Drama 16 Stage Lighting

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.

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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.