Incandescent lighting has been crossfading with more-efficient Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for years, with interest spurred on by, among other things, government regulation. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law by then-President Bush, will start phasing out the most common incandescent light bulbs in 2012.
100 Percent LED
The entertainment lighting industry is already using a variety of LED alternatives to less-efficient light sources. But what would it be like to stage a theatrical production using nothing but LED fixtures?
Hideaki Tsutsui, a professor of lighting design at the University of Texas/El Paso, decided to find out — and to also carefully monitor and report on the results, in terms of both light quality and energy savings.
Tsutsui’s experiment, backed by UT El Paso and department chair Joel Murray, actually started in 2010, when he gathered baseline data with the school’s conventionally-lit spring 2010 production, Of Mice and Men.
This spring, the school staged The Three Musketeers, and while it wasn’t the first production to go entirely incandescent-free, it was among the first to compare the energy savings of conventional and LED lit theatrical productions in such detail.
Gauging Energy Usage
Tsutsui worked with the university’s building maintenance staff to record and meter the total power consumption of the theatre’s lighting system over a 24 hour period that included a performance of each production. (Students from the school’s Electrical Engineering Department also developed wireless power consumption meter to gather data on energy usage.)
“In 2010, I had high hopes of producing an all LED light production in 2011,” Tsutsui says. “I wanted to show that LEDs not only make sense on paper, but also in real-world setting — I wanted to show hard evidence that confirms our assumptions.”
Complementing Tsutsui’s efforts, set designer Ross Fleming sought to show that set design can also be in tune with the environment, and he spent considerable time searching for recyclable materials.
Although the design aesthetic for The Three Musketeers lent itself well to LED lighting — “the one word that kept popping into the design team’s minds is ‘synthetic,’” Tsutsui says, referring to director Chuck Gordon’s vision of a “cartoonish look and feel” for the show — there would be obstacles as well.
“LED fixtures are a huge investment. Purchasing all of the LED fixtures that we needed was not an option,” he notes. Pounding the carpet at USITT 2010 in Kansas City, he sought out industry support, hoping to borrow enough LED gear for a production that was a year away.
His quest would continue until USITT 2011 in Charlotte, NC — shortly before the spring productions were staged. “It was a bit nerve-wracking,” he admits, because “support and fixture availability was less than I expected.
Although he was “nervous that we would wouldn’t be able produce The Three Musketeers using all LED fixtures,” Tsutsui adds, “I am happy to say that after USITT 2011, those fears were put to rest.”
Industry Support
Chauvet, Elation and ETC offered fixtures from their demo stock, and Creative Stage Lighting offered reduced rates on rental of JB Lighting A7 LED fixtures. “The manufacturers came through and offered loaner fixtures that I would have not normally had been able to use.”
If acquiring an all-LED rig was the first big hurdle, it wasn’t the last. “There was a huge learning curve,” he says. “I have been working with tungsten and arc sources my entire career. I had an idea of what I wanted the production to look like, but it was based on those traditional lamp sources.”
Along with a “softer and diffused” light quality, Tsutsui says, “I found it a challenge for me to use 11 different types of LED fixtures. Each one had its own unique beam spread and characteristics as well as focus and lens options.”
In addition, “since I was not as familiar with their properties as I am with traditional fixtures, I found I was changing and adjusting my design during hang and focus. While the hang and focus time seemed to take the equivalent amount time as the prior year with a tungsten fixture rig, the programming and cueing time seemed to double.”
101 Fixtures in All
In all, there were 101 LED fixtures used for The Three Musketeers, with industry-donated gear supplementing the LED fixtures owned by UT El Paso, and they gave Tsutsui everything he had been seeking, with a palette that ranged from deep saturated colors to soft, pale pastels.
“Since most of the LED fixtures we had were color-mixing fixtures, I had a huge selection of colors available to me,” Tsutsui mentions. Even so, with the variety of LEDs used, accurate color reproduction was a challenge. Each of the different makes of LED fixtures, programmed for “full white,” produced a different representation of white. The same was true when trying to mix the same shade of other colors.
“Taking the various fixtures to a gel color on the Eos that ETC provided for us said that each of the fixtures should look the same,” Tsutsui notes, but “on stage, each of the fixtures were off — either more or less saturated. I found that I had to tweak each of the different types of fixtures using my eyes then relying on mathematical equations in the console.”
Then, “after determining that the various fixtures looked the same on stage, I simply created color palettes on the Eos to quickly recall my color choices for a particular scene.”
Despite the challenges, the payoff in terms of energy usage was clear. While the 2010 production, Of Mice and Men, consumed 30 kW, 2011’s The Three Musketeers used just 5 kW per performance — one-sixth the total. Lower heat output from the LEDs translated to HVAC savings as well.
While acknowledging both the learning curve and fixture limitations, Tsutsui was ultimately encouraged by what an all-LED rig can deliver. “They provided the colors and looks I was trying to achieve. They offer a great many benefits,” and, “over time, they will only get better.”
To download a lighting plot for The Three Musketeers, CLICK HERE.
