Photo Archive for
MUSIC ACTS 2009 through 2010
Lighted by RICHARD BONNER

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Events are in reverse chronological order.)

Dartmouth High School's
50th Anniversary
Dartmouth Sportsplex
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Common Room
July, 2010

Side and back lighting are all 600-watt Ray
Lights in eight different colours. Front
washes are 1000-watt, short-throw, PAR 64s,
with red, blue or orange gel. Key lights are
26-degree ellipsoidals in a flesh colour.

Action Figures

This angle shows the side lighting, dance floor, and video screen at the far wall.

Rick Gautreau

Sam Moon Band

Note the sharp cutoff between the orange and green colours on Mike's hair. This is achieved by strategic placement of the lights so that one colour fills in the shadows of another.

Maritime Medley
The ScotianAires
Bella Rose Arts Centre
Halifax, Nova Scotia
May, 2010

This is the basic look for song introductions. It has two, 1000-watt. 26-degree ellipsoidals in a straw colour from the front of house and two 1000-watt Wide-Floor PAR 64s in steel blue from the upper back and off to the sides.

Here is the same lighting as above minus the key light on the introduction position and the addition of a flesh wash from the front of house via two 1000-watt PAR 64 fixtures.

Ultra blue envelops the group from two 1000-watt PAR 64s on the Proscenium pipe. A single, 150mm 1000-watt fresnel at partial intensity lightly back lights the director in pink.

The Greene Irish Step Dancers start by facing one another in a tight circle. They are top lit from a single 1000-watt fresnel in a dark steel blue.

This is the same as above with the addition of two front-of-house, 1000-watt ellipsoidals in straw. Each has a 36-degree spread.

This single dancer is lit from two 1000-watt, PAR 64 wide floods, one from each side and upstage of her position. The colour here is a lighter steel blue.

As with the group of dancers, two ellipsoidals from the front illuminate a single dancer, while the lights from diagonally back of each shoulder remain to highlight her from behind.

The dancers here have formed a column and are dancing forward from darkness into the spots downstage. Lights here are the front ellipsoidals in straw and single rear fresnel in dark steel blue.

The line of dancers has just left the central area and are about to take a bow. They are lit from front PAR 64s in flesh while the single rear fresnel pools dark steel blue in the center.

Skip and Kim Holmes are first lit in straw from front ellipsoidals and from behind in lavender by a single, 1000-watt fresnel.

Now Skip is backlit by a single, 1000-watt fresnel in dark steel blue, while Kim is lit in straw from the front, but it is dimmed down for a waltz.

The rear curtain is lit by two 1000-watt fresnels in lavender from the floor and by two 1000-watt, PAR 64 Medium Floods from high up to the sides of the curtain. They are in a lime green. A hint of front red shines on the singers.

The rear pattern here comes from two 1000-watt ellipsoidals on the proscenium pipe each with a breakup pattern and turquoise gel. The lavender comes from two 1000-watt fresnels on the floor below the curtain. The front red has brightened.

The remaining photos show the ScotianAires
with various back curtain looks done from
below, above and to the front of the curtain
using combinations of PARs and fresnels.

Carew, Breeze and Wilson
The Bella Rose Arts Centre
Halifax, Nova Scotia
December, 2009

The black curtain was used for this event. Pink washes it from the proscenium pipe, while the band is lit from behind & above in steel blue. The front wash is a medium red. All fixtures used for the above were short-throw, 1000-watt, wide-flood PAR 64s. Also from the front are two 26-degree, 1000-watt, 150mm ellipsoidals in straw, one each focused on the two central musicians.

The steel blue seen above continues to back light the musicians here, but front lighting is solely from ellipsoidals in straw. The bass player at your right appears red because his light is at a lower intensity which shows as red to the camera.

No curtain lighting or front wash is used so as to create a more intimate, more dramatic effect.

