Stage/Studio Lighting 

 

I have worked with lighting for the last 50 years (from stage lighting for Am-Dram productions to vast music shows - I have worked with some of the biggest acts of the 1970's to produce truly stunning lighting shows.

 

In the 1970's, it was fairly easy to set a stage/set-up, the spots where static, either fixed to the lighting bar above the stage or to the side of the stage on wall/tower mounted fixings. 

 

The Acts/Actors knew exactly where they had to stand to be directly in the pre-set light for them to be seen by the audience.  If they got carried away and missed their mark on the floor, then two manually operated Follow Spots would be on hand to light them up.

 

All of the lighting was controlled in those days from a central console, with a bank of manually operated reostats and yes, it was a super hot place to work!  The reostats controlled a bank of lights which could be either off, on or partially dimmed - some of the spots were 1,000 watts so things could get fairly hairy at times.

 

As time progressed, with the advent of semi-conductors the Triac was invented - by putting a small dc voltage onto the control pin of the Triac, the mains voltage to the load (lamp) could be changed from off to on or dim.

 

The Triac revolutionised stage lighting, as it was then possible to have a small control unit in front of the stage attached to the Triac bank on stage.

 

Again, all the lights were in a fixed position around the stage area and the artist had to know exactly were to stand for each number.

 

 

 

The advent of Digital DMX once again revolutionised stage/studio lighting - with DMX you can have a controller off stage and the power source is on stage, the controller can be pre-programmed with a "set" of commands and each light is connected to the controller via a digital command wire.

 

Rotational DMX lighting allowed the lights to move around a fixed point, thus the lighting could be more dynamic with the music/actors movements.

 

The only problem with DMX is that it is a pre-programmed set of commands fed to the lights at the start of a song/scene, so if an artist is off their lighting mark, they wont be seen.

 

You will always find (at large events/gigs) that the sound and lighting mixer are side by side - there is a reason for this (and a reason why I now hate going to large concerts) - the whole "show" is controlled by a "click track" in the ears of artists with, in many cases, a backing track of audio - the lighting is in fact controlled by the audio.

 

So how does this brief history of stage lighting tie in with Studio2 Coalville??

 

We are setting the studio up for optimal flash lighting settings - using props and dedicated flash triggers.

 

Photographers - To get the optimum out of the studio, please use only the dedicated flash triggers for each area, do not alter the light settings and if you move a light, please put it back as you fnd it or ask one of the team to move it.

 

Models - please do not move props around - they are set for the lighting  - exactly the same as back to stage lighting as previously described.

 

Thanks All.

 

Adrian