Week 10: Christmas Shopping

I know it's a little late, but I'm a procrastinator when it comes to Christmas shopping because shopping, as much as I'm a girl, is just not my thing. But, I decided to pick up a cute boy in my car and drag him to the Irvine Spectrum with me. Every guy's dream..

He actually chose the Irvine Spectrum over the other choices because they had an ice rink. Not that it actually mattered since once we got there he was like, "I suck, I'm not going." But, you know. It was great to see all the neutral coloured lights. They're still festive for the holidays, but acceptable year round, which is how long they're up. But it also helps that they're not coloured so that different people in different religions don't cause any problems with management.

I passed this jewelry store with terrible lighting. Though, I guess they achieved their goal; their goal being to make the jewelry sparkle and look good. And while the jewelry looked fine, the intensity and harshness of the lights didn't make people who would walk in the store look good wearing the jewelry, and the store wouldn't make any sales. And, as you can see, there's no one in the store to even put up with the harsh lighting.

On the other end, higher end stores like Orogold Cosmetics that have very similar harsh lighting were more successful in attracting an audience because of their theme colours. Most stores that had an overall theme were the most successful in attracting customers. Orogold stuck so true to their theme that they even got their own white Christmas tree with white lights, and gold ornaments.

Week 10: Mall Madness

For this weeks blog, I went with my friend, Hannah, window shopping in the South Coast Plaza. It
was both of our first time here. Overall, the Plaza had a very festive atmosphere, shown in the picture directly below with wreaths that were draped throughout the building. They had a giant Christmas tree(seen to the right) in the heart of the mall. Overall, the atmosphere they created and the amount of people that were in the Plaza created a busy, yet relaxing holiday atmosphere. It reminded me of being at home during the holidays, which was very relaxing and comforting. It was lighting that was very easy to walk through and made the trip very enjoyable. We were really surprised at the fact that there were MANY high class stores that were way out of our poor college student pay grade. Luckily, there were a few stores that we could afford. As we walked through the Plaza, I realized that you can identify whether or not you can afford to shop there just by the lighting, which is really interesting!

For example, with a store such as Versace (shown to the left), the lighting was very clear and crisp to highlight the products and the colors of this season. The overall theme was a very high class and elegant fashion store. It is intended for those who have high confidence in themselves and are very successful in whatever filed of work they pursue. They were effective in accomplishing this. I was able to tell from a few stores down that this store was one for the wealthy. Their pieces are made for a specific type of person. They made that clear through          their clean and concise lighting.

Another store that we saw was Miu Miu, shown to the right. I have never heard of this show. But, I took a picture anyway. When I got home, I looked it up. It turns out that it is a well known store. I can tell by the lighting that they were going for a similar feel to that of Versace. However, in my opinion, I do not think that they accomplished it. I feel that the color choice for the outside was unappealing. It also did not accent the product in the same manner as the lighting designer for Versace did. The product almost blends into the wall because the colors are so similar. I think the lighting could benefit more by highlighting the product and pushing it forward towards the audience. Thus, encouraging them to buy the product by making it look more appealing and by giving the products more emphasis. Overall, I think a change in their color palette would be very beneficial for them and may even result in an increase in people coming into their store.

Week 10: Mall shops in Nashville, TN

Having left Irvine midway through week 10, I was able to use some locations where I'll be for the next three weeks - Nashville, Tennessee.  There is a huge mall on the outskirts of town, called Opry Mills, and so I took a trip down (later at night to avoid the terrible Christmas-time mall traffic), to try to snap some pictures for our final blog assignment.

Opry Mills is your typical middle-America mall, with a ton of big-name chain stores, and small kiosks down the middle of the main aisles.  The overall feel of the mall is seen in the picture to the left - bright, uncluttered (except by people), relatively clean, and upbeat.  I think this is what the designers were going for - an upbeat atmosphere that would put people in a positive, active mood to spend money.

