Drama 16 Stage Lighting

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.