly for doing ‘y’?
• How much time ( = revenue, opportunity cost etc.) will I save if I start using ‘z’?
• Do I just fancy a piece of fancy software to mess about with?

An answer of “yes” to the last question is a perfectly valid one, but one that should be answered truthfully.

Stage lighting design software can be extremely expensive to own and in my experience the most comprehensive (read:expensive) does often not fall into the “good buy” category for your average independent Lighting Designer based on the economics. Also, there is a temptation to think that being able to use, even better, own such shiny software makes you more employable and even a better LD! This is not the case. While being able to use CAD is a useful skill it does not make you a Lighting Designer, better or otherwise.

As a freelance LD making your own way, running the latest version of the fanciest software is a lovely overhead eating into your profit unless it can be financially proven that you are actually more productive or your client experience is so improved that it keeps you ahead in the game. Or at least stops you falling behind.

Perhaps it’s already becoming obvious why in the world of fast turnaround events, the biro/tour schedule system of communication is often favoured. No one, not the client, not the ad agency, not the production company, nobody, is going to pay for anything. Why would they when the show will happen with or without all those beautifully crafted drawings and lists? Why bother when it doesn’t matter to them how awkward your workflow is, so long as the show opens? Not all that many Directors / Clients / Mums know a good lighting design from an average one. In the end, they certainly can’t tell if your design has been lovingly wrought in layers of vector-based beauty from the most expensive Bezier curves money can buy. Or if you drew it in chalk on the floor. The show either looks good and the minimum number of creatives had a crying fit. Or not.

At the concept or pitch stage, there is an case for an expensive computer-generated finish, but we’ll discuss that later.

There is also an argument for you making your own life more bearable or enjoyable with the use of dedicated lighting software, but this should not be confused with an actual business case. In order to even need to be more productive with fancy software, you need to have a whole lot of relevant lighting gigs in a year.

All this means that you should seriously look at the free / cheap end of the lighting software market first and consider all the information below before making that big purchase.

However, with the need for collaborative communication, professional outputs in your field and cost in mind, let’s plough on.

2D Plan Drawing Software

To generate simple schematics and two-dimensional lighting design layouts so that your crew can rig and set up correctly is the minimum software requirement by any Lighting Designer. The ability to cleanly draw a lighting plan, print it out or email it.

You can actually draw a lighting plan using MS Word if you need to (I’ve seen it done!) but life is too short for bad drawing with a word processing software when you could be producing bad drawings in a more suitable package. Whether the application uses the ‘CAD’ title or not, the key thing we’ll need is something ‘vector’ based. Vector drawing uses mathematical equations to create lines, curves and solids which means they are accurate, completely scalable and resulting drawings or details are disconnected from screen or print resolutions. Layout of 2D lighting symbols based in ‘raster’ format (bitmaps, basically images) on a plan without accurate dimensional information isn’t ideal and really only a digital version of our scribbled biro drawing.

Any mainstream vector drawing software will produce a nice lighting plan with annotations showing colours, circuits and focus information. If you are already familiar with Adobe products, we are looking at Illustrator rather than Photoshop, and there are plenty of vector titles available including free software. The downside to using a non-lighting specific CAD packages for the production of 2D lighting plants is their lack of scaled stage lighting symbols to drag and drop into your plan and the immediate availability of other stage lighting data such as manufacturer details or specific calculations etc.

The difference between vector based graphics software and dedicated CAD products is only really the presentation of the tools, in particular dimensional and other data entry and reporting. The difference between generic CAD software that might be used by architects or engineers and stage lighting specific drawing packages is again the presentation of the tools, with developers putting what the lighting designer needs front and centre. Professional CAD software generally has the functionality that we could shape for our needs, stage lighting design drawing packages have just already shaped them and put them into toolbars with names that we recognise.

Then there is collaboration and integration with other systems such as being able to use existing venue plans or add stage lighting data to a drawing from another CAD software. Any drawing software that can cope with the AutoCAD standard .DWG and .DXF formats is a must when working alongside others with similar capability, for when you don’t all use the same CAD software. The ability to import these formats can be used with lighting symbols that are available from equipment manufacturers but it is vital to watch out for scaling errors when importing symbols this way. In fact, when working with imported vector data such as .DWG and .DXF drawings, watch out for scaling errors in general! Such errors have the power to make grown men weep into wireless ergonomic keyboards.

The most dedicated lighting design drawing software packages can save you the trouble of importing loads of different lighting symbols by shipping with their own fixture library. They also usually come with with the ability to generate some useful lists such as fixture quantities and gel cuts based on data attached to the symbols. The level of complexity or functionality is, unsurprisingly, related to software cost when these functions are built into a thing with “CAD” in the title.

Choice: If you need to draw 2D plans and are on a budget, get the extra usefulness of one of the free or cheaper lighting design software or basic generic CAD packages . Don’t mess about with raster based image software or something totally unsuitable like Powerpoint. There are free / cheap options that are better suited, some of which are listed below. Ideally find something that will be able to deal with the .DWG files that are thrown at you unless you are going to be simply producing neat lighting plans for others to follow with minimal external input.

Lighting Design, Draw and Specify

What if you want to do more than draw a 2D lighting plan? What about all those lists, calculations and the communication of technical information in other formats other than a CAD drawing.

Using MS Word as our example, you can use Word (or Open Office, Works, whatever) to create neat a list and store it in digital format. What you don’t get from a simple word processed list is the benefit of good quality spreadsheet functions. For this reason, many lighting designer’s have made good use of Excel and other spreadsheet software for many years to deal with equipment totals, cable, accessories and gel allocations. Without an advanced knowledge of spreadsheet functions, we can still benefit from be able to at least set up an Auto Sum or tally and, using something like free Google Spreadsheets, collaborate on these lists in real time.

A database / spreadsheet model is the angle Lightwright, Focustrack and things like Cast’s WYSIWYG reporting functions come from. The benefit of these specialist pieces of software is that a lot of care and attention has gone into creating something that works out of the box for the lighting designer. Some of these CAD packages or software combinations can have their data input at the drawing or at the list, depending on the way you like to work as an LD.

If you would like to get your software to provide extra features such as sectional and elevational drawings, basic 3D views and organise information, then the more robust lighting design software is a better option. The benefits of creating your CAD design in 3D is that you don’t have to keep redrawing sections and elevations and instead can view the “model” from any angle even in different finishes. You also have 3D geometry that you can use for visualisation or pre-programming either within the software or for import into another package.

These packages can “model” your theatre space or venue, including your set and lighting rig which can take the effort out of creating sections or elevations. Using different views of a 3D space are vital in lighting design, particularly for a theatre show, to help you make decisions of angle, light positions and flying heights (and it sure beats doing lots of different drawings!).

Equipment lists, lighting accessories, gels and control channels can be generated by the lighting plan drawing process which saves time and effort on your part while electrical power calculations or weights can be easily viewed.

Choice: If you are working in lighting design and do a lot of shows but do not need to pre-program or see fancy visualisations of your show, you will be looking for a combination of 2D / 3D CAD and spreadsheet software. These can be found as different entities such as using AutoCAD (with or without the LD Assistant plug-in) and a generic spreadsheet software like Excel. Alternatively, these could be rolled into one like Cast’s WYSIWYG or, in the case of Vectorworks Spotlight and Lightwright, be complementary software that bolts together to share data and work in sync.

Visualisation Software

While still in a communicative frame of mind, we should consider the business of visualisation.

In this case, we are looking to be able to demonstrate to interested parties (Directors, Clients, your mum etc.) what our lighting might look like if only we were given the gig or allowed to have all that expensive kit or what would happen if we blew the entire gel budget on Follies Pink.

For me, the key to concept visualisation software is to produce credible images (sometimes even video files) of key points in the show, and produce them with the minimum of time cost. This is because much of the work of visualisation is done before contracts are signed, gigs got or anyone has even agreed to a hire budget. So, what are our options for this kind of visualisation?

The cheapest form of visualisation of show that is yet to happen could be images from a previous show that have corresponding design elements. If no relevant image is available then the Lighting Designer might create something, either using their art material of choice or even lighting a 1:25 scale model of the set and taking photos of it. The digital step up from this is photographic images that have been through a Photoshop style editing software to create an impression of what the Lighting Designer wishes to communicate. This might be based on a venue shot or an artistic impression created by another key designer.

In the world of corporate events, visualisation of the environment is often farmed out to a graphics artist to be used by the production company to secure the work. This means that a certain amount of work has already gone into the data for visualisation and created in any number of software packages and presented in a range of file formats, including 3D virtual tours.

It’s with this background in mind that the Lighting Designer must choose their visualisation method and therefore select appropriate software. The most comprehensive and specialist of the stage lighting software genre could be Cast’s WYSIWYG or a software set such as Vectorworks Spotlight with Renderworks or even ESP Vision plugged in. WYSIWYG has benefited from steady improvements in the rendering engine, while remaining a broad tool that doesn’t require the Lighting Designer to understand every little detail of 3D CGI shaders and render settings to be able to produce the images.

The specialist software also tries to integrate all or most of your lighting design into one process and can spit out plans, lists and visualisation images at any point. A downside to the use of this kind of software vs. generic 3D CGI modelling and rendering packages is the requirement to have already produced your lighting design before you get the images. One of the benefits of something like 3DS MAX or Maya is basically your ability to cheat all kinds of things in order to produce lighting you want your stakeholder to see. Remember that above we needed these visualisations to happen fast, often before a contract, so we need to cheat. 3D CGI graphics is basically the art of cheating physics which brings us to ‘realism’.

