Rosco Spectrum: Dogfight is an enormous musical. We were constantly jumping around from location to location and sometimes right into musical numbers where we were nowhere specific at all. From the beginning of my design process, I knew that I needed to be able to specifically isolate characters in order to make them really pop out, both for the book scenes as well as within the large musical numbers.
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The rosco I-Cue moving mirror can be an incredibly useful solution for productions that require a large number of specials, and when it is paired with the Iris it turns our conventional fixtures into much smarter instruments. I used four moving mirrors this summer as our main front of house specials, and they were invaluable not only for our productions but also for our concerts. They have their quirks for sure, and have a much more limited range in terms of pan and tilt from a moving head, however being able to attach these to any stock leko outweighs those cons in my book, especially since you get very close to the same optics as a conventional ellipsoidal. They also provide a wide variety of settings and modes depending on the application, including fine pan/tilt adjustment, as well as other automated modes. In this article, we follow Lighting Designer Edward Hansen and his use of them in "Dogfight", where he takes advantage of their versatility. For smaller companies looking to beef up their lighting department, I highly recommend the I-Cues.
The I-Cue is an awesome tool and we had one in my highschool at the suggestion of a former student that came to the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Paired with the Iris, it’s like having a full movie light, but it does have some issues. Because the light is so bright, it tends to leak light past the mirror and the backing. It can be hard to move and program, so we had to learn a couple of tricks to make it’s moving path smooth and good looking. Because the light is coming down at an angle, the beam is oval just like it would be if it was shining straight. This would be fine if the light was fuzzed out, but unfortunately we usually used the light to do special applications or spotlights, meaning the edges were sharp. This made the odd shape very obvious which was annoying because real follow-spots are effectively round. Despite these complications, it was always a fun toy to play with.
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