Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stagecraft

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[edit] members template

just joined here, looks like the template for new members is either incorrect, not being used correctly, or both. i fixed what i could, should be an easy clean for someone who ranks a bit higher than i do, any seconds to change/fix the template? thanks, and hello all. i look forward to working with you --drmartini 22:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] LED fittings

Does anyone think a article on LED stage fittings is needed? I am working on a show at the moment and we are using some Martin Stagebar LED fittings (I will try and get a picture taken of them). Leaderofearth 11:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

LED Stage Lighting Instruments could definitly use an article. The show I'm currently working on at Concordia College, Moorhead is using quite a few, the school I work for just bought some, and the Concordia Christmas Concert later this year is using even more, so I would definitly be able to help with the article. Right now I'm too busy to start one, but I can definitly try to answer any questions and provide some sources if needed. -JWGreen 17:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Just got the LED's in today- We got 12 City Theatrical Color Blast-12's. We are using them as a groundrow for a backdrop and cyclorama, with cyc lights from the top. The beam spread wasn't quite what we needed, but a little R-104 Tough Silk took care of that. I'll be sure to get pictures once I have some more time, but for now most of my time will be spent focusing all the conventionals. -JWGreen 22:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I had my brother take pictures of the Martins last night, I just have to wait for him to get home and upload them. I will get him to take some pics of the pacifics we have have up as well. Leaderofearth 22:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I have just uploaded A front veiw of a Martin Stagebar photo.

I will try and get onto starting an artical after this show. Leaderofearth 08:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Finaly got the article started. LED Stage Lights.

Leaderofearth 09:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I have photos on my flickr of the Concordia Christmas Concert, which used an LED groundrow as well as 60 other LED fixtures. There are also some good photos of Gobos in use and general stage lighting. If any of the photos look like they would be good to use on Wikipedia, I'd gladly change the license on a few to Creative Commons so they can be used on Wikipedia. I also will have a few photos of the actual LED's once I get my memory card back from the lighting designer. -JWGreen (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2007 Broadway Stagehand Strike

Hello everyone, as all of you are most likely aware, currently all productions in theaters run by the Shurbert, Jujamcyn, and Nederlander organizations are not running due to a strike during contract negotiations between Theatrical Protective Union Number One (Local One) and the League of American Theaters (The League). I ask that everyone please refrain from any nonobjective edits in regards to this strike. I do have some information about this strike and the contracts in question and the strike. If anyone has any questions feel free to post them here or on my talk page and I will do my best to answer them. I also plan to update the article page for the strike with what I know tonight. So yeah any questions? --Lekogm 23:39, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I changed the importance rating to a mid class. As it is a current event we don't know what the long term effects will be, and at the moment I didn't think it met the requirements of a high importance class. On the other hand, I hope it gets resolved soon. Leaderofearth 11:11, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Useful Website

[edit] Sad News

I just recieved news of the tradgedy at Yale University where a student was fatally injured durring load-in for an upcoming show. Please keep him, his family, and fellow students in your prayers. -JWGreen (talk) 00:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Belated Birthday! Do you know what your gift is? It's roll call!

So uh...... yeah. Apparently back on September 5th we turned 1. The only reason I know this is because I was just thinking, "When did this project start?" I want to thank all of you for the hard work that you do and for all the little things you do. Moving right along, we have 49 active members of this project listed. Somehow I'm not seeing that much editing going on from a majority of this list, myself included. Let's see who is still around and working. And while you're at it, tell us what you're holiday plans are for this group. If you guys don't answer by the middle of December, you're inactive --Lekogm (talk) 06:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lekogm

Well, it seems like I've been neglecting a lot of stuff on here. I'm going to spend the next month cleaning up the project's pages, figure out how to update the templates we have and maybe make them better, and keep on top of the Broadway Strike. Which reminds me, a common trend I'm seeing now that this strike is out there is that no one knows what IATSE really does so I'm going to try and work on the IATSE article page and make it spiffy. As always if you have any questions leave a message. That's pretty much it for me so now it's your turn! --Lekogm (talk) 06:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Leaderofearth

