Creating A Rough Plot

TOC - Finalizing The Plot

• Practical Design
  • Consolidating
  • Simplifying
  • Sacrificing
  • Designing For Flexibility
• Plot Of The Space
• Applying Your Keys
  • Selecting Instruments
  • Selecting Location
  • Selecting Size
  • Selecting Accessories
  • Duplicating The Key
• Applying Other Systems
• Double-Checking

Practical Design

As you go through this long process of design, you will start to realize that because you are designing each scene essentially from scratch, you are using way, way too many lighting units, far more than what you actually have available. We haven't even gotten to the stage of deciding which lights we'll use and exactly where we'll put them, but even so, at this point you'll have far far too many. How to resolve this? This is the first stage of the plotting process, where we need to boil down all these visual ideas into something workable. Up to this point, we have tried our best not to limit our ideas, and for this reason the lighting key process is extremely valuable, but now we need to start compromising, selecting that which is more important to keep and the non-essential items to discard.

Consolidating

The first thing you can do to start to limit the sheer number of lights you are planning to use is to consolidate. This means simply going through your lighting keys, looking for similar lighting systems, and combining them into one system. Basically, if they're pretty close in degree and color, and you think you can still see each scene as working with the consolidated system, then use that for all the relevant scenes. Alternatively, if you have dissimilar systems, but you realize that you can achieve the same conceptual effect by using a system you are planning to use in other scenes, use that one as well. As an example of this, let's say you're planning to use a dim, warm front right wash to light the stage, perhaps to suggest early sunrise. You already have a warm wash from front left which you are using to suggest room lighting. But you realize that if you run those same lights very dimly, it should have the same effect, even though the angle has been reversed and the lights might not be precisely the same color (keeping in mind that lights are warmer the dimmer they are run).

Simplifying

The next thing you can do is simplify. If you were planning to use several lights mixed together to create one color, but you could do the same with a single color that's pretty close, do that. If you were planning to use ten specials for a scene but could get away with five (perhaps with some reblocking), do that. If you were planning to have a scene with 90 completely different cues in it, but realize that you could probably use 5 cues repeatedly, do that. If you were planning to have 20 carefully controlled, 6' acting areas, but could get away with 12 8' areas, (perhaps with a bit of reblocking) do that.

Sacrificing

At some point, you'll probably have to sacrifice some of your design ideas in order to bring your design within reasonable limits. This is always tough, but there are some things to think about while you are doing so. First of all, visibility is the most important. Don't sacrifice your front arealight before you give up some of your more funky angles and special effects. Secondly, special effects may be cool, but they are only essential if they are truly necessary if they are needed to get across some fundamental concept of the show, and you really can't find any other way to do so. Thirdly, sacrifice things that use lots of lights (with the exception of your front areas) before individual specials.

Of course, the basic rule is simply to ask yourself the following question: "do I really need these lights to accomplish the stated conceptual goals of the show?" This includes all the practical things necessary for the audience to appreciate the show, such as visibility. Eliminate the things to which you can say, "well, I can probably do without it". Aside from making a reasonably practical show, you'll probably discover that the show is actually better for not being so complex.

Designing For Flexibility

Eventually, after you've done a few designs, you'll start to realize that there are some patterns of lighting units that you frequently use. Most often these will correspond somewhat with the McCandless or standard sidelight method. You will start to approach designs with a sort of shorthand, saying "well, I can do this scene with my standard approach, and this one, and this one." You'll find efficient and flexible setups that can handle broad varieties of scenes by simply modifying the level of each system. This will allow you to skip some of the lighting key process, or perhaps combine several scenes into one key, and then maybe add a single system for a little variety. This will become more and more natural for you as your learn what lights can and can't do. At this point, for simple shows, I can often skip right to the rough plot, maybe after a couple short sketches of ideas.

There's one caveat to this, however, and this is that you should always keep your mind open. The trap you fall into if you always use some basic design, and just modify it, is that all your designs start to look the same. This is boring, and presumably you are in this field because you want a challenge and excitement. So before you say "Oh, I can do this with standard McCandless", spend some time to think carefully about other appropriate ways to light the show.

