Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) DATE-TIME-LOCATION: Around 3:45am, Friday morning, walking across Memorial Quad

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: It is as black as it can be on the quad. Looking at the ground as I walk along the sidewalk, I suddenly notice that it has lightly frosted and the light from the lamps is hitting the sidewalk at the perfect angle to make it seem to sparkle.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: As soon as I noticed the sparkle, I had to smile.  I was getting the best of both worlds in that moment.  I don’t mind the cold very much, but I am not a fan of winter and all of its implications.  Still, one of my favorite sights to see at home is the moonlight or the soft light coming from the barn lighting up a still pristine snowfall on the lawn. Even better is seeing that same sparkle across acres of unadulterated snow. It may have been the hour, but seeing the ground sparkle made me a little giddy. Although the light may reflect off of water, there is nothing that I have seen that compares to the glittering of ice crystals on the ground, and I love that something so lively and almost mysterious can occur in nature. Part of me can’t help but feel like it has a little bit of magic; it makes me think of The Nutcracker, Fantasia, and faeries sprinkling lovely, magical dust. Best of all, that lively glitter and the brisk air that goes along with it has the ability to calm and center me.

Chuck Kennedy / White House/Sipa Press/NEWSCOM

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/2009/1222/Coming-soon-a-Christmas-tree-that-won-t-shed-its-needles

THEME: Cold

DESCRIPTION: Although it isn’t true for everyone, there are few things that make me think of cold more than Christmas/the holiday season.  I chose a picture of a lit tree from outside of a house because it employs the imagination and it uses a warm, inviting lighting to portray the opposite.  The elaborately decorated tree and the fireplace in the background make it easy to imagine being curled up inside on Christmas Eve with a fire blazing and some hot cocoa. The subtle presence of the light reflecting from the windowpane and the detailing of the window tells a different story. Maybe family members are returning home to celebrate the holidays together and are unpacking their cars in the freezing cold, all the while seeing this inviting room. Maybe someone that has no choice but to work the holidays sees a sight like this as they sadly leave their family behind. Or maybe someone with no family, no home, no cozy, cheerful room waiting for them views the lit tree through the window with sadness and jealousy. In any case, the cold that the viewer is feeling is strongly emphasized by the knowledge that there is nothing but a pane of glass between them and warmth.

1) 2/8/12 – 9:40 PM – Fields at the corner of campus just past the fitness center

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: It was a relatively clear sky with a few clouds scattered in sky. It was a full moon and it was casting shadows and lighting up the entire field and short but clear shadows.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Tuesday was a long day; after working against the clock all morning on the Much Ado set I sat through a pair of hour and a half long classes on pure lecture and was assigned double homework due for thursday. Spanish then followed and by the time 6:00 rolled around I was exhausted and  decided a quick walk would do me some good so that I could clear my head and enjoy some fresh oxygen to the brain (free of sawdust and steel shavings). I grabbed my IPod and left the grounds of the netherlands and headed north east to the fields just beyond the fitness center where I like to walk and enjoy the little grassy sanctuary in the middle of the modernized Long Island I was surrounded by. This spot was a little place that reminded me of home, untouched by buildings and simply serves to house the bunnies and offer a clear place for me to breathe and de-stress.

As I got closer to the fitness center I began to relax and let myself wander in my thoughts. I strolled on to the grass and began walking to the far field. At this point I was in a secluded from the bustle around me and was overtaken by my music and the calmness of the cool air. I began to notice the clarity of the air and the full moon shining above me very high in the sky.

I started looking down the ground and noticed how each blade of grass seemed somewhat shiny in the cool light and each blade cast its own faint shadow just beneath it. Even though the darkness of the grass reflected very low intensities the dark shadows hashed into the deep green created a mess of crooked lines into the ground. As I wandered through the grass noticing the faint resemblance of the bunnies I sat down on the bleachers and looked up. The sky was glowing in a dark blue and only the brightest objects in the sky were visible, Venus, Mars and two other stars. There were three wispy clouds directly above me. The  light from the moon made the edges glow white contrasting with rich blue background. I sat there and took a deep breathe and soaked in the air and the world around me. I looked at the moon and realized how for me it was looking in to the sun. I realized that with a life in the theater, seeing the sun would be a privilege on most days and that for as long as I was going to be in this field of study I was going to have to get used to the shadows and feeling of only the suns reflection.

1) 2/8/12 – 8:54AM – Road between the NAB and Lowe, facing south.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to class in the morning and it was chilly and slightly cloudy. The sun was up but was still reflecting some color on the horizon. The clouds had many colors displayed and silhouetted the trees.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: It was just before 9:00 and I was sleepily walking through the cold on my way to class. I was walking south east toward Lowe right off the turnpike. As I walked along I was wondering if it was actually going to snow. There was snow in the forecast but there were only a few clouds in the sky and even though it was chilly I knew it was going to warm up. As I looked down the road, I noticed a line of trees, all of them stripped of their leaves, standing very close to each other. Their branches reached across and into the other trees branches and created a chaotic mess of twigs criss crossing and fighting their way into each other.

