Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) 3/8/12- 7:46 pm Constitution RSR booth

2) sitting looking out the front plexi-glass window I can see the reflection of the banks of lights behind me headed toward the laundry room.

3) This lighting just kind of took me by surprise. I’ve sat here a million times and never really realized it before. there are 2 rows of 3 lights headed vertically backwards. They are in perspective and it looks like it leads to the laundry room door. It is a sort of thing i feel like would be in the Coen Brothers’ movie The Big Lebowski.

http://www.pxleyes.com/images/contests/max-color/fullsize/Spherical-Sensations–4d2f301f747d0.jpg

vibrant, colorful, saturated

I love this picture because these colorful spheres are bright, shiny, vivid colors and they have all different designs. But in the shiny ones there are reflections of trees. I love how something as unnatural as these spheres try to camouflage themselves in trees and grass.  I feel like they are trying this disguise but their shapes and colors distort the trees so try as they might these spheres will never really be natural.

1) 3/6/12 – 6:55 PM – Entrance to the netherlands quad.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking back to my room after the sun had gone down. The moon was high in the sky in the direction of the student center. The light from the moon was shining through the gate to the Netherlands and casting a shadow of the gate and bike that was locked to it.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking home from dinner on tuesday night. It was a nice night, relatively warm and very comfortable to be outside. The sun had been down for a while and the moon was high and bright in the sky. There were no clouds in the sky and the moon was almost full. As I entered the Netherlands through the sliding doors I happened to to look to my right and notice a very interesting image being displayed infront of my eyes.

In the entrance to the Netherlands there is a large set of bared gates to allow for people to move in to the dorms easier with all of their gear. The Gates are purely metal and are formed from a series of vertical bars about 3 inches apart across the width of the gates. There was a mountain bike that had been locked to the lower 25% of the gate that lay rested against there with the front tire slightly turned to the side to allow the bike to stand up. The Moon was shining brightly through the gate and casting a very long, striped shadow across the sidewalk. A series of very close parallel lines lay on the ground only interrupted where the bike was placed. The lines ran parallel all the way to the bottom where the lines of frame of the bike filled in the open gaps of light from the fence. It was a very cool image on the ground to see the organized lines filled in at just the right areas to be put together to make the perfect image of a bike on the ground, simply created from the light of the moon.

1)  3/6/12 – 12:22 PM – Outside of student center, walking between theater and tower.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to class and the sun was at high noon and was very bright and unobstructed. there was a shadow cast by the student center on the sidewalk but there were blurry reflections of light from the windows of the towers all over the ground.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to my first afternoon class at around 12:30 on tuesday. I was rushing across the parking lot and onto the corridor between the student center theater and Alliance tower. As I passed between the two buildings, I noticed something very strange happening with the lighting around me. The sun was burning brightly, and very high in the sky. Only the tallest buildings were casting shadows. In front of me, the only building to be casting any shadows on the path in front of me was the shadow of the student center. As I approached the shadow on the ground, I thought hardly anything of it; it was just a shadow after all.

As I began to walk directly on top of the shadow on the sidewalk I realized the irregularity of the situation I was in. The sunshine was beaming off of all of the windows from Alliance and Bill Of Rights. With the angle that the two buildings were in relation to sun seemed to make the area where I was walking, the area with the shadow, the focal point for all of the reflections. The pools of light that were making it to the ground were all very unfocused but there was a clear mess of bright spots all over the shadowed sidewalk below me. As my body passed through this haystack of lights I noticed that my shadows were being cast in multiple directions. I felt as though I was in a circus surrounded by a bunch of mirrors. Like what you see in the movies when characters are watching their bodys walking all around them from the reflections of the mirrors all around them. It was a very cool feeling and one that opened my eyes up to all of the angles and sources all around me.

2) Photo taken by Nic Christopher, December 2nd 2012, 3:23 PM in an alley in Boulder, CO

3) THEME: Vibrant, Colorful, Saturated

4) DESCRIPTION: This photo was taken a few years ago of one of my very close friends of him screwing around on his longboard. I took this picture Mid afternoon on a December day with just a few clouds in the sky. Unfortunately the clouds diffused some of the sunlight on my image so the shadows and emphasis is somewhat lacking. In some ways, I believe that this actually enhances this image. With the extremely colorful background and intense colors, I don’t believe that the lighting needs to be super harsh and direct. If the sun were to be shining directly onto this image, casting small shadows and adding that extra depth underneath each brick, the image would have too many elements and be too busy for it to be visually pleasing.

