Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Photo Credit: http://t.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3813330

Theme: Gentle

Description: The only light in the room comes from a stuffed animal turtle projector, which shines softly on the boy as he sleeps. The light makes the boy look very peaceful. The fact that the light comes from a stuffed animal rather than a nightlight plugged into the wall makes the light much more gentle, as stuffed animals generally have connotations of being comforting. The projected stars add to the effect, as they are less harsh than a beam from a typical nightlight. In addition, the light coming from the turtle is shades of blue, which is a calming and relaxing color. All of these elements make this the perfect gentle lighting for going to sleep.

Time: 10pm on Wednesday, at the Met

Objective Description: I watched the lights fade during the last scene of Manon Lescaut, where the title character dies.

Subjective Description: It was the last scene of the opera Manon Lescaut, and Manon and her lover were stuck in a wasteland. She was weak and dying. The light in this scene was pale blue and pale orange, and throughout the scene, the colors slowly faded to monotone colors. It was so subtle that I didn’t even pick up on it until Manon said her last words and died in her lover’s arms. It was then that I realized all of the color had left the scene and everything was somewhere between black and white. I was amazed with this lighting choice and thought it mirrored death perfectly.

1) DATE-TIME-LOCATION: Wednesday February 25th, 2016 – 12:50pm

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: The sky had suddenly opened up without my knowledge, and something about the sun shining down from the near-middle of the sky at noon-ish, while it poured, made the scene look dramatically different than what it looked like as I walked into the reading, what I expected it to still look like outside.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Everything shimmered from the sunlight, having already diffused through the clouds on its way straight down, further refracted through all of the water falling through the air, which seemed to bathe everything in a deep blue tint. Something about the atmosphere was a bit whimsical, instead of being the typical depressing look of rain – being so dramatic it was as though it were a caricature of what a rain storm would look like, something I did not at all expect in February.

Photo Credit: http://hawkenvironmental.com/3-tips-to-improve-your-offices-indoor-air-quality-this-spring/

Theme: Cold

Description: While this picture is not physically cold, it is certainly cold in the sense of “uninviting.” The harsh, sterile, fluorescent light makes the cubicles look very unwelcoming. There is no warm light anywhere and as a result, this photograph feels very inhuman and emotionless, and overall, not a very fun place to be. Basically, this is where dreams go to die.

Photo: Taken by me

Theme: Cold

This photo includes many shades of blue. The color blue creates a cold mood that reminds me of winter. This is a glacier in Alaska that is gradually breaking and melting. The coldness of the multiple shades of blues and the white/blue of the actual glacier creates the cold mood.

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.

1) Feb 19, ~5:30 PM; Outside Lowe

2) Dusk lighting in a snowy area

3) I was making a quick trip Bits & Bytes for a break during my 55 in the costume shop. When I left the front doors of Lowe, I noticed that most of the environment, especially the layer of white snow everywhere, had been made blue by the faint lighting of the late day. I remember a very distinct feeling of uneasiness. I knew the objects around me weren’t blue in true light, but if I had taken a screenshot of my sight and picked out their pixels with a water dropper tool they would have been blue. I felt like my eyes were working hard to bring me as much of the truth of the environment as possible. I started wondering if what I was seeing was real or if my eyes were acting like goggles and showing me the world through blue lenses. I also asked myself– if aliens were to come to this planet right now, would they see the same thing I see?

Theme: Night Life

Source: https://40.media.tumblr.com/24efcc86f67c428d1b8b16b23c588425/tumblr_ncshu103MD1syvcbdo1_500.jpg

I chose this picture because it invited me into a fun story. The intense neon colors, the cracks in the pavement and walls, the steps leading into the dark–all of it screams debauchery and vice. What I see here is a trashy hole-in-the-wall venue that may be fun, scary or both. The picture is taken in such a way that the “WATCH YOUR STEP” is shown, but the actual letters on the sign aren’t. The irony of those words combined with the blur of the sign and the blackness of what’s beneath make this photo feel dangerous, but the myriad of color suggests a fun danger. This is enticing. The lights create a clever color fade effect, as they get colder the farther down you go. I think walking through this would feel like walking from a pink daylight (a time of routine and structure) into a blue night (a time of fun and release).

1. On Portion Road 5/1/2014 @ around 11:00.

2. A blue flash of lighting that lit up a dark sky with a array of house lights below it.

3. One of the many marvels of light comes from vicious thunderstorms. On my way home from a show, It began to rain. The pitch black sky suddenly became darker. However, there were moments where lighting would light up the sky and the road in front of me. The black sky suddenly became light blue in an instant. This vivacious streak of blue spanned all across the sky, beaming all across the skyline. When these beautiful strikes of light  occur, it makes the world below it glow with radiance for a brief moment. It was a stunning sight to see this wonder of nature illuminate the sky.

1. 4/22/14 at around 11:30 at my friend Anthony’s house.

2. Christmas lights hung around his pitch black room. One strand is colored. The other sides of his room are completely dark.

3. Recently my friend moved into a new place that has quite a few problems. One of them being that most of the light blubs were burnt out. Because of this, his room gets shrouded in darkness at night. To eliminate some of the darkness, he uses two long strands of Christmas lights. Two sides of the room is illuminated with a row of colored lights that leave small traces of color on the wall. They leave the wall lit with faint reds, bright yellows, rich greens, brilliant blues, and soft pinks. They occasionally flicker leaving a small portion of the wall in darkness. However, these dimmed lights strikingly light up half of his room very well.  These shining lights are a beauty to look at, with their faint twinkle that brighten the black of the night. We almost don’t want regular lights in his room.