Drama 16 Stage Lighting

7 March 2016-6:40pm-A church on the streets of NYC (not far from Penn. Station)

The front of this church was lit up with several large film lights to make it look like day on the outside perhaps while a film crew shot an interior to exterior shot.

This feeling of falseness pervaded the scene since the light was like this big illuminated patch of sunshine in a dark in comparison world. It was like someone trying to create the white and pure idea of heaven on Earth. It was like the night was bleached out by this harsh, piercing light. The light was the awkward bleach stain on your clothes. It was the thing that seemed like it was trying too much to be the thing to be the actual thing. The main point that made this light seem so wrong and unmistakable from the sun is that this light was hot, white in color. It was warm as opposed to the cool bluish daylight. This warmth marked it as fake. The various angles of the light made the shadows small and few. The brightness and seeming power of the light claimed that it would disintegrate any great patches of darkness that might try to eek out their existence in this space. The light felt like a bully trying to make its victims shout that it was day despite this being a lie. The light was an illusion of day like if someone were to use fog from a fog machine to make a water dragon’s breath. Like all illusions, the light was artificial and not the natural. The light was an actor but not perhaps the best one from the perspective of a bystander. The camera’s footage might tell a different story.

My camera automatically took this photo while I was filming a community theatre production of White Christmas back home in Maryland.

The theme is “single source; artificial light.” There is only one light on the actor at this point in the piece, and it is artificial.

The light brings details to the surface from beneath the waves of darkness, the endless and mysterious abyss. It causes its own spots of darkness though. It penetrates and bounces back off the subject under its rays. The colors pop beneath its whitish spread and are the only thing attracting the eye in this darkness. The edges of the light fall off sharply and leave much to guess about the image. The bright, seething, and only light in this photo is the point of clarity and tension as it contrasts with the surrounding pit of blackness. It is a mysterious, bright, hot, white, harsh, light.

This photo is from a Huffington Post review of the 2015 Chichester Festival Theatre’s Guys and Dolls.

The theme is shadow; this photo from the number “Love Be a Lady” fits the shadow theme since shadows are used to emphasis the dark setting of this number: the sewer at night. This film uses shadow to create a pattern over the scene likely by way of a gobo.

Shadow strikes across the world in this photo. The darkness and shadows clash and are visible by the bright central white light. The light causes shadow and light patterned like the light went through prison bars or some similar bar structure in order to fall where and how it does in this photo. The lighting would fit Chicago’s cell block tango in certain parts, like when the innocent one speaks, since it has this dark feeling of imprisonment. The light has a mystery to it with its shadows and contrasting brightness. This mystery invites feelings of loneliness and thoughts of reflection since only shadows keep you company and the bright light is like that of a mirror reflecting a white wall in a lavatory. Shadow is a contrast and this photo contains that contrast though maybe not as starkly as a bright sun’s light causing shadows. The lighting here still has that stealthy and mysterious tone of shadow and the battle and yet symbiotic relationship between light and dark.

29 Feb. 2016 at 6:40pm – Outside Dutch Treats

A soft bluish white light from the glowing sign of Dutch Treats shines on the branches of a bare tree right outside this establishment.

The light was sad, cold, pure, and spooky. Blue and white, faint and bright, the light varies as it hits the tree in different places. The tree with the cool light looks skeletal and deathly. Death rides on a pale horse and if Death carried a staff made out of a tree, then the staff would be lit to look just like this. The gloom but yet beauty of this bright light reflecting off of the bare tree is haunting and captivating. The mood created by this lighting scene is gloomy and the lighting is brings forth a mood that one might feel at a funeral.

I took this photo last spring break in Washington D.C.

The theme is fun; this photo fits this theme, not because sun rhymes with fun, but because sunshine has many positive associations with it.

The sun beats down on the land illuminating everything and making shadows small and scarce. It is the big white, hot monster come to scare away the night. The vibrant colors of the world dance in this mass illumination; all the details of objects that in the dark or gloom would not be seen invite the eyes to come and play with them. “Frolic, skip, dance from one place to the next,” they shout. “Marvel, embrace this warm light, and bathe in it,” the light beckons the eyes. The brightness and apparent whiteness of the light glimmers off of the surfaces it touches causing parts of them to appear as white as a pearl. It is a treasured light; it is playful fun. Children at school who look out the window will crave to feel its rays. Some working people will want to throw off their hats and run out into it. If they do, then they might cartwheel with joy and excitement as the light sparkles around them. “The light! The light!” In winter when such light is scarce, are not some people depressed? Do they not feel bored and incapable of happiness? Thus, when the sun returns, the fun also returns. The sunlight, the light source that first gave us the ability to delight in what we see and that gives the eyes so much to play with, is a fun light.

