Week 7: A Weekend in Vegas

 On Thursday I left from school with Brady for Las Vegas for the weekend of Live Design International 2014. I got to stay at the Luxor that night because I had a complimentary room which was a great opportunity since I had never stayed there or even been in there before. After getting checked into my room I went out to wander the floor and also grab a bite to eat. While walking around, I was admiring the architecture of the pyramid itself and all of it's glory. It was astounding the size and detail that was put into the building of the structure. Then came the lighting, with which I was not at all impressed. The majority of the lighting inside the Luxor is done with fluorescent tubes which flattens out the detail and hardworking that has been put into the work. I felt like it was a cheap and quick way of designing that didn't work. The lighting could have enhanced the architecture so much more with either using a warmer light such as an incandescent or by adding more character fixtures to hide the accent fixtures.

Also here are some cool pictures from LDI just for a look really. Nothing too special this year mostly just everyone integrating LEDs in their products. Although Clay Paky had a line up that was pretty awesome with two new moving lights and an LED strobe with RGB capabilities. ETC was a little lacking with an exception to the Series 2 Lustr, of which they added a new color into the mixing palette: lime, which allowed colors to have the same saturation without losing intensity by using lime instead of white. 

The pictures are of American DJ and ROBE and are only for viewing purposes because they didn't have anything worth mentioning.

Week 7: Many Opportunities

So for this week, I wanted to talk about lighting design that is not seen on the stage, but seen in our everyday lives. The aspect of lighting design that really attracted me towards it was its versatility. With most majors you have a very specific job that goes with it. However as a drama major, we have various disciplines we can choose from, which leads to even more options. The first picture is a merging area that connects the 241-N and the 91-E. Despite the fact that it is a freeway, I think that this design can make a plain freeway look more attractive. It also has an illusion. 

 By using parallel lines, it adds to the depth of the tunnel. The other picture is the ground at UTC in front of Chipotle. Even though I don’t know what the purpose of the lights are, I think it is really pretty and different from what people are used to. 

The last picture is from a celebration I went to this past weekend. They had a haze machine and an instrument that performs various lighting displays. When they were separate it did not seem to add to the atmosphere of the event. When it was just the lights, it seemed like simple lighting on walls. When they haze was on by itself, I thought I was in a haunted house. But, once they were together it was fantastic and greatly contributed to the atmosphere. It added another plain of lighting because you could see the light beams through the haze. Overall, I am excited to see the various opportunities that appear from the world of lighting.

Week 7: Shadows

 This morning, I noticed some shadows on my living room walls, cast by the window blinds.  I thought it interesting that the shadows weren't forming a crisp edge on the wall, and thought I would look into it further.  It reminded me of the way I see things when I look at something with both eyes, and then switch back and forth between one eye or the other being open: a slightly different point of view, that meets in the middle to produce one image when I have both eyes open.  I don't think this is actually what's happening here (there certainly aren't two suns casting light through the window), but it seemed somehow similar.

When I got up close to the wall, and cast a shadow with my hand very close to the same surface, the shadow was much crisper, much more what I expected it to be.  It was visually interesting to me to have the crisp shadow side by side with the fuzzy one.

Without knowing the technical terms for these different types of shadows, it made me wonder if this is similar to what happens when we are focusing lights, and we adjust the focus.  The actual source of light (lamp) is being moved closer or further away from the surface of the lens


(or vice versa), producing a harder or softer edge.  It also reminded me of using any sort of shadow projection on a screen onstage - the less space between the projection screen and the object, the clearer / crisper the shadow is.

It would also have been fun to experiment and try to add some color to the light - would the fuzzier edges of the shadow had any color in them?  Where would the color stop, if the shadow itself isn't given a hard edge?  And apart from moving the window closer to the wall, or my whole apartment closer to the sun, would there have been any ways to get the fuzzy shadows to sharpen up their focus?