One of the restaurants in the mall is Johnny Rockets.  The lighting enhances the decor and vibe selected for the restaurant - that of a 1950s diner.  The bright neon on the outside of the restaurant, and the bright, warm light inside create an atmosphere similar to that of the mall in general - upbeat, fun, happy.  Light reflects off the chrome fixtures, and all the individual booths have their own light above them.  To me, this is a very successful use of designed lighting - the mood of the customer is manipulated, and the basic theme of the establishment is communicated.

Another shop I found was one I had never heard of, called "Justice".  In my estimation, it was geared towards teenage girls, who were picking out decor for their bedroom or locker or wardrobe.  There were several green and orange fixtures hung from the ceiling, and it seemed as if the designer was trying to recreate the vibe found in a bedroom, with soft, non-fluorescent lighting.  However, the rest of the store's lighting didn't match up to this idea - the non-"bedroom" fixtures were just regular harsh fluorescents.  Because of this, the softer incandescent lighting was washed out, not really visible.  I think this "bedroom" look would have been a good choice, if it had been executed more consistently; because of how it was executed, I would label this "unsuccessful".

There was one more shop that I just thought was interestingly lit, so I'm including it just for fun.  It was "Guess", and the lighting was kind of industrial, with a really great orange fluorescent treatment at the register.  This picture isn't the greatest quality, but the lighting made me feel like it would be fun to shop in this store.

Week 10: The House of Mouse

This week I was able to fit in a few trips to Disneyland in between studying for finals. Luckily one night I made it in time to catch the lighting ceremony on Sleeping Beauty's Castle and on Main Street. While Main Street has a standard design for the exterior lighting on the buildings, during special events they bring out the big guns. On the roof of the buildings on Main Street, as well as other places in the park, they have specifically designed lights for the event.

This event in particular was to create a cool, winter feeling while fans blew snow onto the crowd below. Throughout the event, intricate lighting was displayed on the Castle, the tree and all down Main Street. It was so neat seeing instruments similar to those we use in class in a real world setting, creating looks I'm so used to seeing on a stage outside in the world.

Also, just as a bonus: the lighting for the Teacups ride in Fantasyland is done so well! They hid the lights in lanterns to keep the theme of a tea party, while also creating a grid-like structure above the attraction (masked by vines and such) for a very unique lighting look.

Every time I go to the park I try and find a lighting element that I haven't noticed before, and it makes me feel so cool when I can identify an instrument or the source of the lighting!

Week 9: Why Blue?

I've always wondered why do we always resort to blue to represent night. Is it because it's the darkest color we can put in fixture and get output? Is it because Blue is the calmest of colors that puts our eyes at ease? Probably, but why is it so 

wrong to replicate what is seen here with the hazy moonlight seeping through trees?

Yes this can be directly replicated for the stage, but that should be only if the text or director calls for it because it gives so little visibility and even less emotion. I feel like this picture is very beautiful in the way how hazy the moon is which gives an eeriness that is fun and interesting to look at. I didn't get to see it on skin or at least didn't get a picture. I wonder what it does actually look like with having it directly replicated...I'd love to explore it. But I'm still going to wonder why we see night as Blue on stage. 

Week 9: Illegal Action While Driving

Last week was an intense week for California. It rained three days in a row, which almost NEVER happens. (Sorry you missed it Karyn) And I was actually really just beside myself on the first day that it rained because my right rain boot broke and decided not to keep out the wet, while my left foot stayed dry. I was lopsided.

Anyway, after rehearsal for Blood Wedding, with Gabri is designing for us, I drove home. Sleeping overnight in my car was tempting, but dangerous driving in the rain with a bunch of idiots on the 405 seemed more appealing. So, as I exit my off ramp towards home, and notice several cop cars, I look out front window and am almost blinded by the amount of red light reflecting off of every surface due to the water. Did someone really just decide to take R26 at 100% and shine it into my face?

