ShadowMagic
Make a Scene... Anywhere
What's new?
A brand new way to visualize lighting, scenery, and color, and it works on your iPhone or iPad. ShadowMagic takes everything we learned about color rendition on an iOS device and adds it to advanced rendering and modeling to give you a beautiful, accurate way to experiment with ideas for lighting on stages and film sets.
Lights, Color, Scenery, and Actors... in your pocket
Have you ever wanted a Black Box Theatre or a light lab that was available anytime just to you? Now you can have one and carry it around with you. So whether you are in Lighting design class, or on a plane to your next gig, you can experiment, visualize, and play to your heart's content.
But ShadowMagic is more than just a playground. Using our project and scene method of cataloging your ideas, you can build a complete sketchbook of a show to collaborate with others involved in your production. It can be easily shared as a printed report or sent to a friend so they can view it on their iPad or iPhone.
- Choice of 2 actors, Solo male or female.
- Our male actor has a day job: Italian Chef.
- 8 Lighting positions, can be either Source Four® or S4 Fresnel
- Source Four® with 5 different lenses
- Source Four® 7" Fresnel, zooms from Spot to Flood
- Incandescent dimming follows the color temperature shift
- Over 1,600 Colors from the 4 major manufacturers
- A 40' x 30' Stage
- A Cyclorama which is 40' x 20'
Look at your scene from any angle
Look at your scene from the back of the house or backstage. Get close enough to count the hairs on the actor's arm. All this is possible with ShadowMagic.
- 1 finger swipe left or right: rotates the scene.
- 1 finger swipe up or down: tilts the scene.
- 2 finger swipe left & right, or up & down: pans the scene.
- 3 finger swipe up or down: dolly the camera in or out.
If you rotate the scene around to the back of the scrim, you can then dolly the camera in and end up behind the actor but in front of the scrim.
Be picky with your Lighting Levels
Intensity is important and can be set with each individual light or the entire scene can be adjusted with a grand master. All the dimmer adjustments are in 1% increments for subtle changes.
Our initial offering for lighting types are incandescent fixtures. As the light is dimmed, the color temperature is decreased from 3200° K at full to 2300° when the light is at 4% intensity. This color shift allows you to evaluate colors on the light in a very realistic way.
Choose your Lights
The workhorse fixtures in all theaters are ellipsoidal reflector spots and fresnels. We have picked two of the best from ETC. The venerable Source Four® is available with 14°, 19°, 26°, 36°, and 50° barrels to enable you to fill an acting area from anywhere in the theatre.
We also offer a Source Four® 7" Fresnel, which can zoom from a flood focus of 65° down to the spot focus of 20°. The shadow is much softer on this fixture just as it is in real life and varies with the zoom angle.
There are 8 fully adjustable positions that can have either type of light assigned to it. So if you only want Fresnels to work with, then all 6 positions can be fitted with Fresnels.
Choose your Colors
After you have selected your favorite colors and made up a gelstring, you can use that string to assign the color to any or all of the lights.
We now have the ability to bring gel strings in from our award winning app Gel Swatch Library.
Hang Lights With 1 Finger
Each light can be put anywhere inside 80' wide x 40' high x 80' long space. Lights assigned to the actor are focused automatically on the actor, making it easy for you to find the perfect angle.
Lights assigned to the backdrop can be focused anywhere on it by just touching the cyc where you want the light focused.
Wash The Entire Stage, Or Not
Each Source Four® can have individual lens barrels so any light can be set to cover as much or as little area as desired. Lens barrels included in the base package are 14°, 19°, 26°, 36°, and 50°. The intensity of the light varies inversely with the beam angle and all the barrels show the proper light distribution and intensity.
Source Four® Fresnels zoom to vary the light distribution and ShadowMagic shows the correct brightness of all settings. The shadow of a fresnel is softer and also varies correctly with the beam angle.
Select your Favorite Colors
There are over 1,600 gels in the library from all the major manufacturers. Any of the colors can be dragged into the "Selected" column. If you don't want to use a particular color any more just drag it from the selected column back into the "Gel Library" field. Your selection of colors is made up into a gelstring up to any number of colors. Any color from your string can be assigned to any light.
We now have the ability to bring gel strings in from our award winning app Gel Swatch Library.
