DMG DASH™ Saves The Day: The Nutcracker

Driscoll Otto is a Rosco Ambassador and visual storyteller specializing in lighting and video design for Opera, Theatre, Dance and for Environmental Immersive Events. Shortly after receiving a DMG DASH late last year, he quickly recognized the usefulness of the fixture and added it to his standard lighting toolkit. He shared with us a few unique applications where DASH “saved the day” by lighting otherwise impossible locations onstage. This first look into Driscoll’s work with DASH showcases his lighting design for The Nutcracker at Indiana University.

"Got my DASH from @rosco_labs!
I’m excited to hide these bad boys on sets for lighting people in tight spaces."

Last November I was working on a new production of The Nutcracker at Indiana University with a wonderful group of collaborators. I ended up bringing my DASH units to load in, as I thought I might try to use them for footlights. The scenic design by Thaddeus Strassberger was fairly non-traditional for a Nutcracker, in that we had a box set with three tall walls encompassing the space. The walls were a gorgeous, marbled interior of a large ballroom that became surfaces for projections designed by Greg Emetaz.

Fortunately, our scenic designer had designed large architectural doors and small hidden panels for us to hide our lighting booms behind. Along the way, we discovered that setting the small panels open to a permanent angle allowed us to always have low cross light throughout the whole piece. The only downside was that the angle of the panel made it difficult to capture the projections onto the panels. ENTER DASH! I’m so glad I had mine with me.

The slightly-open panels - unlit (L) and one of the panels lit with a DMG DASH (R).

To help bridge the gap that was created by keeping the eight panels open, we added a DASH to each boom to light the open panels. These CRMX fixtures were programmed to work with the color of the projections design or to purposefully contrast what the projections were doing. The DASH units, carefully used, ended up adding dynamic dimensionality to the room.

Note how the colors shift in the panels on stage-left and stage-right thanks to DMG DASH.

We found another opportunity for the DASH when we wanted to light the castle cake that enters during the Party scene. The fixtures were small enough to hide around the cake and really add a pop the cake.

If I had to describe this light for entertainment design use, I’d say it is a really small LED wash fixture. It is well built, has an assortment of accessories and lenses that allow it to become a problem solver in many scenarios, and can mount ANYWHERE! The colors are not traditional wash colors as the LEDs tend to be softer versions of the primary colors, I find this to be a major feature as it causes the light to look amazing on people. My DASH will continue to be a key item in my toolkit!

If you’re interested in exploring more of Driscoll’s work, you can visit his website: driscollotto.com or follow @drixld on Instagram. To learn more about the DMG DASH and explore if it’s the right LED fixture for your next project, please visit the DMG DASH product page on the Rosco website.