One of the things that we hope for as Lighting Designers in a visualisation software is realism and having it ‘look right’. Initially we think we can get there through the use of mathematical models and ‘accurate’ materials in computer space to simulate the real world. Architectural lighting designers are big on real data such as photometric lighting, IES models etc. but they are often most interested in measured light levels.

The longer I studied 3D CGI graphics, the further I got from the idea that if only I used all the data and the right materials, it would look how I wanted it to. This ignores the vagaries of the rendering engine and all the maths involved in ray tracing, shader specularity and radiosity calculations. This does mean that the Lighting Designer needs to know what the show will look like in order to create the images. If the LD is hoping that the modelling software will show them the end result in lighting terms, they are going to be disappointed. Visualisation software in stage lighting should be used to communicate to someone else, you know in your head to be true. And what you produce at that point may well be the difference between getting the gig and not.

Choice: When choosing software for lighting design visualisation, consider at which point in the process you need to create the outputs and if some of the work has already been done by another party. There is no point in spending days creating a full lighting design to produce a visualisation image in CAD if a Photoshop wizard somewhere has already produced a 2D raster picture that you could make adjustments to using a virtual paintbrush. A while ago, I worked with Autodesk Viz (the cut down version of 3DS Max) because many of the show visuals were coming off the desktop of the graphic artist in that format. I simply ‘lit’ the model and sent them back in time for the production company to pitch. It was also easy to quickly import AutoCAD data in 2D or 3D, add some shaders and cheat some lighting.

Pre-Programming Visualisation Software

At the top end of lighting design software functionality, real time plotting of your rig is the name of the game. The software enables you to set up your virtual lighting rig with control systems, plug in a compatible lighting desk and plot your show before even committing lantern to pipe. This facility is most useful with large moving light rigs and helps the Lighting Designer and Operator build up some of the elements of a show before setting foot in the theatre. Conventional lighting dimmer circuits can also be programmed although the light intensity levels cannot really be accurately depicted however posh the software is.

What pre-programming does assist with is the setting up of moving light positions, palettes and effects and even base cues without the cost of time in the venue with all the kit. This saving is real in the world of performance, but the question of who should bear the cost of running a pre-programming suite is often answered by when you know that lighting production companies are increasingly providing the best software and facilities, along with the actual lighting consoles themselves. The option for cheaper owner/operator consoles may also be linked with the development of cheaper pre-programming visualisers designed to be run from more modest laptops with fewer functionality in the other areas of stage lighting design software.

The different software packages available to do this vary in cost, with the cheaper ones often trading off CAD or paperwork capabilities against the facility for real time programming of your light show. All require you to also have a fairly decent PC to run them on plus the hardware to input a lighting control signal (DMX or Ethernet) that will control the virtual lights.

Similar to the previous visualisation section, there are things to be taken into account when choosing pre-programming lighting software and they fall broadly in similar areas: Workflow patterns, time required and level of learning needed to get a good result. One of the features of simpler pre-programming software is the ability to place lighting fixtures in 3D space without the need for rigging structures etc. If you only want to see what fixture beams are doing, you don’t need a full set and trusses all over the place and can work with the minimum of information for your programming needs. With regard to the cheating of visualisations earlier on in the process, this flexibility is another plus point for building your own system around a kit of software parts as you can choose to put resources in where required. The converse view of the proponents of the all-in-one lighting design software package would argue that such software provides a central point of creation that reduces repetition.

Another element worth considering is native compatibility with your chosen lighting console and the options for sharing of data between them. Only having to create a patch in one place is a time saver. Console specific visualisers such as GrandMA 3D, Avolites visualiser and now the alpha version of the Cham Sys MagicQ visualiser all feature this and WYSIWYG has a long standing tie-up with Flying Pig Systems Whole Hog when it comes to data exchange. The most basic visualisers work using either a DMX input device or ArtNet straight in, while the ones that exchange data use a more proprietary system of communication.

From the other end, a visualiser such as ESP Vision works with data and 3D geometry from Vectorworks Spotlight, meaning that your plan and visualisation environment are created at the same time in a similar way to WYSWYG. This is not the case with the cheaper visualisers.

The question is at which point you need your visualiser to plug-in to your own working practices and, indeed, which parts of the process you use and which you don’t. There is little point in using a visualiser that integrates beautifully with your CAD drafting package if you rarely produce drawings. If you regularly use a particular console, perhaps you can live with a break in connection with your cheap CAD drawing software and free spreadsheet program in order to have stronger ties with your console data. Everyone will have a different solution.

Choice: Software such as Light Converse or Capture are good value visualisers and produce quick results for pre-programming as well as allowing the user to edit lighting fixture personalities as new models are brought to the market. Cast Lighting’s WYSIWYG Perform is all singing and dancing with 3D CAD, good paperwork creation and comprehensive programming and rendering. It is used by professional lighting companies and designers on the biggest theatre shows and events but all these features come at a price and a subscription service keep the fixture library up to date. Such software requires some pretty hefty hardware to run it on.

The latest addition to the console visualisation market is the alpha version of the MagicQ vis from Cham Sys. The visualiser is free, basic and works with the also free MagicQ lighting control desk and software, and is certainly going to be of interest of the growing number of MagicQ users around the world.

Choosing Your Lighting Design Software

Wherever you sit in the stage lighting CAD market, there are choices to be made. These centre around your own particular needs and working patterns, what your collaborators use and, let’s face it, what you can afford. A professional level software package with a comprehensive toolset and good implementation of things such as import / export of .DWG and .DXF files is always going to cost money and is more than likely going involve a serious learning commitment from you as a user.

At the other end of the scale, there are plenty of free or cheaper solutions to vector CAD drawing in both 2D and 3D, spreadsheets and collaborative tools that mean that anyone can design, plan and communicate their lighting design to a high standard whatever their budget. The path to success is understanding what is key to you and your collaborators and where you can use digital tools to save your time resource and work more effectively.

Another good starting point is to understand lighting design paperwork created by hand and all that it entails, from which pieces of communication are vital through to how to track changes. You can then use the free software available at any point in time and, if need be, revert to good ol’ paper based systems when you need to. The danger in the digital age is that aspiring Lighting Designers miss out the initial understanding and get bogged down in shiny lighting design software without really identifying what is actually important in their planning and communication. Hopefully this article has helped a little.

Below is a list of resources and stage lighting design software or software that can be used in stage lighting design. It may not be exhaustive, so if you have any favourite software packages drop us a comment in the box and we’ll add it to the list.

Tell us how you use the software or service, a rough cost and what is good / bad about it for your purposes.

Resources

A list of useful resources related to stage lighting software but not affiliated to the developers.

Vectorworks Spotlight Video Tutorials
Stage Lighting CAD Symbols
Introduction To The Stage Lighting Plan
A Guide To Using VW Spotlight PDF
Kent Goetz’s VW Tutorials For Theatre
New York Library Theatrical Lighting Database – Wonderful resource with scans of “old fashioned” (non-digital) stage lighting planning paperwork. Provides good context.
Bright Green 3D Visualisation Some nice examples of 3D CGI event visualisation from colleague Helen Green.

Free Software

Free stage lighting software or related free tools that can be used in stage lighting planning and communication.

• LX Free for Java or Mac Really nice and basic lighting specific software for drawing LX plans.
• Google Sketchup – 2d and 3d with models etc. available from other users.
• Blender – Free 3D modeling and animation software in the MAX / Maya area.
• GIMP – Free Photoshop style software
• Serif Draw – Free vector drawing.
• Draftsight – Suggested by reader in comments below. Free creation, viewing and editing of .DWG for Windows, OSX and Linux.
• Google Docs
• Open Office
• LibreOffice
• LD Calculator Lite Planning tool, not drawing.
• Dropbox – Sharing and cloud storage.
• Evernote – Great notebook software.

Drawing and Communication

Software that has functions related to lighting design drawing, planning of inventories and lists, recording show information and collaboration.

• AutoCAD
• LD Assistant
• TurboCAD
• Stardraw Lighting 2D (seems to still be available but in 2007 version)
• Vectorworks Spotlight
• Lightwright
• LX Designer
• Focus Track Rob Halliday’s system of documenting lighting data for rep plots / large tours etc.  Quite a thing.
• Cast Lighting WYSIWYG
• Serif Draw Plus
• Corel Draw / CAD / Designer
• MS Excel

Concept Visualisation

Some ideas for visualising the lighting for a show at the concept / pitch stage or throughout the design process.  Not all stage lighting specific.

• Easy View 3D
• Capture Polar
• Light Converse
• ESP Vision
• Martin Show Designer
• Cast Lighting WYSIWYG
• Autodesk Viz / 3DS Max
• Maya
• Lightwave
• Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop etc)

Pre-Programming Visualisers

These visualisers may have differing levels of functionality but they all provide a virtual lighting rig to help you pre-program your show.

• Easy View 3D
• Capture Polar
• Light Converse
• ESP Vision
• Martin Show Designer
• GrandMA 3D
• Avolites  (visualiser now part of Titan)
• Cham Sys MagicQ Visualiser (currently in alpha)

Stage Lighting Design Software – Choose Your CAD is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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While looking at the new ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, On Stage Lighting considers the future of colour in stage lighting control and revisits an old problem with a possible solution that leads to further questions.

The Colour Mixing Problem

In a past article, we looked at a specific problem concerning the crossfading of colour mixing lighting units and the possible visual hideousness that can be the stopping off point between one colour and another.

