# How do you make curtain warmers?



## ntcsound (Mar 19, 2005)

My director asked for them and nobody ever tought me how to do it.


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## lightwench (Mar 19, 2005)

I generally just take a couple of lekos (I have some Source4 Jr. Zooms) that I hit the curtain with, using a warm gel (dependant on the curtain color). Does that help?


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## ntcsound (Mar 19, 2005)

I meant more shape-wise. Do just make a circle or two or several squares? I normally just cover the drape with that scattered light gobo but she said it wouldn't work? She wants a more "clasic" one. Help me.


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## cutlunch (Mar 20, 2005)

Quite often you can use ellipsoidal lights from high up and close to your curtains. This will give a nice scalloped look across the curtains. You may also find that the lights you are using from front of house to light the front of stage may give a nice spill on the curtains. If using these the levels shouldn't be set to high. Do you have old lights in your inventory that you don't tend to use. These may be perfect as curtain warmers.


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## propmonkey (Mar 20, 2005)

i just run all my foh lights at 20-30%. ive been meanign to add to zooms with breakups for more effect.


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## The_Guest (Mar 20, 2005)

For a classic look I generally like to use a minimum of four lekos. I put them in a cove directly next to the curtain on the mezzanine level (2 lekos per side). Focus the beams parallel to the curtain, aim them about to the center of the curtain. Each pair of lekos (l and r) of the lekos should be aimed a bit upward on the curtain, while the other two pairs should be aimmed a bit downward. Forming a diamond like shape. This should be ran a fairly high intensity to cut through the light coming from the house lights and if you're lighting up anything else down stage. I normally will either light up the down stage area and the curtain very dim or just run the stage wash very lightly. Sometimes a nice texture focused downstage and on the center of botton quarter of the curtain. As far as gelling curtain warmers, generally use some warm colors than will catch the audience's eye while still blending in with the calm preshow/intermission/post show environment.

So basically the warmers should look like this...<>

You can even do this in a rock environment, even if you don't have a curtain. With some haze of course. You can make a sort of virtual transparent curtain. Works well with a tighter iris so the beams don't spread all over the place. You could even ditch the horizontal diamond formation and make horizontal or vertical bars with several lekos.. You'd need a lot haze though. It really is a good and simple way to seperate the rest of the stage and the house preshow and intermission. It looks great gelled a flashy color, or cool mellow colors look good too.


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## rochem (Nov 26, 2008)

Apologies for bringing back a 3 year old thread, but I'm curious how other people do it. For the first time I find myself with a few spare instruments which I am going to use as curtain warmers. I've never been able to do this before, but right now I'm just planning on hanging one instrument on each end of our FOH pipe and focusing it to the opposite side of the curtain. Then I want to put some sort of gobo in a different color focused on the center of the curtain, but I might just stick with the two instruments.

How do you usually do curtain warmers? I know some designers go all out on their warmers and change colors and patterns throughout the overture based on the mood. What do you do in your shows?


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## philhaney (Nov 26, 2008)

rochem said:


> How do you usually do curtain warmers? I know some designers go all out on their warmers and change colors and patterns throughout the overture based on the mood. What do you do in your shows?



At the Pageant we use apron strips and just light the main from below. Next door at the Laguna Moulton Playhouse, they use six or eight lekos on the balcony rail, all soft focused to do a wash on the main. I'm not sure if they gel them or not.


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## LekoBoy (Nov 26, 2008)

So I have a blue main curtain, and normally use two 8" Fresnels with barndoors from the Beamport gelled in R68. Would these be "Curtain Coolers"?


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## cdub260 (Nov 26, 2008)

philhaney said:


> At the Pageant we use apron strips and just light the main from below. Next door at the Laguna Moulton Playhouse, they use six or eight lekos on the balcony rail, all soft focused to do a wash on the main. I'm not sure if they gel them or not.



For those of you who may not know what Phil means by apron strips, this is two twelve ft. strip lights, made in house from aluminum raceways and medium screw lamp bases in a wood masking frame so you don't see the lamps from the audience. It's a set-up that you don't see very often in more conventional stage shows. Their use as curtain warmers is secondary to their primary purpose as one element of our set lighting. For the 2008 Pageant, I also hung a 19 degree Source 4 from our mid house right lighting truss with, if I remember correctly, an R-12 gel. We had a yellow curtain for our 75th. season. Our two niche stages, on either side of the main stage used 50 degree Source 4 Jr.'s mounted on the down stage wall of the orchestra pit with the same gel that I used in the 19 degree.

Now, with all that said, there really is no single, "right way" to do curtain warmers. I've seen them from the front with a gobo wash, striped from the side with pars, and, of course, lit with foot lights in addition to anything else that has been listed by other posters.

Oh, and Phil, the venue next door dropped Moulton from their name at least fifteen years ago. Ten years ago they removed their proscenium arch and replaced their curtain pipes and dead hung electrics with a grid structure. I was part of the demolition crew on that project. For most of their shows these days, they don't even have a curtain to warm.


