WholeHog Tip #2 February 26, 2010
Posted by anthonyrisi in Lighting Design.Tags: Lighting, Programming, Tips, WholeHog
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What in the world does the “Suck” button do? I get asked this all the time. I had one guy tell me that it just took the lights and tried to make them look worse. Not right, not right. The “Suck” button has a very good purpose. It goes along with the “Touch” button. Both buttons are located on the right touch screen at the bottom. Lets start with the “Touch” button. Have you ever looked at a light in one cue and said, man I really like what it is doing here and would like to put it over in another cue. You could copy the cue and then remove everything else from it, but that is the hard way. The easy way is to use the “Touch” button. So do this. Make sure the cue that you want to copy from is running. Then select the light that you want to copy. Hit “Touch”. The clear light will light up, do not hit “Clear”. Release the cue that you are in, and go to the cue that you want to put this in. Notice, that the light you selected is still doing what it was doing in the first cue. What happened, is that when you hit the “Touch” button, every aspect of the light was pulled into the programmer. Once you are over to the cue you want to put this in, hit update and it will let you re-save the second cue with the information for that light from the first cue.
So what if you just want to do that with a certain function of the light. Say you have a light pointed at an object, and you didn’t record a preset in the position pallet for it, but you need to make sure it is in another cue also. Select the light in the first cue, hold down the “Position” button and then it “Suck”. This will pull all of the position information from the light and put it in the programmer. You can then release the first cue and go to the second one and update that cue. Note that I am talking about two cues over two different cue lists. However, you can use it for cues in the same cue list. Say you have built an effect that you want to keep using in the cue list over and over, but you have cues in between that stop the effect. So you either have to create the effect each time, or save the effect to the effect pallet and keep recalling it. An easy way, use the “Suck” button. Go to the cue that has the effect. Select the lights that you want, hold down the “Effect” button, and hit “Suck”. Then go to the cue that you want this applied to. Notice that whatever the effect was is still happening. Hit update, or save a new cue.
Please let me know if this help, and if you have a question, please ask.
Thanks
Church Lighting Post #2 February 26, 2010
Posted by anthonyrisi in Lighting Design.Tags: information, Lifechurch.tv, Lighting
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Last week I talked about getting a main color for a song. Lets keep going on the song Revelation Song by Kari Jobe. The first verse is still soft, so I ask myself, does this verse need anything. One of my main goals in lighting design for my church is enhancing the song. We could take all of this away tomorrow and still worship God. We don’t need all these lights, but they are a tool that we can use to help enhance the worship. In this song for the first verse, I decided to bring focus down to the singer. So I simply took two lights from behind the singer, and turned them on pointed at the singer. I have seen some places that make one look for the entire song and leave it and never change it. That is fine, that is just not what I do. I try and build a song from start to finish, and I try and keep it with the music. As this song continues, we get to the first chorus. This first chorus is still kinda soft, so again ask does this need anything? The song does build a little, and since it is a chorus of the song I decided to add some more lights in, soft with a few breakup gobos in. Not all of your lights have to be on all the time. Just by turing more lights on you can add to a song. Breakup gobos are a great thing to use in soft songs. Again, take the artistic license and go for it.
Let me know if this helps, or if you have specific questions, please ask.
Thanks
WholeHog Tip #1 February 21, 2010
Posted by anthonyrisi in Lighting Design.Tags: information, Lighting, Programming, Tips, WholeHog
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I know a lot of churches that use WholeHog consoles for there lighting systems. Some have consoles like the iPC, Road Hog, WholeHog III, and some use the PC version. All of them use the same software, so what I cover here you can apply to any of them.
So tip #1, the Knockout button. The knockout button does exactly what it says. It knocks things out of the programmer. A little background just so you know, anytime you select a light and change anything about it, like change the color or something like that, the console puts the light into the programmer. This is a place where the console holds it until you save it or hit clear. So say you have just built an entire look onstage using all of your different lights. You look it over before you save it and decided that one of the lights you don’t really like. So you decided to take it out. You could do this by just turing the lights off, or you can knock it out. Select the fixture and hit the knockout button, which is located near the middle of the right touch screen at the bottom. The light will be taken out of the programmer. If you have another master up that has that light in it, the light will go back to doing whatever is in that master, but if you don’t have any other masters up, then it should just turn off and go to home position.
