Equipping the Student Sound Stage

Recommendations for Equipping the Student Sound Stage:

I was very lucky when I was a student at UCLA in the late fifties and early sixties. We had a small sound stage that was a miniature version of a 20th Century-Fox stage, it had wooden catwalks where we could place our lighting units. I learned over the years that this system was by far the easiest and fastest way to light.

I have watched my crews struggle with dead hung pipes, fancy motorized grids, and jury-rigged truss systems. While for special applications, some of these systems work well, they all have a basic drawback. If you want to hang or adjust a lamp, you must clear the areas beneath the lamp, move in a ladder or lift, adjust the lamp, then replace the furniture and props before you can proceed. If you clamp the lamps to the top of the walls, every time you move a wall, you have to relight.

We all know that making pictures is not a cheap undertaking. Neither is the teaching of this subject. To teach drawing, all you need in the way of supplies is paper and pencil. Movies, WOW!

Professional stages for making dramatic features come in every shape and size. Most of them fall within some helpful parameters that will serve as our guide. The medium stage is about 100' by 150' and up to 40' high. It is sound proof, has a wood floor, and heating, cooling, and exhaust fan systems. They also have a grid system of very heavy wood and steel beams to support sets and the lighting cat walks, called beds, greens or decks. Above this grid is a working space of eight to ten feet. A large cargo door is used to get equipment and sets in and out. Small stages run 75' by 100' and 20' to 24' high. Really big stages 200' by 300', 40' to 70' high. The ratio of length to width in these examples is 1 to 1.5. In the real world this ratio can be as little as 1.3 to as big as 3 to 1. You will find very few square stages.

Our teaching stage will be 50' by 75', 20' high. Why so high? A standard hard flat for movies is 10' high. You need room above the flat for the catwalk, lamps and a person to walk. The catwalk should be 6" to 18" above the flats so you can move them around without hitting the beds. Seven feet for a person to work. Two to three feet to hang the catwalk. If you use a dead hung pipe system you could get away with 16 feet, but what a pain.

Now for the floor. Stage floors are usually wood. This is because it is easier and safer to secure the sets. When the Production Designers I work with encounter a stage floor that is cement, they always put down a plywood floor to support their sets.

Power for this stage should be a minimum of 400 amps, 800 amps would be better, and 1200 amps would be best. But we are on the cheap, so our lights will only draw 200 amps which will leave room for expansion.

Most professional stages have a flexible cabling system. One or more large power sources on the walls, some high, some low. From these “bull switches” feeder cable is run to a series of small fused switches and plugs, which can be extended with extension cables to each lamp. This procedure makes it very easy to meet all of the different needs that may be encountered with a minimum of cable. I recommend this type of approach. Fixed pre-wired stages are never what you need for the many different types of shows.

I have chosen to base this list on Mole Richardson’s equipment because that is the equipment that I primarily use, and it is considered the standard for the industry. There are, of course, many other manufacturers of lighting and grip equipment which I have used to good effect all over the world. This list will serve to illustrate the principles I would like to share.

The Fresnel spotlight is the basic unit in this package. It casts a hard-edged shadow like the sun and can be carefully controlled. It is a multi-purpose light. It can serve as a soft light, too, by bouncing it off a reflective surface or projecting it through diffusion material.

The Floodlight units do not have the control or hard shadow characteristics of the Fresnel Spot, but are useful for lighting backings, making soft boxes, and providing fill light.

The Par light gives you the most “bang for your buck”. Its light is somewhere between hard and soft, but gives you a lot of sloppy light that is very effective for night exteriors and for making large punchy soft sources.

The units and accessories on the list are very robust. Most of the stands are steel and very heavy. This way the students will not destroy them, will not have to put sand bags on them to keep them from toppling over, and they will last a long time. Two-leaf barndoors work better because the extra two on the four-leaf version are usually in the way of the other two. You can do a better job by using tin foil or a clip flag, but there are always exceptions to the rule.

Rolling carts to store the equipment are very important. It keeps the many pieces together and ready for use or storage. If you wish to go on location for a day its a simple matter to rent a cube van with a lift gate and just roll your package on and tie it off.

Loss is always a problem. If each piece of equipment has a place on the cart and there is an inventory list on the cart, this problem can be minimized.

There are so many hangers, adapters, and specialty items that it boggles the mind. It seems as though there are new ones created every minute. I have tried to keep these items to the most basic and versatile.

I have chosen house plugs for the lamps because this is standard practice for most of the studios and rental houses in town for lamps under 20 amps. All the lamps are 20 amps or under, so this will be OK. Once over the 20 amp threshold, you must go to the grounded pin plugs. With the other feeder cable, the 60 amp and 100 amp grounded plugs are used as in any professional set up.

Whenever anyone uses electricity the utmost caution should be used. Electricity can kill. Movie lamps are also very hot. Wear gloves! Remember, a 100 watt household bulb can set a piece of paper touching it on fire. In short, be careful, and use common sense.

Final Note:

What about fluorescent, HMI’s, ellipsoidal, plano convex spots, far cycs, space lights, coops, dinos, maxis, sky pans, minis, quadlights, cliplights, gators, bo bo lights, scoops, cones, obie lights, the “Miss Francis”...? The effects these lights give can be easily reproduced with a combination or modification of the units in the 200 amp package. Example: The Nooklites can light a cyc, be grouped together to make a coop, space light, or coffin. If you need a little daylight booster light, blue gel on the PARs will do the trick. Don’t be lured into buying specialty lights. Better to have convertible multi-use lamps.

BUILD YOUR OWN STAGE, EQUIPMENT LISTS:

• Equipping the Student Sound Stage
• Equipping the 100 Amp Student Sound Stage