Lighting Accessories

These are add-ons to the lighting instruments that do specific jobs.

Color Media

These are what we insert at the end of incandescent, conventional (non-moving lights) in order to change their color.

The most common of these is known as gel and is colored plastic that filters out the parts of the spectrum of visible light to only produce the color you want the light to be (like red). Over time they will melt a little bit or discolor and need to be replaced. But what they require in maintenance, they more than make up for in price. Gel is cheap and easy to find.

Another version of color media are called dichroics which are thick, colored pieces of glass that filter light into the color that you want. Dichroics are special due to their durability. They will not melt or discolor over time (like gel can) and can be used for higher heat applications (like for color changing systems inside of moving lights). Because of their more specialized usage, dichroics are way more expensive up-front than gel. But their longevity makes them an excellent choice for moving lights, dark saturated colors, and in theme park installations.

Both gel and dichroics are organized by a manufacturer code, similar to the code you might need to give when picking a paint color at a hardware store. While R-48 might not mean much to a common person, to a lighting technician that translates to the Rosco 48 gel which is a medium rose-purple.

They are inserted into metal sandwich-like frame called gel frames which are placed into slots at the end of the light's barrel or lens.

Gobos

Gobos (also called templates) are how we give stage lighting a texture or pattern. They come in almost every pattern and shape imaginable, with more being designed and created every year.

The areas where you want light to shine through are removed and the areas where you want there to be lines or darkness are left in place to block the light from leaving the stage light.

Gobos can only be used with ellipsoidals or moving lights and also come in two different materials: metal and glass. Both are designed to withstand immense amounts of heat, but glass gobos (like dichroics for color) are more durable and will not degrade as much over time. This makes glass gobos the better choice for moving lights, but also makes them significantly more expensive.

They are inserted into a gobo frame that holds the gobo in place and can be inserted into the middle of the ellipsoidal that it needs to be. Moving lights have gobo wheels built into them that the gobo is inserted into, allowing a moving light to hold and switch between multiple gobos.

Clamps

Almost every light will need a clamp of some type. They are used to attach the lights to the electric, pipe, or batten where they are supposed to hang. They come in a few different styles but the majority of them are semi-circles with a threaded bolt that is turned and tightened to clamp the pipe in between the tip of the bolt and the curve of the clamp. The most common one is pictured above and is known as the c-clamp.

Electricians will use a crescent wrench for this job and it results in an extremely strong and safe connection point between the light and the pipe.

Safety Cable

Despite how strong they are, clamps or even parts of the light can wear down over time and suddenly break, causing them to potentially fall from the batten. A safety cable or safety chain prevents that light from falling if this was to happen. It is a carabiner attached to a piece of steel aircraft cable and is rated to hold several hundred pounds each. It is wrapped around both the light and the batten. You MUST attach one of these to every light that is hung anywhere but stationary on the floor. No exceptions.

Power Cables

Also known as jumpers. These are the specialty cables that distribute power to the stage lights from the dimmer rack or constant power source. We call that process of connecting a light to its power "circuiting."

Most theatres will use cables with stage-pin plugs or twist-lock plugs (you can see the stage pin above or illustrations of both on page 123 of your textbook). Both of these cables can carry high wattage and are designed to not plug into a common wall outlet to avoid accidentally ruining the light or your house's electrical system.

Data Cables

Designed to send DMX signals to the lighting equipment. Data cables come in 3-pin, 4-pin, and 5-pin styles that are used with specific equipment.

Most lights that accept data cables have the ability to daisy-chain this DMX signal between fixtures. They feature an input socket for the data cable coming from the console and then an output plug to connect another data cable that will pass that data signal along to another light.

Beam Shaping

These are accessories designed to reshape the light beam in a few different ways.

Top hats and half hats are used to mask the light from the audience. They cover the end of the barrel or lens that is radiating with light and help direct the audience's focus away from the lights above and towards the stage. They are often not a necessary accessory, but they can make the light plot appear much cleaner and shield the audience from any glare.

Louvers and concentric rings are great for making soft-edged lights even softer and also shielding the audience's eyes from glare coming from those lights.

Barndoors are the rough equivalent of shutters for fresnels and PARs. While they are not quite as accurate as an ellipsoidal's shutter system, they do a good job of cutting the light beam off from where you don't want it to go.