I am out of shows until next year, other than a paid event and some matinence tasks. Wikiwise I have started a article on Led fixtures and am watching other project articles. Leaderofearth (talk) 06:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 48v

I was bogged down too much for any real editing for quite a while, but I've been trying to keep up lately. Lately I'm mostly into starting brief articles, largely stubs from the requests page or redlinks. Let me know if you can think of other ideas for me, and I'll do the best I can. I'm a high school senior, so i've been spending a lot of time applying to colleges, but judging by the deadlines, that should slow down pretty soon. :) At any rate, I'm still around and as active as time permits. 48v (talk) 06:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] JWGreen

Just got done with the fall musical at Concordia, Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical), and have started on the Concordia Christmas Concerts. Just got the murals today as well as the fiber optic curtain and a few other rented lights. So far we're ahead of schedule (knock on wood) despite late shipments. I am planning on expanding the LED fixture article as I am working with 80 plus of three differnt kinds of LED fixtures on the Christmas Concerts, I am also watching my watchlist and reverting vandalism and whatnot. I probably won't do many edits in the next three weeks as I work over 40 hours in addition to classes the week after Thanksgiving, and then run the concerts, and then its finals... Wish me luck! JWGreen (talk) 07:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE: Well, as of now, I have finished the most of the projects untill February. I just found out my college is buying a Flying Pig Systems Whole Hog iPC, so I have that to look forward to. I noticed that there were no articles about High End Systems, Flying Pig Systems or the Whole Hog consoles, so I may write one of those in the future. I will be getting photos of some LED fixtures at some point, but they ended up on my boss's computer and not mine somehow, so I'll have to wait to get those from him. I will also be working load in and out for a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert this friday, a 13 truck show... but that will be the largest rig I've ever seen so its worth it (they pay doesn't hurt either). -JWGreen (talk) 20:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] KeepOnTruckin

Im here. I just designed an interesting light project. I had 5 mins of music and I had to design a light show to it for a black box theater, which has 25 channels. Moving lights were not available for use. So that took some time due to the channel constraints, I had to decide what to twofer and such. The next thing i am doing is working on a so-called tech one-act, with no actors. I hope to base it off of one of Ray Bradbury's short stories. it involves an automated house which continues to function after a nuclear blast annihilates the US. Also we just got an ETC Insight light board with 10,000 cues. I dont know how I will mangage to fill them all. KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 22:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like my final for my Intro to Lighting Design class. We had a fixed light plot (all we could change was color or gobos) with the exception of any three conventional fixtures we could hang anywhere. I've used an Insight once, wonderful thing to work with, especially since I learned on an Expression 3 and Express 196. The one act project sounds interesting... telling an entire story with lighting sounds like a challenge. -JWGreen (talk) 22:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
The house also has to burn down and collapse, and there are loads of small robotic cleaning things. Still working on the house burning down, but we might use a couple video projectors. And we have a cool fire gobo to put in a gobo rotator, which will look good. And then of course we can use the MACs to project their fire stuff. But it still wont look real. Oh and we will have a little narration to explain some stuff. But not too much. KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 18:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kmccoy

I'm still here. Touring whenever I can, but unemployed at the moment. I don't write much, but I do try to make occasional copyedits. And if anyone needs an admin for any issues, I'm happy to help. kmccoy (talk) 07:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moojoe

I'm here. I keep planning on added a major addition to the rigging page, but due to work and life, havent had the time to finish writing up everything. Started an article on Luc Lafortune though, which Im hoping to expand soon. ---Zachary Cohen (talk) 07:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DJSparky

Here. Busy, busy... 'Tis the season for fireworks/ pyro prep for the New Year. If someone has some free time, could they look over the article on theatrical smoke and fog and see if I've managed to restore / maintain an adequate NPOV?? Thanks. DJSparky (talk) 04:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Binksternet

Usually I'm screaming busy gigging up to Thanksgiving and then things ease off somewhat for the holidays. This year the busy-ness extended to mid-December but here I am finally with two moments in a row to catch my breath. Me and the wife will soon be driving 755 miles (1215 km) from Oakland, CA to Prescott, AZ to see her folks for Xmas and we'll check out some roadside America along the way. Yes, the Grand Canyon in snow is a must-see. Won't be seeing Yosemite in snow this year but it's highly recommended. Marvelously awe-inspiring vistas and the crowds stay away in droves. Binksternet (talk) 04:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help with image

Poles at stage right of the Moore Theatre, Seattle, Washington.
Poles at stage right of the Moore Theatre, Seattle, Washington.

