![]() The blue light, the ruined buildings, and the tree shadows are created using stage lighting and shadows. In other parts of the show, it also provided clouds or stars. In the image above, it is being used to create the moon. It was on the floor behind the cyc and was bounced off of a four-foot wide mirror onto the cyc, creating rear-projection. However, the projector being used was a simple and old 1000 lumen projector. ![]() In the image above, the cyclorama has full-stage media. Combining projections with other media: A mixed-media screen A Midsummer Nights’s Dream, 2007 Though we still lit the stage around it very carefully, our very ordinary projector was completely up to this task. It’s placement up-center gave it importance and prominence. This screen ended up being about 12′ x 9′, or 108 square feet a very modest size. The moving flats framed it nicely, requiring it to fill only a third or less of the width of the space. There were stairs leading up to the screen, reducing the need for it to be tall. The advantage of this arrangement is that the screen does not need to completely fill the background. The exact location within each of those semi-generic settings was established using the projection screen up-center. The solution was to create “story-book” units, where painted flats could be paged to reveal castle, village, or forest. This was produced in a theatre with a very low proscenium and extremely limited fly-space and wing-space. The show was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Below is a part of a design I did for a children’s theatre company in 2007. It is quite a large thing compared to an actor. On a big empty stage it looks a little small, but if you built some scenery right up to it, it would look a lot more impressive. By reducing our screen to half the width and half the height, we are spreading out light over only one-fourth of the area. ![]() That’s four times as bright as the screen that we started with. The same projector will give us over 18 lumens per square foot. This screen is 20 x 11, or 220 square feet. This screen is 20 feet wide x 11 feet high, or 220 square feet. Our image brightness is now more than 8 lumens per square foot – almost twice as bright as the previous setup. Notice that we have cut the surface area almost in half, though. It still dominates the stage composition nicely. Here we have reduced the size of the screen down to 30 x 16, or 480 square feet. This screen is 30 feet wide x 16 feet high, or 480 square feet. 4000 lumens distributed over 880 square feet is just over 4½ lumens per square foot. In the space shown above, the screen is 40 x 22, or 880 square feet. This screen is 40 feet wide x 22 feet high, or 880 square feet. That’s a little brighter than the typical classroom projector, but not unusually bright for a typical school or small theatre. ![]() Let’s suppose that we have a projector that outputs 4000 lumens. Let’s look at a single projector illuminating a big screen upstage. Shrink the size of your projected area down and fill in around it with traditional scenery, or gobos, or shadows, or some combination of these.Use multiple projectors tiled together to fill the cyc.Use a regular projector and light your stage carefully, almost like a dance concert.If your goal is to create a background, here is a toolbox of things you can do to boost the visibility and quality of your projected media. The more you spread the light of your image around, the weaker it all becomes. You might not want, by default, to fill your entire cyclorama with one projector. Do not forget how part I of this article started: spreading butter on toast. The cyclorama is a very powerful and useful place to put projected images. Let’s start there, though, because that is the most prominent way that they tend to be used. An important thing to consider is that this is just one of many ways that you can use projections on stage. It is easy to think of projections as being just the background behind the set. The first part is Projections on Stage Part I: How do I make them brighter?
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