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## gafftapegreenia (Nov 26, 2008)

Ya mean like Foot Lights, such as these open trough beauties in the 1926 Kliegl catalog ?


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## cdub260 (Nov 26, 2008)

Gafftapegreenia,

The concept is similar, though the execution is somewhat different. For one thing, my lamps are spaced on one foot centers. Also, they are not recessed into the apron, but turned on their sides with the lamps pointing upstage. And, of course, as is the case with a sizable portion of my lighting equipment, they were designed and built in house.

Thanks for the visual by the way.


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## gafftapegreenia (Nov 27, 2008)

Ok,so its not *exact* but check out item No. 627. Again, 1926 catalog.




Of course, now I want to see pictures of your lights.


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## cdub260 (Nov 27, 2008)

Unfortunately, your upload of this page didn't go so well. It's mostly a blank grey sheet.

As for pictures of my lights, I'll see what I can do, but I can't make any promises. I'm not sure whether posting pictures of my equipment violates company policy. I know posting pictures of our sets would.


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## TheDonkey (Nov 27, 2008)

Sorry, I'm not totally following this thread,

But how would posting pictures of equipment be against policy?
Does your company design/build its own fixtures?


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## cdub260 (Nov 27, 2008)

TheDonkey said:


> Sorry, I'm not totally following this thread,
> 
> But how would posting pictures of equipment be against policy?
> Does your company design/build its own fixtures?



Yes, we do. For much of what we do in Pageantland, standard, of the rack stage lighting simply does not work. So I end up either finding a household or industrial fixture that comes close to what I need and then modifying it or designing and building what I need from scratch. As for why posting pictures of this equipment may violate Festival of Arts company policy, our board of directors is under the impression that there is some big secret to what we do. They're wrong of course. We don't do anything that you couldn't figure out on your own. In this instance, what they believe trumps reality. So before I go posting pictures of my equipment, I'm going to make certain that I'm allowed to do so. I love my job and I'd like to keep it, thank you very much!

As for why you're having trouble following this thread, it's because we've gone off on a tangent. For those of you have forgotten the subject at hand while gafftapegreenia and I have hijacked the thread, that subject is curtain warmers and how you do them. So please feel free to chime in on that subject at any time.


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## TheDonkey (Nov 27, 2008)

Yeah, I was working on the wording.

By not totally following this thread I mean that I read the first post, some other random post, and nothing else that makes up 90% of the context for your post.


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## gafftapegreenia (Nov 27, 2008)

cdub260 said:


> Unfortunately, your upload of this page didn't go so well. It's mostly a blank grey sheet.
> 
> As for pictures of my lights, I'll see what I can do, but I can't make any promises. I'm not sure whether posting pictures of my equipment violates company policy. I know posting pictures of our sets would.



Well ok.

And here's a link to that page, all I did was standard html. It looks fine to me.


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## DaveySimps (Nov 28, 2008)

We use 4 26 degree Source IV's from our torm positions (2 from each torm) in a pattern similar to the aformentioned "diamond pattern". It has worked out very well for us.

~Dave


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## lieperjp (Nov 29, 2008)

For me, If I know there won't be anyone going out in front of the curtain before show (for instance, our Children's theatre production where there is pre-show entertainment to keep 800 kids occupied until the show starts) I just use one channel on each of the four R-40 strip lights at about 50%. If there will be someone on stage, I'll add some light from the catwalk at about 80 and bump up the strips until I get an even blend. I've tried gelling but to me it seems our red curtain just likes open incandescent light. 

I was thinking about making a gobo with the school's logo on it to project onto the curtain, as I have access to a laser metal cutter (ok, I don't but my dad does...) However, I decided it wasn't worth it to figure out proper keystoning.


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## willbb123 (Nov 29, 2008)

Normally I just have some fancy break up gobos, Like So

I decided to get a little more creative today. Ok... I had and idea and wanted to see how it would look. The show tonight was a Christmas jazz concert, and next week is the Nutcracker (I'm designing). I origionally wanted to put snow flake gobos in some floor mount source 4s in the pit and aim them up to the ceiling in the house. But then I realized that there is going to be a full orchestra for Nutcracker so I could not have lights down there. So I ended up focusing a light on our lowest box boom onto opposite sides of the ceiling and one from the balcony rail onto the curtain. So I basically had one curtain warmer and 2 ceiling warmers  






Sorry for the low quality pics I only had my phone. It was best viewed from the orchestra level, but I decided to take pictures 2 min to second act opening and I was in the balcony.

Oh yea! There were a few people in the audience when I brought them up. There was a little girl and when she saw the lights she said "Wow! mommy take a picture of the snowflakes"


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## Fibrostic (Sep 25, 2009)

Would anyone be able to post a picture of the "classic" Diamond pattern curtain warmer, I have a purple curtain, would i go with a deeper purple gel?


