The background is known as  cyclorama or cyc for short. The lights usually shine down on the cyc from above and in front of it, but can also be lit from below if there is something to hide the instruments. With a couple sets of different colored lights you make a wide range of colors by varying the intensities.

Dan

Following on from DANLB - The Cyclorama, was originally known as the ?Sky cloth?.

The Cyc lighting is normally from a batten of lamps - floods [scoops] joined together to cover the width of the cloth, with the cyc lighting from above in the ?X? position. However you can enhance with side light &/or with a groundrow. Also it is sometimes more effective to use a ?Reflector cloth upstage of the cyc & bounce the light through it. While there is a lot of materials used for the cloth, houndstooth or sharktooth weave is better.

If you only use an ?x? position Cyc lights wash, you should ensure that you position the batten, to give maximum coverage, with each colour wash & can avoid light scallops from the lamps, this can be rectified by the globe choice, reflectors &/or the angle of light.

Also it is helpful to have ?barndoors fitted to cut out over spill & light halation.

The ?Skycloth? was traditionally sky blue, with the advent of colour gels & electric lighting, it became a white cloth. It was adopted from Theatre by black?nwhiteTV studios, who renamed it cyclorama & changed it to an orange colour. This gave a better colour definition for their transmission.

Again with color TV, it reverted back to white.

One thing is if your cyc is left hanging for any period of time, it is good policy & practice to avoid touching the surface, as this can & will wipe away the covering surface dust & it will be seen as a mark under lights. If you can fly the cloth, bouncing it can remove a certain amount of airborne dust evenly.

Also the trick is to stretch the cloth tight, to get rid of the wrinkles, by the use of a tail batten & side cloth stretchers. Screw joint steal conduit or small diameter water pipe, is good as the tail batten. It is easier to join lengths together as it is slides into to the tail pocket.

Halls stage equipment has a new fast stretcher device, that does away with the tired old pieces of wood & rope.

I would also like to ask how one makes transitions from different colours to indicate the change of time during a day. The scene is set in a garden outside and the times of day would be afternoon and sunset and evening. Which colours of lighting would be used and how would they be combined? Thanks for the information!

we use red blue and gold most outdoor scenes are done with the blue and a hint of gold if there is anger in the character or right before the character enters the lights turn red it adds a cool bit to the play.