The Poetics of Stage Lighting Lighting is a bridge to the interpretation of the indescribable in human experience, - a means of expressing feelings and the intangible. - It is a thing of beauty at its most fundamental It is inextricably linked with our culture and our early conditioning - It works the most basic level of all - the emotions- without needing to go through any kind of intellectual process on the way. It is: sophisticated, subtle, evocative, inspirational, elusive, deeply complex poetics? I have chosen to call it poetics, but you can call it something different if you want. It’s a simple concept It’s the contribution that light makes to a performance, Lighting as a performer in its own right. Not just a technical help, a means of visibility, or as an aid to stop actors bumping into the furniture, but as much an integral part of the art of performance as an actor. It all started for me at the age of 17 when the electrician at Colchester weekly rep went on a bender and disappeared. I was pitchforked onto the Sunset board there on the grounds that I was the nearest person to hand, and duly made a pigs ear of the job until I found my feet. About a week later I looked sideways at the stage as I was doing the final fade down. It was beautiful. It was just right for the music, just right for the words, just right for communicating the emotion of the moment to the audience. Do you know that amazing moment when the light fades away slowly and the just just closes in before it just disapears leaving behind a memory a ghost of what was there before? And do you know what? That night the audience just sat there for a few seconds before they started clapping, and then applauded like they had never clapped before. All ten of them ( well it was weekly rep!) It got me here. It I was hooked: I wanted me to feel that way and the audience to feel that way every time I did a fade up or a fade down and spent the rest of my career trying to communicate that incredible feeling Sometimes I succeded. Mostly I failed. It was what my job , my art was all about. That’s what I call Poetics: It’s the effect that lighting has on you. Fred Bentham said many interesting and perceptive things. This is not one of them. “It is a sad feature that specialist lighting designers may be skilled in the art of stage lighting but they are neither artists nor is what they do Art” . . I profoundly disagree with this one. Like all arts, music, books, films, Cathedrals! , the art of lighting design should be regarded as a specific kind of cognitive engineering. As a first principle, art is an actively intended to influence the minds of an audience. Its major social functions are cognitive: they influence memory, shape public behaviour, set social norms, and modify the experience of life in their audiences. How? Its not too much to say that with the use of controlled light we can cause people to feel however we want them to feel. We can easily cause an emotion to sweep over an audience like a body blow - or to kill it stone dead. And we can do it fast with almost clinical efficiency. In just that microsecond after a curtain goes up, without a word being spoken, and even in a black box theatre, we can cause an audience to know what world we are pitchforking them into. Time of day, place, period: We can speak of horrors or joys to come. We can suggest, mislead, confuse, unbalance, and emotionally engage. And then go on from there to make them see what we wish them to see, think what we want them to think, believe what we wish them to believe Consideration of the poetics of light puts the physical tools of our amazing trade, the luminaire the dimmers, the desk, the digital protocols, all the servant technology way back on the back burner in the chain of creativity and brings the human psyche to the forefront. Essentially: It relies fundamentally on instinct: by being totally receptive to that part of the brain which tells you new things, things you really didn’t know: I’m sure you have all experienced it: You are doing something else altogether and suddenly an idea pops into your head and presents itself fully rounded and ready to go, the sort of “Where the hell did that idea come from?” idea that seem to have no recent past in which its preparation and appearance could be followed. In fact the sort of idea so amazingly brilliant, that it makes you want to get your brain out and hug it in gratitude. Our minds are subtle delicate creatures which like to be in balance. They like to fill in missing information, to work out what is required to complete an artistic jigsaw. Given the right conditions it can come up with good answers sometimes quicker than we can because it knows much more than our conscious does. It has a huge library of referents and symbols which it can bring to bear: the several-deep meanings of word and phrases, the colours of emotions, the value of plain areas of colour, how light coming from one direction can seem 'faster' than an otherwise identical beam coming from another, the angle and texture of light conveying actual information, time of day, latitude, season and so on. All that stuff buried in light, pure light. What we 'see' is far more than the upside-down image marked on the retina, but an entire universe of references, memories, emotions, and every experience of out personal world that we have ever undergone For an example we might see, this red hot poker: But each of us gets a different message from it: to my Schwabishe sister in law it is something to plunge into Mulled Wine. To me it is a tool for burning a hole in a piece of plywood to mount a switch for a home made telephone when I didn’t have a drill at the age of eight . To others is represents a little more warmth from the fire, To a few it represents unbearable pain. It is not recorded what Edward the second thought when he was put to death with one. Ouch Having said all this, how do we get to the heart of what lighting a play is about? Well its not to do with choosing hardware and sticking it up with the right colours in. Its not even to do with drawing circles and angles on your screen. All that comes later. What it is to do with is using the five basic artistic tools – Intensity, colour, texture, motion, direction (in no particular order) to make real on