An impactful production calls for three crucial factors: clear sound, captivating visuals, and creative lighting. Stage lighting equipment goes beyond just brightening up a space. These invaluable tools shape the environment, provide visual direction, and craft immersive, visual symphonies that enhance the production performance to move audiences. To guide your next event towards artistic illumination, Whole Hearted Pro AV is here to unravel the intricacies of stage lighting equipment.
The Role of Stage Lighting Equipment
In the realm of live productions, stage lighting equipment serves as a conduit for energy, emotion, and connection. While the stage is the canvas to any event, stage lighting equipment is the paint brush that makes a presentation into a performance and a gathering into an experience. These illuminating tools are not restricted to one sole purpose. In fact, stage lighting equipment is incredibly versatile and plays many roles depending on the nature of the production, including:
- Stage illumination to craft clear visuals for your audience no matter where they are seated.
- Highlight focal points to guide your audience to key areas throughout the presentation.
- Set the ambiance and scene of your production to resonate with your audience.
- Adjust the mood of your production to encourage the desired emotions from your audience.
Basic Stage Lighting Equipment Terms and Concepts
At Whole Hearted Pro AV, we recognize that unless you’re a seasoned audio visual enthusiast, navigating the nearly endless array of stage lighting equipment available to you can be challenging. Although it would be nearly impossible to become familiar with every equipment option on the market, it is beneficial to get familiar with a few key terms.
- Fixtures: Because modern stage lighting uses so many lighting instruments to gernatate a variety of lighting effects, all devices can generically be referred to as lighting fixtures or just “Fixtures.”
- Lamps: When you hear lamps used in the context of stage lighting equipment, we are not referring to desk lamps, but rather the light bulbs used in stage light fixtures. It should be noted that most modern LED fixtures no longer use “Lamps” in the traditional sense of the word.
- Wash: Traditionally created using floodlights, a wash is a wide covering of consistent lighting that spans across a stage.
- Intensity: The term intensity is used when speaking about the brightness or dimness of a production.
- Ellipsoidal: An ellipsoidal is a type of spotlight fixture. These fixtures produce a single beam of intense lighting, used to draw the audiences’ attention to a defined subject. One of the most powerful features of Ellipsoidal lights is that they can be “framed” using built-in paddles which is useful to keep the light off of projector screens, etc.
- Followspot: Similar to an ellipsoidal, a followspot is a form of spotlight that highlights a primary focus, usually a person. However, with a followspot, the light can be manually adjusted in real time to seamlessly follow the subjects path as they move around the stage.
- Fresnel: A Fresnel has a fixed lens but can be zoomed in and out by adjusting how far the lamp is from the lens. They create very coherent light that easily blends with other fresnel lights.
- Light Bar: Long narrow bars that can generate a single color such as white or black light (UV) or many colors (often at the same time). These are typically used as uplights to light the wall at the back of the stage, but can also be used in a variety of other creative ways.
- Intelligent lighting or moving lights: Many fixtures can move in variety of ways, and create everything from
- Color Temperature: “White” fixtures vary in color from warmish yellow tinted light to cold looking bluish tinted light and everything in between. How yellow or blue the light is described by “Color Temperature” which is measured in degrees Kelvin. “Warm” yellowish light is typically between 2700-3200K while the more white/bluish white light can be between 5000-10,000 K. the color temperature of stage lighting can seriously impact the quality of video.
- Haze: While technically not a lighting fixture, hazers create a thin fog-like atmosphere with particles in the air that reflects light as it goes by. This is an important element if you want to see “beams” in the air which can be a very creative three dimensional effect.
Stage Lighting Positions
To craft dynamic visual experiences, it takes more than just high-quality stage lighting equipment. The position of your lighting is equally as important as the lighting fixtures themselves. To formulate dimension, depth, and captivating visual effects that accentuate focal points and impact, it’s essential to be strategic about your stage lighting equipment positions, which include:
- Front lights: Primary lighting source.
- Backlighting: Positioned in the rear of the stage to highlight background actions.
- Downlighting: To bring dimension by shining straight down or at an angle in conjunction with other lighting components.
- Effects lighting: While not always used to light characters or elements on stage, some fixtures, especially moving heads are used to create movement and energy, and when used in conjunction with haze, can be used to create a variety of three dimensional effects.
Endless Creative Opportunities
Stage lighting equipment allows you to unleash your creativity. When a production demands fluidity, stage lighting can be tailored to align with the rhythm of the presentation. From the sweeping beams of a followspot to centrally focused spotlights, floodlights, and beyond, the possibilities are plentiful. Moreover, stage lighting equipment is diverse. You may opt for manually controlled lighting tools or the power of automation that allows you to seamlessly adjust colors, intensity, and patterns using the touch of a button. You may even take your production a step further with mesmerizing special effects, such as strobe lights, or laser displays.
Unlock Bespoke Stage Lighting Equipment with Our Audio Visual Professionals Today
No two productions are the same. That’s why at Whole Hearted Pro AV, we lead with a commitment to customization. Whether you’re looking for immersive lighting for your house of worship or a choreographed light show for a small concert, our experts are here to bring your vision to life with bespoke stage lighting equipment solutions. We partner with you to understand your lighting aspirations to recommend the right tools that align with your production objectives. To get started, contact our friendly team today.