Top light in blue, and from slightly behind, comes in at a steeper angle than the steel blue seen above. It is more tightly focused and is done using three, 1000-watt, 150mm fresnels with barndoors. Front light is a dim red wash, while the curtain is washed from two, 1000-watt, medium-flood PAR 64s at extreme and high side angles so as to show off the curtain pleats. It looks blue to the camera, but is actually a dark lavender.

Lighting here is strictly the back steel blue and a single front-of-house ellipsoidal on the one musician.

Only front lighting is used here. The blue is an "ultra" blue from the proscenium pipe PAR 64, wide floods. This provides a very steep wash on the band. A single musician is picked out of the blue by a front-of-house ellipsoidal.

An A Cappella Christmas
The Bella Rose Arts Centre
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November, 2009

Patrick is put to bed by his mother. His bedroom set was in front of the curtains, partially on platforms situated on the main auditorium floor. Lighting was from two 1000-watt, 150mm, ellipsoidals with orange, colour-correction filters to simulate warm room light. The table lamp used a typical 40-watt, screw-base, non-diffused (clear bulb) light source but it was under control of the lighting director.

As Patrick falls asleep, the lighting is cross-faded to a single, 750-watt ellipsoidal with a rotating pattern of a snowflake. Note the chromatic abberation in the edges of each element of the pattern. This is because theatre light lens systems are usually not corrected for colour-fringe problems.

The curtains open to reveal a lit tree while the lighting cross fades to a single, 1000-watt ellipsoidal in blue from a high, on-stage angle focused on the bed from behind and to its left.

The open curtains show that Patrick's toy soldiers have become real. They are frozen in pose except for the platoon leader who peers through binoculars to be sure no humans are around. The leader and front soldiers are lit dimly from two front-of-house, 1000-watt ellipsoidals in straw.

The upstage soldiers are in green from the proscenium and in pink side-back light from the rear catwalk. Fixtures are 1000-watt, short-throw PAR 64s with wide-flood lamps. The rear fixtures are barndoored to control spill into the down-stage area. Once again, the bedroom (partially seen at the right) continues to be lit in blue from the high-angle ellipsoidal hung above the stage.

Blue washes the soldiers and Patrick from the proscenium, with lavender from the rear sides.

A front-of-house red turns some of the blue into a nice purple for this quiet song. The red is most evident on the back of the platoon leader and her teddy bear because both are downstage of the blue wash's focus area. Fixtures here are wide-flood PAR 64s.

The bedroom is lit from the front in lavender and from behind in blue. Fixtures are 1000-watt ellipsoidals. The table lamp is once again brought up for this scene.

After a few songs and more story reading, the solders return to the risers for a final song, the curtains close and Patrick awakens to realise it was all a dream.

Seventh Heaven

Lighting here consists of two ellipsoidals from the front in straw, with a medium lavender from a high angle behind. Its colour is evident on the performers' heads and shoulders, on the floor at their feet, and at the edge of the curtain to your right.

City of Lakes Barbershop Chorus The chorus is lit in deep blue with an overlay of flesh, both from the proscenium pipe. Steel blue comes in from the rear sides, while lime green washes the white curtain which was used for the second half of the show. All fixtures for this look are wide-flood PAR 64s.

The ScotianAires

This is a simple scene with only the front red and blue washes used to make pink, while a steel blue highlights from the rear sides. Fixtures are wide-flood PAR 64s. No curtain lighting was used. The shadow is caused by a low proscenium valance curtain shading the front-of-house positions.

This closeup shows almost the same lighting but with flesh from the front and a lavender curtain wash. The latter comes from well above and to the sides of the rear curtain. Light slashes right down it rippling along the pleats. The moderate shadow at Top Center is caused by a projection-screen box.

The ScotianAires

For the finale, all acts took to the stage to sing together. Lighting for this shot, taken after the final song, was flesh and blue from the front, steel blue from the rear sides and the lime green on the rear curtain. To bump up the levels upstage, an additional flesh wash from the proscenium was employed. The tree, which had been moved to where the bedroom set had been, was illuminated for this as well.