Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Time: Tuesday night, 11:50 pm

Objective Description: As I looked out my window at night, everything appeared to be black and yellow, except one room in a building across the parking lot.

Subjective Description: I was getting ready to go to bed, and had turned off the lights in my room but hadn’t yet closed the shades. In the dark, I was able to easily observe what was going outside my window. Spots of yellow lights were visible from the lamps lighting the pathways and the few cars driving by. Several of the rooms in the other towers were dark, but some still had their shades open to reveal squares of more of the same yellow light. I could easily see the landscape below, but instead of the usual colors, everything appeared to be somewhere between artificial yellow and complete darkness.

There was one exception to the monotone scene below and it caught my eye immediately. Across the parking lot, in the Bill of Rights building, someone else’s room was glowing with some kind of novelty light that cycled through the rainbow. This one tiny square of light was captivating against the plain yellow and black backdrop.

2 Feb. 2016 – 9:18am – Classroom 0028 in the Basement of Breslin Hall

The room was dark besides the florescent light I let in from the hallway as I cracked the door open and a soft bluish green glow from the computer screen way over on the other side of the room. This light from the screen illuminated a circle on the white wall to the left of it, and one of the technical difficulty emergency phones was located just off middle in the circle. It is the lighting on the wall that caught my eye, not the pools of florescent lights that wafted onto the floor a few feet in front of me.

The lighting was mysterious and eerie since it was surrounded by shadows and darkness and since it was such a peculiar color. This lighting would not have been out of place in a murder mystery play in which a character is scared of the phone because the ringing of the phone always signals something bad. Thanks to the hue, the lighting seemed sickly. In the murder mystery play example, this could represent the mindset and paranoia of the afraid character. It mirrors the feeling of quintessential fear that a person home alone at night who starts hearing spooky sounds must possess. Soft, circular, and contrasting with the surroundings like something out of another universe, it could have been the light that emitted from an alien spaceship’s beams of abduction. This lighting moment touched a chord and got under the viewer’s skin by being a reminder of mortality and that there is so much uncertainty out there. It presented the fear of the unseen and the fear of the unknown mysteries of life like when a person will die. Thus, the lighting resembled in color, distribution, and intensity whatever the torch or lamp of the Grim Reaper looks like and inspired fear and thoughts of the supernatural in its beholder.

January 31, 2016, approximately 4pm

Objective: The light that I observed was the light shining through the window on the twelfth floor of Enterprise hall. The sun was bright and shining in in gold-saffron streaks, highlighting portions of the room while illuminating the dust floating in the air. 

Subjective: The light shining in through the window gives the room a hazy feeling, making the entire space feel warm with saffron light, creating a beautiful halo glow on everything it touches. It feels cozy and safe and everything is good. 

Location: My Room

Time: 4/17/15, 1 AM

I turn my lava lamp on before I go to bed some nights. I don’t usually like when the room is pitch black when I sleep but I don’t want regular lamps on either because they’re too bright. The blue and green light within the lava lamp are perfectly dim and create a cool ambiance that relaxes me. Normally I only use it after a hard day when I need to relax. I put on soft acoustic music to complete the atmosphere. All that’s really illuminated is a small circle of space around the lamp. The rest of the room catches the slightest bit of a blue glow. It’s perfect for falling asleep.

I think I missed a lighting observation either last week or the week before, so I’m doing an extra this week.

1) 4/3 8:00pm. Norwalk, CT.

2) Night lights illuminated in fog.

3) As I was taking the train home for spring break yesterday, I looked out the window at one point and realized that there was some of the lowest fog I’ve ever seen. When we went over a small lake, the fog was practically touching the lake, making it impossible to see more than a couple dozen feet away. But the most spectacular visual, was when we rode through the small city of Norwalk, Connecticut. The buildings disappeared into the fog and the streets were barely visible. Even though you couldn’t see any of the streetlamps, the lights illuminated the fog in little bursts all across the city. It was spectacular because it was just “light.” You weren’t seeing a streetlamp, you were seeing light. Of course it was one of the best lighting moments I’ve ever had. In this case, light was calling attention to itself, and asking to be recognized. It was truly beauticul.

1) 3/19 11:30pm. Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.

2) Cincinnati skyline reflecting in the water.

3) One of the best parts of the USITT trip to Cincinnati was one night when we walked a bridge and crossed over into Kentucky. We were able to go down to the water and look back at the bridge and the skyline of the city across the water. As vibrant and alive as the city lighting felt, the water was even more illuminated. All of the lights from the buildings seemed to perfectly mirror themselves in the river below. The bridge had a series of lights the ran along the sides which reflected into the water. The entire moment was incredibly serene and memorable.

The other night after a party I passed out at my friends’ house in their spare room. They refer to it as “the palagio” because it is a very elegant room. The next morning, I woke up to sunlight streaming in through the blinds. The room was illuminated and shone with its walls all painted white. There were abstract reflections on the vaulted ceiling from the mirrors in the room, as well as my phone screen which also caught the light. Combined with a warm breeze filtering in through the window and the warm mattress which i rested upon, it truly felt like a palace.

The wi-fi router on my ceiling sometimes changes colors at night, and as sensible as I like to consider myself, that little change from blue to green on that light panel, no larger than a floss-box always creeps me out.

Its standard color is blue: cool, calm blue. It reminds me of a baby’s nightlight. It hits my Whitney Houston poster in such a way that Whitney’s skin looks heavenly, beautiful. The seafoam green light comes on occasionally if there is a problem with the wi-fi. It makes her look extraterrestrial and strange, and her teeth look grimy. The color is reminiscent of some secret corridor in an X-Men movie that no doubt leads to an illegal testing room.

1) 2/24/14, 7 pm-ish

2) Lights in the top floor windows of Enterprise

3) I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but the towers on the residential side of campus all have faces. At the top of each tower, the way the windows are positioned on the uppermost floor and the floor just beneath it make the buildings look like they have two eyes and a mouth. I don’t really know how to describe this. Picture two narrow rectangles for eyes and a wider rectangle (one bigger window beneath the other two) as the mouth.

Every time I’m walking back from the gym and those lights are on, the residential buildings turn into a colony of giants with stoic faces. Normally it’s Enterprise that catches my attention. The geometric features of its face (rectangle mouth with clenched window pane teeth) don’t lend themselves to a smile or a frown. The giant just looks like its face hurts, as if it accidentally injected itself with too much botox and is stuck. Or it’s just sick of bracing against the cold winter wind. If it could speak it would probably say “HNNNNN!”

When the lights are off, the botox-infused, winter hating giant is sleeping, I’d guess. I think these giants are nocturnal, because next to sunlight, it’s hard to tell whether those lights are on or off, and it looks like they’re asleep. Against the black night, the eyes and mouth of the stone guardians stand out because they’re so full of light. That is when they’re awake. I feel camaraderie with these buildings. They’re night owls, like me.

1) 2/26 , 11:30pm, Outside Hofstra USA

2) Moonlight reflected on ice on ground.

3) I was walking home from a late night in the studio when I looked up in the sky and noticed a bright white moon shining down and lighting the path ahead of me. However, the most remarkable part of the walk was that every time I walked by a pool of ice, it would reflect up the light from the moon. Near Hofstra USA there was one particular patch of ice that was really big. When I walked by it, the entire thing illuminated in a shiny white light.  We’re not used to seeing light coming up from the ground below us, and it was like I was standing on a sea of light.