Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1. 8AM March 28th 2012 In My Dorm room
2. I woke up to find a shadow of the window shades on the wall behind my roommates head.
3. Waking up. It is so difficult for me to wake up. Never going to bed is much easier for me to do(easier not healthier). When I try and wake up, whether I got 4 hours of sleep or 8, I feel a huge pressure on my chest as if someone where holding me down. I usually wake up but lie in bed for a while, thinking about the multitude of work I need to get done, which usually inspires me to get my lazy ass up! Not today though. I have seven papers to write, a design project that is nowhere near completion, a profile paper to write on abandoned houses (future lighting moment?) and I am planning an end of the year banquet. There is so much to do, yet no inspiration to get up. I want to get up but I can’t. As I say this in my head, I see my dad’s typical face of disgust. “Don’t say you I can’t!” he screams in my head. “You want to be a lazy son of a bitch? Then get the fuck out of college!” My father has very colorful language, even when he is in my head. I turn on my side, readying myself to get out of bed, when I see a shadow coming from the window shades.
The shadow was cast on the opposite side of the room. It reminded me right away of a barred up window, like they have prison. The thick dark lines criss crossing, trying to keep something out, or maybe something in. These dark lines, perpendicular to each other on the wall, are keeping something in my room but what is it? What do I have in this room when I wake up that I lose as soon as I leave it? Every time I am in Emily Lowe or around other people in my major, I am different. I am not the same Tanner that woke up this morning. There is something different about me. But what is it? I continually doubt myself. I allow myself to be taken advantage of by others. I feel lost sometimes. What am I doing in this major? Everyone has so much talent and I feel like I can just keep up! Those shadow bars in my room, they are keeping something in. I think it is a combination of my confidence and common sense. They entrap it and I am forced to face life without either of them. I love my work though. I know that theater is my life and I could not see myself anywhere else. So I build up myself, to be better. I commend myself on the things that I have and work to gain the things that I don’t have. I stop listening to others mean comments and focus just on those who give their criticism, the ones who want me to succeed as I want them to succeed as well. This business is a tricky one. I need to file out the ones who wish to get ahead by destroying me and instead work with those who want to get ahead by working off of each other. It is up to me to create a new sense of pride and confidence. Even though it is locked in my room, doesn’t mean I never possessed the skills. I am Taylor Tanner Jefferson Alvarez Alcatraz and I am here to be the best damn director I can be!…….You know after reading this, I see why my friends call me Tanner ALCATRAZ.

http://keetsa.com/blog/fashion/aurora-dress-comes-with-10k-led-lights/

This lighting is quite intriguing. The picture is a dress made of 10,000 LED lights and it was worn by an opera singer. The lights all work together and mix with one another to create to image of this dress. The colors all blend well into one another, from blue to yellow to green to pink. The bottom piece has no holes at all in the dress, it is one unified object of color. The LEDs on top have black around them as the LEDs are more spaced out. The dress itself fascinates me. There is a risk to where live circuitry around your body in the form of a dress. It surrounds the entire body with light. But who would wear such a dress? Maybe someone who is insecure, trying to keep the focus off their physical body, and on their artificial one. This purely artificial light cannot help but steal your attention. If someone where wearing a dress like this, I would feel the inclination to talk to them and introduce myself. Is this the way for new fashion? A blend of different LED colors, illuminating as one solid image? It does not seem practical to me at all. But when has fashion ever obeyed the laws of practicality?

National Geographic photo contest 2011

This image expresses wonder to me in the way that the image reflects off of the eye to create a sense of wonder and amazement while simultaneously reminding us that everything we see is merely an impression, a reflection of sorts and not truely reality. We see what the person in the photo is seeing, literally. But we also see more, the way the colors of the cliff in the reflection blend almost seemlessly into the iris, the way the eyelashes create shadows on the reflection. It strikes a curiosity about the place in the reflection and the person who is looking at it, while simultaneously being a reminder that we can never fully understand.

1. 3,30,2012, 7.00AM, The Batcave in Starship Enterprise

2. The white morning sun shone in through my window, casting a golden glow on the treeline.

3. I am not a morning person. I am quite possibly the opposite of a morning person. I am a morning not-person. I refuse to function in normal human society until I am fully awake. This is one of the reasons I love daylight savings time. Suddenly there is light coming through my window in the morning, helping me to feel like it’s daytime, time to be awake. This morning it is cold again. 40 degrees according to weather.com. This morning, when I woke up, there was a perfect white light streaming through the 6inch gap between my blinds and the sill. I looked outside and the pale blue sky reminded me that it was still March, cold, quick March, however, as my eyes dropped to the treeline that makes up my horizion, I spotted a golden glow, just on the tops of the trees. That sunshine honey color that drips out of summer. Such a color on my trees brings hope that midday is coming, summer is coming, warmth and color will be back soon.

