Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Photo Theme: Summer

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/5235848024

This photo I found online while looking specifically for something that had a nice evening vibe. Summertime is know for the longer days and shorter nights, but I find that summer evenings are some of the best times to exist. In the photo it seems to be early dusk, most of the landscape in the background is in shadow and silhouetting against a dark blue sky. The sunset either just happened, or is across the sky on the other horizon. Under the cover of this porch there are two other sources of illumination that give contrast. The first is an exposed overhead bulb, good old fashion incandescent with a warm splash of amber light. Around the edge of the porch is a bunch of fairy lights that are loosely hung so as to dangle and overlap somewhat — which look to be just a hint warmer than the bulb. These artificial sources provide a warm glow that envelops this quiet and contemplative space. It is separated from the outside world, but only somewhat. A mere few steps away is everything else that life has to offer, but under this little wooden roof is a place to sit and enjoy a bit of peace. It feels calming, the kind of spot you could enjoy in so many different ways with or without anyone else involved.

Photo Theme: Surreal

Source: https://blog.shotdeck.com/2022/10/18/the-tuesday-drop-10-18-22/

This is from The Exorcist. I like the use of silhouette, especially when paired with the strong spotlight effect that is visible with the fog. The Overhead lamp also helps to give just enough context to really make it seem like this character is crossing into a new world. The stark contrast between the character silhouette and the glowing beam of light make it stand out. The spotlight also creates a strong line. There is a lot of mystery, involved, as it makes it seem like the very location itself is alive and aware of this outsider’s presence. For my re-creation I also utilized Gobo effects to mimic the lights in the house, which act as a bit of color contrast against an otherwise entirely blue toned scene.

Photo taken by me on Nov. 12th, 2022, at a bus station in Baltimore, 6:15am.

Theme: surreal

Liminal spaces like bus stops during late night/early morning hours are always surreal to me. I was on a very early morning bus home from NY when we made a pit stop in Baltimore. The sun was just starting to rise when I took this picture, and the lone bus in the parking lot feels just slightly wrong. That, combined with the bizarre blue/gold combination of the sky behind it, make the photo altogether feel surreal.

Description: A black & white Geico ad with a single white light illuminating his intelligent, academic gecko face. The sole source of light draws focus to his face, which is both adorable and clearly very wise, as well as to his glasses, which emphasize the seriousness of the subject on which he is speaking.

From: My camera roll, taken March 4th 2023. Jaden leaning out a window in East Hampton, NY

Theme: Single Source Artificial Light

This photo is actually BTS from a film set I was recently working on. Our schedule was pretty tight and we had to film a daytime interior scene after sunset, and since the room had a window it came down to the lighting team to make it work. I was the Best Boy Electric, so myself and a few extra hands ran the biggest light we had out to the driveway and sent it up on a stand above the height of the window. This shot was taken a few minutes after the light had fully turned on, but before we sealed the windows and added a diffusion layer to the inside. It sure did the trick. It doesn’t quite show on camera, but the immense output from this light (and the lack of adjustment from our eyes at the time) made it seem like Jaden was glowing, and his hair looked especially angelic so we all asked him to pose while we took some pictures.

Photo taken by me on August 1st, 2019.

Theme: single source artificial light

The man in this picture was my supervisor at the summer camp where I worked, Tel Yehudah, for the summer of 2019. His name is Teague. We were on a “shmira” shift, which meant we were part of the group responsible that night for making sure campers stayed in their bunks past lights out. Part of the shmira equipment was this huge flashlight that we were supposed to use to spot and identify campers. On this particular night, for whatever reason, we had balloons. Teague pressed the industrial flashlight against the balloon and it glowed this cool neon green as seen above. I love this picture so much. The color and glow created by the flashlight combined with the balloon is so slimy and unusual and it reminds me of how much fun it was to work with Teague.

Theme: bizarre

Credit: photo taken by a friend on Nov. 22nd, 2019 at the Museum of Illusions in NY

Description: I love the energy of this picture. It’s me from four years ago, on a field trip of sorts to the Museum of Illusions, and in this room, the lights were set up in the back to cast three different and differently-colored shadows when you stood in front of them. It’s so weird and so cool – one of those things that looks completely unexplainable until it’s explained, and after that it makes total sense. As a bonus, this is also a neat example of additive color mixing (for example you can see where the cyan and amber lights overlap to make green). Anyway, everyone should do a Superwoman pose in front of illusory lighting.

Theme: night life

Photo taken by me on Sept. 30th, 2022

Concerts feel like the epitome of “night life” to me, maybe just because I attend so many of them. This picture was taken at a concert for a band called The Maine – one of my favorite bands – on The Rooftop at Pier 17 in Manhattan, which is an outdoor venue. The multicolored stage lights mix together into this bluish-purple that is reminiscent of dusk or midnight. That string of lights in the background is the Brooklyn Bridge, and behind that a building with window lights on is visible, but what I find cool about the whole image and particularly those parts is that there’s a slight blur to the lights. It gives the picture a hazy vibe that I think characterizes night life perfectly.

From: https://randallwarehouse.com/3-ways-to-protect-inventory-on-loading-docks-this-winter/

Theme: Cold

I wanted to find something evocative of coldness that could easily appear warm with only a simple lighting change. Searching for basements and warehouses eventually lead me to this image. What drew me to it most was how simple it was. It is just a pretty typical industrial warehouse loading dock, seen from inside. There are only two sources of light, both of which are visible. The first is the sunlight that is blowing out the highlights on the windows, which is a stark white point in the image. The next is the overhead fluorescent tubes that you can spot in the upper left corner, but which more than likely cover the entire ceiling of this room. These lights are both tuned toward a very cool temperature, but only slightly. It might be a trick of the camera, but regardless it has a serious effect. What should be white light has an almost silvery/blue twist to it. The lack of color also helps sell the effect — with most of the image being made up of various grays. Although not directly related to lighting, the surface materials and texture add to the effect. The semi-reflective concrete feels like a garage or a basement, something you would not want to walk on without some good shoes and a warm pair of socks. Aside from that feeling, it also feels cold in the sense that is seems pretty lifeless. There are no human subjects, and no interesting objects. Everything you see in the image was created to serve a solely practical purpose, a byproduct of some industry that demanded things like garage doors and pallet jacks and tightly wrapped bundles of boxes shoved into the backs of trailers. Not exactly a place you would want to hang out or spend time with friends.

Photo taken by me, Feb. 7th, 2021, at 2:30pm. Hofstra North Campus.

Theme: cold

Description: Everything about this photo is cold to me. Not only does it depict a scene we know would be frigid in temperature, but the lighting drives home the feeling. The snow is so white, and though it makes the photo brighter, it does so without warmth – and I mean that in the sense that certain colors can be warm, and this photo contains none of them. The starkness of the dark trees against the pure white surroundings, including that blank, featureless sky, suggest cold simply by removing the possibility of sunlight. There is nothing in this picture to provide warmth, even in some small way.