Lowel lights for theatrical performance

B

basil_555

Member
Hello,

I plan to use 2 Lowel Omni’s to light a 2-hour theatrical performance. Do you think it’s a good idea? Won’t these lights overheat, etc? I know that they are primarily intended as cinema lights and I ‘m not sure if its ok to use them for theatre staff.

Thanks!
 
Well you could, if you want to bore the audience to death. Do you mean you want to video a theatre performance, where there is an audience present? Are there not any traditional theatre lights being used? The snag is that drama, on stage uses lighting in a totally different way - the audience view the action in perpetual long shot, so theatre lighting is very rarely just two lights. 500W for them would be considered rather low in brightness terms - but even in a straight play 2 lights would be considered a very poor way to do it because the blocking of the actors will mean shadows, so you have more lights to fill in the shadows. They also change the brightness quite often. The eye is drawn to the brightest area, so in video, you'd cut to the shot of the baddie hiding the murder weapon, while the others don't notice. In theatre, you can't do this, so you gently brighten the baddie, or you dim the rest - this does the same thing as the closeup. The Lowels will certainly get hot being on for a couple of hours, but 300W is mild really. I suspect they'll just do a bad job. If the stage is a real one, theatre lights will be so much better. If it's a nighttime outdoor event and you are hoping your two 300W lights will be good? Sadly, they'll look like you shot the video with a couple of workshop work lights.
 
Thank you! The lights are just for theatrical performance, not for video recording. It will take place in a large hall with no theatrical lighting. I was plannig to turn off the ambient lighting and just place each of the 2 omni's to the left and to the right of the stage, but now I see its not the best idea. Indded, maybe I should add some lighting behind actors for more visual variety.
 
When you're dealing with low budget unusual situations where you won't be able to follow standard practices then what's "best" is hard to say. Building off what Paul had said maybe the best you can do is use the house lights for the majority of the performance. Only dimming the house lights and using the fresnels or rent just one spot light for solos or important scenes to focus attention, or things like night or dream scene. In order for this to work you need a light with a lens to focus and direct the light a distance to the area you need these type of lights are called fresnels.
 
Omni / Tota lights are indeed hot-lights but they were used for decades to light performances.

Use good sense. Bag the stands, tape down power cables, keep the units a safe distance from people ( 6-ft or thereabouts ). Test the lighting units beforehand. Check that bulbs are properly seated and not swollen, blackened, or otherwise indicating potential problem.

LED does not have the fire / burn hazard. But that’s a moot point if you cannot afford LED lights.

The point here is that you do need to practice good safety but you don’t have to be scared off from hot-lights to where you will not use them. At one time every lighting unit used in video production was a hot-light. 10k and 20k hot-lights with far more safety risk than a couple of Omnis.
 
It boils down to if it's art, or illumination. Amateur dramatics used floods for years, but now full RGBW colour mixing cheap and cheerful kits is available so easily, i's rare to see even cash limited societies not having half a dozen going spare, with control from a laptop and cheap DMX dongle. So many old rules for theatre still apply. Don't forget it's warm colours vs cool colours and white light is rare. Don't even think about the video rules - 3 point is out, and you're looking at symetry down the centre line, so front light and backlight. Convention starts you at 45 degrees out from the centre line, and 45 degrees down - this of course is rarely possible for physical reasons. If it's a play, then front light is most important. Dance is totally different. 3 cheap RGBW LED units each side would be so much more use - and could be T bar stand mounted. The only warning is that the cheap units are always fan cooled and sometimes half a dozen fans is VERY annoying. Two lights, one either side is illumination and not remotely theatrical.
 
We have little info to go off of, but based on what I've experienced theaters are closed so some of these smaller groups want to put on some sort of performance. They get a free location to film it and then deliver it online. So they hire you to film it and you bring your video lights to try to light a larger area than they were intended for. My guess is renting proper theater lights set up would exceed their budget if they have one to begin with.
 
paulears said:
It boils down to if it's art, or illumination. Amateur dramatics used floods for years, but now full RGBW colour mixing cheap and cheerful kits is available so easily, i's rare to see even cash limited societies not having half a dozen going spare, with control from a laptop and cheap DMX dongle. So many old rules for theatre still apply. Don't forget it's warm colours vs cool colours and white light is rare. Don't even think about the video rules - 3 point is out, and you're looking at symetry down the centre line, so front light and backlight. Convention starts you at 45 degrees out from the centre line, and 45 degrees down - this of course is rarely possible for physical reasons. If it's a play, then front light is most important. Dance is totally different. 3 cheap RGBW LED units each side would be so much more use - and could be T bar stand mounted. The only warning is that the cheap units are always fan cooled and sometimes half a dozen fans is VERY annoying. Two lights, one either side is illumination and not remotely theatrical.
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The stage size is about 5x4 m. Do you think a remotely controlled RGB LED panel on each side and 1 or 2 of them on the stage as a backlight will be ok? This is all we can afford.

