Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1. April 26 – 9:00AM – my room

2. Early morning light muted by clouds showing through the blinds on my window

3. My roommate’s alarm had just gone off, and I sleepily woke up and rolled over to make sure she was getting up. In doing so, I saw that the muted light from outside was shining straight into our window per usual, but because the blinds were somewhat open, the room was cast with striped shadows covering every surface the light could touch. As my roommate stepped out of bed, she as well had those horizontal shadows cast on her, and her own shadow stretched across our tiled floor. There was nothing profound about the moment, but rather, it reminded me of waking up at home. Back in Hanover the sun rises directly in front of my house, where my window is located. So each morning, long shadows are cast through my blinds (or straight into the room if I forget to close them the night before). It’s always an early morning wake up call, but it can be peaceful and beautiful at the same time.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/29783161@N05/2836394532/>

THEME:Unreal

I love the look of the sky after a storm.  The cold, grey wash of clouds above is gone and the light begins to stream through again.  The clouds are still there, however, lingering, hanging.  Now they have again taken definition again, just in time to catch the end of a fiery sunset.  Different depths of clouds seem to catch the sun differently.  The white bits at the end glow the hottest, while the grey in the center absorbs a little more.  But that rainbow.  I’ve never seen a rainbow like that (let alone a double rainbow), set in front of clouds the way it is.  Just like the clouds, the rainbow glows with the fire of the setting sun.  In a few more minutes, the sun will set and the storm will move further away.  Until then, the sky continues to burn.

1) 2012-04-21 — 1:00ish PM, At the Temple of Dendur inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

2) Sunlight streaming through the large window illuminating a 2000 year old temple reconstructed inside the museum.

3) Walking through the Met for the first time in my life was an amazing experience.  Travelling through thousands of years of art across every continent, every inch of the planet.  I wandered alone, with no direction, no rhyme or reason to where I was headed or what I wanted to see next.  The light levels changed every time I moved on.  Most rooms were dim, protecting the most valuable prints from fading in harsh light.  The baroque sections were downright dark with deep lacquered panelsand little illumination.  I turned the corner. I don’t even remember where I had been, but right before me stood the last thing I expected—800 tons of sandstone in all its glory.  The window behind seems to be at a slight angle and fills the entire wall.  Pure sunshine filled the room, the stone positively glowing under the light.  The pool surrounding the building reflected some of the light, dancing on the statues that stood guard of the temple.  With no idea this thing even existed, the sudden brightness, the sudden openness, and the simple fact that there was a damn Egyptian building in front of me literally stopped me in my tracks.

<http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0juyz0A3V1qjbegvo1_500.jpg>

THEME: Unreal

I took unreal to mean something that wasn’t necessarily fake, but just seems utterly impossible – magical, if you will. This really captures it for me. Fire is something notoriously unmanageable and unpredictable, and this person is bending it to her will. Not only that, but she’s doing the cool ‘breathing fire’ thing, something I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. It’s a skill of street fairs and carnivals of old, something done to draw in the audience to witness the undoable and the unknown. She’s bathed in a deep red hue created solely by the fire, and it’s reflected in her skin and visible in between her tattoos, showing what the fire is doing, even to her and her skin rather than what she is doing. The focus is on the fire, and it really draws you in.

22 April, 2012
Harlem, NY
Around  9:30 pm

En route to Penn Station on a double decker Megabus, I sit in the front of the second story with a full view of the entire road in front of us. We’re driving south through Harlem on a rainy night. With the height of the bus, my view is just below that of the street lamps and signals. The streets are shiny with the rain, reflecting the amber of the street lamps visible through the trees with dripping branches.

The streets are dark and shiny with the rain, and the little amber blotches disappear underneath the bus as we whiz through the Harlem streets, black with the night. The dark of the night and streets and rain want to encroach upon us, but we’re moving so fast that we leave it in the dust, speeding steadily towards the next light. We’re never caught in the dark for too long, it’s never too far until the next street lamp, and we’re getting closer and closer to the perpetual brightness of further downtown. Everything is fast and close the way a chase scene in a movie comes across, all breakneck and jerky with spastic movement. But we always catch up to the next patch of reflected street lamp, even if we can’t see it through the trees.

2. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/badwater-basin-california/

3. Unreal

4. This is a photo from National Geographic of Badwater Basin in Death Valley. It’s a dry sea of salt below sea level. When I first saw this photo, I actually had trouble grasping the idea that this is actually a place. It’s this sea of white salt, spread as far as you can see, surrounded by mountains. And the sky. The sky is so many colors – from a white and a light blue to a vibrant RED. A red sky – that’s something I have yet to see, and it’s just amazing and awesome and so many things. The red clouds are swirling together with purples and oranges and the blues on the outskirts and the sky just goes on forever, just the ground. The combination of the ground and the sky and mountains creates this otherworldly experience – it honestly DOESN’T seem real. It’s like this uninhabited, magic place. It feels like you could walk forever and never reach any other land besides the here and now of this picture. It’s amazing.

2) http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150709184743225&set=a.10150683729263225.392417.503673224&type=1&theater

3) Unreal

4) Lightning is an awesome thing of nature. It occurs during rainstorms, volcanic eruptions, and, at times, dust storms. Lightning takes on many different shapes and has so many different ways of occurring. This photo of lightning striking the Eiffel Tower seems so unreal because of the way the bolts wrap around the monument. The wrapping motion reminds me of the way a mother bear or any motherly creature, for that matter, would wrap themselves around their young to protect them.

