The first time I ever turned them on I fell in love. The way these lights eased across the dancer’s body and defined every aspect of their musculature was stunning. The full, yet severe, look they gave to these people was a quality I knew I could never get enough of.
Of course we see this quality of light regularly outside of a stage. A sunrise or sunset has, at the most magical moment, this quality of light pouring over our faces as we stare into the ever shifting sky. Our faces light up in myriad colors like the shifting sky itself.
I am talking here of the head high sidelight.
Not only is this angle of light utterly beautiful at an aesthetic level, it is one of the most practical and useful angles a lighting designer has in his tool box.
The beauty comes in large part from the fact that this angle of light shows off an object to its most sculptural. Unless we are dealing with a totally flat surface, like a plastic box, Head Highs are going to show off nearly any bump or fold the object has to offer. At the same time, it fills in the figure enough that you get the sense of a completely lit object. This becomes especially useful when dealing with a performer’s face.
This combination of lending sculptural dimensionality and fully illuminating faces is one of the great aspects of sidelight in general. Head High Sidelight is especially nice because it can do so with a dramatic intensity not possible with other lighting angles. High Sidelight tends to be a bit softer and lower angles, like Shins, tend to be a little too severe for most applications. Head Highs, however, have an almost universal appeal.
At a practical level they are invaluable. One can fully light a rather large volume of performance space with very few lights since a single Head High will cross the entire stage, whereas a High Sidelight will only cover partway across a stage. Because of this, an entire stage can be lit with as few as eight to twelve lighting instruments. Hopefully we are never limited in this way. However, many touring dance companies will encounter such limitations, often due to time constraints, and can effectively light an entire evening of dances with just a handful of lighting instruments.
Another practical benefit is the ease of access with which one can alter these lights. Color and template changes, as well as quick shutter adjustments, can be made rapidly between curtains for dances, scenes, or acts in an evening. Thus, our touring dance company could have a completely different palette one dance to the next despite the use of a single angle of light throughout the evening.
One can fast see why such a lighting angle would be popular with dance companies, traditionally known for their limited budgets and even more limited tech time. Yet an angle of such grace, beauty, and versatility need not be limited to dance. Theater and Opera both are ripe mediums for such illuminative explorations.
The beauty of the Head High should live free of the conventions of modern dance or naturalistic sunsets. It gives a sense of drama unlike any other lighting angle. With such beauty and grace at our disposal how could we possibly say no?
First up is rotation. Whether you are dealing with a template in a moving light with rotation ability, or a standalone fixture like the GAM TwinSpin or Rosco Double Gobo Rotator, rotation is a powerful tool for the lighting designer. Spinning templates can be a lot of fun for music events, bands, and the like. This is often what people first think of when they imagine a rotating template. However, rotating templates can have some powerfully subtile effects as well. Placing a static leaf or cloud pattern in a light with an abstract rotating template behind it can give a slight sense of movement without overpowering a composition. Getting the focus just right, such that the rotation recedes to the background, is critical in these cases.
Linear movement is another wonderful way to create motion with templates. Whether it is the vertical rise of flames or the slow horizontal shifting of clouds, linear motion, like that created by the GAM Film/FX, can be wonderful. These effects, like rotation effects, require a very careful attention to focus if you are trying to achieve any degree of subtlety. It is too easy to make these effects look like effects and not like an integrated part of a larger composition.
Abstract gobos can be particularly good for delineating location in large musicals. While a full scenic shift is great, augmenting that with a total transformation in the lighting environment can truly make the difference in a production. Linear patterns that drape over scenery or scrape across walls create quite a different effect than geometric shards of lights cast across the floor. Abstract breakups like R77764, focused very soft, lightly highlighting scenery or perhaps a framed photograph or poster, can really bring that element to life.
Abstract templates are fantastic for providing a sense of architecture and place to a scene, party, or music show. A simple change in gobo, from leaves to a geometric template for example, can tell us quickly that the action has moved from outside to inside. A pattern projected on walls and ceilings can fast give light a direct connection to a theme party or event. Whatever your situation, the use of abstract templates are very powerful.
With a live act, the kind of template used can be guided by the style of music being played. A techno band might want more linear shapes, perhaps circuit board patterns or something to that effect. A psychedelic jam band on the other hand may call for more swirly organic shapes. Intuition and feel are your best guides when working with music. 
Cloud templates come in several varieties and each have their benefits and drawbacks. Standard steel, like with leaves, provide a cookie cutter cut out of a shape that, with the proper attention to angle and sharpness can be either cartoonish or subtle. Even a template as silly as R78169 can, with the proper focus, turn into a very powerful effect when designing a sky. 
The first concern is the shape of the gobo. Sadly, this is something that is too often overlooked when considering a template for use in a production. When I say shape of template I do not mean the exact shape of the leaves themselves, but the overall shape of the pattern. As you can see from the example of R77732 the pattern has a round shape overall. No matter how you point the light, no matter how much softness, this template will always look round. While this might not be a concern in certain styles of production, or when you have a full stage wash on, it does become a concern for more naturalistic compositions. If you want to vary the intensity of the individual lights to pull focus to a certain area of the stage you will end up with little circles of leaves of varying intensity. Worse still, if you just want to turn on a single light, you end up with a circle of leaves which looks hokey at best.
When using a template like R77774 there is no concern that the template will look round. In fact it is impossible to focus the light in such a way that a single instance of the template appears round. The potential pitfall with these style templates is that you often need more physical instruments creating a tighter beam overlap in order to get a clean full stage look. The benefits of not having a round dot of leaves, however, far outweighs the need for greater precision in drafting, hang, and focus. There are plenty of examples of non-round templates but they are definitely the minority when it comes to leaf patterns.
Once the shape consideration has been resolved you need to consider density. Our example above of R77774 is great for more open sun filled compositions. The template lets a lot of light through while still maintaining the character of light through trees. But perhaps you want your templates to be more of an accent. Perhaps all that light, and the varied size of the spaces between steel, is not the right look. A template like R77733 gives a more uniform, dense, feel the the light. Similar in density to the R77732 noted above, this template shares with R77774 the characteristic of not being round. What density of template is wanted will be determined by the dramatic needs of the scene in question.