So say you already recorded the cue. Then you decide that you don’t want that light in it. What do you do? The knockout function only works in the programmer, so we need to get the cue back in the programmer. To do this, make sure you have that cue list chosen using the Choose button above the playback master. Make sure you are in the cue you want to edit. Then hit the “Cue” button twice. The cue will be loaded into the programmer in blind mode. You can then select the light and hit knockout and it will remove it from the cue. Hitting the “Update” button will then re-save the cue without that light.
You can also do this to just certain things on a light, like the color for example. Select the light, hold down the “Color” button and while still holding it down hit knockout. The color will be knocked out of the programmer for that light. If there is a cue before this one, the light will simply keep that color, if not, then the light will go back to white.
Hope this was helpful.
Thanks
Church Lighting Post #1 February 21, 2010
Posted by anthonyrisi in Lighting Design.Tags: information, Lifechurch.tv, Lighting
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Lots of people come up to me at church and ask me how I come up with the lighting I do every week for Lifechurch.tv. Mostly these are people from other churches that are visiting our church. So I decided to give out some of my thoughts on this, and I am going to try to make this a weekly post, along with another post that I am going to start called, “Wholehog Tips”. I will try and post these probably on Friday or Saturday every week.
So here we go. A little bit about my church first. I am the lighting designer for Lifechurch.tv OKC campus, in Edmond OK. We are a multi-site church that broadcast via satellite to 13 other campuses, 100 network churches, and to the internet for Church Online. Very contemporary music and messages, using Audio, Video, and Lighting. My lighting system includes, moving lights, ETC Source 4s, LEDs, and a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog iPC. To see what this all looks like please go to live.lifechurch.tv. You will be taken to Church Online, where you can see sermons and worship from this location ( most of the time). So that is a little bit about my church, in a nutshell. Click here for more information on Lifechurch.tv.
So onto the lighting design. I am going to start this from the first thought that goes through my mind. The first thing I do when designing lighting for music is to listen to the song. From that moment, the first thought that goes through my mind is “what color is this song?”. Let me stop and say that lighting design is half science, and half artistic. Because of the nature of our church, and the fact that there are HD cameras capturing all of the worship, I have to think of what it will be like on the other side of the camera. Certain colors transmit over the cameras better then others. So I first get a main color of the song. Lets take the song Revelation Song by Kari Jobe. This song starts soft, and to me soft is blue. So I will set the whole tone of the stage around the color blue. Does that mean that all my lights are blue, no, but that is the color that all of the lights work around. So other lights might be a complementary color to blue.
Next week I will go more into the next steps that I do in designing lighting for a song. Start with a color first, and make that the main color. I very rarely change the main color in a song unless it just absolutely calls for it. Does that mean you can’t? No. Like I said, lighting is half artistic, so take some artistic license and make the call.
Comments are welcomed, and please let me know if any of this is helpful.
Thanks
The Gymnastics meet February 7, 2010
Posted by anthonyrisi in Uncategorized.Tags: bad lighting, Photography, Shannon
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Well so I did get to go to Shannon’s last gymnastics meet and get some pictures. I was not really happy with the seating in this place. Basically it was an arena with all the first floor seating pull out. So all parents had to sit on the second floor seating area, on one side only. I got there like 20 minuets before the gymnasts were suppose to and I still did not get a front row seat. Part of all of my pictures had a rail in them, and I should have just stood up to take the pictures, I was trying to not be rude to the people behind me. I did not have a fast enough lens. I was going to rent a f2.8 70-200mm lens, but decided that for this one I better save my money. Maybe for the next one. So here are some of the pictures.
Not the best picture, but one of the only ones that I could get the entire team in, and Shannon is usually not in the front. Below is the original.
© 2010 Anthony Risi
The bars were first. Could not get the landing because of a persons head.
Then the beam. I really did not get that grate of shots on the beam because it was so far away. Plus everything she did seamed to be away from us. Oh well. The lights also were doing some really strange stuff. My camera kept changing its white balance setting. I hate gym lights, they suck. Poor camera.
On to the floor. Here is where the railing at the front of the seating section really became a pain. This building was not really designed all that well.
Didn’t get any worth showing of her on the vault. It was on the other side of the room, so I really needed a 400mm lens. The awards stand was on the other side also, and people were standing up and blocking the view, so I could not get any of her there. But she got 1st on bars, 6th on floor, 8th on vault, 6th on beam, and 3rd All Around. Bars are her strong event. The next meet is in the Cox Convention center here in Oklahoma City. I happen to know someone that works there so I might go try and look at the room before hand and see if the lights in there are any better. If not then I might rent that lens for this one.
Comments are always welcomed.