22 Feb. 2016 – 1:19pm – 2nd story Breslin Hall

The sun shines through a dirty window and also appears to reflect off of the bricks on the exterior of the building some. This shines a textured and patterned light on the interior wall and some grey doors of Breslin Hall. On the slightly peach-colored, off-white wall, the light looks cream, and, on the grey doors, the light looks light greenish with some blue in it.

The lighting is rough and intriguing. It displays a gobo-like pattern on an ordinary surrounding; thus, making the setting endowed with a theatrical magic. No longer are the objects just a wall and some doors; they are gritty like sand and mysterious like ocean waves with splashes of whitish foam and deeper colors. The lighting harkens to the beach with its reflected greenish and cream colors. The wall and doors are foreign objects in a bland classroom building setting with this lighting softly expanding across it. A breath filled with the smell of the ocean and dampness of water can be felt and imagined through this lighting. The lighting is transporting, alluring to the eye, and soothing with its gentle contrast between the light and shapes created by its false gobo.

I found this image online. It can be found at flickr.com.

The lighting theme is hot.

Orange, red, and yellow may be cooler in terms of degrees Kelvin but they are associated with warm things like the sun and fire. The big bright hues of the sky reflect the excessive warmth of the lighting. The sky is on fire, red hot. The golden ball of gaseous matter shines like the largest gem and greatest treasure in the sky and makes the sky its hue. It is yellow and white with a hint of orange like a match flame glowing bright to light a candle. It is thus a mass producer of heat parching the landscape like how a used match is charred. It silhouettes and gives a highlight of red to the things beneath it like what a dreamer might imagine the Martian landscape to look like. This red makes the world seem hot like a laser beam has been pointed at everything. The distribution is wide engulfing the entire sky and majority of the landscape in the warm colors and causing the silhouetting to occur. The light source glows with warmth, and the lighting is as hot as a bright red pepper tastes as a consequence.

2/12/16 – 6:27pm – Hammer Lab

The fluorescent lights are reflected through the glass to appear to be a double set on the other side of the glass despite there not being any fluorescents there in those exact locations over there. There are some fluorescents on that side of the glass. The reflected lights seem to be faded slightly and float in a way.

Stale, ghostly, and ominous, the mirrored fluorescent lights feel oppressive like an army of evil jellyfish that has started flying across the land on a campaign of terror. Jellyfish would be more pleasant than these glowing boxes of off-white though. Two eyes can be seen to creep forth from the bulbs of the light and to beat down upon you. It is a scrutinizing gaze and an unforgiving one. Harsh and inhuman, the ghost lights are so many in number that they seem to be following or haunting people. They bleach the world; they engulf it in an intense brightness that is unvarying and plain. The nightmare of a futuristic society where people have lost their own individuality and creativity is felt in the glow of these lights. The lighting is bland, unnatural, and dead.

This photo is from the blog TheLiontheWitchandtheWardrobeMalfuctioned.wordpress.com, which took it in turn from the motion picture Pan’s Labyrinth.

The theme is cold, and the lighting is cold in this still image.

The lighting spreads a cool blue wash over the scene which gives a feeling of coldness to the beholder. It is like an ocean’s wave’s tears have gone and made themselves at home in the scene, but the tear drops do not fall everywhere. They leave some shadow to contrast the hue of the watery lighting. Due to their hue, soft illumination, and saturation, the wave’s tears, the lighting, might actually subconsciously induce feelings of cold. The lighting contains such a gloomy cold feeling that it touches the mind and instinctively prepares it for darker emotions like those that one might feel after watching someone suffer. The feelings of the lighting are sad, cold, and isolated. This lighting would fit well with a scene of someone stranded in the tundra. It is so cold that it can be seen as being devoid of the warm sunny day and something of the cold, dark night.

2/8/16 – 6:00pm Student Center Hofstra Shuttle Stop

The light is a ground light in a little island with a tree in the middle of the walkway that is nearby the shuttle stop. When this moment happened, the light was buried in the snow but still on. It glowed through the snow.

The little ball of yellowish wonder that was the light shown through the snow like a porous sea sponge. The light poked happily through the pores and holes of the snow. The little fire encased by the snow was warm and comforting; its warmth and blaze was like that of a hearth at home. Although shrouded in the snow, the light was not mysterious, hidden, or imposing but rather it was inviting, charming, and marvelous in nature when compared against the other street lights and its immediate surrounding. Put up next to the darker hues or shades of the not as well-lit snow around it, the golden light only seemed more gentle and kind. Simply put, the light in this moment had a warm, homey feeling in its small gentle but not dim glow that issued from beneath the snow.