"The Oxbow"

This painting by Thomas Cole was created during the "Hudson River School" period in art history when artists portrayed the wide open landscapes of the Americas. Cole uses dark colors in the foreground to contrast the savagery and beauty of the wild landscape with the placid, open, civilized valley. The winding river in the background reflects the sky, giving a sense of boundlessness. There is a little light being shed on the stump in the forground, causing it to catch the viewer's eye, and to continue the line that the clouds seem to lay across the painting, dividing it into thirds.

The man who makes rainbows

I read this article about a man who makes rainbows. He does them for everything from children's birthday parties to world peace rallies. He uses fireman's hoses and floodlights to make them and angles the light to determine the position. I don't know how he keeps the audience dry.

Remember the Titans

Right now the Movie Remember the Titans is playing in the Hendrix center, and there are several interesting uses of light. First of all, there seems to be a lot of backlighting. In a scene where the african american players are in the gym, there are sunbeams coming in the windows from the back and lighting them up from behind while they talk about soul power. There is a halo effect around their heads. However, in the scene when they are first at camp and everyone gets into a fight, they all run into a shadowed part of the hallway. Before the camp scene, when the white players are confronting the coach outside of the buses, their faces are in shadow while his is lit up. Similarly, every time there is a scene that adresses racism the actor is dimly lit and every time something epic or hopeful is happening the characters are usually lit from the back or the side so their faces appear to be glowing.

The Holocaust Museum

Doing the second lighting charade made me think about my experience in visiting the holocaust museum in Washington D.C. The architect specifically uses light in the design of the building to add to the meaning of the displays. Upon arrival, you get in an elevator and go to the fourth floor, which is extremely dimly lit and has displays of Nazi propaganda along the walls. As you continue, the darkness deepens, guiding you through displays of children's shoes and railroad cars. At one point, however, you walk from a very dark room into a room made of windows on all sides, and the glass is inscribed with the names of victims. This is an expression of hope and celebration of those people's lives. You continue in the darkness/ light pattern until you finally emerge into the lively, brightly lit foyer. It's a fascinating and thought provoking experience.

Rent

I had been meaning to write this one for a very long time.
One night during a production of Rent I was observing the way the beams from the movers caught in the haze and how particularly distinct they were.
Then I left to walk back to the dorm and it was about ten thirty pm. There was a light mist in the air, and the beams from the street lamp were doing the same thing, shining in neat little mushrooms of light.

Rent Tech Reflections

I've never been a part of a musical before. It's a completely different experience than being in a straight play, especially in terms of lighting. The new moving lights have also changed the experience, because their capabilites allow for a lot more variety. Musicals use more color, it seems, or maybe that's because I'm paying more attention now to the colors being used. The movement of the lights also adds an effect that would probably be distracting in a straight play, but which adds to the drama and characterizations of a musical. The gobos being used are stylized and exaggerated, and looks are very specific for specific scenes. Spotlights are another element of the more stylized approach of the musical, because it accentuates the direct adress to the audience. The lighting looks change many times over the course of a song in a musical, while they seem to change fewer times in a straight play. Conclusion: Musicals are a lot more work. But they are also a chance to take risks and play around with new lighting techniques.

Memorization tactic

In our electricity class, I kept thinking of Aretha Franklin's "Respect" until I was singing this song to that tune:

E-L-E-C tricity!
P equals I times E!
E-L-E-C tricity!
A over W equals V!
Shock it to me shock it to me
Shock it to me shock it to me...

It's mind blowing that we can understand electricity, and use it to recreate natural- seeming conditions in an indoor location.

The painting, "Abbey in an Oak Forest" by Caspar David Friedrich has always fascinated me. The burned ruins of the church, the dead trees, and the graves all speak of death but the light tells a different story. The light shines throughthe paneless glass and barren branches. It's backlighting, creating silhouettes and revealing the twisted forms. The light fills up the whole sky. It draws the eye to the abbey window, and has an orange tone to create a sense of warmth in the winter scene. This painting makes me think of there being hope in the face of destruction, which is comforting in the wake of the Haiti earthquakes.

