Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Photo found here, posted to tumblr by the user travellingwithmike.

Cold.

The all consuming white blankness of snow all around you, while the thin mountain air along with the tingling chill you can feel down to your bones steals the breath from your lungs as surely as the night is dark. It escapes from your mouth in a puff of smoke as if you’d been puffing on a cigar. The deep blues, overlaid with soft hues of pale pink reflect off the snow and the haze of clouds overhead, letting only just a peek of sunlight through casts the peaks and valleys of the surrounding mountains into stark shadows in a range of blues, violets, and purples. Staring from inside the warm cabin of an airplane sealed from the outside atmosphere, a shiver runs down your spine as goosebumps spread across your flesh as an imaginary icy wind cuts across your face.

Photo by Me, taken at The City Museum in Saint Louis, MO on August 17 2015

Theme: Cold

In the museum, there was a section that was set up to resemble a cave. There were more crawl spaces than you can count, and some hard to find. I stumbled upon this little nook and the lights reflecting on it made it look kind of like a moon to me at the time. But the colors of the lights made this area feel cold, which at the time felt like an awesome retreat from the 100 degree weather outside.

2/11/2016 7:20am Driving southeast through Westbury on the Meadowbrook

The sun has just risen, flooding light across everything I can see. It is low enough in the sky still that every bridge I pass blocks the sun itself, leaving, for just a moment, the sky glowing with the soft hues of yellow, orange, even pink without the searing glare of the sun itself. Flashes, moments in time; blink-and-you-miss-it moments flash through my windshield like stripes of an optical illusion as I speed down the parkway; glaring blindness as the sun reveals itself contrasted with brief flashes of relief as it’s hidden, leaving behind a soft glow illustrated in beams seemingly shooting out from the bridges as I pass, cutting through the chilly morning haze like beacons from lighthouses at the shore.

If I believed in such things, I would call it the ethereal light that emanates from angels; glowing beams of light left in their wake, while their form is hidden from human eyes. Striking through the bleary, confusing haze of that in-between-dreaming-and-awake state are heavenly beams of yellows and ambers, oranges and pinks. The sweet relief that comes from a lazy morning stretch in a warm bed; the sense of awakening after sleeping long past dawn; releasing a breath, and with it, all anxieties and thoughts of the long days ahead – simply existing, here, now.

1. February 10th, Academic Side of Hofstra, 1:00am
2. Objective Description: The bright white lighting of the lamp posts at night don’t mix with the orange tinted streetlights. There’s enough light to illuminate the path, and then some. Like the sun, these lights are challenging to look at for more than a second. The lamp posts emit a cooler toned white and they are reflecting off of the snow and trees around them.
3. Subjective Description: It feels kind of like Narnia when you walk through the pathways around the Spiegel and there’s snow on the ground and a sidewalk lined with lamp posts. I’m not sure I feel safe but it’s definitely calming. It reminds me of my home town and the lamp posts we have around the town center, only i’m pretty sure those actually once were lit using fire.

Date: 11/1/2015 Time: 5:30 pm Location: SUNY Albany

Objective: The light identified is the overhead street lights on one of the walkways leading to one of the residential buildings, as well as the sun setting.

Subjective: I thought this lighting moment was pretty dope because the sun was setting and it was getting dark so the street lights came up yet I noticed that one of them was defective as it kept flickering on and off. Still, the part that amazed me was that the sun setting was perfectly lined up with the end of the walkway, giving the appearance as if one was running off into the horizon directly towards the sun. The defective light added character to the moment as if it was too perfect, it may have seemed unreal. Though the faultiness of the light oddly brings realism in my opinion as nothing truly is perfect.

Credit: Online

Theme: Cold

Description: This is a photo of the sign from the game turned movie, Silent Hill. The main lighting source depicted is the sunlight from the top left portion attempting to bypass the fog to then shine down upon the road. I feel this photo embodies the theme “cold” because as the protagonist is surrounded by this thick fog, she is seen traversing into the haunted town of Silent Hill.  With no one else around to accompany her, another meaning of cold be it lonesomeness, is then evoked.

Sunday, February 7th, midnight, outside of Hague.

Objective: The street lamp above casts a yellow light across the area between Hague and Leiden houses, not in a large spill of light but rather in individual streaks from the curves on the glass on the lightbulb.

Subjective: The warm light spilled across the pavement makes the cold night feel a little less cold. There is enough light to see make out the features of other people, but only if you are up close to them. The golden backlighting makes it appear as if anyone standing near the light was wearing a halo. My friend takes a drag off their cigarette and the burning ember commands attention, almost as much as the cloud of smoke emerging from his mouth lit from above.

February 11th, 10:30pm, Location: LIE

Objective Description: driving home from Hofstra and seeing the bring stars, car lights and street lights light up the roads was truly a remarkable site.

Subjectice Description: As I was driving home after rehearsal, I was on the LIE and couldn’t help but recognize the stars and few car lights on the road. It is amazing how these stars can light up a whole sky. The reflection of the lights hitting off the snow on the road made the snow look magical and cloudlike. Even though the night was freezing, the night sky and car lights guided me home and made my drive relaxing

2. Taken by me on Friday, February 5th, 2015 at approx. 10 am

3. Theme: Cold

4. The entire campus is covered in a blanket of snow, and the air is swirling with more of it coming down, between that and the morning sun being diffused through thick cloud covered, everything is bathed in a grayish, sterile glow. The 10-foot statue of Benjamin Franklin (which may or may not be life sized, historians just don’t know) stands solitary in the whiteness, his dark form a contrast to the snow that has covered his features.

1. February 10th, 2016 – 5:15:08 PM – Lowe 216
2. Viewed from inside the studio, the setting sun catches the Eastern side of Axinn Library, illuminating it in a rosy pink glow.
3. The scene is filled with hope! Standing as a symbol of the studying and work that goes on within its walls and elsewhere on campus (such as here, in Lowe 216), Axinn is bathed in warmth from the setting Sun, signifying a triumphant end to the day and a brief respite from the grind, for students and professors alike.
4. (Also I know pictures aren’t necessary but I took one cause it was pretty cool looking:)