On UV Lighting and UV Scenery from the Lighting Designer’s Perspective

This guest editorial is by long time Lighting Designer Ian Peacock peaprod@artnet.net. We’ve now worked with Ian on 3 separate projects: Chicago Tours 98’ & 99’ and Splash! At the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.

"If you are just designing a piece that is only going to be used with UV light and nothing else then you really have a no brainier. Please do yourself and favor and don’t go designing some fabulous piece and then not bother to light it properly. More on that later.

In my designs where I have used UV/FX, all the scenic elements have been dual purpose. The UV elements for me have always involved a hidden image that only gets revealed 2 or 3 times during a show. So for the other 97% of the show I have to look at this thing and make it interesting. I try to come up with artwork and scenic that can take light well so I can create lots of different looks from one single piece. I have spent a lot of time with Richard and Kent trying different ideas. Kent has lots of scrap pieces of Lino lying around with numerous color combinations that we tried.

What works for me is having plenty of area in your design that will look good no matter what color you point at it. You will find that some of your artwork will have to be of a color that will not take light well. This is a good thing cause what I find happens is you get this great movement when you change color. You will see some colors disappear and others suddenly pop out at you as you change the color you are throwing at it. This can all be controlled as a part of the design process.

Another thing that I have found is that if you play with a combination of UV light and stage light you can get some really interesting things going on. To really make your UV image pop out you really need to have low levels of stage light. Especially when you reveal your UV effect for the first time. This is not a gag that is going to work with a really brightly-lit stage. Keep this in mind when you are selling this to your Pet Pop Star who then wants to see it on his big encore number with the house lights on. Having said that you might be surprised as to how much stage light you can use and still see your UV image.

I had this 80’ wrap (see Chicago 98’ photos) around backdrop that I used on a show a couple of years back. It was a strange looking physcadellic monster that came about by mistake but that is another story. When People saw it in the daylight they would look at it and say **** You all know how colorful and brutally honest IA guys can be and they have seen it all.

For every time I heard laughter, I also heard the compliments after the show. The reason being that it had a great UV Dual Image that Kent created and people in the audience would clap when it was revealed. Also because of the time that was spent on the color combinations for the artwork, it would change shape slightly every time I changed a scene and looked great no matter what color was used on it.

It pays to spend time with the UV/FX creative team and find out what combination of UV paint color is going to work for you in conjunction with the colors of the visible image.

Now that you have spent all this time and money whatever you do, please make sure you have enough UV fixtures to cover your piece. Whatever fixtures you end up using will vary depending on the job just make sure you have enough of them. Especially if you are using the piece where there is going to be some ambient light."

Ian Peacock
Los Angeles

UV/FX is a Wildfire UV Lighting premiere dealer and we can provide more information on their line of high quality UV fixtures or you can visit their site directly at http://www.wildfirefx.com

All of our recent projects can be seen by visiting the archive section of the web site.
http://www.uvfx.com/archive.html