# lighting sunrise for les mis



## 3D (Jul 21, 2004)

my high school is doing Les Mis this year. i want to do an effect at the end of the show. i wanted to get some advice on how i could create a sunrise at the end when claude valjean is finally liberated from javert. anyone have suggestions. i want to make it with lighting. we have almost everything to our disposal. we have a qaurter fly, cyc with cyc lights, spots etc expression 3 and intellegent lighting. i want to make it as awsome as possible. starting from a dark blue ending in a bright sun orange. HELP cause i am new to lighting. but not theater!

Thanks,
3D (Derek D. Deiterman)


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## zac850 (Jul 21, 2004)

well, the classic way would be to use the cyc and your stage wash. 

Bring your cyc from a dark blue type color to a light, more white color, but still with some blue in it (i'll check my swatch books later and give you some color suggestions).

For your stage wash, bring it from a deep blue to a brighter color, like an orange type thing. You can also put some light bastard amber type color in FOH for a 'daytime' FOH wash, and a blue for a 'nighttime' FOH wash.

That is the normal way of doing it. You could also use one of your intelligent lights to create a sun. You can have your intelligent light to create a circle on your cyc and fade it up as a sun type thing (or, you could do this with a Source 4 if you wanted to, I guess, gelled orangeish. 

Or, if you wanted to go another way with it, you could create a sun and fly it in or out.


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## The_Guest (Jul 21, 2004)

I'm currently working on the SMT production of Fiddler on the Roof. There is a sunset used in scene or two, I believe. I'm sound so I'm not completely sure how this was implemented. They're three light booms with as many as 5 fixtures setup in each wing. The boom furthest upstage at stage left had a sun type gobo projected onto the corner of the cyc. The beams of the sun goboextended downward in all directions, it lookes great mixed with the cyc's warm colors. The sun gobo looks better when placed in the wings rather than on an electric or catwalk because it does not make the sunbeams extend enough. Also there were several gobos projected with the stage wash to make it appear as if the sun is rising and shinning down on the actors. Your intels could really help you out here for sun rise motion effects. Experiement create a design for it, read up what others have done with this show. This show is very popular everyone has done it at some time, you won't have any troubles finding other designs for this show on the internet. Good Luck.


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## MikeJM (Jul 22, 2004)

*lighting for les mis*

3D- What kind of intelligent fixtures do your facility own? (Just wondering)  

As far as sunrise/sunset goes, you can program cues with up/down times of minutes or more/less to create the illusion of a sunrise or sunset. That and a mix of orange/red/blue lighting -cyc lighting you can do a pretty good job. I did the musical Fiddler on the Roof last year and we had a sunrise over the course of the entire opening number of "Tradition" in the begining. You could use a mix of cyc lights or strip lights and lighting fixtures on the floor such as floor cyc units or even par cans. Alot of this is just experimenting.


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## 3D (Jul 22, 2004)

MikeJM 

we own two Chauvet Legend 150-r's


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## avkid (Jul 22, 2004)

we used a yellow spotlight that moved slowly upward


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## The_Guest (Jul 23, 2004)

Heh, that is a little to generic and vague. Unless you have a fantastic gobo and the spot throws wide enough, it probably looks too basic. The sun should emphasized no matter what, it's the center of our universe, it supplys the energy for your theater. Haha, give it a little more respect than that. A good sunrise should have some texture too it, not just a yellow circle. I think if you got two sunset gobos (Very very wide half oval/circles with textures surround the exterior. Try to find a gobo that is realistic but not obvious and man made looking) for each intel gel'd red and orange (or something similar) and had them overlap and blend with each other slowly rising on a slow slow time cue all thrown onto a warm colored cyc would look quite nice. With a very slow cue, cue it with time rather than intensity. Use time as referrance in the scene. Also if you could add some warm colored fixtures for use as the wash in the scene would look great. A gobo illustrating texture from the sun shining down and casting shadows due to make it appear like the sun is at a low morning angle just rising above the horizon. If possible if you could put some fixtures on booms in the wing or set some fixtures at foh or from a catwalk all the way in the back of the house creating a nice shadow. If you can wash the stage with orangish-redish colors that could really emphasize the sunrise. This is not as a hard as it seems, the only tricky part is making a nice motion effect for the sunrise.


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## MikeJM (Jul 23, 2004)

You don't neccessarily need to represent the sun to show a sunrise or sunset unless you are going to do something like is done in the Lion King Show in which the sun is slowly flown out. Using a mixture of colors, cyc units and other fixtures you can create a good sunrise, just by a slow fade up/down over a period of time, like I earlier stated. 

I am not saying that you can't create a good sunrise using a gobo, or a spotlight, but I can see it being very difficult to make it not come off as cheezy.


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## dvsDave (Jul 23, 2004)

Think of it this way, try to visualize the "east" of the stage as off to a wing of the stage and plan your lights accordingly. We had really low angles at first (starting stage left) and fading them to higher angles while fading an pinkish-rose cyc to a more orange-reddish color. this all happened over the course of a couple minutes, but don't forget how pink the sky can look in the early, early morning!


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## Les (Jul 23, 2004)

Sorry, I forgot to Log in. That last reply was from me.
-Les


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## The_Guest (Jul 24, 2004)

Lester said:


> Sorry, I forgot to Log in. That last reply was from me.
> -Les



Don't you just hate it when that happens?


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## avkid (Jul 24, 2004)

to that i say, we are cash strapped


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