Briefly, the principle of channel value controlled colour mixing and state based lighting create an problem. When channel levels create a mixed light colour based on the intensity of individual colours like Red, Green and Blue (RGB) sources, a fade between these colours sends the values through a series of colours including what might be termed Dull White.

Colour Mixing and Crossfades suggests ways in which these transitions can be managed, either by hand or using additional cues as stopping off points that create an A-road bypass around the Dull White and avoid unwanted colours between two lighting looks.

The Colour Control Problem

The way we currently run colour mixing fixtures using additive RGB, RGBW et al and subtractive CMY uses control channels for each colour component intensity. This used to simply translate to a series of 8-bit values on an encoder (or even earlier, a fader) but lighting console makers wanted to give us more. They created ways in which we could “pick” the colour or align it to a simplified colour model that might approximate, say, a Lee filter. By somewhat crudely mashing up a series of values, a colour was produced that didn’t involve wheely-wheelying each individual colour emitter to it’s desired intensity.

But “crudely” is the key. The actual resulting colour output is, of course, very much based on the light source it is being used with, what colour temperature discharge lamp, the colour of the Magenta flag or which “Red” LED. This mashing of values and the variable nature of the light source depending on fixture type, has always led me to create my colours while avoiding things like “colour pickers” and any adjustments made are directly controlled by said wheely-wheelying the specific colour channel.

Some professional consoles give the programmer the option to use Hue, Saturation and Intensity (HSI) or some similar model to set the exact colours. These systems don’t really address the issue that a lighting console doesn’t actually see the colours it thinks it’s outputting and can’t really judge if the Cheapo-LED Pro is actually the same steel blue as the Lari*lite 2000 Wash.

The CIE Colour Space

Before we go anywhere, you should probably know about the CIE colour space. It’s extremely interesting and science-y if you are extremely interested in science-y things. If not, it’s basically a mathematical way of describing a particular colour, based on coordinates and can be visualised with a lovely rainbow thing shaped like, well, something. The important bit is that, using these coordinates we can describe colour. Handy.

The ilumo Zoom LED Spot

I recently took a look at the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, following it’s formal outing at the Frankfurt show. The last time I saw the prototype, it was more of a non-working model, but this time Lumonic’s baby was full of life and I had plenty of questions for the designer of the ZOOM Spot.

Well, ok, so it’s not really a spot. If you expect it act like a projector or profile spot, it doesn’t.

The Zoom LED from Lumonic is a fixed PAR style colour mixing fixture, with a remote motorised zoom. It’s based on OSRAM high brightness LEDs in an array and goes from pretty darn tight to nice ‘n’ wide. The ilumo is DMX controllable, has all the things you’d expect from a professional level colour mixing PAR-like and a load of other things too. We’ll let you head over to the website to mug up on all these things, but notice that the design pedigree of this fixture is not insignificant, having a heritage with the orginal JTE Pixel range of LED kit including the famous “1044”. If you know your MAX2s from your RGB DMX modes, hold that thought.

There is much to talk about in this LED fixture, but this article isn’t a product review. We are more concerned with the concepts for colour mixing control , of which the Zoom Spot flags up.

Fixture Personality

The ilumo ships with range of possibilities regarding the way the unit is controlled via DMX (or similar: Artnet, sACN etc.) and these possibilities are wrangled into what they call “personalities” but you might consider simlar to fixture “modes”. These have been put together by the designers to give the user a single point of access to a specific setup, a bit like a stored series of settings, rather than what we think of as modes, which seem to be most manufacturers way of making sure you end with a fixture that will Pan and Tilt, but won’t open it’s dimming shutter!!

Within this personality, one channel of DMX control may be given over to what the ilumo call “Colour Control”, which in reality sets up the unit to behave in certain ways regarding it’s use of colour. Remember, this is controlled remotely from the console using ranges on a single 8-bit channel, effectively giving you control over the colour model at any given time, right there in your cues. In P6 (Personality 6) the channel map looks like:

• 0-40 RGBW (raw)
• 41-80 RGB (calibrated)
• 81-120 CIE x & y
• 121 – 160 CIE Colour Temperatures 2000K to 10000K
• 161-200 Palette Selection
• 201-255 HSI (& Colour Temperature)

The first part of this channel range simple sets the fixture to a standard RGBW model, in which a Red at full equals all the Red emitters are full pelt. But take a moment to look at the other models, all interesting in their own right. HSI is there and is what is says on the tin, plus something called calibrated. There is mention of the CIE coordinates x and y, but more on that in a moment.

Colour Calibration

With all the mention of colour temperatures and the problems outlined at the start of this article regarding the somewhat vague nature of colour mixing, it’s worth looking at how calibration works within the ilumo. For a start, what you are looking at is the fixture itself designating what colour it is, based on things such as your chosen CT or calibrated Red, Green and Blue sources.

What this means is that you can set the Red at the fixture to be “LEE 106” or “LEE 027” and other possibilities, customisable or standard. Obviously, the LED units themselves don’t swap out for new ones, the fixture creates the base colours with a combination of it’s given raw material and an uplift in this calibrated “Red” might involve a change in all RGBW LEDs. You can see why this is called a Colour Engine already. We are pretending to control this RGB fixture in a simplistic way, and it’s busy doing stuff under the hood.

CIE X and Y Coordinates

As we now know, you can pick a colour using the CIE colour space using numbers, and this is where the CIE x & y comes in. Again, we are now looking at taking out the vagaries of the console colour picker and identifying exactly a colour that the engine will attempt to reproduce. I have to say at this point, that these in-fixture calcs presumably don’t take into account the age of the LEDs themselves or the batch, possibly not even the model generation of the ilumo range. Anyone that has worked with a large quantity of JTE 1044 Pixelline of different ages, from different hire companies, will know the shenanigans involved in putting all that “that sort” next to “those other ones” when it came to getting and even colour. Now, of course, LED technology has advanced and perhaps such variance is less common.

But keep the CIE model in your mind as we move on to…

Palette Control

In lighting programming, we know what “palettes” are with regard to consoles. They are a preset thing, including colour, that we can save away for later use and update centrally. They are the centre of our world. The ilumo uses the term “palette” accurately, but not in the way we moving light programmers think of it. So let’s call them “Stored Colours” for the minute.

These stored colours are recalled by one of two DMX controlled channels, I didn’t get if they stored the same colours or different ones on each channel, to be honest. The key thing is that the two channels act like an A/B buss, like a DJ mixer. One channel sets up one colour, the other, another a second colour. The final piece of this puzzle is the third X-Fade channel – it’s the sideways slider-y thing that DJs like to fiddle with. It fades between the two colours, loaded up on the A and B busses.

“But why?” I hear you ask. “Surely, we don’t need to set up a colour on a channel and another on another channel, and upload and store it in the LED fixture to then crossfade between them. I spent good money on a lighting console that does that for me and without so much faffing about!!” Well, it’s a good point.

The interesting thing about the ilumo ZOOM Spot is the reason it bothers with all this in the first place. The colour engine goes out of it’s way, to, well, go out of it’s way!

What I mean is, the crossfade from colour A to colour B deliberately doesn’t take the path that leads through Dull White or other colour nasties. The fixture finds a route from one side of the CIE colour space to the other, while trying to avoid Yuckville around the middle.

I’m not entirely clear how the routing decisions are taken but tested it out and it does actually work, presumably the engine interpolates between the two colours, rather than simple changing intensities in a linear fashion. The acid test for an RGB fixture is something like a Red to Cyan crossfade, taking the LEDs at their extremes and crossing them over. The colour route wasn’t half bad and there was no discernible dips or bulges in intensity during the transition.

The Questions

All these interesting solutions and options for more accurate colour control create some interesting questions, which probably don’t have one answer for everyone:

Are colour mixing fixtures expected to make a better job of their colour business within the fixtures themselves, making it easier on the end user and the lighting console?

Is it better that the dumb kit just takes instruction from a calculating console, which in turn needs a lot more information about the light source than it currently has? (Cue minor rant about the nature of console fixture personalities)

Is the additional effort of creating and storing colours in a fixture, in order to make use of it’s colour cross fading engine, offset by the benefits to the lighting designer of better transitions?

Can I ever think in CIE coordinates? And if I do start with a CIE colour, can I edit in them or do I need to return “bumping up the Green a bit”? I don’t mean “Can the kit do this?”, can my brain?

Are we happy to simply create console colour palettes up for various fixture types, adjusting them and matching them by eye, and putting up with dealing with transition issues using the various workarounds we have at the moment?

How does a fixture with such proprietary colour control fit onto the consoles of today and tomorrow, with their current colour setting arrangements? If other colour mixing kit doesn’t use such a control system, does it even matter?

Are we finally seeing the limits of DMX and other dumb channel based one-way control for complex fixtures? And are workarounds like the A/B Colour buss just pandering to an old system when we should just get up to speed with our controls?

The ilumo ZOOM LED Spot is a very interesting piece of technology and control implementation, as well as being a very nice piece of kit from the lighting designer’s point of view. Lumonic says their mission is to “challenge the status quo” and there are elements within their patent pending Colour Crossfade Engine that certainly does that. It also asks questions of us as programmers and those that design our interfaces.

Do you have any thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the comments below as usual.

