Friday, November 16, 2018
Creating Nutcracker Magic With Rosco LitePad
Rosco Spectrum: While complex stage elements and lighting can provide outstanding visual effects on stage, the little details are just as important in captivating the audiences’ imagination. A perfect example of this is how Houston Ballet used Rosco Custom LitePad HO90 to provide a simple, yet ingenious, lighting solution for their 2017 production of The Nutcracker.
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5 comments:
This is cool, but I am not entirely clear on what makes this solution so novel. It seems similar things could have been accomplished with either projections or a standard monitor or screen, if a bright enough screen could be found. Maybe it's cheaper, but that is not made clear in the article. I do like the concept, and maybe for certain situations where a projection is not quite "glowy" and bright enough, this could make a lot of sense. Outside of that though, most theaters already have projectors (and many theaters have already spent the money to buy good ones) on hand, and projectors seem more versatile in general. It is not clear from the article whether the LitePad is reconfigurable or if it is a single, permanent image. In addition, it sounds like the LitePad would have to be placed on stage (and therefore take up valuable space and need power/data connections), whereas a projector can be placed somewhere backstage or in the house, out of sight.
While I do not have any experience with the Rosco LitePad, this solution seems like the appropriate move. You can not see through a front-lit scrim but backlighting reveals what is behind it, simple enough. While this is a clever solution for the face on the clock, it is not exactly groundbreaking. The article expressed the designer’s wish for the face to even be seen from the back of the house and a similar solution could be achieved by using simple projections. I do appreciate this article for broadening my knowledge on light technologies but I am not sure why an entire article was written on this one particular look at Houston Ballet. After reading this article, I am interested in other lighting solutions that Rosco may have for this type of rear lighting. Some questions I would have for Houston Ballet I mentioned previously, the projection could offer some more dynamic solutions for a clock that actually changed time and then having a face appear.
I’ve been trying to sell people on Lite Pads for years. Frequently, a show will be looking for a short-throw, flat-field effect, and they’ll settle for a grid of LED tape or worse, a puck light. The results tend to be mediocre and overly complicated--puck lights are too dim, and LED tape can get messy and complicated. In this instance, it’s nice to read through the iterations the design and production teams went through before settling on the Lite Pad. It clearly shows that they did try all the more conventional options before moving to a custom-made unit. That said, the effect shown in the video seems a bit dark and blurry, and I’m not sure it accomplishes the goal of being able to see the face from the back of the house. We can’t see the whole stage picture, though, so it may look great in context. That said, without knowing the lumen output of the Lite Pad, I suspect that the scrim may be the limiting factor. It seems at least partially like a resolution issue, which could be caused by the size of the holes in the scrim.
Unknown 10:08am is Chase Trumbull. Computer goof.
This article speaks to the magic of theatre and how visual effects can add to the story and give further meaning to what is happening on stage. I think it would have been more interesting if father time started moving in the clock face. With recent technological advances, effects like this have become even more accessible for even the smallest theatres in the country and visual effects that were once the entire show budget are not able to be made in-house on the most modest budget. Rosco is clearly the industry leader when it comes to visual lighting effects, and they have made the system integration seamless. I would, however, say that prototyping and creating your own visual effects has also become a lot easier with Arduino and other microcontroller technology.
I look forward to seeing how other technology continues to penetrate the industry and how designers find new ways to integrate technology into their show.
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