the stage the picture which has already formed in your own imagination You might notice that those five basic tools: and I will say them again O7 because they are so important: Intensity, colour, texture, motion, direction - do not include anything to do with hardware or the equipment we use. Oh hardware is more than important… but its just a tool- that’s all it is, just a tool, something we use to help us make real our imagination. Our theatrical tools : whether they be as simple as a bare bulb or as complex as a media server are tools which are an extension of our imagination designed to allow us to place light where we have already seen it and for the purpose of delivering it to a third party However like all tools there is a price to pay if we are not careful. In a worst case, the technology totally dominates the look and can have the effect of amputating or modifying the true needs of your design. In extreme cases, it actually becomes the design itself and we hear people using the term “look” to describe the effect. Recently I saw a rep show which used a gobo cover at low levels in haze in an attempt to create a mythic aboriginal feel, but if failed horribly because the kit they used were moving lights with discharge lamps and the beam quality was all wrong, it wouldn’t focus “brown” and at low levels the colour temperature was too high. Try as it might, it just looked like a rock show effect.. I know for a fact that they had a whole lot of Cantatas, Sillhouettes and source fours round the back doing nothing, but they had just bought these heads after a lot of arguments and a long financial struggle and they wanted to use them come what may. So my point is: don’t be misled by latest looks, dont use the latest technology just because it exists and is fashionable. Let your imagination create the picture first and then look for the tools to make it real. So we let our imagination rip and let it do all the hard conceptual work. How? Do we say to our brains “go ahead chum, you’re on your own, I’m off to the pub, let me know when you have decided” ? Well funnily enough, essentially, that’s it, Obviously you have to upload all the information first to give it something to go on. Which means chat to the Director and all the other professionals involved and read the script of course, . Personally, I start by reading the script, as though I was reading it like a novel, just for pleasure, Have some biscuits handy and a nice cup of tea, and just read it. Of course ideas will form and pictures emerge, but you know what? Take no notice. Ignore them. Discard them without examination. Be ruthless. Don’t give them any room in the house. That means that if you suddenly think “Oh I see that scene in steel blue”. Just ignore it. Even if it’s a good idea. `Certainly if its a hardware based idea like “this is a job for my mac 2000’s”. or even “oh I see a digital light curtain sweeping majestically across the plain like a herd of wildebeests” ( oh the wonders of a classical education!) Give it the contempt it deserves. Tell these ideas that you are busy in the pub and they should go and find someone your own age to play with. Pretend that it was a suggestion from an elderly family member whose brain was past its sell-by date. Nod and smile fondly and ignore it. THE POETIC EMERGES! But even then its just a sketch an idea, a concept. The really hard work begins. You are all professionals, so I don’t have to explain how to do the nuts and bolts of lighting design. Buts that’s not really what I am talking about anyway. The hard work means now turning this concept into a workable aesthetic design. For it is at this stage that you turn your keyframes into reality: to create that elusive beam that comes from the top right corner of your visual picture, creates a halo-like corona around the character and sharply defines that shadow which reaches almost to the floats and creates a crucifix-like impression - or whatever your vision was. I don’t have to explain how to do the nuts and bolts of lighting design. But Its not to do with choosing hardware and sticking it up with the right colours in. Its not even to do with drawing circles and angles on your screen. All that comes later. What it is to do with is using the five basic artistic tools – Intensity, colour, texture, motion, direction (in no particular order) to make real on the stage the picture which has already formed in your own imagination You might notice that those five basic tools: and I will say them again because they are so important: Intensity, colour, texture, motion, direction - do not include anything to do with hardware or the equipment we use. Oh hardware is more than important… but its just a tool- that’s all it is, just a tool, something we use to help us make real our imagination. Marshall Mcluhan said “The shovel we use for digging holes is a kind of extension of the hands and feet, similar to the cupped hand, only it is stronger, less likely to break, and capable of removing more dirt per scoop than the hand. A microscope, or telescope is a way of seeing that is an extension of the eye” Our theatrical tools : whether they be as simple as a bare bulb or as complex as WYSIWG software are tools which are an extension of our imagination designed to allow us to place light where we have already seen it and for the purpose of delivering it to a third party However like all tools there is a price to pay if we are not careful. In a worst case, the technology totally dominates the look and can have the effect of amputating or modifying the true needs of your design. We all know that In extreme cases, it actually becomes the design itself and we hear people using the term “look” to describe the effect. At present, many excellent productions and concerts look alike: the in look is pixelmapped and colour changing LEDS: only the quality of the content saves some of them. Recently I saw a rep show which used a gobo cover at low levels in haze in an attempt to create a mythic aboriginal feel, but if failed horribly because the kit they used were moving lights with discharge lamps and the beam quality was all wrong, it wouldn’t focus “brown” and at low levels the colour temperature was too high. Try as it might, it just looked like a rock show effect.. I know for a fact that they had a whole lot of Cantatas, Sillhouettes and source fours round the back doing nothing, but they had just bought these heads after a lot of arguments and a long financial struggle and they wanted to use them come what may. So my point is: don’t be misled by latest looks, dont use the latest technology just because it exists and is fashionable. Let your imagination create the picture first and then look for the tools to make it real. Let those tools include all the things that theatre lighting can learn from the art of the television picture: composition, balance, framing, focus, how the speed of a cut or fade or crossfade is exactly analogous to a lighting cue, and can affect the emotion of a piece in the same way: I pay homage to Gerald Millerson, whose Technique of Television Production which I bought an early edition of for £2.10 shillings taught me so much