Actually, the main reason why I asked about Lowel lights is that LED panels are not as powerful (4 our panels are 40w each) and we will probably have to place them very close to the stage. The 650w Lowels have much longer reach.

David W. Jones said:
If this is an event or theatre hall, does it not have a lighting grid and board?
What do other performance groups do in this hall, play in the dark?
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It is a large reception hall. It has one huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling and some small lights on walls. It doesn’t have a grid or theatrical lighting. It is primarily used by musicians or vocalists for their performances with all the available lighting turned on.
 
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Are we talking TV lights? Close is always bad - as when they move about they start to get very close and close means half the stage might be in darkness by an actor close to the light. If these are TV soft lights, then I'd go with your distant Fresnels, although TV Fresnels of the LED type usually don't have proper Fresnel lenses, but the microgroove type that behave less like the traditional Theatre and TV types - Arri 650W and 1.2KW, for example - they are effective TV and theatre sources. On wide they can wash an entire stage, and on narrow they're very narrow and punchy. LED types are not the same.

What is the production - play or musical? Is there any scenery that needs lighting, and of course the look depends on their makeup standard, and the costumes.

You may have to live with bland and just illumination. Very few stages available in the UK are lighting-less, it tends here to come with the venue, certainly all the smaller ones. A few large houses are empty, but that's rare, and mega expensive.
 
paulears said:
Are we talking TV lights? Close is always bad - as when they move about they start to get very close and close means half the stage might be in darkness by an actor close to the light. If these are TV soft lights, then I'd go with your distant Fresnels, although TV Fresnels of the LED type usually don't have proper Fresnel lenses, but the microgroove type that behave less like the traditional Theatre and TV types - Arri 650W and 1.2KW, for example - they are effective TV and theatre sources. On wide they can wash an entire stage, and on narrow they're very narrow and punchy. LED types are not the same.

What is the production - play or musical? Is there any scenery that needs lighting, and of course the look depends on their makeup standard, and the costumes.

You may have to live with bland and just illumination. Very few stages available in the UK are lighting-less, it tends here to come with the venue, certainly all the smaller ones. A few large houses are empty, but that's rare, and mega expensive.
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They are not TV lights, just RGB LED panels with barn doors. They can be controlled distantly and have some special effects built in. Each panel is comparable to 100W bulb in brightness. It will be a play, not much scenery, just a dramatic action.
 
This is the type of situation where you bring your lights and test them out. The director will make the call whether they're helpful or not.
 
The trouble is that comparison doesn’t work in any meaningful way. If it is a food, in beam spread, then 100W is a glow worm. A 100W source with narrower beam spread can be punchy. If you were in 1970, 2 500W floods would have been considered dim. Professional theatre would have been perhaps 6 1Ks. Your lights might be great or awful. I have some movers 36x 3W for each colour, so that’s over 100W per colour in electrical power and if they wash a stage in blue, it’s really bright. In fact, so bright that a 1KW par can with blue gel in cannot beat it. Take the gel out of the par can and all four r, g , b and white channels on the narrow setting are not narrow enough to be comparable.

Your panel if it has an equivalent output of 100W is seriously dim. My tv studio LEDs are not a patch, brightness wise on my tungsten Fresnels, and I cannot afford an Arri proper lensed LED at such a crazy price. Five grand for one light is out.
 
FWIW... I've been shooting a weekly church service on the cheap, fairly mid-sized old DIMMLY LIT Episcopal church. I've been using a pair of Lowel RIFA 55's (500W 2x2 soft boxes), set a bit more oblique than 45 degrees off either side of the altar & pulpit, just to get levels above the camera noise floor and fill in faces and raccoon eyes from the toppy lighting.

They'll get your an exposure, but as paul expounds, it won't necessarily be dramatic.
 
You have to forgive me but I lit my first show professionally in the late 70s, and still do quite bit. Small scale to mega scale, and still do the occasional (or did when theatres were open) amateur show. The absolute worst lighting were old 50's/60's battens, full of 3 or 4 colours . Big stages had long runs of them, and small ones used the same lights just not so long. They were brightish and very even, and no shadows - kind of a 12m long soft light, with 500W lamps in each compartment. When we started using Fresnels and profiles (ellipsoids, in US speak), things suddenly took a turn for the better. Schools and community stages carried the floods on the longest, but eventually they went too.
 
I don't think the OP has stated his purpose for using these lights. Whether the venue is too dark and wants to reduce image noise or he wants to change flat overhead fluorescent lighting to harder more dramatic lighting found in a theater. Like I said before setup the lights and see if they do what you want.
 
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