And then I look to my left and my goodness, I was being blinded by a much cooler almost silvery white light. I don't think as green as L201, but definitely somewhere within that colour range. However, it was also easier to look at than the red. The red just burnt my soul and eyes and made it so that I had to close my eyes and wait for the inside of my eyelids to change colour with the stoplight.










And then I did something illegal. I rolled down my window, with a cop on the opposite corner of where I was taking my photograph, and took three pictures. One of the red, one of the white, and a panorama of it all. I don't know exactly why, but there was really very little colour mixing taking place. You can see a little hint of amber down the middle, but it's almost like the vertical cyc that Dan created for one of his projects, where the colours just split down the middle. It's really enhanced by the rain and even moreso by the quality of the photograph, obviously, but even so. And then the light turned green and I drove past the officer while singing Taylor Swift's song "Blank Space".

Like a badass.

Week 9: Cityscape Over Water

A few nights ago I took my girlfriend to the aquarium in Long Beach and we ended up walking around the harbor later that evening. Looking out at the water, I just had to snap some pictures. The way the color on the water rippled got me thinking about how I could create something like this on a stage. For our class plot we've only ever had one pair of cyc lights on each side, but I wondering if a larger cyc with more individual units could produce an effect like this. Then again, it would probably be easier to do something like this with a dedicated system of lekos, although that then presents the problem of using up a ton a lekos, which wouldn't work unless it was a space with plenty of instruments and dimmers to spare.

Lately I've been working as light board operator for Darrin and Ebony on New Slate and I've gotten to see some of what moving lights can do. I'd love to see how close to a look like this I could get with some movers. I also wonder how a more abstracts interpretation of this would look on a cyc. Perhaps just a regular cyc wash with a just one or two textures thrown on top of it (maybe a twinspin for the rippling). For still another option, I might try creating a ripple animation video and projecting it over a cyc wash to add some moving texture.

Week 9: Night Light

As I was driving around town this evening, I was on the lookout for photo opportunities that would be appropriate for our weekly blog.   I started to notice the different outdoor lighting fixtures that were placed along roadsides, and how they illuminated the immediate area.  There were definitely similarities to some of the brushstrokes we've been looking at in class.  With all it's spill, the unfocused quality of the light reminded me of pars, and the amount of spill we see with pars was definitely similar to the quality of light in these sources.

I enjoyed the unobscured sources of light - rather different from what we do onstage, where the goal is usually to hide the actual source of light.  This reminded me of concert lighting, where things are rougher and more exposed, generally going along with the feel of the music.

I also started to think about how to create a similar look onstage:  where there are lots of small light sources in the distance, keeping the surrounding darkness at bay.  One idea would be to create some sort of toy-theatre set-up, where you could possibly use Christmas tree lights or small battery-operated fake candles, and allow their small pools of light to be surrounded by darkness.  And perhaps incorporate traditional tonals into the composition to give a more lush, rich feel to the darkness.

Week 9: Light Tests

One of the many things I have learned while working on Blood Wedding is doing light tests with the costume designer. At first, I thought that this was a semi-important step in designing for a show. That was before I saw a black dress turn red because R80 has a large amount of red in it. So, light tests have definitely been bumped up in the lists of important things.

When I went outside this morning to check the weather, I saw that a similar thing was happening with the leaves as the sun progressively rose. The leaves that we being hit with the sun light were a different shade of green than those that were not, which conveyed a different emotion and atmosphere. The color of the leaves with the light also varied as a result of  the actual color of the leaf. This really shined a light(pun intended) on the fact that you must be cautious of what lights and gels you put on which costumes because you never know what the output may be.

Week 9: Tinsel Time

I was sitting in my living room this morning when I looked up and saw that the sun was hitting our Christmas tree at the perfect spot! The natural source of the sun was hitting the tinsel on the tree and bouncing every which way across the living room and kitchen.

