Thoughts on Lighting: Recent Comments

Comment on Control Desks continued: Displays

Robert Wertheimer — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:18:59 GMT

Sorry for being very late to the game here, but I just wanted to let you know that I believe the GrandMA will provide whatever monitoring situation you desire based on your above comments. Designers can have their own monitor layouts or they can just see duplicates of what the programmer is looking at...your choice!

Comment on Color Conversions

Glenn Meader — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:05:07 GMT

Stage Lighting Gels: spreadsheet with specs on color media from Lee, Rosco, Gam, etc. including RGB equivalents on
http://www.chromakinetics.com/

[ed.] Thanks Glenn for the link; that is a very useful website you've put together. I appreciate it and I hope many others do as well. I really love the html page for my iphone!

Clifton

Comment on Thoughts on Lighting Desks

clifton — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:44:44 GMT

yes, I think Rob is right on with his writings and a great advocate. I definitely understand how we got the performer/expression consoles, I'm just happy that etc has discontinued them!

I had a prestige console where I went to college and there were good things about it. but boy was it buggy. Colortran never could devote the resources to clean it up.

thanks for your comments Derek, most appreciated.

Comment on The Lowly Sidearm

clifton — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:40:05 GMT

I love that suggestion. I'm going to put it on my various rep plots, thanks Derek!

Comment on The Lowly Sidearm

Derek — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:06:45 GMT

IF sidearms are unavailable, then at least hang the boom fixtures sideways, yoke parallel to the deck, either US or DS. I do this with moving lights all the time, and simply "swap pan and tilt" in the desk. Focus is so much faster.

Comment on Thoughts on Lighting Desks

Derek — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:05:25 GMT

Have you been reading Rob Halliday's "Things every console should have" series?

I ran one of the first Light Palettes, v4J. I also ran piano boards, so it was an easy transition.

But I see how those who grew up with 5-scene preset boards would prefer the Q-only style of Kliegl Performer and ETC Expression.

Don't forget the Colortran Prestige as the intermediate step between Light Palette and Obsession.

Comment on Control Desks continued: Displays

Clifton Taylor — Sat, 31 May 2008 09:28:46 GMT

Thanks for your comment Rob. I love many things about the 500 series and have used the console on many shows, including on Broadway last season, and think the programming of that console was a positive step in command line development. However, using more than a dozen moving lights on that desk always seemed problematic to me, as the interface became unwieldy above a certain scale. Also I feel it was unusable in a concert situation (I know, it wasn't built for that, but at this point in our development, couldn't we have a console that is versatile enough for many markets?).

I agree completely with your comment about text display formats. The consoles should be nimble enough to output many different formats, including text.

I'm planning to write about Eric Cornwell's (Westside Systems) Virtual Magic Sheet in a future post, but I'll say here that I think it is a wonderful program and wish that the console manufacturers could incorporate it directly into their products. The ability to lay out the display as one wishes, and the very well thought out graphical display of level and focus information are great reasons for everyone to have a look at this program. But I also love that the program acts as a web server, outputting its data to anyone on the network with a web browser on their laptop. This is such a powerful and empowering use of existing technology.

I think it would be great if the lighting desk could output elements of the display as separate html streams to the network. ie, a command line monitor, an intensity display, the contents of the 'programmer', patch information, and the stage output to start. That way, all the remote displays could be handled by everyone's own laptop without additional hardware or software. Each person in the theater could look at the data that was needed, without having to touch the console. And without having a dongle or other proprietary software loaded onto their machines. It solves the union issues of conflicting control, as the HTML output could be set-up to only act as a display technology, not necessarily an active command path (though that is the direction that the GrandMA2 is possibly moving in, see below).

Of course, this doesn't solve 'paging', but at least we are all used to moving around in a web page. And we are used to operating our own laptops. A clever html programmer could easily combine the desired elements, including a third party stream like virtual magic sheet or a visualizer such as wysiwyg into a combined webpage. Would be useful, yes?

...

footnote from above: on the GrandMA2, one can operate the command line via a shell session on a remote computer. so, as I understand it, you would be able to SSH into the console and operate every function of the desk through the command line.

Comment on Control Desks continued: Displays

Rob Halliday — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:18:03 GMT

Hi Clifton,

Fascinating to find somewhere discussing all of this stuff both publicly and, more importantly, intelligently.

I agree with much of what you say, but would note that much of it was available when using Strand's xConnect 'remote console viewer' dongle to connect a laptop to one of their late, lamented 500-series consoles. The dongle would allow you to set up multiple connections/displays at one time, each either being a mirror of what the operator was seeing (wht command line) or an independent display (with personal command line) with ('login') or without ('monitor') the designer able to interact with the console throught the command line.

Not quite what you're after, but with careful arrangement of windows on a monitor (perhaps stacking the operator's window under the designer's window so the command line was always visible).

Plus a character based display that was both familiar and incredibly easy to read, even at a distance. I, too, wonder why more modern consoles don't just copy the display formats of their predecessors.

Off to read more of your thoughts now.....

Rob.

Comment on Control Desks continued: Displays

Clint Allen — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:45:28 GMT

Nice thoughts Clifton.
One idea could be a "screen patch"
At the beginning of tech, the designer and electrician would set up designer monitors via a visual screen patch on the main console. Once the designer locked in the look, then this could be stored for future use. The next time the designer is in, their view could be uploaded as a preference.

Comment on The New York Times Article on Dance Lighting

jim — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:59:32 GMT

I enjoy the Forsythe aesthetic when its paired with appropriate material. But I've found recently that its become the default lighting style for a broad variety of work, much of which calls for a different approach. Like any other visual artist or designer, lighting designers have a wonderful variety of techniques to choose from. Some are established; Rosenthal's Jewel, Balanchine Blue, Chenault's Shins, and some are as new as yesterday's tech rehearsal. With light as the most abstract of mediums, we have astonishing flexibility.

So why is so much contemporary work treated with this one iconic style?

OK, off the soapbox with me, up with you. I'd love to hear your thoughts.