Plot Of The Space

Before you can create a plot, you will need to have a basic plot of the space. This can range from a simple sketch to a true scale architectural drawing, but at a minimum you will need to have something that clearly indicates your available hanging positions, preferably in relation to the stage. If the plot you get is to scale, if it has indications of interferences, circuiting, and other peripheral information, so much the better. Since you'll probably need to make several drafts, you will also need to develop some way of reproducing your plot. I use a CAD program (AutoCAD) in which I've drawn all the spaces I've used. The CAD program allows me to easily add and remove lighting units, and I can even extract certain information automatically to create additional paperwork. I generally plot out my drawings onto vellum, and then use a blueprint machine to make copies.

None of this complexity is, of course, necessary, particularly for smaller shows. I have certainly done shows where I just took a sketch of the space and scratched in some lighting units with basic information, and worked from that. But if you seriously get into design, or you need to do a large show, you should consider purchasing a real CAD program like VectorWorks or AutoCAD. CAD drawings of the various spaces are available off this website to make your life even easier.

Applying Your Keys

The basic idea you are going to use for this next phase of the design is to simply take your lighting keys, which represent the transformation of your visual ideas into discreet units for a particular area, and apply them across the stage. To start this process, you will need to divide the stage into acting areas. How you do this will depend on what type of lighting you are doing. For a standard McCandless lighting pattern, areas that correspond to the frontlights are generally about 8' across; a typical stage might have 6-20 of these areas to fill it entirely. Some angles and keys won't use the standard acting areas, the lights in these keys might span areas or only need to cover some part of the stage. A full-stage sidelight color wash, for example, might only use four instruments to fill the stage, when the "acting area" lights consist of 20 units one for each area.

What I generally do is go ahead right at the beginning and just divide the stage into acting areas that are 8' or so across, making sure that I cover all the useful playing space. Some areas that are little used I might cheat a bit by making the areas a bit larger than others. Even if I don't actually use each area for a given set of lights, labelling them with the closest one will help me remember where the light is supposed to be pointing. I always start from DSR and work my way USL, each area gets a letter. When I lay in the instruments, they will each get a letter designation that shows where it will be pointing.

Once this is done, we can start to lay in the lighting keys that we've developed for the show. [eds note...have we talked about notes that just show specials for keys and whatnot, not the full lighting key???] In order to do this, we will now need to select a particular type of instrument, pick a place to put it, and then write it in with accompanying information.

Selecting Instruments

Picking the appropriate instrument for what you want it to do can be quite difficult, and gets much easier with experience. Each available type of lighting instrument has its pros and cons, and as you work with them you will discover what you can and can't do with them. Within each type, you need to pick the appropriate model to use to fit the space you are working with. Keeping in mind, of course, what you have available in your inventory.

First of all, you need to know what the features are of the various kinds of instruments. They are your tools, the things you use to create your vision, and you should know them as a painter knows her brushes. What follows is a quick description; more extensive documentation is available elsewhere:

• Ellipsiodal: The ERS spotlight is the workhorse of the theater. It provides a tight, coherent beam (although this can be modified by focus or by gelling) which is quite controllable. Built in shutters allow the unit to be cut off of scenery or the audience. Generally used for frontlight or tight spotlights that shouldn't spill. Units are available by size, which means that each unit produces a certain angle of a cone of light.
• Fresnel: Another very common unit, casts a soft, warm beam that's great for highlighting or spotlighting. Beam is tougher to control than an ERS, but can be resized easily. Some spill.
• PAR can: Basically a headlight in a can; beam size is a result only of what size lamp is put in the can (Wide Flood, Medium Flood, Narrow Spot, etc). Fairly soft, "bouncy" bright white light, that's good for color washes and bright punchy effects. Not easy to control.
• Striplights, borderlights, etc: Generally used for lighting drops or scenery, several bulbs or wide-angle reflectors cast a soft swath of light.
• Beam projectors: Casts parallel rays of light, not used very often but great if you want to have moonlight streaming through a window or something like that.

You will need to first determine which type of unit will do the job you want it to do. A typical plot might use ERS spots for frontlight, and fresnels for toplight, and then some PAR cans to throw a wash of color on the stage. But this is only half the story; you will also need to determine which size of unit you want. This is most important for ERS spots, which come in a variety of sizes (if you have zoom ERSs, you are lucky as they can cover lots of sizes). For PAR cans, it's more a matter of specifying which size of lamp to put in it, and for fresnels and the other types of units you won't generally have much choice. The wattage of the bulbs available to you might come into play, but in most of the theaters on campus, this is pretty standardized. A complete description of how to choose the correct size will come after you've learned how to decide where to put the unit.