Here are four approaches: You need all of them! APPROACH NO 1: The Instinctive, subconscious design process:
According to the American psychologist William James: “Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.” This is known as the "indirect theory" What we 'see' is far more than the upside-down image marked on the retina, but an entire universe of references, memories, emotions, and every experience of out personal world that we have ever undergone. When we read a work of literary merit with an open mind, whether it is a playscript, a novel or even a work of philosophy, these images are free to form, and it is these images that can be used to telling extent to create clarity, illusion, confusion, and a sense of time and space. The illusionist/psychologists such as Deeren Brown or David Blaine use these techniques to make an audience swear that black is white, and that they can see people washing their faces in red hot coals. More on neuropsychology of stage lighting Approach No 2: The collaborative, evolutionary approach This is is another face of the 'purely instinctive' approach, but more structured and collaborative. This kind of method is used extensively by companies such as Shared Experience and Kneehigh, and involves a complete repudiation of preconception of the piece, ignoring existing practice and stylistic convention, starting from scratch for each production as a new piece of theatre The process involves a fully-collaborative development and evolution process, the director being a partner and inspirer rather than dictator, although of course the last word lies with them.The lighting designer and all other designers involved are an absolutely integral part of this process, as opposed to merely being enablers. In fact, they are major contributors to the finished work. The process can take much longer than the usual few weeks rehearsal period, as much of the time may be spent in discussion, improvisation, working with hidden text and missing characters, and sometimes exploring blind alleys which are later discarded. The lighting designer can - and in my case does - join in all these discussions, exploring text, offering psychological insights, perhaps even taklng part in bonding and group excercises as an equal partner on the grounds that the lighting of the production plays its part as a performing character in its own right. Unfortunately, this evolutionary approach sometimes has to be cut short because there is a physical and technical need to produce a workable design fairly early in the process, and so in-principle agreements need to be reached early on. If the designer has spent sufficient time in discussion and shows that he is fully in tune with the approach then most directors will offer a considerable degree of trust. Of course you will have been speaking to the everyone else involved, all along such as the production manager, scene designer, costume designer, the wigmaker, the special effects person, the flyman and the sound designer, plus the chief electrician, and the stage management. If you don't do this then you might as well give up and become an insurance salesman. Approach No 3: Rigourous text analysis This is highly complementary to the 'purely instinctive' approach. In fact it is totally fundamental to lighting design for the theatre to the point where without it anything you design will be completely meaningless. For example, in its simplest form, the character says "its raining" then unless the play is set in a curious climate, there should be no bright sunshine pattern through the window. It seems obvious, but it is amazing how often I have cringed in the stalls of someone else's play when what is in the text simply doesnt match what is going on. Most play texts contain many clues to time and place, period, atmosphere, circumstances which cannot be ignored, In addition to the clues actually within the script there are historical contexts and traditions to be taken into account. An example of this is in Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is set an an indeterminate period of history when Elsinore, Capital of Denmark was in imminent danger of attack. The first scene is set on the Battlements, where a watch has been set looking out to sea. Although it doesn't say so in the script as such, they are obviously fearful of an attack from that direction, or what elese would they be doing on the roof? We can surmise, perhaps, that they would not have any torches or fires to keep them warm for fear of revealing their position to an enemy out at sea. Ber: Who's there? Hamlet: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. They obviously can’t see each other easily, so we can see immediately that it is very dark. Little or no moonlight and certainly no artificial light. Why? Because they are on watch for a surprise attack and any glimmer will reveal their position to an enemy. More clues: Ber: 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. So, such light as there is, which would be required for basic visibility, comes from starlight and possibly some slight spill from the stairway up to the battlements from the room below. However, audiences make their judgments of time place and conditions on a very brief acquaintance – as little as fifteen seconds, after which they are prepared to accept some inconsistencies. So as long as it starts very dark, a subtle, hopefully unnoticeable follow