Week 4: Das Tee

Walking along the road near Mesa Court Housing this week with Dan, we happened upon a random free standing cup of tea from Cyber A. Before picking it up and throwing it out, like good civilians, I decided to take a picture of it before Dan could call dibs. We both thought the light passing through the liquid created a really interesting texture. And look at that colour too.
Dat texture and colour doh.

What I really liked about looking at it was the visual hourglass figure that the light was creating by passing through. It almost looks like the inside of a source four, if you could see the focal point inside of the light! And now that cup is in the trash and the beauty of the colour and texture is gone. Gone forever. Kbye.

Week 4: The CAC at Night

Last night, during projections load-in for The Last Lifeboat I found myself walking in and out of the xMPL booth quite a lot. After it got dark, I noticed that there is a light switch in the second floor hallway, so I turned off the lights, because I like pressing buttons, I guess. The lack of light in the hallway revealed a really cool texture though!

As light from in front of the CAC shined up into the hallway, it had to pass through the railing at the end of the hallway. This created something of a natural gobo, throwing an awesome looking pattern onto the, already texturally interesting, brick wall.

The bricks already had a grid pattern on them, which helped to accent the angle that the shadows were coming in at. The pattern gave me a sense of movement because of the way the lines of shadow splayed out along the wall.

I'm not sure I would want to use a gobo like this for light going onto a person because it would be odd looking and distracting. However, I would definitely like to use a texture like this on some background scenery, or to create texture on a cyc. While parallel lines aren't exactly the most exciting thing in the world by themselves, the angle that they are at here, along with the fact that they seem to splay out just a little bit adds a lot to them.

Week 4: Eureka! Texture!

Ok well this picture came out horrible so I will attempt to describe what is supposed to be seen here. 

This is at the new restaurant Eureka, I was walking by it tonight and just happened to look up and see a sort of shimmering on the top of the building. I looked over to see what it was. I was guessing some fancy moving lights or some other fixture making the effect. When I actually saw what it was I was blown away. It was just water, there were some small LED lights inside the fountain, but the effect was only water. We can come very close to making water effects on stage, but there is nothing like the real thing of a light behind rippling water. This also made me think of Metamorphosis, and how it can be done without using a real pool of water on stage. I'm very interested to see what Brady will do to accomplish setting us into that world. 

Week 3: Bright and Early, Ready to Ride

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking a motorcycle riders course from Harley-Davidson and it was so much fun. The only thing is we started at 8am Saturday and Sunday so that was unfortunate as far as getting enough sleep. Anyways I showed up about 7:40 and the sun was just beginning to peak up over the horizon which allowed for this beautiful picture.

I really enjoyed the texture that came naturally from the sun light through the clouds. The colors produced were more on the lavender side with blues scattered throughout. I'm extremely interested in reproducing this look on a stage to see just how close I can get to making it look like the picture. I also like the little bit of hilation that is seen on the motorcycles as well as my instructor. The picture is a bit dim but it originally had a natural halo effect around him.

Week 4: Architectural Texture

It astounds me how everyday architectural elements such as a staircase can create such an intriguing texture with the right light. Lit from below, this staircase places texture on the building itself and creates another layer that reflects the urban quality of this location. 

Even the tree creates a pattern on the ground! There are so many textures around us all the time and in our everyday lives that can be represented on stage in some way or another. I'll admit that I don't notice these textures all the time, but if I were to see these on stage I would be able to easily connect.

Week 4: Everyday Texture

I made an effort this week to try to find some instances of textured lighting in my own home.  I didn't expect to find much, but I did find a few examples that proved the idea that interesting lighting is all around us, in the most ordinary of circumstances.

 First I checked out the dish-drying rack in the kitchen, which afforded me some striped shadows on the wall behind.

 Then we further investigated shadows made my metal kitchen objects, and got some curved stripes made by the produce basket.

And finally, I spotted a polka-dot pattern created by the panel on a desk in our home office.

All three of these instances show to me that interesting lighting can be found anywhere.  And the source of light doesn't have to create the texture for you: it can be as simple as setting an object into the space and seeing how light interacts with it.

Week 4: Ceiling Texture

While studying in my living room this week, I looked up at the ceiling and saw this cool texture. However, despite how cool it looked I was confused as to how it got up there because the roof covers the patio area and I am on the third floor. So at the time of the day when I took this picture, the sun was not low enough to hit the windows at the correct angle to have this effect. I was talking to Holly about it during tech for the shows Here We Are and We Are All Fish. She came up with the idea of how it may come from the bounce from the cement outside of the window.  I thought that was really neat! After we talked about it, I was curious as to how this technique could be used in theatre, especially if you are trying to light in a difficult space. Could you have a light hit a mirror at a specific angle to hit a certain area on the stage? It also brought to mind an idea that I want to do for the character of Moon in Blood Wedding. I would tell you, but you might go see the show so I do not want to ruin the surprise. But, it is interesting to see the way light appears in mysterious ways or places.