Drama 16 Stage Lighting

2/17/15, 11:30pm, Intramural Fields

It was a FREEZING night as I walked back to Colonial Square from rehearsal. The intramural fields were quite a sight: Freezing rain had poured on the already snowy fields earlier that day. The result was an expanse of shiny, glazed-looking ground, riddled with footprints. 3 large lights on the field shown on the sorbet floor, which reflected their light all the way to the edge where the snow met the sidewalk. It looked welcoming but also deceptive: Three trails were lit to walk across the intramural fields, but anyone who fell for the trick of the lighting would no doubt slip and fall flat on his face.

1) Feb 19, ~5:30 PM; Outside Lowe

2) Dusk lighting in a snowy area

3) I was making a quick trip Bits & Bytes for a break during my 55 in the costume shop. When I left the front doors of Lowe, I noticed that most of the environment, especially the layer of white snow everywhere, had been made blue by the faint lighting of the late day. I remember a very distinct feeling of uneasiness. I knew the objects around me weren’t blue in true light, but if I had taken a screenshot of my sight and picked out their pixels with a water dropper tool they would have been blue. I felt like my eyes were working hard to bring me as much of the truth of the environment as possible. I started wondering if what I was seeing was real or if my eyes were acting like goggles and showing me the world through blue lenses. I also asked myself– if aliens were to come to this planet right now, would they see the same thing I see?

9am Thursday, 57th st. & 8th ave. NYC

A single red stoplight

At this intersection just below the stoplight was one of those orange chimney-like cones they place over a manhole to vent steam from below the street. The steam was rising and zigzagging in front of the red light, while the light fixture itself wavered slightly in the breeze. It was a stark cold moment that emphasized what can be a cold unfeeling city at times. The light felt lonely only to seemingly wish to be warmed by the steam rising in front of it but never touching.

source: http://bluelavasolutions.com/

This is a bit of a cheat. The picture is clearly lava so we know that intellectually it should be hot, but most of us are conditioned to think light in the red side of the spectrum is “warmer” and blue is “cooler”. The volcano here is in Indonesia and the blue lava phenomenon is from the large amounts of a particular sulphur present that emits the color blue when it is ignited. This made me think of the the dance choreographer that I mentioned in class who had the typical red/blue warm/cool idea reversed; perhaps she’s from Indonesia…

1) 2/12, 5:00pm, Parking lot at Hofstra

2) The dark blue sky, the moonlight, and a street lamp combined to shine on a two large winter trees.

3) I was standing directly under two large trees with twisting branches when I looked up and noticed this beautiful combination of colors that was glowing from the trees. The first layer of light was the midnight blue from the sky above. This layer covered both trees completely and was the base of what I was looking at. The second layer was the moonlight, which only hit a certain side of the trees, creating shadows within the branches themselves. The third and final layer of light was a street lamp that rested within the trees. This cast a warm glow over an otherwise very coolly lit scene. The beauty and majestic mood set by the lighting could have been taking as dark or eerie, but I felt it to be much more relaxed and elegant.

1. Feb 13, 2015

2. Morning sun through window blinds

3. I woke up a half hour before my alarm went off this morning. I’m never up this early, when the sun rises over eastern Long Island and hits the face of my building. The room was filled with an orange crimson light, broken up by the slats of the window shades. Everything in the room looked soft and dreamy. I was not ready to wake up yet. The dreary thought I had, my mind still half-connected to sleep, was that I was in a warm oven, not quite finished baking yet.

Source: http://eyewanderphotoblog.com/2013/12/new-orleans-french-quarter-at-night-st-louis-cathedral/

Theme: Nightlife

I set out to look for photos of New Orleans because I wanted a vibrant picture of nightlife– lights hanging, people crowded, bright colors– but I was really caught off-guard by this picture. I’ve never had taste responses to pictures of non-food before, but this picture did it. The warmer colors of the street lamps and their shine on the yellow-green leaves of the tree made me taste citrus; particularly orange. The bright blue-green colors reminded me of mint. These are two terrible flavors to mix– anyone who has had orange juice after brushing their teeth will know, but I think the contrast works in this picture to create a flow of colors, and the movement of the lights from the upper left-hand corner to the center right (the woman in the photo also lends to this movement with her posture) creates that journey from tangy and wild to refined. There are many more things to say about this picture (such as the silhouette of the fence and woman or the texture of the stones) but that was the most interesting encounter I had with this picture.

1) Feb 12, ~2:20 PM; Lowe 106

2) Light coming through window blinds

3) Before our movement class, a few friends and I were running around and warming up in the space. It was very cold, but we knew that we would be warm soon after we began our class so we chose not to turn on the heat. The light that was laying diagonally on the studio floor was warmer than the rest of the floor, so I chose to stand there to warm up my toes. I looked down at my foot and the lines that were created from the light that missed the blinds were rounded up on my foot. It felt jarring and almost gross to look at my foot this way– to see the curves and skeleton of my foot. It was jarring because the light moved along my foot but I did not feel anything– like a ghost sensation. I felt the need to move my feet so that the lighting could lay flat on the ground, but I also felt intrigued by the sort of character I had created with the shape of my foot.

1) Feb 9, ~10:00 AM; C. V. Starr Hall

2) Daylight in tinted windows

3) This lighting moment moved along with me, so you’ll have to imagine it. I was walking into C. V. Starr Hall and had just mentally commented on how beautiful and warm the day was. When I entered the building, I took a right turn and walked past the windows. They were lightly tinted a brown/grayish color. I was intrigued by them in some way but I couldn’t figure it out yet, so I filed them away to try to define the ‘lighting moment’ at a later time. My class ended and when I walked out of the building I found it! It wasn’t as naturally dramatic as some lighting; there were no big shadows or silhouettes, but it was still exciting. As I was walking out with a line of people, the doors in front of me were opened and the outside was visible in un-tinted daylight. However, to either side of me, there were doors and windows tinted with the same brownish-gray that I had noticed. The people walking in front of me were visible only by their backs, but I watched them transfer from mostly artificial light to complete daylight. As I said, this moment moved with me because the interesting part of the lighting was that it was moving people– it was propelling them forward to the outside. Moving from one lighting to the next seemed active and eager. I think if we can set up lighting like that onstage, we can create movement that propels the audience’s eyes from one space to the next.

2/12/15, 1:55 AM

Student center staircase

There is a creepy semi-hidden staircase in the student center located next to Card Services. I take this staircase frequently when going upstairs for office hours or meetings for a club I’m part of called Entertainment Unlimited. This staircase has dim lights on the walls that only shed light on pockets of space (certain stairs) and make the rest of the space relatively dark at night. Walking through the area always makes me feel like I’ve temporarily left Hofstra and entered a dangerous place. The effect is aided by the fact that the staircase is always the same temperature as the weather outside because the heat doesn’t reach it.