15-Monday

Today classes were pretty normal, I think I am getting into the swing of things, developing a routine and all. The exciting part of today was that I had an electrics practicum meeting; we went over the different types of lighting instruments, there are ‘pars’, ‘Fresnels’ and  ‘ellipsoidals’.

Pars- are the standard lights that you normally see DJ’s using. They look like little cans that you put a light bulb in. The bulb looks similar to ones you use at Christmas to light up your house. They have a lens that has a box pattern the smaller the pattern the tighter the focus. If over used they are lovingly called luminescent vomit (:

Fresnel’s- are basically pars that has a barrel (a barrel is what is on the end of the lamp it is the tube where the light is passed through.)  The barrel can be adjusted and can move so you can change the length to change the focus.

Ellipsoidal-these are simply stationary spotlights. The have shutters to change the shape the light. There is also an accessory slot where you can drop GOBO’s (gobos are the patterns , so if on stage you see a window pattern that is a small piece of metal that has a design punched out that the light is projected through. They also have adjustable barrels. A sub-category of ellipsoidal are zooms where you can adjust the lens back and forth to change the light.

In all of the lights you can also insert Gels, these are thin sheets of colored translucent plastic. They are how lights project color, unless its an LED light, but that is a whole other story.

Our Adventure was going up to cat walk in the black box theater which is only up about 20ft but still it was a little scary for those of us that we are a little scared of heights. Then we practiced hanging lights by moving instruments from one side of the catwalk to the other side.  Fun fact: when you hang a light you put a safety cable, (made of airline hanger cable) so incase it slips  no one is hurt.  That I knew but I didn’t know if you wrap it around more than once it becomes weaker. So if its wrapped twice around then it becomes ½ as strong and three times 1/3 as strong.

That was the excitement for the day, otherwise it was a normal day doing homework in the Library.