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.

Wednesday 1 February, 2012
Axinn Library Stacks
Around 7:30 pm

A boy is sitting on the floor leaning up against a bookcase filled with books. His legs are crossed and the hood of his dark sweatshirt is pulled up over his head. His Macbook Pro is propped on his crossed legs, the bright screen reflected in his glasses.

It struck me simultaneously as quite telling of our generation as well as ironic. Here he was, completely engrossed in whatever Youtube video or movie on Netflix he was watching while surrounded by thousands upon thousands of stories to which he was paying no attention. They were nothing better than back support. The way the lights of his show flashed in his glasses parallel to the movement on screen coupled with the given context made him look like a zombie – especially since his mouth was slack and he wasn’t really moving much. Methinks I saw a bit of drool dribbling down the left side of his face – but that could have just been the reflection in the plastic of his earphones.