Stage wash

A stage wash is the front light that covers a performance area evenly, so a speaker is lit wherever they stand. It is built from several fixtures with overlapping beams rather than one bright one, because a single source produces a hot centre, dark edges and a hard shadow behind the subject.

The angle is what makes it flattering. Light arriving from roughly forty-five degrees above and to each side models a face — enough shadow to give it shape, not enough to put a nose across a cheek. Light from straight ahead flattens a face into a mask; light from directly above digs holes under the brows and the chin, which is exactly what a room’s own ceiling downlights do.

Back light is the other half and it is what is missing from most rooms. A fixture behind and above the subject separates them from whatever is behind them, which on a stage in front of a dark drape or a bright LED wall is the difference between a person and a silhouette.

On camera none of this is optional. A general session that looks acceptable to the room will look flat and grey on the recording, because the eye compensates for uneven light and a sensor does not. If the show is being streamed, the wash is specified for the camera and the room gets the benefit.

Event lighting — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Colour temperature How warm or cool a white light is, in kelvin — the number that decides whether skin tones hold up on camera, and the one a cheap fixture’s spec sheet flatters.
• Fresnel A soft-edged wash fixture with a stepped lens, adjustable from spot to flood by moving the lamp — and controlled at the edges with barn doors, because it has no shutters.
• Uplighting Small fixtures set on the floor and aimed up a wall or a column to put colour into a room — the cheapest thing that changes how a ballroom feels, and the easiest to space badly.