Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) 3:30pm 2/5/11 driving on a road adjacent to West Hampton Beach

2)Driving down the road next to beach when sun is starting to set, and is casting shadows upon everything.

3)Driving down the road adjacent to West Hampton Beach, it was later on in the day about 3:3opm the sun was starting to set.  Just the positioning was amazing the way sun caste shadows gave everything a menacing feeling.  It felt like a horror movie in a way.  The atmosphere was aided by the empty beach parking lots and closed up lifeguard towers.  As the farther I drove there was close to no one there at all.

Date, Time, Location: Wednesday February 9^th, 2011; 1:26AMish, at home

Objective Description: nightlight in the kitchen onto the box of cookies I was after.

Subjective Description: on my nighttime voyage for snacks, I noticed the nightlight on the counter. It was facing down and was the only light on in the whole house. Directly under this single white beam of light was a bag of Pepperidge farm cookies. As the bag was being lit from above, flickering, it became more defined. This ominous glowing made a halo effect. And just as important as the light, was the darkness. The other snack food on either side of this holy bag of cookies was just shy of hitting the light, and could only be seen by the silhouetted against the back wall. This effect made it appear as if the less important snacks were in these cookies shadows. After I saw this “light moment” I proceeded to eat a cookie… it was delicious.

Date, Time, Location: Tuesday February 8^th, 2011; 6:00 AMish, at home

Objective Description: harsh blue sun light on bottles of soap

Subjective Description: As I was hanging out in my bathroom early one morning, I was blinded by the harsh blue sunrise coming from the window. Although the paneling effect from the blinds was interesting I was looking past it to find a more impressive “lighting moment”. As the light with harsh edges past the translucent shower door it began to spread out to a more respectable area. This made my eyes focus more on the bottles of soap that were being lit from the top/right side in back. The shadow cast made a perfect silhouette, telling it was a soap bottle, without fully defining itself. The blue wavy effect from the lights path made me feel as if I was in an ocean.

2) High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Palem, India), as hosted by boston.com

3) THEME: THE SUN

4) DESCRIPTION: Total solar eclipse. The sun is blotted it and all that is left are rays jutting out around the black pit in the center. It is scary that the sun, which we need so much, can be reduced to this hole in the sky. It looks like the center of a sunflower; the black hole being the center of the flower and rays shooting outwards as the petals. The sun in this picture holds power still, but seems weak, and more destroyable than I want it to be.

1) Feb 8th, 6:00, Bits and Bytes

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Dark. The lamp I’m sitting under has gone out. The lighting is adequate, however none of it is focused towards me, all of it is spill. It is dark outside the windows.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION:
The light is barely on me, and I feel like without any focus from the light, I can barely be noticed. I know this is not the case, and it is not actually too dark, but because the areas around me are much better lit, I feel like I am in a different place than that which is shaped by the light around me.

1) Feb 10th, 8:00, Calkins

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The light is completely fluorescent. It is bright white. It lights the entire room. Some orange light spills in from a lamp outside, but it is washed out other than right by the windows.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The light seems harsh and unfriendly. However, it is, more than anything else, neutral. This light neither adds to nor takes away from the room, and illuminates everything equally. It is the perfect light for rehearsal, as it holds little weight other than to make everything visible; a function it fulfills well.

Annular Solar Eclipse

Courtesy of http://michellegregg.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/todays-solar-eclipse-new-moon-and-mercury-direct Copyright 1984 Jerry Lodriguss and John Martinez

THE SUN

The sun is a powerful source of light, so when something as large as the moon interferes with its light, interesting things happen. The red color caused by the eclipse and the placement of the sun in the sky is an angry red, very saturated and vibrant. The seeming motion of the red streak from the sun to the right of the photo is interesting and gives an “action shot” feeling to the image. The presence of only black and red give an intensely ominous feeling to the image. Also interesting to me is the fact that the glow from the thin crescent of bright light that is visible creates a crescent moon-shaped field of color, visually turning the sun into its “opposite.”

1) Thursday Feb. 10th 2011, 7:20 P.M. N.A.B. Black Box.

2) The cast of War of the Roses lit with a dying lantern.

3) During rehearsal tonight, while blocking the scene in which Joan of Arc summons the fiends, Royston had Avery turn off all the lights in the black box and gave Shanna a very large and powerful incandescent flashlight. The goal was to make the appearance of the demons terrifying, and it worked, at least from where I was in the mezzanine. The lamp was bright enough to light Shanna well and barely illuminate the “demons,” and the shadows cast made the large space feel claustrophobic. There was a definite orange tint to the light that made it feel very intimate. The battery in the lamp started to die, and the shadows on the faces of the actors (all but three of us) lengthened and darkened, creating an even more hellish feeling.

DATE-TIME-LOCATION: 2/7/11; 2:00PM; Bernon Hall

OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Sunlight from the west shines through large skylight in Office of Undergraduate Admission.

SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The sunlight lit up the entire office through a giant pyramid-shaped skylight in the center of the ceiling.  The light was so bright, I had to squint my eyes to see anything.  The heat was on in the office, though it could have been turned down because the warm amber light made me feel warmer on this freezing cold day.

1) Saturday Feb. 5th 2011, 8:35 P.M. Manhattan.

2) The light at the top of the Empire State Building through the fog.

3) It had been raining all day, and there was a thick fog obscuring the tops of the taller buildings. As I turned onto 34th St. from Madison Ave., I could see the Empire State Building, which seemed to be surrounded by a thick green mist. I was taken aback by the unnatural, spooky feeling of the light. The dispersion of the light in the fog made the range of the lamp itself visible, and it made me feel quite small. It complimented the cold, remote feeling of the weather perfectly. It is one of the more unnerving things I’ve seen lately.