Appendix for DMX chart nerdery – Personality P6 channel mapping:

1. Red (or Red calibrated or Hue)
2. Green (or Green calibrated or Saturation)
3. Blue (or Blue calibrated or Intensity)
4. White (or White CT)
5. Zoom
6. Dimmer Speed
7. Master Intensity
8. Strobe
9. Colour Control (mentioned above)
10. Colour Temperature
11. CIE x coordinate
12. CIE y coordinate
13. Palette A (colour buss discussed above)
14. Palette B
15. Palette Crossfade (A/B)

Ilumo Zoom LED Spot and Colour Mix Control is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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In a world where both traditional lighting and digital visual media are the domain of the modern lampie, On Stage Lighting considers the forthcoming release of media software Resolume 4 Arena which looks like it has potential in the small to mid scale show visual market.

Here at OSL, we don’t really do product reviews and the following piece continues that tradition. In order to give you a look around the software, we finish up with a video poke about under the hood.

This article simply looks at Resolume 4, which is in Beta 2 at the time of writing, from the point of view of a Lighting Designer/Programmer and asks if we should give the new Arena offering our attention. If you have some experience of media servers or the complexities of current projection and mapping trends, you’ll find some ideas on using Resolume 4 instead of your more familiar Arkatalyst Hippo Box software (see what I did there?). If you didn’t get that joke and have little experience of media servers in show production, read on anyway after checking this media server primer from a few years ago.

What might we want from our media server?

To precis, media servers are used on all kinds of show to play digital media which is then either projected on screens, the set, the floor, or even pixel mapped to starcloths or other low resolution outputs. They come as hardware/software or simply as software that you run on your own machine such as a decent spec laptop or desktop PC/Mac. Resolume is in the software camp and the interesting thing for us about Resolume 4 Arena is that they have added features to their Avenue VJ platform that are relevant to what we do. We will completely ignore the fact that it does quantised audio playback for simplicity today. Resolume has a setting to Hide Audio Controls, which clears thing up for us.

So what do us lampies really want from a media server and how does Resolume stack up? We’ll start with our typical Lampie Demands and see where it gets us.

Content playback

The ability to pick and mix video files and play them back whole, or in loops, or backwards or in a specific order.

Resolume 4 Arena plays stuff back as you would expect. Unlike some other lampie media servers, it’s a little different to simply picking a media folder between 0 and 255, the picking a clip between 0 and 255. It does have the usual Play Modes: Forward, Backward, Bounce, Loop etc. plus Pause, Stop,yadda yadda yadda.

The thing that is different is the way it organises content, something you do at the terminal, not from the lighting desk, as it’s extremely flexible which is code for saying “You are likely to get yourself into a muddle.”

Composition:

The file/workspace you are working on at the time and the final output of your combined content.

Decks:

Within the Composition, a collection of layers and clips you’ve set up, that you can toggle between from the desk if you like. You could use a different desk per song, for example.

Layers:

If you are into media servers, you know what layers are. You can set the number of layers and drag and drop clips from your media folder onto slots on the layer. The difference with these layers, is that although they are numbered by default, the layer order is not set in stone and you can bump order around so a different one is “on top”.

The layers have the usual Opacity and other manipulation controls such as scale, size, rotation and a whole bunch of others.

Columns:

The slots that you drag content in live in Layers on the X axis, but in columns on the Y axis. Now you might be starting to see that Resolume differs from things like Catalyst. Columns can be triggered ie. all the clips in all the layers of that column can be “Go”ed at once, firing off your final look of combined layers. You can also set the columns to auto fire along the line in a time you specify. You can bump the order of the columns…. uh oh…. so much choice….

Clips:

These are the slots where your media file is put ready to play, in the Layer you choose and in the relevant column to taste. The file can be triggered by a Column or individually and get this, you can move the clip around within the Layer. Holy confusion, Batman. Fortunately, I don’t think you can do this from the console by default.

So, unlike some media servers, Resolume Arena doesn’t so much have a timeline in the conventional sense but it does have options for the firing of cues, using pre set up columns is probably your best way. Either way, the flexibility in this means that you should decide on some kinda ordered system of how you use your layers and columns and clips and decks. And stick to it.

Along with conventional video content, Resolume can also deal with Flash and Quartz Composer stuff, which is fandabbydozey because that kind of realtime rendered content is just loverly and opens up huge possibilities that don’t rely on particular videos of particular resolutions.

Content Manipulation

To be able to layer, mix and generally mess about with video content, to come up with something original and fitting the visual look of the show. We want to be able to muck up the 4 loop clips we have in so many ways, so that it looks like we have endless content hidden back there.

OMG. Forget scaling and rotating, the tools you have for manipulating content at every level, Composition (output level), Layer and Clip are like having real time After Effects that you can plug in wherever you like.

With the standard manipulations such as scale, you have constant access to them from the console but the fun starts when you look at plugging in your effects such as Colour Shift or Waves. These effects can hit any level, can be applied in different orders and you can assign certain parameters to the eight Dials at the top of the Clip, Layer or Composition tab. This translates to dials on the console, meaning that in one instance, an encoder could be controlling Red level of a Layer, the next could be tweaking the Noise or Mask across the whole Composition.

If you can’t get a whole show outta 4 clips and all this visual trickery, you ain’t trying. The key point is, again, you need a structured approach and to spend some time setting up what you want to be able to control. And keep it simple. My suggestion would be to assign Add/Subtract Colours Red, Green and Blue at Layer Level to your dials, giving you the option to blend your visuals into the rest of your stage look.

Live Media Playback Control

If we wanted to play an hour long piece of edited content, we could simply make up our video and get the boys out back to press play on the ‘ol Beta tape machine. This millennium, we want to be able to busk our visuals live during the show. There are people that do this, they are called Video Jockeys (VJs). We would like to be like them, please. We’ve done it with a rig full of moving lights, how hard can it be?

If you’ve been reading the above section and your brain is still intact, you might see how live playback is Resolume’s strength. Assign this to that, fire this using the other, hold your pretend headphones to one ear and mix, man. Apart from all the above methods of busking your content real time, I need to mention the DJ style A/B buss that you can assign layers too, giving you the option of flicking that particular bean. Standby for sideways crossfaders on yer console…

As with moving lights, how you play back your show live is entirely up to you. Resolume 4 is good enough for VJs, it can work for us lampies too!

Control from the lighting desk (console, if you must)

We want to be able to use our nimble fingers to wiggle faders and bump buttons right at the lighting control surface. We want to control the world with our GrandXZY Hogolites VII, every atom in the venue directly connected to our wheely wheely encoders and fondly touchscreens.

Resolume Arena allows for both ArtNet control and via the Enttec USB DMX Pro box, so no excuses for not being able to plug your desk into it. If you so inclined you could follow the lead of some big gig LDs and use a cheap MIDI interface with keys, knobs and faders. Or use SMPTE timecode to trigger your stuff. The choice is yours.

Not only that, but you can map any DMX channel to any attribute by setting the software to listen and sending that channel while selecting the attribute. Oh no, more choice.

Luckily, the Auto DMX Map facility sets our channel mapping in stone so that it ties up with available fixture personality files and means you have some kind of stationary point in a turning world. The composition (remember, the overall output) uses 28 DMX channels and each Layer requires 37 channels, both include the all important 8 Dials as well as their various options.

I’ve been using the MagicQ with the default personality file and it works well enough with Avenue 3.x, although I might make some changes to create my own custom personality to reflect my workflow. These would be to move things like Dial 1 – 3 (which could be Colour) to the Colour mixing area of the desk meaning it appears in the right place for me and can take part in any colour mixing shenagins I care to throw at it. By default, an awful lot of the parameters are accessed under Beam because they have no set function until you decide how you are going to run your show.

At the time of writing, the beta 2 version of Arena 4 needs work as the DMX Auto channel mapping is muddled up. Resolume tell me that they are working on this and as Avenue 3.x works fine, I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash.

*Update: The full release of Arena 4 DMX Auto Map includes extra channels of DMX control for both the Composition and Layer fixtures.  This means that a DMX personality file created for Avenue 3 will not work as expected, you will need to use an updated file specifically for Arena 4.

Accessibility

We do not want to wait, we need to press buttons now and see results yesterday. This should work if I press that. Don’t worry I know what I’m doing, I can’t possibly break this, I remember saltwater dimmers, y’know…etc.

We do not want to type in an entire sentence of DOS commands into a fiddly keyboard, just to have our dreams appear in front of us. We like drag, we like drop. We like “I want this, over there.”

We also want it to be affordable and not involve piles of expensive kit that we don’t already own.  It’s all very well for PRG, we just can’t afford vast warehouses stuffed with throbbing rackmount media wotsits.  We do have a Macbook, however.

My seven year old has worked out how to get a clip onto a layer and set it’s opacity, before adding another clip and adjusting the colour or jitter. Everything in Resolume is super intuitive, you drag things into position, drag effects into where you want them and even drag parameters on the those magic six Dials.

I’m a lampie and even I can work this. Having used some pretty unsexy media server interfaces, I can say that I really get on with this.

However, that’s in the software interface. What about the lighting desk? Here’s the rub. Resolume 4 does not currently seem to support MSEX or CITP or whatever it is that you like to send your media thumbnails between your server and your lighting desk.

You can see why this might be hard to implement.

Given that you can fire stuff at Column and Clip level and that you can reorder clips and layers and columns, where exactly would it get it’s thumbnail from? This is easy when all you have is Folder 254, Clip 127 but I assume it’s less easy when what you are about to output is not based on the media file itself, but the result of a media file that lives in a bucket such as a Clip, Layer, or Column. But still, this means when looking at the console you are not looking at a bunch of pretty pictures. And we like pretty pictures, we are visual people.