The effect made an awesome design of squiggles everywhere, patterning the room with light. It didn't even occur to me until now that tinsel is a reflective surface, thus perfect for a Christmas tree with lights on it. I know tinsel is pretty and messy, but I honestly never put it together. With the power of sunlight, the textures on the wall are very interesting.

This reminded me of a post that Gabri made earlier in the quarter about finding a texture on the ceiling of her apartment. It's incredible how light can be reflected on so many surfaces and at the weirdest angles.

I wish the squiggles could move! How neat would that be? To have this texture in a moving light, and use it in a dance show or something? It's like art is happening right in front of me.

Week 8: Stages of Stage

I found "depth" to be an especially challenging subject to find in the everyday, but just when I'd all but given up hope, I sat down at the board in the Claire Trevor Theater and saw this.

There's a slight difference here in the quality of light between the apron and the main stage area, but much cooler, is the difference between the main stage area and the back wall. There is a transparent drop that adds a mist-like quality to the back wall. It also serves to separate the warm light in front from the industrial greenish light of the work lights behind the stage. 

I really like the way that the drop separates the stage into distinct sections and I'd be very interested in playing around with one to see all the different ways that I could use it with light. I'm also interested in this idea of progressive shifts in light over different slices of the stage. For example, I'm thinking of a how it could be used to create the effect of a creepy hallway that gets progressively darker towards the back. There are tons of possibilities here.

Week 8: Dep

I found inspiration for this week's topic when flying home for Thanksgiving. As I passed over Orange County at night, I realized how the light emitting from the cities below further emphasized how far away I was from the ground below.

The light also seemed to be warmer the further away it was from the plane. The closer I was to the ground, the lights appeared cooler with an almost greenish tint to them. Very urban, kind of industrial. It got me thinking about depth on stage, say for a cityscape, and how smaller lights such as Christmas lights on a backdrop or the scenery can create perspective for city lights that are farther away from the audience.


I going to be honest and say that this actually made me think of the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland. On the ride you fly over the city of London, and the blinking lights below were designed to create this sense of great depth between the people up above and the city below.

I wonder how this effect could be replicated onstage...

Week 8: Depth

As I was walking to tech this morning, the light in Aldrich Park was really stunning.  I snapped a few pictures, and enjoyed the way the visible beams of light helped define the depth of the space - it always seemed as if the light where you could see a physical beam was in the mid-ground of the picture.



As I got closer, the visible beams kept changing - I never got to where I was walking right next to them. They remained in the not-so-far-distance, peaking through different trees as I walked.  I found this interesting, even though I don't have an explanation for that.

 Regardless, I think this would be pretty striking to recreate on stage, using some sort of fog or haze to catch the beams of light.

Week 8: We've All Done It

We've all done the flash light behind the flesh, ET phone home, trick at some point or another behind our fingers. And of course, where there is less mass of flesh and bones, your skin is far more transparent and allows more light to pass through. The three pictures above are my hand with a flashlight behind it, as the flashlight moves deeper into my hand. What is fascinating to me about it is not the fact that light passes through as the colour red, though that is cool that human flesh can compare to a gel with its pigment, but the fact that human flesh is thin enough, transparent enough, to allow light to pass through, even at the center of your palm where your hand is almost at its thickest. Sure, skin allows liquids to pass through (outwards), but prevents the inward acceptance of liquids. Why is it the complete opposite with light that it can be accepted by human flesh, but not emanate or create it otherwise?
And certain objects that do accept liquids and retain water as given, such as wooden blocks or duvetine, do not allow light to pass through its solidity at all. Baffling.

Week 8: Depth

This week’s theme was difficult for me to find images for. However, I found inspiration on the drive home this weekend. It was really stormy. The light broke through the clouds. For me, the clouds captured depth through the variance of light, which resulted in changes of the intensity of color. I feel that the storm clouds acted as a natural cyc for my drive. It establishes distance between me and what would be the back wall. This sparks ideas as what to do with the cyc. It also gets the mind into thinking about various ways to uses gobos and shadows to establish distance and depth for the piece, especially if the characters are traveling in the play or if the distance serves a symbolic purpose.

