Live Design's fifth annual 31 Days Of Plots features one production per day during the month of December 2022, highlighting a different lighting design, from across theatre, concert tours, corporate events, live for broadcast, and more, as we wind down 2022 and head toward the new year.
Lighting designer Jeff Ravitz designed a stand-up comedy special, My Name is Mo’Nique, which was filmed for Netflix in October 2022 at the Rialto Center for the Arts, Atlanta, GA., for a 2023 release.
"I like to showcase smaller shows that present a challenge but turn out great in the end," says Ravitz. "This production was a stand-up comedy special, which sounds like a simple task of lighting one performer onstage. There’s more to it than meets the eye. You need to make the talent look their best (or better!). The backgrounds need to have careful treatment to look good from all angles and not overtake the show. The surroundings need to be defined, which should be minimal and classy. And the audience typically requires subtle lighting to give them a presence on-camera without blinding them or making them appear “deliberately” lit. Finally, there might be the desire to have a little dedicated sparkle for the cameras to see."
Ravitz did find that the venue, which he considers "very nice," does have its shortcomings: "Originally conceived as a symphony hall, there are orchestra shells that cannot fly up above the lighting. The entire batten system is dead-hung and most of the in-house lighting is blocked by the orchestra baffles from focusing downstage. Despite that, I needed a foundation of back wash to allow the comedienne to have backlight wherever she wanted to roam onstage. I also needed some over-stage positions as a starting point to my audience lighting plan, which includes a little bit of front light that can act as a fill, if needed for a big ovation or during the walk-on."
For the LD, "the only way to achieve any backlight on this stage required tailing-down fixtures from the dead-hung pipes. Working with the inventory at Blacklight Productions, we used stirrup hangers to lower down a number of Chauvet Rogue Washes for good, even backlight, plus a few for that audience fill I mentioned. We also tailed-down several Chauvet Intimidator Hybrids to add that camera-sparkle."To make life easier and to speed up the setup, I used quite a few Chauvet WELL Fit uplight fixtures, which are battery-powered and controlled wirelessly. They skimmed up the edges of the proscenium and the walls of the theater. Some Intimidators shooting across the room gave a little extra dimension to the venue’s slatted walls," he explains.
"The scenery consisted of an upstage curtain and fabric legs in the wings. Blacklight owns Blizzard SkyBars, which are also a wireless product. I hadn’t used them before, let alone for a televised production, but they worked fabulously. The venue’s ChromaQ Colorforce 72s and 48s handled the upstage curtain," adds Ravitz. "The house hang was made up of ETC SourceFour ellipsoidals of all barrel sizes. The most useful for my purposes were on the box boom positions, which I used to cross-light the audience. The venue also had booms in every bay of the wings. The ellipsoidals on these worked perfectly as my offstage sparkle for the cameras, since such a high percentage of camera shots see the wings as background."
The final challenge for the LD was the front follow spot: "The house spot was an old Altman Explorer. A great light in its era, but for a hundred-foot throw, it required too much color correction to reach the stage with much intensity. We found a Canto 1500 spot in Atlanta and it did the trick nicely," notes Ravitz. My only worry was the very low, straight-on angle from the house booth to the stage. Michael Williams helped devise a makeshift platform in the booth, squeezed in between some large and heavy film projectors. That platform got the spot up “almost” where I would have wanted it, but in the end, it looked terrific on our talent," Ravitz concludes. "Thanks to Blacklight Productions for pulling off a complicated setup that they made appear simple. Add a hazer and a fast and skillful programmer on the house ETC Ion XE 20, and bingo…we had a show."
Lighting Team
- Lighting designer: Jeff Ravitz
- Vendor: Blacklight Productions (Atlanta)
- Project coordinator: André Allen
- Programmer: Will Brunson
- Venue Technical Director: Michael Williams
- Production Designer: Korey Washington