Given that many other of our current media servers can do this, and that lighting consoles are often equipped with enhanced media server control areas, this seems like a weakness in an otherwise strong offer for us. Time spent deciphering text legends, or heaven forbid, looking at the software, is time spent not looking at the stage or the control surface.

Being software based, Arena is priced at a point that brings it within the realm of an owner/operator LD that wishes to bring a bit of extra something to their clients without major financial commitment.  Let’s face it, you don’t get paid extra to bring these goodies, they just give you the edge and make a show that is better than just OK.  You get booked next time.

Pixel mapping

One day, lampies decided that they didn’t know much about big LED screens or things with many pixels but they did understand starcloth, RGB LEDs and a way of turning that into a huge telly using an ArtNet network to transmit lots of DMX universes to an array. This mapping of digital content to a lo res grid of starcloth-like pixels became known as, er, pixel mapping and gave rise to actual products that made your stage look pretty.

Resolume isn’t designed to be a pixel mapper and I’m not sure if I see why they would need to add that feature. We have stand alone mapping systems that take a video input, plus things integrated with lighting consoles that serve our needs. Pixel mapping as we know it at the moment is dependent on the fashion for particular bits of output kit and while it’s principles can be used to create lighting effects as well as send pretty pictures to large arrays, this is not what Arena is for.

Multi-mapped bledge ending thingys..

We want to do things Vidiots can do. We‘d like to make big screens out of multiple projectors without having to learn complicated videoperson software or pay for for said videoperson to eat into our fees and drink our coffee. We want to map bits of our mind-bending visual vomit to funny shaped things strewn all over our stage. We do not like boring 4:3 projection screens, they are for Powerpoint.

The possibilities of edge blending (using multiple projectors to create one large picture) and projection warping/mapping (projecting onto strange shapes) is where my interest in Resolume Arena began. Given it’s price point of less than 700 Euros, it’s seriously attractive as these features are often found as add-ons to already expensive hardware or software. So what can it do?

Within the Advanced section of the Output settings, you have control over your final input to the , er, Output stage. This is your Composition, the result of all your hard work of layers etc. output as a single picture. You can slice up this input picture, eventually sending different portions of it to your connected screens (video graphics outputs).

These can overlap and you can apply a soft edge to them, meaning you can edge blend as you stitch the results back together again with your projectors.

The other side of this Advanced output is, er, the actual Output stage. This is where you assign the slices of your input to an actual output which is assigned to a real world video graphics output. These outputs slices can be manipulated too, stretching and skewing, mapping them to your final surface which could be a rectangular screen, a curve or even an angled funny shaped thingy.

The way that you can slice up the inputs, assign them to an output and overlap them means that you have very simple but quite powerful control over your mapping. Being able to overlap the input stage, and then send that to different parts of an output stage enables you to be able to edge blend across something as cheap as a Matrox TripleHead To Go. Or get a seemingly flat image across multi angled surfaces. Cool beans.

You can save the output settings to a preset. It would be great if you could recall presets as part of your show running, allowing for changes in projection set up. At the moment, this is a set and forget job.

Conclusions

Resolume Arena 4 is still in beta. Their beta tester forums suggest that there is still work to do, which you might expect. See update below*

They are currently offering a pre-New Year release discount on the pre-sale licence price, which added to the educational discount, made it an offer too good to refuse for me. I have students that want to know about this kinda thing and money is always tight. As an early Christmas pressie, I’ve been living with Arena for a couple of weeks now and I can already see potential in markets that we all understand.

Content, live manipulation, mapping, blending, it’s the kind of thing I’ve been trying to do on the cheap for clients since before anyone had heard the term projection mapping. It was hard to sell, even using existing kit with a bit of ingenuity and creativity. No one could see the point and kinda smiled and changed the subject. Now, everyone is on this particular page, they all want their shows to look like “that thing off the telly.” Sure, if you are used to a particular media server, you might have to look at the world a little differently from time to time.

If you are in the business of creating visual stage magic without access to boundless budget and racks of hardware, Resolume 4 Arena could be the very thing that you were looking for. Just thought I’d mention it.

*Stop Press: The day following publication of this preview Resolume 4 was taken out of Beta and is now available as a full version for all users to trial.  Great stuff.

(Now take a look at the Resolume 4 via our 15 minute bonus embedded screencast. Any issues with the embed, the link is http://www.screencast.com/t/hfDBDWSAvl1A )

Resolume 4 Arena Review – Media Server Software is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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Armed with nothing but a well worn pair of shoes and four days supply of anti-migraine pills, On Stage Lighting hits Earl’s Court in London for the 2011 assault on the senses that is the PLASA show.

If previous PLASA shows were an indicator of the direction of travel in style, visitors to the PLASA (Promotion of LEDs And Screens Ad nauseum) show 2011 were going to have to steel themselves. At past shows, in order to keep the nausea at bay, you simply had to pace yourself, avoid protracted stints on any stands serving beer and decline the strange coloured cocktails that Avolites might offer.

This year, the unsuspecting punter at Earl’s Court also had to deal with two halls full of exhibitors trying to induce various forms of visually stimulated ill health with their products. Despite being a few stands bit heavy on the sub, it actually seemed quieter this year in audio terms – light was the weapon of choice.

So what was it all about this year? Apart from getting yer retinas frazzled…

LEDs, LEDs, LEDs…Oh, and a fresnel

OK, so LED lighting technology has been developing rapidly in recent years and previous shows have featured an increasing number of LED based products. PLASA 2011 (the Chinese year of the LED, apparently) often seemed about little else. This is especially true when you take into account the fact that designers of digital audio desks are now stuffing them full of colour changing illuminated bits everywhere in an order not to be outdone by the lampies.

Don’t you wish you’d bought those shares in, well, whatever it is that they put in those chips that makes them light up, now?

PLASA shows have seen plenty of LED wash lights, moving LED wash lights, LED arrays and panels and this year was no exception. The improvements in colour rendition, the continuation of development of multi LED colour systems like the ETC Selador and others, the use of warm white, cool white and what the Americans call toonable white, continues.

This has led (ahem) to cutting edge LED driven fixtures being used in all genres of the industry and most notably in television. This is significant because TV lighting is particularly picky when it comes to things like CRI and colour temperature, multi chromatic shadows and the flicker on camera caused by fixtures that dim using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) – as LEDs do.

The adoption of LEDs in the TV industry was demonstrated by the excellent LED Shootout area, organised by Paul Middleton and others from the Society of Television Lighting and Design (STLD) which had demos, seminars and the opportunity to see a choice of over 80 LED fixtures in use. While the title of “shootout” suggests a quest for the ultimate in LED product, the stand followed the STLD ethos of the free exchange of ideas between lighting directors and was more of an opportunity to consider the options, rather than find the killer fixture, and to share best practice. Useful.

The perceived holy grail in LED based fixtures was genuine point light sources, either multi coloured or not, in order to produce an LED based profile spot (lekos, in the US) and also an LED fresnel replacement. PLASA 2011 was where a clutch of these things came to the party and joined the few already in this space such as the Robert Juliat Aledin, and really showed us that LED and high quality optical systems were a reality and a long way from the horrors of El Cheapo units.

In terms of form factor, Coemar and Strong profile offerings seemed familiar in appearance if not quite light output of a 750w HPL loaded Source Four. In the “bright and sharp” stakes, the Prism RevEAL garnered a lot of interest due to it’s extremely punchy output and high quality optics – and not the fact that it’s large size and shape made it look like something that would make your average Ann Summer’s customer eyes water. Prism were showing in the ever expanding White Light Zone, confirming the WL strategy of partnering their way to the top with JB Lighting, iPix, Core, Coemar, W-DMX and Arkaos, with popular MD Bryan Raven smiling down benignly on the hub of activity that is the White Light bar.

Along with the RJ, Philips Selecon and others were displaying LED based fixed washlight / fresnel replacement fixtures either with familiar stepped lenses or not. Everyone had an cannon of LED wash lights, often moving yoke, aimed at a particular market – and more often than not, right in our eyes. Particular thanks go to Clay Paky, Martin and Robe for that, plus an additional shout out to Avolites who had managed to program a flying purple splodge that kept assaulting anyone that dared to try to study the demo screen in their AI media server area.

Anyone playing “Spot the conventional” might have stopped by the ETC stand to look at the Source Four fresnel, the answer to the question of how you mount a lamp designed to be used axially in a base-down fixture design. Like many lanterns past and present, the Achilles heel seemed to be the focus mech, that had only been on the stand a day by the time we tried it and was looking a little awkward in terms of design and snagging – not an issue with just this fixture I might add, but plenty of others from other stables. The overly complex colour runner door latch thingys were also bust by then.

Control and Media

Back at the Avolites stand, an excellent demo-er took me through the new pixel mapping features of their Titan control platform which also gave me an opportunity to see  Avo really getting there after a shaky start on their journey into modern control platforms.

The key to Avolites products is their simplicity, hands on use and visual nature and with Titan they finally seem to have managed to claw back some of the Avo Way while offering the things that a modern LD wants from their controller. Titan now looks more intuitive, complete and attractive (LD attractive, not just shiny graphics) than earlier incarnations and the hardware in the form of a working Sapphire Touch plus Tiger Touches and Pearl Expert were showing off it’s chops, along with Titan Mobile hardware and some posh touchscreens. Their solid dimmers stood stoically by, including the great Power Cube that has been around a little while, even though the mention of RDM induced a coughing fit.