Save and organize your Scenes
Every look can be saved as a scene. All the lights, all the dimmer and color settings, everything. Just hit "Save" after your are pleased with the look. The scenes can be organized by project and rearranged in any order you want. Any project can be dragged to the most convenient position. Any scene in a project can be dragged to a different order in the same project or copied to a new project, just drag and drop it where you want it.
Create a new project by tapping on the page with plus sign symbol. That will allow you to enter a name for a project and then create it. When it is created, this becomes the current project. Any scenes you create are added to this current project. You also get a new default scene. You may want to discard that and drag in your most recently created scene.
Scenes or projects can be shared with colleagues in a .pdf report. And you get a preview button to make sure you are sending only your best ideas. Just drag your scenes or projects to the share button and you can text, email, or use any other channel that you already have installed.
In-App Purchases
ShadowMagic can be extended in ways to expand your creativity. Different lights can be added by manufacturer or lighting packages. You can add actors and costumes. You can also add an ability to "print" scenery on the built in cyclorama.
All this will be coming soon.
Frequently Asked Questions for ShadowMagic.
A quick mini-manual.
- How do you navigate around the scene?
- Where is the gel settings control?
- How do I create a project?
- Can I edit the name of a Scene or Project?
- How do I save a scene?
- How can I add a scene to another project?
- Does ShadowMagic also run on an iPhone?
- How do I assign a Fresnel to L1?
- Why are the L1-L8 designators different colors?
- How do I focus a light on the Cyc?
- What is the easiest way to set up a gelstring?
- How do I share a scene or project?
The picture above shows everything you should need. The deck is at 0 feet high, and down stage center is at the front edge of the stage. All the light positions are measured from here. Note that all distances from the downstage edge going upstage are negative, So placing a light at the cyc will be -30 feet. Also notice that the lights are labeled upstage or downstage automatically. If the light label says USR, the light is upstage of the downstage edge of the stage and in this case, stage right of center.
A 1 finger swipe up or down will tilt the scene. A 1 finger swipe left or right will rotate the scene. A 2 finger swipe will pan the scene up, down, left or right. A pinch will zoom in or out of the scene. A double tap will bring the scene back to the default viewing position. And a 3 finger swipe vertically will dolly the camera in and out.
We now have 2 ways to get there: Use our new shortcut: Long Press on a color select button, or use the system settings page.
From the main view tap the Gear Symbol and you will be taken to the settings page. Just tap "Select Gel Set" and you will go to the page where you can drag any color into the selected column. Colors may be reordered by dragging. If you want to de-select the color, just drag it to the Gel Library field. The search field is very helpful to narrow down the number of selections.
In the Projects page, tap on the Page+ Symbol and a window will pop up to allow you to name a project. This becomes the current project.
Soon, but not at this time. You will have to create the name of the project you want, drag all the scenes into it and drag the project you don't want to the Trash.
From the main view press "Save" in the upper left corner and a window to name the scene pops up. This is saved into the current project.
Just drag the scene from one project to another. This will copy the scene. When you select a scene, its project becomes current.
Yes it does. Anything that will run iOS 11 is suitable to run ShadowMagic.
From the main view long press on any individual light (L1 - L8) and a table will pop up. For L1 you will see a type box, and a focus assignment (Stage or Cyc}. Slide the type selector to choose a Source Four® or S4 Fresnel or any other lights in your inventory. Choose the light_fresnel and then tap done.
The colors signify where the light is focused. Yellow is on the actor, and cyan is on the cyc.
We have a great video built in to the app that shows how to do this. The video can be turned on at the information page.
From the main view long press on any individual light (L1 - L8). The popup table has a "Focus" selector, pick Cyc. Hit done to go back to the main screen. With your recently changed cyc light selected, tap "Pos" (position). You will see a "Set Cyc Focus" button above the sliders. Tap that and then touch the cyc where you want the light to focus. If you are focusing a fresnel on the cyc, it is easier to see by setting the zoom to less than 45°.
Go to the Gel Settings page. Tap the search bar and type in the first letter of your favorite brand of gel. For instance: "R". That will give you all the colors of Rosco. If you then type a number e.g. R1, then you will see all the Rosco gels that start with 1. You should see R10, R11, R12 etc. You can do similar searches with Lee, GAM, and Apollo.
Search has been expanded so you can type in "red" and see all the gels with red in their name. Or "blue" or "green".
Drag the scene or project onto the left hand symbol (box with the up arrow) and you will be presented with a choice of how you want to share the .pdf report.