Week 6: An Obsession with Time

Of all the things that people obsess over, perhaps most obsessed over is time. The other night, I snapped a picture of the clock next to my bed. I think this is a very good representation of time as an obsession. When I think of the color of obsession, I think of something strong and bold, like red. The red of the clock is perfect both literally and metaphorically.

If I wanted to create some similar lighting on a stage, I would probably use an R26 gel. I think it would also be interesting to try to create a clock effect with a gobo, but I'm not sure exactly how to achieve something that looked like a real clock (with movement). Looking at this picture it even looks like a stage, with the actual clock being the cyc. I think this would look really interesting in a dance show, where we wanted to see the the dancers in silhouette.

Week 6: Art

My grandparents, the incredible couple I posted about during the week of "love", have a large collection of art. In fact, they own a sculpture park called Wolfstein Sculpture Park and donate art regularly to different venues. In addition to donating, they also purchase quite a bit of their own. They have two houses that hold a striking resemblance to museums, and some of the pieces are even marked to be donated to museums after their passing. It's incredible. They're obsessed with art. They've spent 60-some odd years collecting and they truly love every piece and have a story for every piece that they've purchased. AND THEY REMEMBER ALL THE STORIES. My grandmother is an elephant. Never forgets a thing.

This past Friday, I decided I needed 24 hours to deconstruct and destress from school happenings before losing my nights to rehearsals for my next show. In doing so, I went down to San Diego to go visit my grandparents and have a card night in with a beautiful view, which you have seen once in a previous post (again, about "love"). But when I arrived at their house around 1:00 PM, they were winding down from their morning adventures with a new piece of art, by Jeffery Laudenslager and Arline Fisch. Arline has been playing with a form of glass which separates specific colours from the light spectrum. The first photo is of the piece in natural, ambient light. The second picture was taken at night, with a small spot placed on the piece. I want them next to each other so that you can really see the difference between the separation of color on the metal. Jeffery is also a fabulous metal bender, sculptor, and artist.

I thought it was fascinating that each piece of glass separated a different colour. The colours didn't alter or change as time went on, though perhaps angle might make the lighting appear different, but the spot was stationary. It was really a beautiful piece. I always enjoy going to my grandparents museums.. Haha.

Week 6: Obsession

When I got home around 5pm today, the sinking daylight hitting the hallway door in my apartment really caught my attention. The contrast between the incandescent interior light coming from a single fixture in my bedroom, and the cool evening light washed over the door got me thinking about the layering of sources and how those sources can work together in a composition.

I then decided to turn off the interior light inside the room in order to see how the natural light hitting the door would shift, or if it would shift at all. And it did! These photos were taken within seconds of each other, yet with the interior light on the natural source appears cool. Then with the interior light off, the natural source loses saturation and the intensity looks like it increased. How cool!

In the past weeks I have been focusing on exterior inspirations for these blogs, so catching this interesting alteration of light inside my own apartment made me think about a theatrical set and how a natural source can be such an integral part of a composition.

I know this doesn't exactly relate to this week's topic, but I'm obsessed with this discovery! So that counts, right?

Week 6: Obsession

In thinking about obsession, I tried to come up with different interpretations of that word, and different ideas for pictures.  In taking a close, direct picture of a light bulb, I hoped to capture the idea of overwhelming intensity.  However, the picture didn't really do justice to the brightness of the bulb in real life - in real life, it was pretty difficult to maintain a direct gaze from just inches away.
Several ideas in this picture represented obsession to me:
The afore-mentioned intensity, being both really intense and slightly uncomfortable.
The heat felt by being that close to the source.
The fact that everything not close to the source falls into darkness.
The light bulb itself looks a bit fuzzy - hard to get a clear, accurate observation of it, due to the overwhelming brightness.

I think we experience some of these same effects using some instruments in class.  Any time we use the Pars, any time we use lights that come closer to hitting the audience directly (backlight), we start to get into a world that can feel similar to the photo (especially if we've got a black curtain backdrop - similar to the non-lit areas in the photo).