Selecting Location

Selecting the location for your instrument should, in principle, be pretty simple. Remember that you've laid out the stage into acting areas, and that you've specified lighting keys for each set of lights you will use. The lighting key specifies the angle at which a particular light should be placed relative to any given acting area. So all you need to do is to find a place to put that light that produces that angle of light for that acting area.

Now, you might not actually be putting a particular unit into each acting area. As mentioned before, you may be covering a larger part of the stage, or you may be ignoring the acting areas entirely. In that case, you should probably specify a place onstage where the light will be "centered," and work off of that.

A couple caveats. Remember that in most cases you will be lighting faces. This means that the actual angle that will be produced is relative to a point 5-6' above the ground at the center of your acting area. Keep this in mind, or you will discover all of your acting lights are angled too low! Less significant, but something to remember, is that for the standard horizontal pipe-hung light, the source of the light is actually 9" below the pipe itself (or 9" above if tophung). Usually not important, but if you are deciding between closely space pipes, it can be significant.

So how do you select location? Well, it should be pretty simple. Start from the center of the area you are lighting (or the spot onstage). Look at your key, which specifies what horizontal angle you should be at (e.g., the angle off the centerline of the space). Draw a line from the center of your acting area at that angle that goes through the possible hanging positions. Next, use a section drawing (which can be approximated pretty quickly). Draw a similar line through the center of the acting area (and 6' off the ground) at the vertical angle specified by the key. The combination of these two lines should show you where (horizontally and vertically) you should place your lighting unit.

You should pick a spot that is horizontally on a 1'6" grid. The reason for this is that, by convention, all lights are hung on a regular grid so that plots are really easy to read. 1'6" turns out to be a good distance that allows enough space for most units to swivel freely, but isn't too far apart that you can't fit enough on a pipe. The 1'6" grid starts at the centerline, and distances are generally specified as "4'6" SL of center" or "12' SR of center". Follow the same convention for pipes that run US-DS, but pick a different reference point.

Exceptions to the 1'6" rule are possible, but need to be very clearly indicated on your plot. You might do this if you have two very long instruments that need to point across each other. Ordinarily you would just leave an "empty" slot between them, but you could also just separate them by a few more inches. Or, if you have a set of instruments that are all pointing parallel to each other, such as an ACL bar, you might specify a tighter hang than 1'6".

You may need to compromise where you place the light for several reasons. First of all, your angled lines may not pass close to any hanging positions. In this case, it is up to you to compromise in the way that will work with your design the best. For instance, you may want to use your 45° angles for area lights, but discover that as you try to hang lights for your offstage areas, you are running into the walls of the theater. Or, you may have difficulty finding a pipe in the correct vertical location. If the problem is severe enough, you may need to redo some of your design. Each space will offer a different set of lighting angles; in some cases this will profoundly affect your design [eds...has this been mentioned already in the design section]?

Another reason you might need to compromise is that although there's a place to hang the unit, you don't have the correct unit to hang there. In this case, you can always consider renting, or you can try to find a substitute location or unit. An example of where this happens sometimes is with high sidelight on pipes parallel to the plaster line. Following our lighting key idea, we would probably want to hang a sidelight at the same angle for each area. In practice, however, it's often easier to hang all the lights grouped at one end of the pipe, and vary the sizes to work with the throw they are asked to produce. A wider angled unit is used for the short throw to the nearest area, and medium-angled unit for CS, and a narrow-angled unit is used for the far side of the stage (more on this in the next section). There probably isn't enough pipe to hang a medium sized unit far enough offstage to hit the near area, and the difference in angle is usually not noticable.

You should also think about some additional factors, like where the light will spill to. For instance, if I have an acting area that's close up against a drop, I might cheat the vertical angle a little higher to minimize the spill light from the unit onto the drop. Or if I'm worried about the light hitting curtains on the side as it passes to hit an area upstage, I might cheat the angle onstage a little bit.