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## MillburyAuditorium (Sep 25, 2009)

Didn't read earlier posts-

Hello,

If you meen, what do you do for something on the curtains in pre show and intermission,
We usually make a bubble kind of effect. Our center spot is a bit higher than the others, then we use the ones on either side that are closest, in projection wise, to the center one, which since they are a bit lower makes a bubble.

But we are hoping to get a custom gobo with the schools name or some other message which would replace this.


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## NevilleLighting (Sep 26, 2009)

I use several different methods, depending on what I think is a nice look for the production at hand and what works in the venue. 

For a "classic" look you may want to consider footlights if available. In the absence of footlight strips I often use a row of heavily frosted PAR-16's. THis gives me the added bonus of having a footlight wash for the show, if the show needs it. 

Another approach is to accentuate the folds of the curtain with more of a side angle, usually from a box boom position. You can go for one of the concentrated versions explained in other posts or for a full coverage version. The concentrated version has the added bonus of possible functioning as a stage color wash if it's focussed carefully so it doesn't spill on too much ugly stuff. When possible I will combine the side angles that highlight the folds with a deeper color front angle to fill in the valleys. 

As for color, I always use color but you have to play in the color range near your curtain color. You're not going to turn a red curtain blue. Usually a color slightly lighter than your curtain color works well. Too dark and it will probably disappear, washed out by houselight spill. 

As for equipment type, I've seen all kinds work. I've seen very nice warmers done with PAR-64's and even Fresnels. I normally gravitate towards an ellipsoidal of some flavor, more control. What is most inportant is to get a very soft focus. Try a light frost such as R132 or R119 if necessary. ​


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## philhaney (Sep 28, 2009)

_How do you make curtain warmers? _

The same way you make leg warmers. It just takes a LOT more fabric. 

Or, get a two mile skein of yarn, a pair of number 14 knitting needles...



(I'm surprised no one has poosted this yet)


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## MNicolai (Aug 16, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

A recent curtain warmer we used:



Curtain Warmer by smoke-test, on Flickr

The client wanted to have a curtain warmer, but hated always seeing curtain warmers that were just gobos projected onto the center of the main drape. Took us about an hour to get the colors/angles just right, but the client was thrilled by it (and we surprised her by not turning these on for her to see until the house opened opening night).

This accidentally became our curtain warmer for the next three months of shows; I only recently struck it to return the lighting fixtures to our concert lighting plot.


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## chausman (Aug 16, 2011)

MNicolai said:


> A recent curtain warmer we used:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Wow, Cool... Would you like to share what colors those were?


---
- Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## MNicolai (Aug 16, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

They were R77 (blue), R377 (indigo), L113 (magenta), and R389 (green) shot from Source Four PARnels onto our Royal Blue main drape.

Some time ago we struck our main border to a cart somewhere in the shop, and since then we've kept these eight PARnels on Line Set #1, downstage of the main.

Normally the fixtures are backlight for the apron, but for this particular show the director didn't want anyone dancing south of the plaster line, so we pointed the fixtures at angles as contour lighting across the drape.

What followed next was grabbing every color from the gel cabinet we thought may work well against Royal Blue, and after we tested them all at ground level, these are the four (out of probably a eighteen or so) that we settled on.


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## Esoteric (Aug 16, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

I assumed those were LEDs. We have done things like that with LEDs in the past. Interesting to know it was actual gel.


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## n1ist (Aug 21, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

I have used LED PAR38 fixtures on floor bases as curtain warmers for some dance recitals.
/mike


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## EustaceM (Aug 21, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*


n1ist said:


> I have used LED PAR38 fixtures on floor bases as curtain warmers for some dance recitals.
> /mike


 
I usually make mine within the style of the show only if there is extra. Recycling old and used always works fine. You wouldn't use bright colorful lights for a tragedy and vice-versa, you know.


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## gafftapegreenia (Aug 21, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

Whenever I see curtain warmers, they always tend to be the oldest radial fixtures the given place has. They always look so quaint hung next to dozens of Source 4's.


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## Toffee (Aug 22, 2011)

*Re: Hey, I thought we could share pictures of our shows...*

For our curtain warmers we use sets of PARs with WIDE lamps in our large theatre, two sets of two hung at the far ends of our balcony rail, one red on each side and one blue on each side. It is the same effect I have seen at most theatres I have ever worked at out here.


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## baotto (Nov 30, 2011)

For something a little more scalloped:

http://electrocellulose.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/dsc_0025.jpg

This was from a show I hung lights for (and acted in) a couple weeks ago. We just grabbed whatever spare lights we could find. I seem to remember there were a couple of S4 Jrs, Altman 6x12s, and fresnels. It looked a little asymmetrical, but it was really cool.

And, yes for any of you Madison area people that might be out there, it was "The Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker."


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## chausman (Nov 30, 2011)

baotto said:


> For something a little more scalloped:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Welcome to CB! Feel free to introduce yourself in the New Member Board!

I actually kind of like that look. Sort of interesting. I can see it working really well for some shows, and not as much for others.


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