Beyond the trees, there were a few layers of white clouds on the horizon in front of me. Clearly the sun had been up for a while and it was not a moment where I was witnessing the most brilliant sunrise of all time. The sun was hidden behind the buildings that surrounded me however I was able to witness the relatively low sun reflect its rays onto these clouds hovering in the distance. The hues in the clouds seemed to have been touched with a shade of gray tone painted over every color. There were many purples and blues with touches of a more warming vision of pinks and oranges. The colors looked pastel and muted making the feeling much colder that a more vibrant sunrise. The twigs in the trees were perfectly silhouetted by this muted reflection of the suns rays. It gave me hope that there would soon be the snow that had been forecasted.

2) Photo By Nic Christopher. Taken 22 March 2010 at 5:30 PM in Vancouver, Canada.

3) THEME: Cold

4) DESCRIPTION: I usually find pictures and paintings of flowers and plants to have a warming and happy feeling to them however not in this image. Vancouver is a very wet and rainy place. In the spring the normal weather one would find would be clouds and rain. The lighting becomes very flat and gray. I found these flowers growing just off the beach in town and thought it was a very pretty image. When I uploaded the picture to my computer I noticed that the lighting had influenced the saturation of the greens and purples in the flowerbed to become muted and less brilliant. The very tip of the purple flower is very vibrant however it is the lighting that falls on the background that creates a colder feeling to me. The greens seem to reflect the gray tones of the sky and the rain that had fallen earlier that day. What really speaks to me in this image is the fact that such a vibrant picture has been altered by flat gray lighting to make the entire image feel cold rather than warm and spring like.

I had my lighting moment sitting in Lowe 106 for Hamlet rehearsal on 2/9. I looked over the door on the side of the room, and the light was reflecting in such a way as to create the never ending hallway effect. I looked at it for a moment, but I didn’t figure out exactly where the light was reflecting from to create this effect which was odd.

The light reflecting in the window of the door was shaped almost like an old-fashioned gas lamp, and as the image repeated itself, it seemed to create a hallway, like a secret passage into a world of the past akin to the tunnels through which the phantom leads Christine in Phantom of the Opera. It was an erie effect, considering no lights in the room are shaped in such a way as to create that particular reflection, or at least not obviously.

2. Http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/hashima-island-or-gunkanjima-nagasaki.html

3. This photo comes from an abandoned mining island that was shut down after the WW2 in Japan. The Japanese government now forbids anyone but occasional photographers to step foot on the island making it one of the most desolate places on earth. At it’s peak this isolated community had the most dense population on earth per square kilometer. They was a fully functioning society on this island with schools, stores, and apartment complexes. This photo portrays the now cold and lifeless area. The reason this photo comes off as cold is the slight blue tint to the light that combines with the colors of the building and surrounding to mute the entire scene. The lack of directionality gives no highlight or shadow to the picture which flattens the photo even more. The bright white light in the top left corner establishes the emotion we associate with cold, the still and stiff. If you were to be standing in this place you would almost feel the need to look over your shoulder as the moment feels loaded as if something is going to happen.

2) Photo by Jim Smithson. Corbis. Photo ID: 42-27306498.

3) Cold

4) This photo shows a set of railroad tracks on a cold winter morning. The sun is rising, and the light of day is slowly but surely taking over the sky from the dark blue of the night. The hazy fog exhibited by the morning light sends chills down your spine, and you can truly feel the biting cold of a winter’s morning just by looking at this picture.

This is a photo I took on a foggy morning. This photo feels cold to me. The sky is an even wash of grey-ish blue and white. The lack of a visible source for the light makes it feel colder, since light sources generally are also sources of heat. The mountains, are clearly visible in the background  and are white with dark blue shadows. And the city peeks out from under the fog as blurry silhouettes. The layers of cool colors with little variation or direction to the light make the entire scene seem frozen.

2.  Aurora Borealis, Lapland, Finland.  By Martti Rikkonen

3.  Cold

4.Seeing the northern lights is in the top ten on my bucket list. Such impossibly brilliant color against the deep blue of a winter sky creates such a stunning juxtaposition of color that even photographs of it make my heart ache. This image of the northern lights and full moon above finland on a snowy night is a perfect cold photograph. The moon and stars in a midnight near purple sky cast a frigid  tint across the trees and snow. While such  bright pinks and mints of the aurora might seem an unexpected choice for cold the hue of the pink lives  toward the blue side of the color wheel and  its the green is so heavily tinted white as to lose all of its warmth. These colors, though bright, still feel distant and otherworldly. They are not comforting so much as alien and terrifying in their severity.