The Hula Skirt: Low Tech Solution for A High-Tech Pain in the Rear

Here’s the scenario:

You’re loading in the XYZ Company’s big corporate show into Anytown, USA’s huge convention center.  Let’s just say for gitz and shiggles that the room is a few hundred feet long and a few hundred feet wide, and the only real cost effective way to light the general area when not using the show’s production lighting is to use the high-bay fixtures (the big metal halide scoops) for room lighting.  You could add a bunch of lighting specifically for the house to the rig, but that’s usually never in the budget, so you’re forced to use the venue’s general illumination lighting.  Inevitably, this usually:

• leads to the general room lighting looking like a huge pile of crap
• completely ruins the mood you were trying to achieve
• washes out your video screens because the room lighting is never in the right place for video
• or a combination of all of the above

Now in the past, I’ve always tried to use a combination or turning certain zones off in the venue which has the tendency to leave important parts of the room dark and swearing at all of the universe as a whole, which usually solves nothing.  A company called Shadow Management has come up with a very low-tech solution to the problem of annoying convention center lighting getting in the way of all your great design ideas – why not cover it up, block off what is annoying you, or even color the entire system of houselights to meet the design requirements of your production?

Meet the Hula Skirt:

The folks at Shadow Management have really solved this problem at the “well, duh” level, which I like very much.  Either cover the darned lights up or use them as colored toplight!  Makes pretty good sense to me!

Check out some images, all taken from the Shadow Management website: