Moving Head Wash

Front light doesn't have to be as powerful as back light, since it doesn't have to cut as hard (Par 38s keeping up with 250w arc lamp from behind for example).

Not sure where the statement that washes cost more then spots comes from. An Accu Wash 250 lists from $1200 while an Accu Spot 300 lists for $1500. Washes are generally a little cheaper, do to less moving internal parts (things like gobo wheels and prisms).

Will a 250w wash keep up with a 250w spot, yes and no. A wash has a softer, bigger light then a spot fixture. So the spot fixture will always look brighter. Keep in mind however that a wash fixture washes and a spot fixture spots. you want your spot fixtures to cut through your wash fixtures, otherwise you can't see them. 4 or maybe even 2 Accu Wash 250s will blow away 8 Par 38s. And the Accu Wash 250 is most likely the cheapest wash unit you will find. If you are set on movement, you will spend some money unfortunately.

Movemnet always equates to more money. No way around it. More parts, more complexity, more functionality, gotta run more money!

Please explain why the front lights don't have to be as powerful as the back lights. Here's why I ask: When doing larger shows, I've typically had a 40-foot truss flown front and back and rigged the same. What I had in the front I had in the back.

Now, I get the purpose of the front lighting, and then the back lighting helps cut some shadows and restore depth so the setting doesn't appear so flat, as well as take some of the harshness off the front. But since I had whatever was in the front match the back and positioning was pretty much the same, forgive my being confused.

As far as your description on wash vs. spot, I don't need any clarification there. That makes sense. My Q-spot 150's are more of a spot-type effect, but I use them as a wash when I have to. They don't excell at it, but they can get the job done if literally all else fails, they can "just get by".

Has to do with angles and perception. In order to get that back light 'glow' around a person, the light needs to be able to beat the front light, overhead light, and side light. If it isn't powerful enough to do this, you don't get a glow, maybe just some shadows on the front of the stage/in the audience. Note how generally, back light is closer to the target then front light and generally uses more fixtures to do what it does. When I get to the office, I will post some shots of a show I did to explain it more with a photo.

Another fun filled fact with regards to angles of lighting. If your audience is looking straight at a stage and not down on it, or down on it at a slight angle, your side light and back light can actually be hard edge focused and the audience can't tell. I do this a lot for better control when using lekos for side and back light.

In my examples, the backlight is generally not any closer than the front light. Regardless, now I understand what you're talking about. The backlight actually has to cut through the front lighting to make a difference, while the front light merely needs to illuminate.

Washes provide a softer/diffused light, while we want a hard-edged beam of focused lighting for our spots, which need to cut through pretty much everything.

As people should be able to see, lighting can be quite the art form. Even more so in film and television where the lighting can make or break things. Anything learned in one aspect of lighting can be applied in other areas. GOOD knowledge of TV/movie/film lighting can definately be applied to stage lighting. Stage lighting guys I would suspect would need some additional training and practice to get TV/film lighting right, while the TV/film folks would need to learn to cut it back a few degrees UNLESS doing a video shoot.

Sometimes I just need a more real-world and relatable example to grasp it. That definately did it for me.

Actually, being a theatre background, it was easy to get into film lighting. They generally just want a 3 point system, a soft box or bounce from one side, flood the other, and something from behind to stop floating head syndrome. Film is also generally white, white, and more white. You also don't use nearly as saturated as colors in film as you do theatre since cameras aren't as smart as the human eye.

Theatre, the angles are often much more crazy: foot lights, shin/knee buster sides, side light, head side light, high side light, overhead, front, torm/box boom, back light, cyc/back drop light, and then all the special effect lighting, like gobos and specials. And then the color depth and theory is a whole ball of wax unto itself. Colors can go from nothing to so saturated, I have to replace gels during intermissions because it only lasts a couple minutes.

Its a good thing I enjoyed math in school, because I use a lot of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry as well as some physics just about every day. I am also a very visual person, which helps. I can just see stuff in my mind and how it should look before I do it. My point there, I guess, is film is basically the same thing every time, where as theatre will change depending on the show and what you are going for.