Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1. 5/3/12 1:00 p.m. on the Spiegel Stage during Undergrad Cabaret

2. Lights shining the stage and the first few rows of seniors.

3. This was a special moment and it happened just last night during Undergrad Cabaret. I was on stage and the lighting was perfectly lighting up the seniors and the stage. So it felt like a really intimate moment, like it was just me and the seniors as I told them how much they meant to me and thanking them for what they have done for me. So it was probably the most special lighting moment I’ve had this entire semester, and it was happening in the perfect moment.

2. Taken at Dance Unlimited of Hanover – approximate dates (top) April 1996 by Dawn Forristall and (bottom) April 2010 by Linda Turner.

3. #Allofthefeelings

4. There are not many things I miss about home, the big exception being the studio I danced with for sixteen years. That studio was home to me, the people there were and are my family. That’s why I chose this picture for this week – they aren’t remarkable photos, but it’s a snapshot of how I grew up. The top photo is class when I was younger, and the bottom a class in my last few years with the studio. The photos were taken at the same point in the year, and the same girls are in the photo – we grew up together, and stayed together. The lights in the studio aren’t anything special – actually, the lighting was always pretty awful. The fluorescent lights are harsh and very bright, but they always got the job done so that’s all that mattered. The lights hang pretty low in the ceiling. I can remember all too well hitting the lights if we got too much height in a jump or trick. I guess that just added to the charm of the place – it may not be five star quality, but it’s home.

THEME: #Allofthefeelings

Prior to leaving for college, I was adamant about getting pictures of my parents and my puppies for my dorm room. This picture happened in between attempts to force my dogs to pose, a concept they didn’t quite understand. Regardless, I snapped this image of my dad and my oldest dog Rajah (a ginormous black labrador who might as well be a shetland pony). Not only does this show to individuals that I love dearly, but it was taken at a time of both joy and wistfulness. I was both excited and apprehensive for my foray into the next chapter of my life, college 3000 miles from home, and in taking such pictures I managed to take a little bit of home with me. My dad is his typical perpetual tan (though not like the Jersey Shore tan – he just likes to sit out in the sun and read) and my puppy looks as sweet as ever. They’re both in between the camera and the brighter light source, casting them in enough shadow to give them a faint glow around the edges. That coupled with the brightness and beauty of a perfect summer’s day gives off a feeling of comfort and nostalgia for me, of the memories I have and the home that I miss. With showcase and finals and so much work getting packed into the next two weeks, it’s a little bit of hope for what I get on the other side.

26 April, 2012
Webster Hall, New York City, NY
Around  7:30 pm

I got to go to a mosh-style concert for the alternative punk rock band The Wombats. They had two bands as opening acts, the first being an unknown quasi-progress rock band, the second a very loud punk rock band.

Prior to this I had never been to a rock concert before. I’d been in sit-down atmospheres for a couple of my favorite artists, but those had assigned seats. This was a full-on standing room only, potential mosh pit style venue, with loud speakers and crazy concert lights. With all of this, before the Wombats came on stage, before their opening acts, before anything but radio music was playing and people were only just filtering in, I was in a perpetual state of wide-eyed excitement. As an overall experience, it was wonderful. It was loud and crazy and busy and I felt the bass in my chest and the movement of the floor. I was with good friends listening to wonderfully blaring and fantastic music, and all of this pretty much carried on throughout.

While I am an avid fan of the Wombats, I was a lot more impressed by the first opening act (whose name I conveniently cannot remember), a watered-down progressive rock band a la Coldplay and Young the Giant, though with slightly less enunciation. For their set, they had four giant light bulbs on stage, set up between instruments and band members, mostly surrounding the drummer (as he was center stage). Before they started playing my friend and I were somewhat confused as to what they were exactly – it was pretty dark and we only saw lights glinting off of the bulbs because they weren’t on yet. But then when they started playing their music, when it got super loud and fast and busy and energetic, the lightbulbs went off and on to the beat. Flashes of muted amber went off with the other LEDs and moving lights in the theatre, completely drawing you in trance-like to the music and sucking your focus almost primarily to the beat of the drums amidst the loud and full music coming from the band as a whole.

1) 4/26/12 – 12:34 – Walking from Lowe to Netherlands. Just outside of Bits under the trees.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to my room from Lowe one night recently. It was pouring rain and the trees were dripping wet. I looked up at the tree above me and there weren’t that many leaves on the tree. The light was shining through each droplet and being magnified off of each branch.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was wondering back to my room after rehearsal one night. Unfortunately it began to rain heavily just before I started walking home and had to simply accept that I was going to be getting soaked. I strolled down the sidewalk outside of bits and looked up at one of the trees outside of memorial. The leaves were just beginning to pop out of their buds on the branches of the tree and the branches were still somewhat naked. The water began to collect on the bottom of al of the little branches and the wood on the tree was soaked to an extremely dark brown. The sky was somewhat of a glowing gray due to all of the reflection from the city lights down below. As I studied the tree branches I began to notice the droplets almost seemed to be capturing all of the ambient light that was surrounding me.