I'm sure someone here knows what these poles at stage right of the Moore Theatre are for. Could you please recaption on Wikimedia Commons (and maybe categorize) accordingly? - Jmabel | Talk 20:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Those aren't poles, those are jacks used to keep flats up. --Lekogm (talk) 22:22, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Aha! Makes sense. Shows which side of the fourth wall I'm usually on. - Jmabel | Talk 21:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2007 Energy Bill

Any idea how the 2007 Energy Bill will effect theatrical lighting? If all incandecent lamps are phased out, I'm sure there will be a large impact. Does the ban also apply to halogen lamps? Without halogen or tungston lamps, we pretty much have no light source which can be sharply focused. LED's cannot be focused, flourecents cannot be dimmed, HID's put off too much heat for many applications, and would ultimatly draw more electricity than incandecents. Anyone else have any thoughts? -JWGreen (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Our government down here in New Zealand is looking at a similar scheme. Hopefully common sense would prevail and we would be allowed to keep using Halogens in theatre lamps. Otherwise the entire lighting industry would disapear overnight (I have never had and probably never will have a budget to light a show using just LED's and HID movers). And unless the government is going to pay to replace all the lights that are in service that are effectivly rendered useless by not being able to replace the lamps. Also new technology means we can get more light out of 1200W Pacific now than a older style 'Zoom Spot' with a 2K lamp in. So that is a increase in efficiency in itself still using effectivly the same type of lamp.

Rant end. Leaderofearth (talk) 09:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Not that it would provide a solution if such a bill passes, but cant flourescents be dimmed with a special dimming ballast, but not to low levels? KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 21:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC) Oh and on a side note, which really belogns under my roll call, I met a guy today who goes to NC school of arts and he has actually worked on a show with John McKernon! (made Lightwright). Evidently Mr. McKernon is very short.
Fluorescent lights burn differently than incandescent lights and would have an adverse effect on what we are trying to accomplish with light. --Lekogm (talk) 18:17, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Fluros can be dimmed, but not to nothing. And in my opinion there is nothing worse than seeing lights snap on then fade up on stage (I saw some nasty looking LED parcans do that in a show a while ago).Leaderofearth (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

A friend of mine just wasted two weeks installing compact flourescent's into all the chair and step lights in their theatres (4-5 in a University setting), and then promptly taking them all back out again because the internal ballasts were crating too much ambient noise. The buzz on the audio system was unbearable. DJSparky (talk) 16:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I only found that the bill (in the official summary, anyways) requires that government buildings use flourescents for all general-purposes. Theatrical lighting would certainly be exempt, and even if it was phased off of the market I doubt theatrical suppliers would be affected at all. Also, Australia's ban has a provision for halogens, and I believe these acts are modeled off of one another. Hotshot977 (talk) 21:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I use CFL's in my house wherever convinient, but they certainly aren't always appropriate. http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm has a great article about many of the drawbacks relating to the ban in Australia. Certainly they are not a viable option in theater. Also, he cautions strongly against using conventional dimmers on fluorescents. I have done so successfully before, only using the dimmer as an on off switch (dimming profile had 0 and 255 only.) Even for this, he had to add some incandescent clamp lamps offstage to keep the fluorescents from spontaneously flickering while "off." 48v (talk) 08:44, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Some CFLs can be dimmed successfully on a standard household dimmer but most of the ones we get over here are designed to work in places with a dodgy power supply. So when you try and dim them by reducing the voltage they pull more current to compensate, and pulling more current out of a small dimmer tends to kill them. Easy money charging the customer to bypass there dimmer because they tried to dim a CFL.

