Tiny Tip: Fade(r) to White

I lit a rather famous dance orchestra recently.  I was hired by the venue to light the concert in a way that showed off the new lighting package and the new building.  When I read through the tech rider, I was concerned to notice that they did not want saturated colors on them, as they are reading old music charts.  To answer the obvious- I do not know why they don’t use music stand lights.  

When I arrived at the venue, I made a cue list of different color combos between the Cyc, backlight, hisides and movers.  I set the colors to be what I wanted them to be- jewel tones, saturates, etc to make the stage look as attractive as possible.  But since I have a fair amount of experience with musicians (specifically- the kind who are reading music), I made a handle that took all the backlights to full white with a higher priority than the main cue stacks.

When we were in sound check, the band leader insisted on more light for the musicians.  I pushed up the fader until they were getting what they needed, and was able to run the rest of my show exactly as I intended, as the fader de-saturated all of my colors in the backlights while still retaining enough of the original color to stay tied to the colors of the rest of the look.

What lighting tips have you all picked up for dealing with different performers? Hit me in the comments.

Featured image by Marius Masalar from Unsplash

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