Week 7: Red

This evening I was working at the Mesa parking booth with my friend Cat for a Brown Bag event. When I turned around I noticed how the red of the light outside of the booth was hitting her face. It was so unexpected how beautiful that light was- it came out of nowhere! Sometimes you don't really notice a light until someone's standing right underneath it.

It is such a strong statement that I actually gasped when I turned around and caught her standing right in it. Her hair also has hints of red and pink in it as well, so the light reflected quite nicely.

I never really thought about red as an exterior light in this context, but it pops out from the background really well and the high angle creates a lovely layer of atmosphere.

An unexpected find in an everyday location. Lighting is everywhere!!

Week 7: Lighting Happening!

So, a lot of interesting things have been going on lighting-wise in the world this week and I want to share a few moments.

On Friday, I had a class at 1:00 PM with an almost five hour break following until rehearsals started at 6:30. Because of the excessive amount of work to accomplish over this weekend, and still wanting to spend quality time together, my special someone decided that a few hours away from work on Friday would work best for the both of us, so he drove to Irvine to keep me company during my break. We originally wanted to play baseball in Aldrich park, but he got self conscious about his throwing ability and lack of coordination, so we dropped that idea and decided to explore the aloe forest in the center of Aldrich park instead. Amidst our search amongst the aloe, we came upon an opening, a beacon if you will, of light breaking through. And no, it wasn't the end of the forest, just a weird part where the plants did not meet to create a tunnel. And although I call it beacon-like, I think it looks particularly scary due to the lack of colour in the surrounding area, the whiteness of the branches, and the overall lack of warmth to the photo. The immediate attraction my eye goes to is the shirt of the explorer, because its vibrant blue stands out from the sameness of the background environment. Also, the white light is eating his head! Foreshadowing for a terrible ending if he steps into the light... That's almost like a metaphor or something. Oh no!

And the VERY NEXT DAY, we were playing with clip lights and shadows in rehearsals for Travis' DCP going up week 10 (Come see it). Though the light was scattering everywhere off the sheet, as well as on it, I thought it looked really interesting as an audience member to watch the movement taking place as a silhouette of the characters. Of course, being closer to the light meant being more mushy and blurry on the sheet, whereas the closer you were to the sheet, the more crisp the silhouette. I just thought it was beautiful. That's all.

And finally, after brunch with Dan's mother, grandmother, and Dan, our roommate and I came home to nap. Whilst laying on the couch watching Scrubs, I turn to my right side and notice this OBSCENELY NEAT texture on my wall and ceiling. We have blinds covering our window, but even so, you expect light to behave somewhat normally when entering a home. One slit between the blinds means one slit of light hitting the wall, NOPE. That's what makes light so fascinating. WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING? Amazingness. That's what. None of these slits of light are even, not all of them are going at the same angle, and not all of them are hitting the same surface and the ones that are aren't even restricted to the same general area. The texture just keeps going. This is just brain overload. I'm imploding. That's all. K bye.

Week 7: Beacon

We've all undoubtedly noticed these things scattered around the campus. They cast out a bright blue
light that is pretty unique among the types of sources we're used to seeing around campus (which I imagine is the point). It's interesting to me because we usually don't see much saturate light from artificial sources outside of a theater like this. Mostly we we get around campus is warm amber and the occasional industrial light blue or greenish.

I also found it interesting how the intensity of this blue changed the colors of the materials around it. The two lines of yellow brick became an orange-brown color and the white-ish-gray bricks adopted the blue light as their own.

I also found it interesting to look at the color of the near by floodlights and how they compared to the blue of this one. The two nearby sources each cast a familiar warm light that we expect from artificial sources. However, other nearby sources were casting a very greenish light.