on with a little extra light as needed to help the audience hear and comprehend. It may be that you can justify this with the moon breaking out from the clouds or perhaps you might get a little light diffused from the tower which is lit by moonlight reflected from the sea far below. Human beings being phototropic, the guards might naturally gravitate towards any light there was, the better to see each other. The ghost of hamlet's father might not be a human actor, it could be a projection on the cyc, or a plume of smoke, or a spot of light, or simply a disembodied voice. In an extreme example David Warner played it as a man possessed by the ghost of his dead father using a change in his voice and demeanour. If it were human however, you need to be aware of it, not necessarily see it. Does it bring its own unearthly light? Does this metaphorically shed light on the old King’s murder? You do need to see Hamlet’s reaction however. Being so surprised, terrified perhaps, maybe Hamlet stops worrying about the Norwegians and opens up a dark lantern better to shed light on the apparition? This leaves a great opportunity to drop the lantern later and plunge the battlements into even more terrifying darkness. Approach No 4: The technical approach Once all the intellectual and analytical stuff has been thought through, then the technical matters must be considered. But here I would once again stress that this aspect of the job is the most junior, the most subservient and the least contributory of all - but at the same time one of the most interesting. For it is at this stage that you turn your keyframes into reality: to create that elusive beam that comes from the top right corner of your visual picture, creates a halo-like corona around the character and sharply defines that shadow which reaches almost to the floats and creates a crucifix-like impression - or whatever your vision was. To achieve this you need to consider shape, texture, cohesiveness of beam, scatter, colour, and a hundred other factors: play these factors off against the practical hanging and safety constraints and use that information to select the hanging position, because that and that alone, will give you the beam placement that you require: the distance from the actor because that will determine the beam cover and softness or otherwise of the shadow: the type of luminaire because that will determine the texture, shape and scatter of the beam and the precise quality of the edges and the colour and or gobo that you might place in the runners, and lastly, the intensity because this gives a huge range of further control over colour temperature, beam cohesiveness and of course, brightness. You must consider the situation in both plan view and elevation view to map where your beam will be in three dimensions. There is software available to help with this, which will get even better and cheaper in time. I recommend you use it if you can, but it is better for your development and personal pride if you can draw this on paper with some very simple geometry and mathematics. After a while you can do this by experience and 'the seat of your pants', but this can lure you into some expensive time wasting on the fitup. You apply this design logic to every single keyframe in the production, building up scene by scene until you are satisfied, on paper that you can accurately reproduce your vision. Then you must consider the moments in between your keyframes, ensuring that your general covers really do create a modelled and balanced environment. At this point the Excel spreadsheet comes into its own, with some really sensible guesses at channel levels for each cue so that you can arrive armed. If you are really confident, you can give this to the board operator who will blind plot it for you in advance. Make every simgle luminaire do the job it was intended to do. There should theoretically be not a surplus luminaire on the rig, but hey! -we live in a world, where Directors change their minds, writers add and cut scenes, change sets and furniture about about and actors never stand where they are told to. To cover myself I add a good liberal sprinkling of GYOOTs ( Get yourself out of trouble lights) in sensible places where they can be quiety focussed and plotted in during the plotting session or rehearsals. These can be automated moving lights You might say -and there are many people who say precisely this - why not just hang a moving light everywhere we can conveniently put one, and then we have complete control over colour and effect? But to me, this is a red rag to a bull, because it does precisely the opposite. It stifles the creativity and makes every show look the same. Apart from anything else, dimming can be ragged and irregular, and the beam of each type ( washlight,effects projector) only has one basic characteristic. Moving lights are great to create the effects they were made for and to solve the problems they were designed to solve. But they cannot compare to a selection of Profiles, Fresnels, Plano-convex and par cans, which each have a quality of their own.
Edward Gordon Craig and Adolf Appia- vision of lighting
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BETTER MINDS THAN MINE ON THE SUBJECT OF LIGHTING: Stage Lighting is not static: Throughout the timespan of a performance, the selectivity and atmosphere of the light is fluid. Without light nothing can be seen, it is one of the primary stimulae to the human brain and we are immensely sensitive to its every nuance. Stage lighting is not a black art. It can be practised openly. "As music releases the mood of a scene, projecting the deepest emotional meaning of an event as well as its apparent action, so the fluctuating intensities of light can transfigure an object and clothe it with all its emotional implications." Author: Adolph Appia Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. - Saint Thomas Aquinas Light has quality to reveal,it is opposite of dark or unknown.in time it is an element,in spirituality it is catalist. Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. There are two kinds of light--the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures. In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course.
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