DATE-TIME-LOCATION: March 26th, about 11pm, Vander Poel 13th floor lounge side room

OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The open lounge rooms on the 13th floor face due West, the lights are off in the side room, and the lights from New York City can be seen rather clearly through the panoramic windows.

SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The last couple weeks have been busy and incredibly stressful for me for a variety of reasons.  Just when I think I have a good handle on things, it seems that something new hits or gets remembered or shows up. Quite honestly, the pattern that I’ve seen developing in my life has me incredibly frustrated and I’ve been questioning whether or not I should even be in school, if I should have come to Hofstra, even considering running off to South Korea for 6 months to two years to teach conversational English in rural schools.  I had locked myself out of my room and my roommate was upstairs with her boyfriend, so I ran upstairs to grab her key.  As I stood there chatting for a brief moment, I suddenly noticed the miniature skyline in the distance, and all of the reasons that I am here and all the reasons that I’m happy and that I love being where I am hit me again. Those tiny, sparkling lights in the distance may not have finished any papers or fixed any problems, but they infused me with a little bit of the life they represent and brought a little of that purpose and solidity back to me. I want to be here, I love it here, and I can figure it all out one way or another.

Photo By: James Norton

http://www.pacificsandiego.com/2012/01/27/call-of-the-wild/

THEME: Intrigue

DESCRIPTION: This picture is the definition of intrigue in visual form.  The dim, amber lighting coming from the unusual and interesting light fixtures create that air of mystery and interest that make you want to learn more about the people and the place.  It’s the perfect spot for lovers: unique ones who love the charm of the exposed brick wall and the taxidermy decorations, young ones who slip into the bar and find a quiet corner booth just to draw out an evening, and the ones who aren’t supposed to be lovers, knowing that such a quirky little place would never draw the attention of their spouses, fiances, or partners.  The bottles seem to emit a low, warm glow, almost like potions calling out for you to sample them and see what unfolds.  And just like this quirky little bar with dim lighting provides cover for covert lovers, it seems as though it just could be the ultimate meeting place of espionage and revolution. And really, who doesn’t want to know why on Earth they decided to make a stuffed antelope head the centerpiece of a bar in San Diego?

1) Wednesday March 28, 2012 – 12A.M. – Alliance Hall Bathroom

2) The tower bathrooms have two large mirrors, one in front of the sink and one on the wall directly opposite. Both these walls have fluorescent lighting stretching all the way across the top of the mirrors, and in this particular moment, one of the lights was flickering on and off.

3) So, this was a lighting moment right out of a thriller moment. I was staring into one mirror, while the one behind me had a flickering fluorescent bulb above it. When two mirrors are directly opposite of each other, and you stand directly in front of one, an illusion is given where the reflection continues for ever. This made one flickering light seem like an entire row of flickering lights and I was in front of all those. In a scary movie, this is where the monster, or killer would appear during one of the flickers and disappear in the next. The feeling this moment gave me was not a good one, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand and I got out as soon as I could.

2) Carnovsky, Designer (http://www.carnovsky.com/RGB.htm)

3) Theme: Intrigue

4) I linked the photo to the website, because the intriguing part about this piece of work is that because it is three layered paintings  made with the secondary colors of light, the effect is shown when a certain colored light is used. The designer did this so that when the primary colors of light was to hit the paintings, it would use subtractive characteristics in order to drown out the secondary colors  and have only the painting painted with the complimentary color show up, it’s rather ingenious. I love the way that even though the detail in the art is so intricate, it’s the lighting that completely transforms the art and really creates it. Each new primary color of lighting tells it’s own unique story and gives it’s own mood, along with the actual painting. Green feels more like nature, especially with all the furry, forest animals in the art, red really feels more dangerous with venomous and deadly creatures in the art, while the blue gives a sense of wonder with the huge amount of bugs.

<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3Qov9luERCY/TjbPRby8dtI/AAAAAAAAATM/wF6-FpQtHB0/s1600/Garden_Techniques_Shadowing_Lighting.jpg>

We’ve talked about the unnatural effect of lighting a person or object from below, especially in the way shape of the face casts its shadows up. Night lighting in this garden not only illuminates the leaves immediately in the foreground, but also seemingly doubles their size against the stucco behind them.  I love stucco walls (I grew up in a 1920’s Spanish-style house full of white stucco and dark stained wood).  The rough texture of the stucco also provides a place for the light not hitting the leaves (is it Bird of Paradise?  Looks like it to me) to create micro-shadows wherever it hits the stucco edges.

1. Wednesday March 28^th 8:30 am Hempstead turnpike
2. It’s a cloudy morning so the sun is trying to shine through them.
3. It’s enough to brighten everything but there is a dim tone to everything. The sun is trying its hardest to break through the rolling clouds but only making a difference on the edges. Where you can see glows of light it’s a bright auburn that brings life to everything making the edges of the clouds seem as if they are on fire. There is a sharp contrast between the light quality above the cloud and below. It’s almost up lifting but then the clouds are coming over and blocking all of the sunlight creating a gloomy start to the day