The Avo Life didn’t yet seem to extend to the AI media server which Avolites have bought the rights in a strategic partnership with Immersive Ltd. which looks like a fantastic piece of software for the Aspergic but didn’t have an ounce of Avo ease of use stamped on it. Whether complex projection mapping and rendering is a good fit with the Avo brand isn’t totally clear to me. But it’s early days and in recent years, Avo have demonstrated that while they might falter in early moves, they are cabable of ironing out the wrinkles even though it’s done in public. The carrier bag pushing beauties didn’t seem to outnumber the number of Avo people that actually knew something this year.

In other stories of ever increasing complexity, the wonderfully visual Vista with it’s Bryon release software is beginning to look devilishly complicated to the untrained eye. Seemingly more menus, buttons, screen areas and sub layers to keep up with increasing features and tool sets, one can’t help but wonder if we shouldn’t be looking elsewhere for inspiration in our interaction surfaces. And keeping it simple.

This theme was touch on by self confessed data junkie Rob Halliday in his seminar on lighting control, who actually simply called for more intelligent use of data within consoles. A small element of this features in my own personal nemesis, the Strand Palette. Given his console history, it’s hardly surprising that Rob is at his most comfortable with a numeric keypad and a spreadsheet on screen and still many of our current forays into the multi touch environment only really augment what are essentially way of presenting data and manipulating it.

On other stands at PLASA, we saw the Emulator DJ software used with a large rear projected touch surface or the rather fun Interactive Visions media projection and interaction on a tabletop or floor. While maybe in lighting all we need is an iPad, the idea of giving the Lighting Designer the tools to create without data manipulation being so intrusive, is an attractive one.

The notion that technology innovation might be driving the design was a theme covered at an ALD seminar on the “The Next 50 Years” in lighting, held in a back room while out on the show floor that technology continued to assault the senses.

Future gazing and self contemplation was a feature which ever side of the fence you were on, certain quarters hankering for the good old days of Patt 264s (What???? They were horrible and everyone said so at the time!!!!). Certainly everyone was looking forward, whether vying to have the brightest, modernist LED fixture or discussing the Quality of Light. During a lull in the reminiscing and misty eyed eulogies for the Pattern 23, it was back to the floor to look at what the kit makers had brought us for “Going Back To School” in lighting control.

ETC were showing their new Gio console, the one that is more portable than the EOS but bigger than the Ion. It’s common for touring theatre shows to program on an EOS and tour with an Ion, gone are the days when the show just schlepped about the UK with a Strand 500 series show disk. The Gio looked attractive with a sensible desk footprint and is nicely made to stay together while touring. I can think of a few smaller theatres that would perhaps prefer something a little more than their recently purchased Ion, maybe ETC should run a buyback scheme!

If small was your thing, the Cham Sys M60 filled in the gap between their PC wings and a full size MagicQ console, with a familiar set of hardware including a smaller touchscreen that looked nice. Ham fisted programmers might see the benefit of the old fashioned “Hog Ops Pencil” (a pencil with an eraser at both ends) to help them with their prodding.

Along with the visual barrage from the waggly LED wash light brigade, more eyeball battering came from the large number of hi resolution module LED based screens – more than ever before. In the past, large walls of lower res stuff have provided colourful displays but PLASA 2011 was increasing about quality content rendering on panels made up of clip together modules.

The LED craze in screens too meant that the fashion for projected things waned, apart from a few small pockets where the media server guys showed off their projection mapping capabilities. If forced to predict something that would be a whole lot more evident next year, it would be the area of 3D projection mapping and larger scale displays of this. Along with the usual Hippotizer, Pandora’s Box and the aforementioned Avo AI servers, Earls Court 2 saw the commercial version of the well regarded D3 system used on many shows including running the central LED screen on U2s 360 tour.

Anything Interesting?

On Stage Lighting spent four days asking this very question of everyone, from some of the biggest luminaries in lighting to young BTEC students coming for a day out. For all the square footage of shiny toys, no single item or trend was cited as floating the boat of the punters, despite the leaps in technology and showing of “new” things such as a profile spot, albeit an LED based fixture. Perhaps PLASA goers will have to wait until next year for that life changing new thing.

That isn’t to damn the show as a waste of time, as there was plenty of opportunity for networking and future gazing which leads to the shaping of our industry. And hey, it’s fun once you’ve found a quiet corner away from the strobing to recover and just talk to good friends. A lot of those friends were wondering what the future in performance lighting might look like, and despite the stands telling us that they were it, many didn’t seem that sure.

Others talked of disconnect between manufacturers and users, even between the needs of distinct genres and the production of fixtures that are supposed to please every market. TV seemed happy with their LEDs in the studio, the Rock and Roll guys will be loving the new iPix colour mixing LED ACL bars while many theatre users just seem to wish it would all go away and stop making so much noise so they can dust off the 264s. That doesn’t include the RSC, who have embraced the modern lighting world and even invented a solution to their specific problem – the RSC LightLock, which was there again.

A particularly big trend that is interesting to me, following on from PLASA last year, is the use of batteries and wireless DMX. Initially what I would call the “Plonk and Play” wall washers from GDS, Core LED, iPix et al, the totally portable market is growing to integrate push up stands (GDS again) and features that make a wireless way of life more possible. The start of a trend for modular (different heads, same power base), “come to pieces” kit that allows for the light source to be sited separately from it’s normally attached power and control station, give the LED/Battery/Wireless DMX solution a load more flexibility.

Add this to the fact that, despite it’s challenges, all the major players in Wireless DMX solutions (W-DMX, City Theatrical and Lumen Radio) seem to have cracked the timing issues associated with sending RDM DMX over a wireless system – it’s all very interesting in the truly portable market. Perhaps our shows will be a lot less wire heavy in the future, particularly at ground level where cable management can be an issue.

Once the brochures had been put in the recycling and the last motor had been boxed in Earl’s Court, the key take away from PLASA 2011 was how tiring the show is becoming to attend on a sensory level. I’m sure exhibitors found it more tiring than ever, I certainly did. It’s worth the exhibitors remembering that the kind of lighting, sound and media that you reserve for a few hours of spectacle during a single show is not a good environment to do business in over four days.

Next year, I’ll certainly be planning more quiet time, seminars and spend more time exploring the darker corners that West London might have to offer, possibly from under the duvet of the hotel. If there is anything interesting to see, I’m sure someone will tweet me

Did you attend PLASA 2011? Got anything you’d like to add, stuff you liked or hated? Comments in the box as usual, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

PLASA 2011 – Show Report is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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Following the recent news of several stage and event structure collapses, On Stage Lighting looks at where we have come from as a fledgling industry and where we might look for a path in the future.

This last month or so, it’s been a regular event: The reporting of a temporary structure failure at a show, leading to serious injury and loss of life. In recent years this kind of news is no longer unheard of, either during a build or a show, something in a roof support or rigging system fails and sets off a chain of events that is putting people in danger.

There has been, and will be, a lot of speculation about specific recent failures, much of it temporal conjecture and even more of it political wriggling, blame and avoidance. Once the bereaved have been comforted, scapegoats cited (like the Weather Gods), legal proceedings done and lip service paid to future event safety, there is the horrific possibility that the “show will go on.”

My hope is that there will be some actual lessons learned and disseminated throughout the industry – but how?

We Are Toddlers

The live event business has grown up fast, now calling ourselves an “industry”. Not long ago it was nothing more than a collection of individuals putting on shows with whatever they could hack together. Look around you at the tools and systems we have now, many of them nicked from a wide range of unrelated industries, construction, lifting, cargo, shipping, military, telecoms, rescue – the list goes on.

Not so long ago, we were using electric hoists in vibrant colours with the decals “upside down”, the casings sprayed black to make them less obtrusive in a show environment. Spansets only came in a range of colours based on their working load. Now they come in black and are sold by sales reps that actually know which way is “out”. We design structures using things we already use, added to other things that we already use with some custom fabricated items. And then put a roof covering on it.

We have a short history of finding ways of doing things quickly, cheaply and to satisfy the needs of the show for the short period that it runs.

What we don’t have is a long history of shared design standards and practice. The industry has just started, in relative terms, we have the beginnings of all these things and have come a long way in the last 40 years.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) was founded nearly 200 years in a London coffee house and continues to provide a platform for the sharing of knowledge, as well as being a qualifying body and promoting the profession. We have PLASA (encompassing ESTA), which produces things such as “ANSI E1.21-2006 – Temporary Ground-Supported Overhead Structures Used To Cover Stage Areas and Support Equipment in the Production of Outdoor Entertainment Events”, written by industry professionals and currently under review. It is, however, important to remember that PLASA describes itself as a “pro-active trade association”, which means it rightly represents the interests of it’s members.

On the structures guides front, there is also the “Temporary demountable structures. Guidance on procurement, design and use” from the Advisory Group On Temporary Structures at IStructE (see, another professional body).

This continuing professional body model, like the ICE or IStructE, is surely vital in our future and hopefully still doing great work in 200 years time.

A professional body should be able to collate and disseminate design or implementation failure information, outside of the politics, lobbying or blame investigations, and make recommendations specific to the industry that it understands.

The Show Must Go On

It’s a badge of honour in our business. No matter what, by hook or by crook, the audience will not be disappointed and the show must go on. It’s a great way to galvanise the highly committed individuals in show business, getting the best out of people against the odds. But it leaves a legacy.

