Professional Lighting & Production - Summer 2019 | Page 28

Mumford: I’d say the MAC Encore
[by Martin], especially now with the
heavy frost. My favourite is the cool version.
I also very much like the X4 Bar 20s by GLP.
PL&P: Thinking back to the last two or
three years, which widespread trend –
in terms of tech, workflow, or industry
relations – has had the most significant
impact on your work or the theatrical
lighting sector in general?
Constable: There’s lots of change
going on. There’s technology
change, there’s environmental sustainability
change, and there’s also change in terms
of looking for a more diverse workforce
and looking for different models of how
we make work. I’m just negotiating to try
and have a project that we’re working on
covered by two women as programmers
because one of them has got two kids.
So, the idea or models of how we work
and job-sharing and things like that. I think
we’ve had very fixed ideas of what it takes
to make a production and I feel like we are
slowly opening the possibilities of there
being different models of working… Also,
how to make it an industry that encourages
a more diverse community into the area is
important. There is a lot of talk of that to do
with actors and directors and writers, but
actually, it has to be throughout the whole
industry to really make a change.
Fraser: The proliferation of afford-
able LEDs is having a big impact. In
my world, we’ve gone from “can we afford
some LED tape?” to “how much LED tape
do you want?” In terms of workflow, and this
is a trend that is longer than two or three
years, many producers increasingly want
bigger productions for the same budgets
and in the same tech time. It’s like trying to
put 10 kg of art into a 5 kg bag…
Guinand: It seems that more and
more theatres are acquiring some
LED head fixtures, which is giving so much
more colour flexibility. That said, I still feel
the need for some traditional fixtures as
opposed to an all-LED house. Another
frequent element is a mover of some sort.
This is a very valuable tool, especially in a
time where one is frequently having to pro-
vide a lighting plot before all the staging is
planned. Having a moving fixture eliminates
the need for a range of traditional fixtures
being used as “specials.”
Labrecque: The first thing I can
think of is the slow-but-inevitable
death of tungsten fixtures and, of course,
the era of LED coming to the theatrical
28 | Summer 2019
lighting sector. It changes the way I think
about lighting, it changes the schedule,
and it changes the looks of the overall
production. We need to educate ourselves
and learn to work with those new tools and
educate the directors and producers, too.
Even if I love tungsten and I hope it never
disappears, I think it’s a pretty exciting mo-
ment in the lighting business.
Lamotte: Two things. First is adding
LED cyc units, movers, and ETC
Source Four LED Series 2 Lustrs into con-
ventional tungsten rigs has been mostly a
blessing and a small curse. The criticism I
have for the LED equipment is outweighed
by the flexibility and new solutions offered.
Second, styles of directing and staging
are evolving to more fluid ways of working.
New options open all the time.
PL&P: Has the proliferation of video
technology impacted your workflow
in the design process and the overall
production?
Constable: The best thing about
projection or video design for me
is that it has introduced me to some really
brilliant new collaborators. I’m very fortu-
nate in that I tend to work on shows where,
if projection or video is becoming part of
the conversation, there is an acknowledge-
ment that it has to be creatively driven. So,
that tends to be in the hands of a separate
designer. The days where it would be the
set designer giving it a go, or the lighting
designer, those days really have gone in
the rooms I find myself in, which is great. I
think that one of the exciting things is that
there are more and more people coming in
to create content and manage content. It’s
a whole new conversation coming into the
room and that can be extraordinarily excit-
ing, if you find the right collaborators.
Fraser: It is essential to control
the amount of light that hits the
projection surface so the projections don’t
get washed out. For me, this usually means
more side lighting and less front lighting
on performers near projection surfaces.
There are some effects that can be done a
lot better with video than with conventional
lighting, such as rain or snow, and it’s great
to be able to use video for those. A down
side is that theatres often add video to a
show without adding time in the schedule,
so lighting cue sessions turn into lighting
and video cue sessions. This is difficult
for both lighting designers and video
designers.
Labrecque: Now there’s a new
player around the table and we have to
make sure that they’re integrated proper-
ly during the creation process and in the
production week because their work has
a direct impact on mine and on the overall
production. When there’s projections in
a show that I’m working on, big or small,
I want to be as close as possible to the
designer. It’s important to me to under-
stand where they’re going, what the colour
palette is, what the content is, etc. But most
importantly, I want to have control over the
intensity of the projection. As a lighting de-
signer, it’s still my duty to balance the light
on stage and so I consider that projection
or video wall as a light on stage.
Lamotte: It’s far from my expertise
but I have enjoyed the collabora-
tion with the projection designers that I’ve
worked with. Last summer I did the lighting
design for Stephen Fry’s one-man show,
Mythos. It is a retelling of the Greek myths…
Projection designer Nick Bottomley was
able to add images of maps, paintings,
sculpture, and the colour and sunlight from
photos of modern Greece. That element
made the show magic. Lighting can often
be so abstract and projection so literal.
When they come together and each design
discipline works at collaborating, it can be
transcendent.
Mumford: I’ve been working with
projection in the theatre since the
late ‘60s – then in film – and still do, so I’m
not a newcomer to its theatrical applica-
tion… It’s a whole new world but one that
relates very closely to lighting design – it
has to. I must say that generally it’s been
very rewarding to collaborate with video
designers, especially, for example, with
people like Wendall Harrington.
PL&P: LD Brian MacDevitt recently told
Forbes: “We lighting designers have a
joke that it’s not the best lighting, but the
most lighting that wins a Tony,” and that
“...voters respond to big lighting events,
not subtlety.” Do you feel any kind of
pressure from producers or audiences to
“go big” or “stand out” for its own sake?
Constable: It sort of breaks my
heart that people think that “good
lighting” is lots of lighting. I’ve spent my
entire career making lighting that wasn’t
like that and no one is going to expect me
to suddenly pull that out of my tool case…
But yes, I think there is a belief that more is
better, but actually, in the current environ-
mental climate, we have to stop believing
that. We have to start thinking that it’s a
precious resource that we’re using. Also,