Wednesday, March 20, 2019
A Blueprint For Successful UV Effects
Rosco Spectrum: When the Idaho State University Theatre Department decided to produce Three Days of Rain, by Richard Greenberg inside our small, flexible black box theater, we settled on concept, color palettes and a corner configuration relatively quickly. The Director, Stefan Espinosa, wanted to utilize the concept of a semi skeletal set as a way to reference the decay of time.
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UV effects can be pretty cheesy, but I love the feel they can create when they really work. I’ve seen varying success with UV scenery, but I wonder more about costumes and makeup. It seems like there’s a ton of potential considering their more dynamic nature and potentials to closely associate with individual characters, but I haven’t seen many high quality commercial products in those areas like I have in scenic paints. I’m sure they exist, but I’ve yet to come across them. One of my close friends was recently makeup designing for a production of Willy Wonka the musical, and was having an extremely difficult time finding UV sensitive makeup that read on stage without destroying her budget. I almost wonder if it’s even worth doing or if object tracking and projection mapping are going to get so good that glowing effects could be painted on actors faces with projection. I think we’re still a few years from that level of precision, though.
I’ve done a fair amount of messing around with UV light for escape rooms, and I’ve never found it particularly complicated to conceal. I usually just paint everything however it should look in regular light first, and then I go back with paint that glows under UV but is otherwise clear. It has always read pretty well when I do that. I’ve also found that I can just paint over the black light paint and as long as it is a pretty opaque coat it hides it pretty well. I don’t know how well the products I typically use would hold up to being walked on though. Regardless, I really like this scenic design. It makes me want to see the show and see how they used the effect in the context of the play. I’ve seen a lot of interesting use of blacklight in various performances, but typically I’ve seen it mostly on costumes for dance pieces, circus type shows, and at the very least musicals. Incorporating black light as part of a play seems more surprising to me.
Ultraviolet light effects can be very effective, but can also be done very wrong. In my experience, directors want this effect but think it can only be achieved by putting some UV lights from Party City on the front of the stage. This works, but never to the extent that a designer or director would wish. After reading this article it was really beneficial to learn about some of the techniques used to create a stunning effect. Fluorescent paint is something I have been aware of, but never had the opportunity to use in a production. Bleaching fabric is also something that I have never thought of doing to make fabrics pop under UV light. After I worked on Lunar Gala at CMU, a fashion designer made a line of clothes that glowed in the dark which drew a very impressed response from the audience and all of the crew members, this was one of the first times I have seen a UV effect executed in an effective way.
My favorite thing about Rosco is that they are always working on products with very specific purposes. They have an eye on integration, and their array of lighting fixtures were carefully engineered to work with paint and color. Many of the highly regarded lighting companies have short throw options, uplights, flat field units, but they were mostly developed with an eye to commercial installation. Rosco’s lighting units were certainly developed for similar purposes, but they were aiming for broader applications. The longstanding basis of their company is in color for light and color for scenery, so it only seems fitting that they began to make products that bridge the gap to bring the best out of both categories. I have worked a bit with UV paint and lighting, and I agree with the author that it only really works for carefully curated scenic effects. As often as not, a cool UV effect gets cut from a show because it is impossible to not stare at something undesirable.
This is an effect that I always have felt work better in your escape room/experience types of themed environments not so much a theatre. In my experience I have always seen UV light as a sort of gimmicky option to how a director wants to make something disappear or underly the show in an ineffective way. That being said the technology and the work that Rosco are putting in to it makes me start to think other wise about its uses as if there was a way to make it read better on stage it could end up being a more effective means of portraying stories in the light that it was intended. If there was a way to make this element something that seamlessly joins with the rest of productions as any other specialty paint treatment then I could see a future for it in theater to come.
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