The idea that someone would dare to put their head above the trench and say “Stop” isn’t entertained. Stop, it’s dangerous. Stop, this person is too tired. Stop, this needs to be done in a way that costs more time and money. Stop, it’s just not possible. Sometimes, someone needs to have the conviction to walk out on that stage and say “Sorry, 20,000 people. We just need to stop.” I’m not talking about the automation tripping or the show Mac locking up and stopping the show, I mean saying “OK, things might seem fine right now but there is a risk…… And we can’t continue.”

The transient nature of live events is that, unlike a permanent building, it only has to get us to the end of the show – not last 50 years. This leads us to bodge perfectly safe solutions when a smoke machine duct hose goes missing or we need to use a road box as a table but it’s that same culture can lead to holding out and hoping that things will be ok for the next couple of hours. This is obviously not acceptable when it comes to serious stuff like the stability of structures.

Pseudo Safety

Sometimes people like to feel safe, so they do things to make themselves (or someone else) feel better. That might be using some form of under-spec’ed secondary safety bond, or attaching it to a point that is not actually going to take a decent shock load. It could be fitting an anemometer to a PA wing and occasionally checking the Met Office website first thing in the morning.

Say you have a structures guy with your gig. He clears the standing water regularly, keeps an eye on how the rig is loading the roof and generally sorts stuff out with 5 ton ratchet straps. The anemometer spins away on the PA wing, telling somebody that things are “safe” – it’s there reading wind speed after all.

What is the procedure if the wind speed reading gets to a certain point? Does he mention it to Production and what is their response? Is there a system in place to quickly remove the coverings to reduce wind loading? Now the structure is fully loaded with kit, can he even get to the coverings? Are the stage crew briefed on how to do this? Will anyone even entertain the idea that the covers need to come off, despite the thousands of pounds worth of moving lights and other kit that will get soaked by the rain? At what point will someone make the decision to systematically clear the stage area and crowd and stop the show? Who will make that decision? Will anyone actually do it – especially if the weather is not even on site yet?

Without all the following questions answered BEFOREHAND and the system in place, the anemometer is pointless.

I’ve seen many instances of pseudo-safety and box ticking in my career, things that don’t in themselves make life any safer but reassure you or others that something is being done. Luckily, most of the time this pseudo-safety isn’t actually tested.

Design Standards

Safety procedure is about having systems in place and actioning them. But we are also responsible for designing and erecting these structures.

Looking again at engineers in other industries, if you designed or built a structure that flat packed after a few 70 mph gusts that would be the end of your career and rightly so. Being responsible for a permanent structure that couldn’t stand up for it’s lifespan is unthinkable and even then the unthinkable happens, it’s because of a genuinely unforeseen set of parameters that were not understood at the time (like the collapse of the WTC.) These events change design standards for good.

Engineers design things to withstand certain conditions, in some disciplines this might be a weather event that occurs once in one hundred years, or once in five hundred. If you designed a building to withstand a 100 year event, if the building was going to be useful for 100 years then you would assume that such a design standard would be prudent.

Our temporary structures might not be up for more than a weekend. Does this mean that a 1 in 50 year weather event isn’t going to happen in that time? Of course not.

A lot of the catastrophic failures of temporary alloy structures in our business play out as a cascade of events. Something fails and the rest of the system follows. We are using lightweight, portable and demountable components that seem to be nearing their limits as a system without a more fail-safe approach. Let’s not forget that in recent years we are asking so much more of our temporary structures – the average moving light weighs 10x more than a PAR can. In the 70’s if a bit of tarp blew off the meagre scaffolding structure, it wasn’t a big deal. All of a sudden, we are putting more in terms of weight overhead than we have on the deck.

A fail-safe design takes into account the possibility of individual component failure, without jeopardising the rest of the structure as a whole and seeks to avoid further damage or injury. So many entertainment rigging failures have caused additional failures, rather than behaving in rip-stop fashion.
Another design standard that should be considered is the time it takes to avoid injury and loss of life. This is not somehow coming up with a design that is never, under any circumstances, going to become unstable and collapse – that would be uneconomic if not technically impossible.

Given that failures occur, how long can a building remain in an unstable state without complete failure, in order for the occupants to be alerted and evacuated to safety? Back in our world of temporary event structures, time between the initial failure and the catastrophe is unreasonably short at the moment.

The Future?

It is important that us toddlers are grown up enough to realise where our tiny industry is and how far we still have to go, including in areas of safety procedure and design standards. We need to continue to follow any good examples set by more established professions in terms of the sharing of knowledge and qualifying.

We also need to ensure as an industry that we make our own investigations and are realistic about the facts when things go wrong, it would be too easy to go along with the idea that it’s just “one of those things” and walk blindly into the next catastrophe, muttering “The Show must go on..”

Image based on a picture from helixblue on Flickr

Event Safety and Temporary Stage Design is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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A question from On Stage Lighting reader Michael prompts an article looking at a common consideration in modern stage lighting – successful transitions with colour mixing lighting fixtures.

***Note: Interesting product update at the bottom of this article.

Colour mixing facilities is rapidly becoming the norm on many types of show across a range of budgets. Lighting fixtures in all markets are now sporting technology that allows for a range of mixed colours, either in the form of CMY subtractive mixing or additive LED based mixing using RGB, RGB+W and more.

At the cheap end of the market, RGB LED PARs and floods are finding their way into every DJ rig, while at the other end of the scale pro kit such at the ETC Selador range and Vari*Lite VLX colour mixing engine are providing high intensity, consistent colours for shows all over the world. For the moment, this looks like the future even though there is still a place for good ol’ white light sources and gel filters.

While these technologies vary in output quality across price ranges, all are rapidly improving but they present the lighting programmer with a specific programming problem. It’s possible to control simple colour mixing equipment with the simplest of desks.  But whatever control you are using, how do you create acceptable colour transitions with colour mixing lighting fixtures?

Colour mixing technology might be relatively new, but the question isn’t and is only too familiar to anyone that used colour washes as the basis for their concert and theatre lighting or lit a cyc by mixing multi coloured battens. Getting from one “state” to another in full view of the audience without accidentally visiting some unwanted colours en route.

What is the problem?

In lighting, we commonly use crossfades to provide a smooth and seamless transition between lighting looks on stage. Cross fading of light intensity isn’t too complicated, some fixtures get brighter, some less bright or go out altogether.

The only possible issue is that intensities that are remaining roughly the same in each scene may fade down a little with the outgoing state, before being pushed back up again by the incoming cue – causing an unwanted dip. We have this mostly covered by dipless crossfade features within the lighting desk or the judicious dexterity when pushing faders by hand. We can also use split fade times or even channel specific fades or waits to overcome this and achieve visually pleasing crossfades.

The issue with intensity dips is a function of the transition from look to look in a fairly linear format – Scene 1 fades down, Scene 2 Fades up at the same time and in the middle somewhere, we have the potential for unwanted results while the intensity levels float to their new values.

The problem with colour transitions is the same, only this time the unwanted results aren’t a dip in intensity but a journey via colours X,Y and Z during the crossfade from A to B. For example, using a simple RGB fixture, a simple crossfade from Red to Blue starts at:

Red @ 100%
Blue @ 0%

and fades to

Red @ 0%
Blue @ 100%

With a simple linear fade, the mid point of this cue has values of Red @ 50% and Blue @ 50%, creating a Deep Pink / Magenta colour and a range of mixes at other points in the fade.

Now, a fade from Red to Blue via Pink might be fine for your needs or even look quite good. But what if it isn’t what you wanted? Another RGB example which might not be so forgiving is a Yellow to Blue. First up, let’s say we have Yellow values of:

Red @ 100%
Green @ 100%
Blue @ 0%

Again, with a straight crossfade between the two, there is a point where all RGB values are at 50%, creating a dirty white colour not to mention the hundreds of other colours that result from all other steps in the fade.

What’s more, now we have a situation where we were using R and G LEDs at Full, then just Blue, theoretically halving the intensity of the second look. But that is for another day, we are concerned with colours during the fade. What can we do to “pretty up” our transitions?

Getting Better Colour Mixing Transitions

The first step to improving live colour fades is to understand what is happening, in particular how additive and subtractive colour mixing actually achieves the colours. That way, you can make informed changes to your cues with the tools at your fingertips. How do you get Amber from an RGB LED, what makes up RED in a CMY moving spot? Read up on light colour mixing theory and experiment with your fixtures.

Blackouts

The simplest and most effective way to manage your colour fades is never to allow the unwanted mixing in the first place. This involves fading the outgoing colour to black before bringing in the new one. No piling on of colours that take you to whacky disco land between beautiful scenes. But blackouts are a statement in themselves, causing an obvious dip.

Multi Part Fade Cues

Either using automated playback or good ol’ finger pushing technology, you can create multi part cues to avoid colours you don’t want. That doesn’t mean the physics can be changed to allow for an “in view” fade without going via another colour, but it does let you choose the route. How about going from Yellow to Blue in a more orderly fashion?

Q1 Yellow = Red @100%, Green@ 100%, Blue @ 0%

Q2a Red = Green to 0%
Q2b Pink = Blue to 100%
Q2c Blue = Red to 0%

While this goes through a few colours, it does avoid a whole bunch of dirty white and pastelly ones on the way. You could equally take this multi part cue through Green and Cyan, although I’m not sure how many people choose green as a stopping off point in many shows. These part cues all run smoothly together, creating a single transition, but via colours you choose within the confines of colour mixing physics.

The key to this approach is to take something away first (in the example, Green), then add (Blue). Take away, then Add. I’ve used this trick by hand on many live shows, where I am performing long, long cross fades on colour mixing kit during the action.

