Things Every Console Should Have - Part Seven
Not Pre-Viz, Live-Viz!
Rob Halliday
A confession: I've never really been a big user of
lighting pre-visualisation software. In the kind of shows
I've often ended up doing, large scale musicals, we've had
the luxury of lighting with the real rig in the actual
venue. This is not necessarily because the producer wants
to indulge the lighting team, but because it takes time to
get the show up on its feet in terms of scenery, automation
and, of course, that least programmable of elements: the
performers. Lighting are generally quite happy to take
advantage of that time! Even during my recent grandMA
'conversion', I have found the console's Stage view to be a
useful thing to have in the corner of my eye (why can't I
see that light.?...ah, it's pointing into the wing) rather
than as a first-line programming tool.
But I have a dream of how it might be useful to me - not
'pre-viz', but rather 'live-viz'.
In creating a show, a lighting programmer is constantly
having to do mental conversions of what they see on stage
into the numbers of the console and vice versa: I can see a
blue beam of lighting coming from stage right to stage
left, but which light is it? By looking at the rig plan or
remembering the numbers I can guess, or by stepping through
some likely channels and using flash I can identify the
light. Or, if I had a visualiser with a suitable mode, I
could switch it to show the channel numbers on-screen -
but, unless I'd spent a lot of time modelling the set, I'm
only seeing this against a black or overly-simplistic
background.
Plus, that involves looking down, away from the stage. For
those of us that believe that lighting should be a 'heads
up' pastime, like driving or flying a fast jet, that is a
bad thing. But imagine if the channel numbers could be
right there in front of you, floating in space merged in
with the real rig, like the fighter pilot's heads-up
display.... Imagine if on the top of the console could be a
large transparent surface, much like an autocue screen,
that had a WYSIWYG-type display projected on it, and that
you could scale and align that image to match your actual
view of the stage. Now you could see the real stage, live,
full of performers - but overlaid on that could be the
visualiser's outlines of the beams with the channel numbers
or other information (focus palette name, colour name)
overlaid on top - and so floating as part of the real stage
image. Now it's easy to see the source of each beam of
light. Take it further and you could select the light by
reaching out and touching it, focus it by dragging, scale
it by moving the virtual beam's edges - though this would
always be slightly hampered by the 2D-nature of this
floating control surface.
Too fanciful, too Minority Report? Maybe - though remember
that in many theatres the lighting console already lives
behind a sheet of glass when it's in the control room;
bring that control room window usefully to life and a
programmer might want to stay in there rather than moving
out into the auditorium as we've been conditioned to do for
years (- argue that looking at the stage through glass
doesn't give you precise finessing of level you need? Fair
point, but surely that's ultimately the role of the
lighting designer rather than the programmer.....though, of
course, they might want the heads-up display, too).
In any case, until we can get to that stage, why not a more
practical half-way phase? Mount a video camera on a circle
rail (or take a feed from the camera that is very probably
already there, feeding the stage manager's view or the
latecomer TVs in the bar), then feed that video in to the
PC that is already running your visualisation software (or,
if your console has an on-board visualiser, into the
console itself). Most visualiser packages already have
camera view modes - so now tell it where the real camera is
spatially and it should be able to produce a matching view.
Then have the software merge its view with the real, live
video view. Now you have lower-budget live-viz: you can see
a cone of light surrounding a real actor, and see a label
floating in the beam telling you which light it is.
And while the sci-fi version would be limited to showing
you the view from where you're standing, the real-world
version could be more versatile, therefore compensating in
part for its 'heads-down' nature: rig a second overhead
camera, and then for those tricky focuses you can't quite
see from your operating position toggle to that camera. A
number of programmers have actually done just this with
overhead video feeds on recent shows... but, again, merge
it into the visualiser and now also toggle it to that
viewpoint and you can again identify the beams - or drag on
the beams to focus real lights to a real point that you can
really see on the real stage, even if that point is an item
of detailing no-one had ever bothered drawing in the
visualiser's stage model.
What if it turns out that the visualiser's stage plan isn't
quite as accurate as you might have hoped? Why not correct
it from the live video input, almost tracing from the real
scenery into the computer's model? And if it turns out the
lights aren't in quite the right place, perhaps you now
also have a tool for rapidly figuring out how much
everything is out by and having the console compensate for
it....
It's a different use for visualisation, and one that
doesn't necessarily need the highest resolution, highest
quality renderings of the final image that all of the major
packages now compete to offer - none will ever be as good
as seeing the real staging beneath the light beams (though
some might be better than the image from a cheap, nasty
black and white video camera - you wouldn't want to skimp
on the camera used for the live-viz feed!) But it's a use
that would get me and perhaps others who've had no need of
visualisation software until now using such packages while
creating the show - and would also provide a valuable tool
in the next phase of the process on long-running shows,
documenting and maintaining everything. The operator who's
taken over the show would now be able to easily see which
light was which - and perhaps to know when a light was
faulty, it's real beam no longer lining up on-screen with
the virtual beam....
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