This post was originally posted at Backstage at the Lowry Theater Company.

Backstage. What really does that mean? Will we share all of our secrets? Will we offer just a glimpse? Or will it be somewhere in between? I suspect there are certain things that we just cannot tell you about during the run of the show as they might give away secrets that will be revealed. The good news is that I’m more interested in the technical aspects of the production.

There is one important aspect of our production that dictates how we shoot the show. We are shooting this show with all the gear we own. Normally, we would rent whatever we didn’t have but needed such as dollys, flags, lights, etc. Thus, we ran into a very first technical restriction to the show. No one in our group has an array of professional lights. By professional, I’m talking about Mole Richardson and Arri Fresnel lights, or banks of Kino flos. In fact, we only have a single Fresnel light at all. A Lowel 650watt light. What we do have, however is a basic Lowel light kit consisting of two Omni lights and a Tota. When Ted Setla joins our crew or lets us use his kit, we have double the lights.

Our main workhorse lights, are our Lowel Rifa lights. These are ideal lights for the space we are in, and the style of shooting we are doing. The softboxes allow us to cover a large area in soft light, allowing actors to move around the space and stay relatively evenly lit. With the Fresnel and the Omnis, we are able to throw targeted light on the backgrounds.

This is, in fact how we shoot as much of the show as possible. It allows us to set-up quick and gives us a nice look to the series.

I have received a fair number of reviews from colleagues and overwhelmingly they all agreed on one thing: they think the show looks great. With our lighting, we went for the most basic look we could get without looking bad. The lighting though, only highlights the great location that is the Lowry Theater. Take our softbox technique and put it into a white room and you’ll have a completely different result.

I don’t want this to sound like an advertisement for Lowel, but considering their price point and versatility, they are what we are using. I have my eye on some nice Chimera softboxes though.

Thomas A. Koch
Director of Photography
Series Producer
EXIT Stage Left