Selecting Size

If you don't know how ERS units are specified as to size, you should read through the more extensive decision. This section will concentrate on how to choose the correct size.

Let's say that we are selecting one of our acting area lights. Our lighting key specifies that this is a warm, say R02, coming from 45° vertical angle and 45° from a line through center stage. You've found the closest approximation to this on the lighting beam, and are ready to pick a unit to put there. Here's what you need to do:

• Determine the throw distance from the hanging location to the acting area. Remember that you are shooting for 6' off the ground, and that your unit will actually be 9" below the pipe. This is an elementary 3-dimensional right triangle problem, and you don't need to be particularly accurate.
• Look up the specifications for the kind of instrument you are using. These are generally available on the web and from manufacturers specifications, and certain well-known units are standards.
• Determine the beam [eds...is this the correct one?] size for candidate units at that throw distance from the specs, if necessary using the beam angle to calculate it (most specs will have chart for certain distances).
• Select the unit that produces at least a beam size as large as your acting area (or whatever you are trying to light). If the beam angle is too small, you will have annoying "gaps" between areas where shadows will fall on the actors' faces.

Note that you won't really need to calculate this for every single acting area; you will soon get a feel for when to use certain instruments and when to jump up to the next size. It's always OK to jump to the next wider size ERS, since you can always shutter it down, although you will be sacrificing the round edges, the brightness of your beam, and the smooth transition from bright center to darker edge.

Selecting Accessories

The last thing to consider when writing in an instrument is whether it needs any accessories. What gel color will you be using? Do you need barndoors for fresnels or PAR cans? Do your ERS units need gobos? Does the hanging location require a sidearm? There are a lot of different accessories that can be used; take a look through the technical docs for the correct usage and try them out.

Most of the accessory information will be recorded with the unit in some form or another. For the rough plot, you should at least record what acting area the unit is pointing at and what color it is gelled with. If you are using the same color for several purposes, then you may need to further specify what the unit is for. Gobos should be marked for easy identification as well.

Duplicating The Key

OK, so you know how to pick a unit and decide where to put it. What next? Well, you need to do this for your entire design, working through all your lighting keys in turn. I tend to start with my most basic lighting, like say the acting area frontlight, work through all the lights for one particular color/angle system, and then go back and do the next system. I then work my way into washes, specials, etc. Most keys are repetitive, and will use the same basic lighting, so that allows me to complete the bulk of the design early on and then specialize later. By doing one system at a time, I can easily remember approximate locations of hanging positions; it's easier to pick the next location by thinking "OK, I just moved 9' SL, so all I need to do is put a unit on the same pipe 9' SL of the other one." Also, by doing similar functions like frontlight in succession, I can make use of any symmetry off of centerline to place my units without having to draw lots of angles.

As you work, keep in mind what the actual functions of each system are, so you don't just blindly copy your keys into every acting area. Not all systems need to cover the entire stage.

You will soon start to get lots and lots of lights on your plot, and may start to run out of hanging positions. It might be time to simplify your design. It might also just be difficult to keep track of which systems you are working on with so many lights floating around. You can create multiple plots to reduce this problem (or use different layers in a CAD program), just make sure that you know which hanging locations are already taken and that you occasionally cross-check with your other plots to make sure there are no conflicts.

Applying Other Systems

As you work on your plot, you will probably be struck by some things that you missed, or that didn't make it into your keys. For instance, certain spacials, or perhaps set lighting. Or effects that need to pass through set elements where the important effect is how the light passes through rather than the angle. Or practicals. Whatever these are, go ahead and place them on your plot in a clearly recognizable way.

Double-Checking

The final step is to run through your plot, checking for the following things:

• That you've written in all the systems you were supposed to
• That you've written in all the necessary units for each system (it's very easy to "skip" an area by accident)
• That you don't have the wrong unit type specified
• That you aren't missing any information attached to each unit
• That you don't have any units that will be too closely spaced
• That you haven't overused your inventory
• That you have enough circuits/dimming available for the units on each pipe (you can play games with extensions if you need to, but it's often easier to move stuff to different pipes)
• That the plot looks good and isn't messy

I'm sure there are other things that you will check, but the above checklist should catch most of the problems. In the next section, we'll be running through the plot again and finishing up the final details.

TOC - Finalizing The Plot