neat lighting trick

I forgot to mention a neat lighting trick from yesterdays Beat Street show. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but it sure was cool.

So, Beat Street set up a "stage" in one area of the school cafeteria. By which I mean, they cleared a space and they put up a huge backdrop with the letters "beat street" graffiti'd on it. At first, I thought that in addition to the huge speakers, they actually had lights! I kept looking for the lighting person with the board. Then, I realized that the lights never changed--every piece, all the time, was a dark and moody blue. I got hungry and went to the second floor of the cafeteria to get some food, and AHA! I realized where the cool moody blue lights came from. The cafeteria normally has an atrium-type thing, where there's a hole in the second floor so that the first floor can look through all the way to the ceiling. This large hole is exactly over where Beat Street set up their stage. Of course, this would be a problem for staging because of the light pollution. To solve that, they tied a huge blue painter's tarp (clean of course) over the hole to cover it. Voila! Instant almost professional-looking lights. The tarp ensured that the stage was a moody dark color suitable for dance, and the blueness ensured that any light that leaked through was a nice blue color. Perfect, economical way of getting a show-look. Because we all know that a show put on with fluorescent lights look pathetic.