The safety lights that were shining from the top of Hauser Hall were casting down and each water droplet was acting as a tiny magnifying glass for the light. The tree actually reminded me of seeing a tree near christmas being illuminated with decorative lights. Each droplet acted as its own naturally occurring christmas light. Because the water was continuing to fall as I studied the tree, the lights seemed to twinkle as they fell. Studying each branch up close, I could see a repeated bugs eye view of the surrounding area in each droplet. When I took a step out of the moment and looked at the tree as a whole it was a beautiful glowing gold color that was absolutely gorgeous. What truly struck me about this moment walking home is that I could actually see that there was a moment where natural and organic elements such as rain, and a bear naked tree combined together in such a way that made the natural and organic look man made and flashy.

1) 4/27/12 – 10:30 AM – In Spiegel Theater working on the light board for SA

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was programming and setting colors for the LED’s in Spring Awakening. The color mixing for the Pars is additive and when I made pink colors there was a blue center and a red ring around it. The focus beam was blue and the focus field was red.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I see it only fitting to close my last lighting observation of this class by writing about a lighting moment when I was actually designing my own show. Designing Spring Awakening was not easy on many accounts, the main one being the fact that I was designing for a designer. Working with LEDs was also a big challenge as the LEDs have properties found in their functions that are not found in other, conventional stage lighting. One of the properties that was difficult for me was that the lights do not dim smoothly. Another aspect of the lights that was both convenient and a bother was that the colors of the light were created through additive color mixing. This allows me to select almost any color imaginable for the lights; however, they do not always mix so cleanly.

In one of my cues I was mixing a series of LED thinpar64s to be a dark pink color on the walls of the spiegel. Now that the walls are finally black, the light is absorbed very well in the space; however, the lights do not always mix well. When I mixed this color I noticed that even though the color I was selecting was pink, once it reached the wall, it was blue and red. Obviously the pink is created through the mixing of these two primary colors. When I paused and looked at the lights that I had brought up, I noticed that the focus beam and the focus field were being highlighted in different colors from one another. The focus beam was blue while the focus field was displayed in a red ring around it. As frustrating as things were becoming at this point, with Bryan calling out ideas for lights and the colors not mixing, I had to take a moment and look at the light on the wall. It was there to show me that here I was designing a show and understanding all of the properties of things that were happening to the light that I was working on.

Despite the fact that the blue and red individual LEDs are evenly spaced across the face of the PAR, the projection of the light was received in two distinct areas. This is simply due to the fact that our eyes cannot focus on these two colors at the same time because they are at opposite ends of the visible spectrum. Looking at the lights it was clearly defined by the two colors where the focus beam and field were positioned. It was reassuring that I was able to see a problem, recognize the cause of the problem, and fix it due to the knowledge that I have gained in the last 12 weeks.

1) 

2) Taken By Nic Christopher. April 3 at approx. 10:30 PM in the “Blue Zone” restaurant in Dingle, Ireland.

3) THEME: #Allofthefeelings

4) DESCRIPTION: This photo was taken one night at dinner on my recent trip to Ireland. On our final stop of many in Ireland we were in the city of Galway. We had been traveling all day and finally got to our hotel at around 11:00 at night. At 11:00 in Ireland other than all of the pubs there are almost no places to find dinner. The three of us ended up at a hipster pizza place with couches, large tables and crystals made into candles. My mom ordered her usual glass of white wine with dinner. When her wine was delivered to the table it was placed between me and the glowing candle in front of me.

I saw a potential for a great moment with my camera. I moved the glass of wine right over the candle flame and watched the flicker of the light through the crystal and then watched the light flood and spread across the yellow wine in the glass. What I loved about this photo is the way that the light diffused and spread across the wine. I also thought it was really cool to see the light enter the glass and be contained within the structure of the glass. The condensation on the edge of the glass offered yet one more very stimulating element to the image as it added concentrated pieces of light scattered all across the smooth and warming colors of the wine and flame combination.

<http://www.disneytouristblog.com/color-color-color-world-of-color-photo/>

Theme: #Allofthefeelings

Disney’s World of Color is their latest show of lights and magic at the Disneyland Resort.  Similar to the classic Fantasmic, World of Color takes place in the open lagoon of Disney’s California Adventure, and features a montage of light, music, and color alongside minimal narration.  Instead of fireworks, lasers and lights illuminate the jets of water that dance choreographed to projections of Disney characters on giant “screens” of water.  In a montage of sheer evil, The Bells of Notre Dame turns to Stravinski’s Firebird, turns to Night On Bald Mountain, turns to the wildebeest stampede that kills Mufasa.  There are so many colors in every direction, fountains bursting to life out of the depths of the lagoon.  The rest of the park lights extinguished, this show fills the place with its life and bringing about laughs, tears, and sheer awe from beginning to end.