Another thing that I find mind blowing about this photo is the fact that this is not the first time lightning has struck the Eiffel Tower. I read that in 1902, lightning struck the Eiffel Tower and damaged the upper section of the monument.

This picture grabbed my attention by the contrast of the bright light emitted from the bolts of lightning in relation to the darker colored sky closer to the bottom of the photo. The brightness at the top of the photo only grabbed my attention when I saw the light shining at the top of the tower.

1) 4/21/12 – 7:35 – Behind the NAB in the parking lot looking East.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was working in on burning the proscenium for Spring Awakening on Saturday. Bryan and I were standing just outside of the NAB as the sun went down. the sunset was colorful and shining red and orange. There were ver few clouds. There were low clouds that were flying over head at a very rapid pace. The clouds that were low were a dark purple color and had a high contrast to the bright sky above.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Bryan and I were working late into the afternoon trying to get the proscenium for Spring Awakening done with its burn treatment. We stood outside with a butane torch scorching the wood for an hour and a half in the parking lot. As we worked we were able to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful day with hardly any clouds and the sky was nice and blue. The sunset was beautiful and the colors were brilliant. there were many trees in the way however we both noted the intense yellow and orange colors that were radiating from behind the trees. As the sunset continued to build to an intense and stunning climax we had to stop working simply to sit and enjoy the spectacle that the sun was offering us. The few sky was still a rich blue scattered with a few crispy white clouds all throughout the horizon. Everything in the sky seemed bright and happy until the breeze picked up.

When the breeze picked up it seemed to bring very low lying clouds along with it that began soaring rapidly above faster than I could walk. They seemed to be so light to be so highly influenced that much from the light breeze in the air. The clouds were very low lying and probably were not much higher than the tops of the high rises on the other side of the campus. All of a sudden I noticed the one very interesting part of the clouds that were zipping past us. These clouds were very dark and almost had a purplish tint to them. What seemed to be incongruent about these clouds was that despite how light they were in nature they were dark, which I generally associate with gigantic storm clouds. After studying the clouds for a few minutes I realized that the sun had reached a point on the horizon that it was still fully illuminating the sky and world around us, however it was just beginning to cast a long shadow of darkness over campus which each of those clouds was falling under. It was cool to look up and realize that the curvature of the earth was casting a gigantic shadow over us and I was able to see the light areas and the areas in shadow in the sky.

2) Photo taken by Nic Christopher. Taken at lookout point near Blasket Islands on Dingle Peninsula on April 15 at around 3:20 PM.

3) THEME: Unreal

4) DESCRIPTION: This picture was taken while on a hike overlooking the Blasket Islands while I was with my family touring the Dingle Peninsula. Yes this is taken from a similar area as last week’s photo however I think that this photo and the lighting employed in this photo are fantastic. I think that the lighting of this photo is spectacular and almost makes the photo become something more of a photoshopped background or a dream than an actual photo. I other that raising the contrast of this photo I did not do anything in terms of post production to this photograph.

When I tried to think of something UNREAL, the first ideas that came to mind were abstract images or pictures of fire or stunning sunsets. What I realized is that those things are not unreal in terms of lighting. What is unreal is when the lighting can play tricks on someones perception and when lighting can offer a grand contrast in an area that already seems somewhat dream like. The first thing that I liked in this photo was the Rainbow. I think that a rainbow is simply unreal. It is always there and appears to be a tangible thing, however it can never be touched or reached. Rainbows are also stunningly beautiful and extremely colorful. The other element of lighting that makes this image seem so unreal is the contrast between where the sun is shining and where the rain is falling. With the panorama shot, you are able to see that there is a small squall hitting one part of the farm land while the sun is beating down in the background. It juxtaposes a scary and strong storm onto a beautiful and bright scene of a green and luscious hillside.

Standing on the mountain looking out on this land seems to give me a feeling of being king of the land. Watching the elements interact with the land and the animals. All of the contrast is blended with the illusion of the rainbow and it just makes me wonder if this place is really an actual place.

1) 4/22/12 – 4:16 PM – Black box theater in the NAB

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was in the Black Box with a few people looking at the lighting options for the proscenium. Bryan turned off the lights and there was no light in the space. I handed him my flashlight and he walked around but all I could see was the small white dot floating around in the space.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was meeting Bryan Chess in the Black box to look at the possible options that we had for illuminating the proscenium for Spring Awakening. I walked into the Black Box and sat down in the house and waited for Bryan to show me what he had plaid with already. After I sat down he walked over to the light switch and turned off the lights so that we could turn on the strip lights. When he turned off the lights it was pitch black in the theater and I could not see my hand in front of my face. I hardly knew where Byran was other than what I could hear of him.

Being in this absolute dark fog was somewhat disconcerting as I was all of a sudden completely unaware of anything around me. Bryan tripped and stumbled and then finally made it over by me by following my voice. I handed him my flashlight and he began to walk toward the proscenium. As he wandered around all I could see was the tiny floating light all over the black box. The light seemed to take on the personality of Bryan. It zig zagged back and forth and quickly moved about the room, in the same way bryan acts on a daily basis. Finally he found his way behind the proscenium and as soon as he passed behind the muslin I was able to see a faint image of Bryan’s face appear. The light from the flashlight just touched the muslin and reflected just enough to pick up the contours of Bryan’s face and made him look just like he was floating like the wizards head in The Wizard of Oz.