More KCACTF observations

Here are some interesting ways I saw light being used in the invited shows:

1. In an opening scene where a family gathered around a lit birthday cake, a source four junior with a yellow gel was focused so that it washed over the family and the table.

2. In a production of Moliere's "Les Femmes Savantes" actors made a point to interact with the audience throughout the show, and did a lot of acting on the floor in front of the stage, and in the first row of seats. The lighting was adjusted to light this area, and at one point the house lights were raised entirely.

3. In a production of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, the women playing the stones often moved around behind a semi-transparent screen, lit from behind, so that their sillhouettes were an ever present element in the show.

Observations from MTSU

It's the first full day of KCACTF. Yesterday, entering the tiny half moon shaped blackbox for the first playwright/director meeting, I first surveyed the eclectic crowd. They were scruffy, mismatched, quirky looking people with unlikely facial hair. I felt at home, although there were more men than I expected. Based on my performing arts experience, I've come to expect 80 percent female populations at any seminar. My attention then turned to the lights. There wasn't a grid, just three concentric electricals bent to fit the crecent shape of the room. Four Par cans and a projector on the longest, back electrical. Some Fresnels on the second. It was a highly intimate space, and different from the other black boxes I've known. The minimalist technical atmosphere reminded me again that I've been deliciously, outrageously spoiled by good budgets.

Tidbits

Here are some places I have recently taken notice of light where I wouldn't have before:

1. In playwriting class, one of the writers presented the beginnings of a science fiction play, in which a character "sucks all the light in the room into his body." When we gave feedback I mentioned that this would be a fascinating technical challenge. What would you do for that? Maybe bring all the other lights down while bringing up some backlights so it looks like the actor is glowing?

2. While walking over the library bridge I noticed that the sunlight shining through a gap in the railings made a pattern on the the ground that looked excitingly close to the shape of a Fresnel lens.

3.In the Fike studio where I take my Yoga class there are three light switches, and before class one day the teacher was fiddling with them to get the room appropriately dim. She finally achieved her objective, but not before switching on one look that caused one of the bulbs to flicker, which made me wish I knew how to make it stop flickering. Why do lights flicker? At crosspoint church it's because of the quirky dimmer. Or is it just bad wiring sometimes? Bad bulb?

Gran Torino

I saw the movie Gran Torino recently, and noticed a particularly interesting use of light as symbolism. The main character, Walt, makes allusions throughout the movie to a guilt he carries concerning an incident from when he was a soldier in Korea. He is persued by a young priest, who promised Walt's dying wife that he would get her husband to come to confession. At the end of the movie, when Walt is preparing to provoke his own murder, he goes to church and goes through the ritual of confession, but interestingly, only mentions mundane, little sins, making no mention of Korea. Viewers discover why when he takes his teenage neighber and mentee into the basement, trying to calm the boy's lust for vengeance against the gang members, and tells him what it was like to kill a man. He then locks the boy in the basement, and through the screen of the basement door makes his final confession- telling about the teenager he shot. During the scene, the light cast shadows on the boy's face so he looks like he is behind a confession screen. While the dialogue doesn't explain why Walt didn't tell the priest his story, the light effects reveal that he meant to absolve his sin in a more personal way.

Beginning Thoughts

People are affected by light. And they don't even know it.
If you had asked me four months ago how many different lighting looks were used during a regular church service, I would have thought about it and finally told you two.
Not true. There are several more that I had always responded to, but never noticed.
One Sunday I was standing in the tech booth right after the band had finished playing and the pastor was about to come up. The music was clearly over but everyone in the church remained standing. I then realized it was because the lights hadn't changed. I dutifully pushed the play button, the lights came up, and everyone sat down. The worshippers weren't thinking about the change; they automatically reacted.

My professor called this assignment a "Journal of Light."
It's how I am going to sensitize myself to this particle/wave and find out what I've been missing.It's how I'm going to notice when a lamp goes out or something onstage is flickering. And it's how I will investigate the role of light in how people live and think.