[edit] Photo idea

This sprung off of the discussion on the PAR 64 talk page. I post it here rather than the photo suggestions page beucase more people will see it here and give feedback.

OK, so take any light, lets say a fresnel, put it on a table 15 feet from a wall. Put a 500 watt lamp in, shine it at the wall, and take a picture. Change the ;amp to 1 kw without changing the focus and take another pic. Do this with other instruments (as applicable) until we have a bunch of pics showing the different shapes different lights make. Swap out the lenses too if doing an ERS. This would also be a good time to do all that bench focusing youve been meaning to get around to. Ideas/Thoughts/Volunteers ??? KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 03:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It may take a while, but I'm sure we can get that done. Where I work we typically only stock one wattage lamp for each fixture to avoid confusion by students, so I can't do the 500 and 1000 idea. -JWGreen (talk) 04:17, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Feature Article

I was just looking and noticed there are no featured articles in this project. How about we try and get the Three top importance B class articles up to standard. Leaderofearth (talk) 10:25, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Those would be microphone, stage lighting, and stage lighting instruments for the lazy people like me. KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 00:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Of those articles at the moment Stage lighting instruments and Microphone look like our best shot. Leaderofearth (talk) 03:48, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First Roll Call of 2008

It's been a while- last one was in November, so I though we should all catch up on things.

[edit] JWGreen

I just finished working on a production of Quilters, and am now moving into a very busy month of March. My college is hosting a Peace Prize Forum and wants to impress people by going green, so we are renting LED's and using only ETC Source Fours and Source Four PARs for the conventional lighting. The challenging part of that is we are in four venues on campus for it. After that we have light hang for Night of the Iguana which has to be done in one day because the whole set has beams and other obsticals that would prevent us from flying in the electrics, but the college doesn't want us to put the set on the forestage because there is going to be an awards banquet on stage the weekend before we open. Its going to be an interesting time... However I have the week off so I'll be working on some articles, trying to get Stage lighting in better shape and other general improvements, as well as keeping track of my watchlist. -JWGreen (talk) 19:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I also just came across this article: Proposed Bulb Ban Causes Chain Reaction and found the David Cunningham patent quite interesting. I hope that pans out, as it will allow stage lighting to go green without changing much in the way things are done. -JWGreen (talk) 20:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DJSparky

Sloooow in the Great White North, but fortunately our sideline of providing pyrotechnics to major sporting teams is payin rent till the next round of theatrical productions kicks off. On a wholly unrelated note, I don't own a camera. If anyone has some good atmospheric or pyrotechnic pics they'd be willing to add to the wikimedia commons, that'd be great. DJSparky (talk) 00:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, if anyone would be interested in helping, editing with the terminology page to include links to new pages that'd probably be good. DJSparky (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cryptic C62

I've been busy building my high school's set for Romeo and Juliet. We've brought in a professional painter to teach us some layering techniques, and it's already starting to look really cool. In addition to four massive textured walls, we've also rented a spiral staircase.

I haven't contributed much to stagecrafty articles recently, as I've been working with Wikiproject Chemistry. If I finish what I'm working on, I might tinker with the proposed Featured Article ideas. --Cryptic C62 ยท Talk 11:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wilflet

I'm still around, doing this and that. ~Wilflet (talk) 23:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Leaderofearth

I have just lit a play for one of the amature company's I frequent. I am now working on a one night concert (and found a Jands event is much different to a Strand GSX). Wikiwise I have been a bit quiet lately due to lack of time and too much else to do. Leaderofearth (talk) 19:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bards

Been practicing hard for the local mayor's charity show, which I opened last night (in a band) and finished (in a choir); and just started rehearsals for this year's Music Hall production which runs throughout the summer. I want to continue learning about stagecraft, so I am happy to help where I can at wikipedia, mainly building and improving category structures while I read the articles. Bards (talk) 12:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Binksternet

Lots of odd jobs kicked in after the holidays for this audio freelancer... a normal year for me. Here, I've been working on a few articles having to do with audio pioneers: John Kenneth Hilliard was the head of sound at Universal then head sound engineer at MGM and was key in designing the Voice of the Theater loudspeaker for Altec-Lansing. Rudy Bozak was a loudspeaker designer in Connecticut who made theater and industrial loudspeakers but is best known for his expensive home audiophile speakers. Scores of additional audio pioneer pages deserve a good looking at and scores more haven't yet been written. Binksternet (talk) 12:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] KeepOnTruckin