The composition as a whole is very interesting in this image. With the flat, yet still very bright lighting from the sun makes the vibrance of the background pop out and command the entire image. Having the background blurred behind him gives this amazing sense of movement behind him that I see enhanced by the fact that the lighting is constant and equal across the entire composition. The colorful background contrasts wonderfully with the dark colors of Heins clothing and also the fact that he is the only clear part of the image, against the smeared background behind him. What I love about this image is that despite the flat lighting, the bright wash of the lighting reflects brilliantly off of the rainbow of bricks that lay behind Hein. The wall transforms the flat lighting into a bright, brilliant, colorful, saturated and vibrant schmear of colors that livens and gives movement to the picture as a whole.

1) March 7, 2012 around 9:00 pm

In the Black Box

2) There was a light on that hit the black wall, creating a creamy circle.

3) I saw this light during a break from the first rehearsal and saw how much it looked like the moon. If you took away the mezzanine level of the NAB and focused on the dark wall and the light on the wall, it looked so much like the sky. One of the things I miss about home is the lack of light pollution. At home, unless it’s cloudy, the sky is always dark and clear. Having gone home for this past weekend, I suddenly got a pang of nostalgia for my hometown.

Also, I noted that during rehearsal when I stopped paying attention to it, yet still saw it out of the corner of my eye, it appeared to be breathing and growing in size. I thought that could be a very interesting thing to use in a lighting design, the concept of a light having life, but only when you’re not paying full attention to it.

It was Monday morning at around 7am and Abbie and I were walking back towards our dorms from the academic side of campus. It was that time of early morning when the sun’s rays hit the earth at a low angle, creating pronounced shadows.

We had just come out of the student center, and as we approached the random colorful cubes that sometimes provide a shield from the wind when waiting for the blue beetle, we saw a truly remarkable shadow. The shadow was shaped like the part of a tree where the first branch stretches out from the trunk. It matched perfectly the shape of the tree behind the cubes, yet was being cast by the bushes in front of it. The bushes seemed small and unimportant in comparison to the striking shadow and tree behind it. So the effect became one of the tree’s shadow being somehow projected in front of the tree on this cube, a physical impossibility, but a connection the human mind is ever so willing to perceive and accept.

Photographer: Anglolo Manetti, National Geographic Photo Contest 2011

Theme: Single Light Source

This photo is a beautiful example of what a single, visible light source can do. The dust in the air of the canyon allows the beam of light to become visible as it streaks down from above. The dust is swirling in the light, creating a softness and mystical quality to the beam. It is as though some magic or higher power has sent the light, a living organism, down into the darkness.

DATE-TIME-LOCATION: February 23rd, about 8:45pm, 21 Clinton Street, NY–The Living Theatre

OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: In an interactive theatre performance, as “Joan of Arc” was “burning at the stake,” a spotlight shines from one corner of the room to the other, lighting Joan of Arc and shining directly at me. I believe the light has a red gel, but I can’t tell for certain because the light is near blinding me.

SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: This was a very strange moment that invoked several emotions. First, I felt awkward, very singled out, almost as though every eye was on me, even though I knew logically that no one was looking at me instead of the actor in front of me. Still, there was no way to shake the feeling that I was under the microscope. The other very notable reaction was a sort of fear.  Because the light was hitting me so directly in the eyes (and there was not enough space for me to move out of it) and the room had been relatively dark for the majority of the performance I was blinded, seeing spots, and it made the illusion of Joan “burning” seem so much more real. It was as if I was seeing a real pyre, and something about being in that direct light alone made me want to shy away, as if from the heat of a raging fire.

Photographer: George Hurrell

http://fadedandblurred.com/spotlight/george-hurrell/

THEME: Single Light Source

DESCRIPTION: A lot of things come to mind when I think of a single light source; something creepy, something mysterious, someone or something important, illusion, or perhaps movement. When I began searching for images, I wanted to find something very unique depicting movement or creating an illusion, but when I came across a series of black and white “glamour shots” on Pinterest, I couldn’t get them out of my head. This is an image of Natalie Cole, taken in the 1980’s, but the very styled spotlight (along with the wardrobe/hair) whisks you back to the Old Hollywood of the 30’s and 40’s. I absolutely love the films from that era, and something about black and white stirs my imagination; it makes it all about the people, not about the colors. There is no red to make you feel love, the acting has to do it.  Most of all, I love that era and this image because the focus is beauty in the face. There is no Victoria’s Secret sprawl, there is simply the admiration of a woman’s face. Surprisingly, this single light, which could easily create a one dimensional and unappealing image makes Ms. Cole look soft and feminine; the shadows emphasize the soft curve of her jawline, her full lower lip, and her full lashes.