Drama 16 Stage Lighting

This photo was taken by me.

The theme is spooky and it fits this theme because it looks like it could be taken out of a spooky scene from a horror or Halloween film.

The lighting is white and bright like a space alien’s ship coming to abduct someone or that horridly spotless idea of the future that many films attempt to portray. The bright lighting depicted in the animated film Wall-E for inside the space ship where the lazy humans are is similar to this bright moonlight. The light is expansive causing a soft halo to surround it in the night sky. The brightness at night also is spooky because night is meant to be dark in the minds of many. This bright moonlight might peer into a window and wake people up like how the people were wakened up during the Light Riots. The light backlights the tree making it a shadowy silhouette. Moonlight has a history of spookiness with witches flying across it, cows jumping over it, and werewolf’s howling to it; this moonlit picture harkens back to this tradition with the light’s boldness and the silhouetted tree’s bareness. The white light and lingering halo of grey contrast with the night-time blackness like a mysterious power; this starkness and utter lack of an array of colors and stark would be enough to spook a child into hiding under the covers. For all a little child knows, this could be the eye of a huge monster coming to destroy it; and the power (high value) and abundance of this light makes it imposing. The dead, dark world that some might think exists in blackness comes back to life with the bright glow of the moon. However, it is not as alive as day; it is like a half-life or perhaps undead life. After all, in the total dark, one cannot see that the world does not look as alive as the day, but in partial light one can. Thus, the lighting in this picture is spooky as it is a sign that scary things might be out and since it makes things that look bright and alive during the day appear dead, creepy, and unnerving through the limited, bright, far-reaching, and contrasting with the dark surroundings white moonlight.

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.

2. A still from the movie Catching Fire http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131029050952/thehungergames/images/1/1e/The_Fog_75th.png

3. “Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft.” -Sven Nykvist.

4. To me, this picture was perfect because it personified so many of the adjectives mentioned above. It’s dreamlike, misty, dead, dangerous and gentle, poisonous, calm and soft all at the same time. The way the light is lightly diffused with a blue tint over the image gives it a simultaneously calming and gentle feel, but the highlighting also brings with it a sense of danger and foreboding. The slow and stalking income of the mist pushing in from the left reminds me of a lioness stalking her prey before the attack. The soft but illuminating light upon the hand is full of life, but also full of hesitancy of this eerily calm fog.

1. 3:50 AM, April 26, 2013 – Lowe 216

2. There are 14 fluorescent lights on creating a simply wash in the room with tints of green and yellow.

3. I feel sick. I am worn down and look ugly. When I look a my arms, its as if I can see my skin melting into my bones. The light pierces my pupils and blinds them. It is late. Very late. I struggle to sleep. I want to, but even if I had the time, the light is so strong, so present in the room, I cannot. There is no beauty. The way the lights fills the room, eliminates all happiness. Everything looks sickly, stuck in a dormant state. I sit her and push through the pain and emptiness of the fluorescent lights above, hoping for an end to this madness, thirsty for something good to look at.

1)      February 2^nd – 3:45 AM – Outside Hauge, Near turnstile

2)       Objective Description – I was walking outside of Hague to clear my head and was spooked by a flickering light. It hung on the building adjacent to a tall tree. The ugly orange light bounced off the bare tree. It had a pattern of staying on for 3 seconds then quickly flickering five times.

3)      Subjective Description – I do not know what it is about drawing, but it easily stresses me out and I am not very good at it. Nonetheless, when I started to work on the first project Pei Chi assigned I put all my energy into it. I finished my first sketch of what was supposed to be a coffee maker (it looked like a puppy). Next thing I know it is almost four in the morning, but I had to cool down before going to bed. I looked out my window and saw the ugly orange light connected to the building that always shines in my room. It seemed pointless at the time. I grabbed my coat and went outside through the turnstile of the Netherlands. I started to walk alongside the building when I noticed the ugly light near my room. It was flickering, quite obnoxiously. It had a steady rhythm. It was alluring. However, I noticed the bare tree next to the light. The ugly light was reflecting the death off the tree. I was spooked but I could not turn away. There was something about the rhythm of the flickering that would not let me walk away. I was generally frightened (we live in Hempstead and I am outside at four in the morning). I thought to myself, that light is so ugly. Hofstra should replace it with a much calmer colored light. Still, in the back of my mind I was trying to pull away and go back inside. Finally public safety pulled up and asked if I was high. I responded “No, the light is just so ugly”. The public safety officers looked back at me, as if I were high. They told me to go back inside and they wouldn’t write me up. I told them that the light kept flickering. They began to laugh and told me to go inside, go back to bed, and sleep “it” off. They drove off. I looked back at the light and it was no longer flickering. My heart sank and I ran back inside. I looked out my window and the light was still, like it was supposed to be.

After the spooky encounter, I couldn’t help but think of an Angler fish. The light outside kept blinking and attracted me to it, even though the scene looked dangerous. An angler fish does the same thing. It has a light connected to its body that dangles in front of the face. A prey comes along, attracted to the light, and the Angler strikes and eats the fish. I am just glad that I was not swallowed by the tree. The lighting instilled fear in me and made me question if I was on any drugs and I just did not remember taking any. I felt doubt in my memory; maybe the whole situation didn’t even happen, maybe I just imagined it. From that simple light, it scared me, made me doubt myself, and I was even paranoid for a bit. The feelings bottled up inside of me, this being my first release of the situation.  I can assure everyone and the two nice public safety officers that I was not on any drugs.