#MY Wishlist (early)
4 messages in this thread
Hey, as long as we are making the theatre analogy to scrims, how about
another of their very important traits – dye vs. pigment paints. Dye is
opaque when front lit and transparent when lit from behind, whereas pigmant
is always opaque. The mixture of the two is common on scrims and is nearly
always combined with lighting effects for scene transitions & special
effects.
Could be an interesting aspect when applied to animations, huh?
-Phil
I did a little theater lighting (San Francisco Opera) in my time, but I've
forgotten most of my theater terminology. Isn't a "theater" scrim a large
screen dropped from a "pipe" near the cieling, with lights shone behinde it?
God, I can't remember any of that stuff.
I was referring to the movie definition of scrim, which is a metal, wiremesh
disk that is dropped into a lamp's three brackets and used to cut down light by
a known quantity. There are full, half, quarter, etc… scrims.
Geez, why do I feel really confused right now… <g>
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
I've never had the opportunity to work with theater lighting – I was always a
paint slave working on the sets. Yes, a scrim is a drop that is held in the
loft – the difference between it and an opaque canvas drop is that it is made
of gauze and is transparent (when natural or painted with dye). As for
lights, the idea is prvide lighting for them from the front and behind, so in
one scene they're opaque and the next their transparent/translucent.
Now a movie scrim – that's new to me (that's what happens when you get the
tail end of thread <g>). Kind of sounds like a camera filter for a light
(dropping lumens instead of F-Stops).
– Phil
>>movie scrim… dropping lumens instead of F-Stops<<
That's exactly right. Since a production can only fit so many lamp units on a
lighting truck, or even in a studio lamp room, haveing scrims allows one to
acheive lamp intensities that are in-between two unit models (like Inky and
Mickey Mole <= these are real lamp names, btw <g>).
I knew I remembered theater scrims being different. That explains why I wasn't
confident, though… in union theater labor divisions the grip department deals
with scrims, drops, teriactiods (sp?), sets, stages, etc…, and the
electricians deal with lamps, gels, cabling, and anything with a power cord
sticking out of it somewhere. I was a stage electrician.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)