Cross Fade Behaviour

Another way to tidy up your colour mixing transitions is to change the way the fade happens from it’s standard linear format. Professional lighting consoles often have powerful fade curve controls, but the principle can be applied using multi part cues, split fade times, follow ons or just finger technology during a live show.

Taking our Red to Blue example, we might not like the 50/50 Pink that a linear fade takes us through but instead try spend more time of the fade on shades of Lavender.

In this case, we might retard the fade in of the Blue, while taking some of the Red element out before quickly ramping up the Blue quickly past the more pinkish shades and then easing the fade to travel through some pleasant Lavs and slowing removing the last of the reds to rest at Blue.

It sounds more complicated than it is, especially if you experiment using your eyes and controlling a fade by hand, before diving down into cue fade curves if you have the facility. Alternatively, you could set up a few individual cues or part cues and then experiment with fade and wait times to get the cross fade you are after.

Hasn’t this always been an issue?

The effect of colour mixing in lighting cues has always played it’s part in cross fade decisions, well before RGB LED kit came along. Fading out a Straw scene into a Deep Blue wash, while less obviously travelling through other colours, can suffer from unwanted results.

But the use of single light sources with colour mixing, and the fashion for high intensity, saturated colours in all kinds of show lighting, has made live colour changes even more obvious and needs our careful attention.

The future?

In the future, lighting desks should continue to develop user friendly ways of taking control of what happens to your stage picture between A and B for all attributes including colour. This could be the ability to visually pick a path through the available colours between the cues, based on a calculation of the possible permutations, so the user could avoid some colour combinations. The software could indicate reasonable accurate predictions of the more complex mixes which would mean less mental calculation and guesswork by the programmer, or even better align the transitions between a set of RGB additive and CMY subtractive colour mixing fixtures in a single cue.

If colour mixing really is our future, lighting controls will need to continue to reflect those particular needs when programming cues and not settle for a simple graphical colour picker and leave it at that. Good stage lighting is as much about transitions as destinations and we need control over both.

In the meantime, it’s up to us to use the tools we have and to understand the basics of colour theory to continue to have command over new technologies to create great art.

What’s your strategy when it comes to wrangling those colour mixed cross fades? Leave a comment in the box as usual. Cheers.

UPDATE:

Bleep ……..March 2012…..Interesting product news…….Bleep……!

Since we had a poke at the (very) prototype last year, it’s worth mentioning the new Lumonic ilumo Zoom Spot LED PAR-like and it’s advertised Colour Crossfade Engine.  According to Lumonic, not only does the fixture profile include the “standard” DMX channels of control for the LED colours, but also a calibrated CIE colour model with hues etc. set using X,Y coordinates.

Not only that but Lumonic say that the issues in the above article are removed, using channels to select the Current and Next colour to which a Transition is added to, avoiding the round trip through a whole lot of LED mixed colours on the way.

Bearing in mind that a pair of hands behind the ilumo range brought you the original James Thomas Pixel Range and the Pixeline 1044, I’d say Lumonic has to be worth a look.

Colour mixing image by Madcrow_Maxwell on Flickr

LEDs, Colour Mixing and Crossfades is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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An introduction to the Compulite Vector lighting control, a guest article by UK Vector trainer Joe Bleasdale. If you don’t really know much about the Vector, a favourite in control for TV lighting, read on.

I’ll keep it basic. I’m Joe, I am a Freelance Vector Trainer & Programmer and this article is an introduction to a great console. I run Training on request and look forward to bringing some more Vector knowledge to the stage lighting community. Enjoy.

Image from Craig Finch at Shock Solution

The Desk

In 2002, Compulite introduced a new console to the lighting control market. This new console, Vector, ran two separate systems “under the hood”. The idea behind this was that one system processed the DMX output and front panels of the console, whilst the other system (Windows XPe) run the GUI. This way if Windows was to fail, the output of the console would remain unchanged and the operator would be able to continue firing cues and commands until it had rebooted.

Vector is in fact a product family, not just one console. There seven console solutions in the family, Vector Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Ultra Violet, Violet and Node. Red being the largest and most expensive and the Node being the smallest and cheapest. The family of console have been used in a wide range of production applications. Credits to the console include Trans-Siberian Orchestra, X-Factor (UK), Guns ‘N’ Roses world tour, Strictly Come Dancing, Got to Dance (UK), Britain’s Got Talent, Royal Wedding, Royal Variety Performance, Bundevision Song Contest and many more.

Compulite have a world wide distributor network of people and companies pushing the Vector consoles. I used to be the UK Distributor with a colleague of mine. Nowadays I reside as a Freelance Programmer and Vector Trainer in my own right. The consoles are not massively common, but once you have been behind one it is a programming experience you will not forget…

Using The Compulite Vector

The consoles have two modes and two syntaxes. This means, almost any programmer can walk up to the desk and have it working how they like it in a matter of seconds. Firstly there is Tracking Mode and then “Compulite Mode” – the latter is effectively Cue Only Mode. The first Syntax is Action and the next is the Enter syntax. In my opinion, Action syntax is the best to use, it allows most flexibility and fits the desk functions perfectly, however Enter works just as well.

The action syntax allows super fast programming and as you guessed it is based on your direct actions with the command line. For example selecting a channel would consist of [CHANNEL] [X] then you can go straight to altering parameters of that channel without having to confirm the selection. In fact, the Vector has tools to enable programmers to split fixture types up. It has 4 Sets. Channel, Spot, Matrix and Media Server.

Channel can be dimmers and dimmers with accessories such as Scrollers or Apollo Right Arm type devices. Spot is effectively Compulites name for “Fixture” it does not mean a hard edge fixture; you can patch anything under Spot.

Matrix is designed for patching large amounts of LED fixtures to use with the Matrix (Bitmap) feature of the desk.

Finally Media Server is for putting your Media Devices in. Spot, Matrix and Media Server are “cross compatible” so you could (if you wanted) put a VL 3500 in the Media Server set if you so wished. Each set also has its own “live view” (Programmer). This makes for easy show layouts and navigation during programming. It also helps the Programmer number crunch within the desk because Channel 1 just relates to “1” in that set. You can then have Spot 1, Matrix 1, and Media Server 1 – all their own fixture types.

By now your probably thinking, nothing special… other desks can do similar things. You would be correct, but Vector has more powerful features up its sleeve. Built in bitmap capability, Desktop, Media Server integration (Hippo V3, Catalyst V4, Arkaos), Contextual Displays, Attach Files to Objects, Parameter Pickers, Macros, Softkey Colour Coding, and an Effects Engine ™ a Programmer would die for…

Parameter picker for the Rotating Gobo wheel on a Mac 500. Pickers are available on all Parameters that have “steps” in them, I.e. Gobo Wheel, Colour Wheel, Shutter etc. For linear parameters such as Dimmer, Pan, Cyan there are no pickers.

The main tab of the Vector Effects Engine™. The advanced tab contains other Effect Primitives, and functions such as Sync which allows you to sync effects together quickly so they run in perfect sync with each other.

Vector Effects Engine

One of the most sought after features of the Vector is its Effects Engine™. It allows simplicity and power in one package, which nowadays is rare. Deep down, Effects are applied to parameters with Effect Primitives or Curves that apply mathematical functions (such as a Sine wave) to values against a set time. However you don’t have to be a maths wiz to understand this Effects Engine™!! By looking at the image above, you can see that the layout is very simple and graphical making for easy selections and quick Programming.

For example… If I set my dimmer level to 50% then hit [EFFECT] then press {STEP} set the direction to {UP} and then set the size wheel to {50%} then hit {WAVE}. In these few simple steps, my dimmer is now stepping between 50% and 100% in a wave type offset. How easy was that!!

The only down side to this console is its availability, not many exist in comparison to other consoles out there. Most of the consoles I work with in the UK are owned by individual Programmers – not hire companies. This shouldn’t put you off however, Compulite distributors run training on request, and people like me run tailored courses to teach Vector on every level. Once you know who has them, hiring then becomes easier!

I hope you have enjoyed this little introduction to the Compulite Vector. I am hoping to write tutorials on the subject here at On Stage Lighting.

The Professionals – On The Vector

Reliable, Faithful and does everything we need it to do.
Roger Williams – Lighting Director & Moving Lights Operator UK.

I’m using Vector because it provides professional features in a fast easy-to-use way. Its stable, offers a lot of networking/backup features and customer support is very good.
Matthias Schöffman – Vector Programmer

When specking a lighting console for a tour, there is only one clear choice. The Compulite Vector series of consoles are ideal. Quick, Powerful, Reliable, and all any Programmer needs.
Greg Shipley – Lighting Designer & Programmer. Guns ‘N’ Roses World Tour

1) Its ability to do Automated Lighting as well as conventional equipment with ease and not take a ton of time to Program it.
2) When I use them on rentals, they are easy enough for a beginner lighting tech to operate them, but still have amazing power to create any show you desire.
3) The extensive fixture library and ease of Programming make it a great console for any LD to set up for any type of show.
That’s just a few things I like about the Vector console
Nate Ross – NJN Productions

What I like about Compulite desks is you get a lot of desk for your money. The new Ultra Violet is ideal for me with twenty playback faders and two internal touchscreens all in a package that is easily carried and easily fitted into a cramped lighting area.
Bernie Davis – Lighting Director. Royal Wedding 2011 – UK

Thanks Joe – Rob

Compulite Vector – An Introduction is a post from: On Stage Lighting

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