Putting a Face on Theatre
How Fast is 0?
To my knowledge the slowest element is an incandescent filament taking around a second to cool off. Mechanical shutters vary but are faster. A dimmer takes 1/120 of a second to go from full to black. DMX timing can be a factor, but not a big one.
What else might slow the falling of darkness?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey E. Salzberg on -
Smaller filaments cool down faster. So do more efficient lamps. A Source Four will go to black faster than a PAR64.
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Permalink Reply by Judy on -
I think the dimmer curve itself might be a factor. As far as I know all dimmers today are manufactured with the same curve, but they used to be different .TV dimmers had different curves than theater dimmers - there used to be linear, S and logarithmic. In fact some consoles today allow you to program different curves. The one I've been working with has several pre-programmed curves as well as the option to design your own.
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Permalink Reply by Rick Reid on -
If the console changes the DMX in 0 time then the very next packet should read 0 level. I don't see how the curve applies, as it determines what the dimmer does with non-zero levels.
FWIW: ETC (and others) make different quality levels of dimmers, But I always understood it was the rise time that changed to quiet the fillament hum.
I'm still looking...
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Ellison on -
At my High School we have ETC dimmers with ETC fixtures so i should be going black just as fast as Broadway which would be using the same gear. ETC does offer a way to choose a curve but that would be a special case not the norm.
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A lot of this can also be your eyes playing tricks on you. Which Broadway guys use to their advantage. Usually a Broadway stage is much brighter then a University or community theatre stage because they have many more fixtures and many of them are Arc sources.
When you only have a few sources then you can see that when you go to a blackout on a 0 count the lights actually fade. With more sources, the amount of light changes so fast that your eyes cannot adjust fast enough to see it fading. The lights on Broadway still fade at the same rate you just don't see it.
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I saw something in the manual for our dimmers about you can set the response times to a fast, medium, and slow. The medium was the default and I believe it said the slow would help to save the lamps and there was a warning that fastcould damage lamps and only use it if you have to.
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I thought of this too. It can take the eyes a bit to adjust to the sudden drop in light and by then we're on to the next scene.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Griffin on -
At a BLMC (Broadway Lighting Master Class) Jules Fischer talked about preserving the blackout. He explained that the LD should make sure that all lighting sources - run lights, flashlights, cue lights, even exit lights - in the space should be "controlled" so as to not "pollute" the black out. I think this, along with Jon Weaver's comments about the quantity of light available to B-way shows, can trick the eye into believing blackouts in certain spaces are faster than in others.
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Permalink Reply by George on -
Mr. Fisher has been giving that same blackout speech for the past 20 years. I bet he also said "Someday I will write a pamphlet on the masking of orchestra lights, aisle lights, exit signs ..."
For a long time, it's been a closely guarded secret that Broadway DMX is better and faster than the DMX offered outside NYC. Now I'm going to have to kill you.
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Permalink Reply by Erich Friend on -
Although Mr. Fisher may want to provide total black-outs for his audience, this falls in the catagory of 'don't try this at home'. The NFPA Life Safety Code 101 is very specific about the minimum permissible illumination levels in an assembly space. And covering or disabling the EXIT signs is definitely against the law. If you and/or your director are willing to asume the full liability for any person in the building getting injured due to the black-out, then go ahead, otherwise, get a light level meter and teach your staff what 1/5 foot candle (for aisles) and 1/2 foot-candle (for egress routes) looks like and what dimmer settings will get you there.
You will learn that these levels don't rely upon the floor color, so a light color carpet or unfinished concrete will appear much brighter than a dark finish. This is a common mistake in many theatres that have carpeted aisles and bare concrete or tiles under the seats.
You can achieve a very good black-out effect without violating the NFPA requirements if you are careful about where the light spills and leaks. Put it where you need it, and shield it from where it is a distraction (except EXIT signs, they cannot be covered or shielded from view. Don't like the back-lit red? Go buy an edge-lit green one - they are a bit more subtle).
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A house I work in used to have a system requiring the data signal to travel through several Colortran nodes between the console and the dimmers. The delay in the signal path was significant (nearly a second at its worst) and every system tech who came out to address it claimed there was nothing wrong. Some even going so far as to say that it was a "feature". We eventually re-ran the wiring to eliminate the nodes between the console and the dimmers and that improved things a great deal.
What we discovered then was that the dimmers themselves (Colortran iSeries) were causing some delay too. Yet another "feature". (Maybe a quarter/half a second when the dimmers are cold. When warm, it's much less.)
I would imagine that a perceived different between the average house and a Broadway house is a factor of equipment quality and maintenance.
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Permalink Reply by Rick Reid on
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I believe what you are talking about is communication time. The delay between pressing the BO button and the dimmers getting the message. It can be quite frustrating! But so is the delay between the cue line and the operator hitting the button.
I've begun to hear some rumors of delays through either net devices. Were you on a network or "hard line" DMX?
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