Well the big news is i got to touch/see/use/"operate" a brand new ETC Ion, ETC page which im not sure if it has been officially released, but its going to be quite expensive. Im hesitant to say operate because it wasnt actually connected to any lights or dimmers. But I got to play with it anyways. Touch screens with drop down menus make programming moving lights easy and it also has the encoder wheels. And some submasters. On wikipedia im adding more photos and i will attempt to compile all the photos onto the photos page Heres a pic of the Ion: Image:ETC Ion lighting console.jpg


       Looks very nice. but i think I'll stick to my pearl. ~Wilflet (talk) 11:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Compiling Articles

The number of articles aggregating technical jobs and positions seems to be getting a little out of hand, or at least hard to keep track of. So far there's Running crew, Stagehand, List of theatre personnel, , Category:Entertainment occupations, Category:Stage crew, Category:Theatrical professions, Category:Entertainment industry unions and Category:Theatrical occupations. Some jobs overlap lots of these links, some are only in one. Is there, or more importantly, should there be a specific set of criteria / hierarchy for sorting positions. DJSparky (talk) 02:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Theatrical occupations should be merged with Category:Theatrical professions. Category:Stage crew and Category:Entertainment occupations can't really be merged with anything else. -JWGreen (talk) 03:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I have nominated merging Category:Theatrical occupations with Category:Theatrical professions at categories for discussion. -JWGreen (talk) 03:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
As creator of Category:Theatrical professions, I have disgreed strongly with your proposal. Notice that 'occupations' is part of a much bigger hierarchy which only contains named people. Further reasons are given on the Proposal Log page. It would have been much simpler if you had discussed this with me first, rather than initiating an official debate. I would be happy to join your project, if you like, as I have categorised 100s of theatre articles over the last year, and built up much of the structure there. Bards (talk) 14:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Clearly I didn't know what I was in for when I made my initial query. And evidently I failed to include sufficient specifics. I was not advocating merging all these article and categories, per se, as much as I was trying to note overlap and inconsistencies. I see the differences between Category:Theatrical professions and Category:Theatrical occupations, and made more specific comments in the Proposal Log. On the other hand, the entire contents of Category:Stage crew (except Template:Running crew) are already contained within Category:Theatrical professions and yet not wholly listed in Stagehand. There are jobs listed in the List of theatre personnel page that are not in the Category:Theatrical professions pages. For that matter, does the List of theatre personnel page make sense to be redone as a main article for the Theatrical professions category? DJSparky (talk) 16:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Your other criticisms sound good to me. The theatre structure was a good deal messier when I started on it, and there is still plenty to be done. For instance, category:Theatre contained 100s of articles about companies, directors, actors etc which had been dropped there without further thought, and I have cleared it, putting those (and other articles) into the proper places. More work could still be done there. / I have hardly changed individual articles at all, and I agree the lists of jobs are cluttered and overlapping, and could be simplified. It was vaguely on my list, but I haven't got around to it yet. / The stagecraft cat was also very cluttered and unstructured. For instance, I created subcats for 'scenic design' and 'theatrical sound production'; and I linked in existing categories such as 'costume design'; and then populated them. There is still plenty of work to do there, and I don't have the in-depth knowledge of stagecraft to do a thorough job, so I've been moving things quite tentatively to make inroads. Bards (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge suggestion

It's been suggested that McCandless Method be merged into Stanley McCandless. Anyone who wants to comments should go to those pages to do so. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 22:36, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] OT Question

Has anyone ever heard of, or know anything about a Mole Richardson Super Pup? I have found two kicking around a theatre and no one there has any idea how old they might be. By the looks of it it would could be from the same era as the Strand Patt. 123, it looks similar but with some very nice features, like barn doors that rotate on rollers and the whole top of the light opening up. Leaderofearth (talk) 12:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)