Lighting Design
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AS DRAMA AND THEATRE Understanding and designing theatre lighting 7261 Teaching guide: lighting design Please note: this guide contains references to a number of designers/practitioners, not all of whom are prescribed practitioners for the AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre specifications. For assessment of AS Component 2, A-level Component 2 and A-level Component 3, students must select from the prescribed practitioner list published in the AS and A-level specifications. Contents Understanding and designing theatre lighting Understanding theatre lighting 3 What is the lighting doing? What style is the lighting? What about the audience? Examples in action Do it yourself Designing theatre lighting 9 What do I need to do? What practicalities should I consider? Where can I get inspiration? Understanding the context How can I present my ideas? Examples in action Do it yourself Component 1: Interpreting drama 17 Hints and tips for the written paper Component 2: Process and performance 20 Hints and tips for the practical work 2 Understanding and designing theatre lighting – AS Understanding theatre lighting Introduction The purpose of this section is to introduce you to some of the different elements of stage lighting, and to give you some ways of approaching and understanding theatre lighting designs. It will suggest some key questions you can consider when you see or create a theatre lighting design. What is the lighting doing? Lighting design in theatre goes beyond effect on stage. Moods and atmospheres can simply making sure that the audience can also be achieved through the intensity, or see the stage (although this is very brightness, of the light. This is usually called important!). Light can be used to establish the level of the lighting. Very low levels of the time or location of a performance, or to lighting, for example, can give a mysterious create and enhance mood and atmosphere. feel to a space, often placing the actors in shadow or half-light. Time and location are the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of a production. Lighting designers When you consider a lighting design, ask need to consider the period and genre of a yourself whether the light is there to indicate play, as well as the venue where the a specific time or location, whether it is performance will take place. They also need creating a specific atmosphere or mood for to respond to the social, historical and the audience, or whether it is doing both: cultural context of the production. For a play sometimes, a playwright or director uses a text, this might mean thinking about when certain location or time deliberately to create and where the play was written, as well as a mood or atmosphere and this could be when and where it is set. Productions that reflected in the lighting design. are set indoors and at night will need a different quality of light to productions set outside in the midday sun. Remember: everything’s deliberate! Mood and atmosphere is the feeling that Good lighting design is a series of deliberate the production creates for the audience. decisions. Always assume that anything on Lighting is very significant in creating mood stage has been put there for a reason and and atmosphere: audiences will associate contributes to the audience’s experience. different qualities of light with different moods. This can be done through the colour of the light used. For example, blue lighting is often said to create a cold or night-time Think about… quality of light Light looks different in different places and at different times. It is a good idea to start thinking about how light looks in real life. You can do this by searching for images of light at different times of day and comparing them: how does a sunrise look different to a sunset, for example? You can also consider the quality of light in places you see regularly, for example, your school, home or garden. How does the light there change in sunny or cloudy weather? How is it different sitting in a room lit with bright fluorescent strip lights to a room lit with small lamps or candles? 3 Understanding and designing theatre lighting – AS What style is the lighting? Theatre productions use a range of styles, audience can understand and engage with and the lighting designer needs to respond to the world of the production. the overall style of the production. It is What decisions has the designer important to be able to identify the style of a made? production in order to understand how and why the lighting design has been put A lighting designer’s job is to make deliberate together. Some examples of styles include: decisions about what the audience see in the stage space. Part of understanding a lighting Realism design is considering what decisions have Realist productions incorporate elements that been made and what effect they might have are meant to look like real life. Realism can on an audience. Lighting designers might be total or partial. Total realism means a make decisions related to: production that looks as close to real life as possible, so lighting designs for these Colour: the colour of the light itself, which productions need to mimic lighting in real life. can be altered using lighting gels (thin pieces Some lighting designers say that this is of coloured plastic that are placed over the deceptively difficult to achieve. Partial realism lantern). Different colours can create different incorporates realistic elements into a effects and moods. For example, using red production that might not be realistic overall, and orange light might give the impression of for example using a lighting design that has a fire. Colours also have different some realistic and some non-realistic associations for the audience. For example elements. blue light can feel cold and amber or yellow light can feel warm. It is also important to Symbolism consider the colour of the surface that the Symbolist productions are more interested in light is hitting: different coloured light can communicating an idea to the audience than change the colour of different surfaces. You in representing real life. Symbolism allows the can experiment with this by shining blue, red lighting designer to create a design that or green light onto a blue surface, and seeing communicates some of these ideas to an how the colour of the surface appears to audience, perhaps through deliberately using change. Remember that how colours mix in certain colours for certain moments or light (called additive colour) is different to spotlighting certain characters. how they mix in paint (called subtractive colour). The primary colours of light are red, Minimalism blue and green, and when these are all mixed Not all productions have to be large-scale. together, the light becomes white. Minimalist productions use empty spaces and rely on the actors to create an experience for Intensity: how bright each lantern is. the audience. In minimalist theatre, light can Theatre lanterns allow the designer to be used to create entire settings, or a location change their intensity (or level) for different can be changed simply by changing the effects: they are not just ‘on’ or ‘off’, but set at lighting state. Productions that use minimal levels usually numbered between 1 and 10 or costume and set often rely on complex 1 and 100, depending on the lighting desk. lighting. This allows the designer to balance the light across the stage space. Fantasy Fantasy productions allow the designer to Focus: how defined the edge of each beam create a new world. For lighting designers, of light is. Theatre lanterns allow the this might mean the use of a range of colours designer to alter the size and focus of the or even internal or practical lights or strobe beam, so that edges can either be sharp or lights to create magical effects. Strobe soft. Sharp edges can highlight a certain area lighting should be used very carefully as it of the stage or performer (for example in a can present risks to actors and audiences. spotlight or pinspot), whereas soft edges You can read more here. It is worth can blend the light from one lantern into light remembering that a fantastical design still from another lantern. needs to maintain an internal logic so that the 4 Understanding and designing theatre lighting – AS Shadow: where the stage is dark. Lighting designers do not only control what the audience see, but also what they cannot see Think about… blackouts and transitions It is unusual for a production to only use one Shadows can be used to great effect in lighting state. When a lighting designer creating atmosphere on stage. They can also wants to move from one lighting state to give the audience a specific impression of a the next, it is called a transition. character. For example, an actor who Transitions can vary in speed from very emerges from the shadow might be playing a fast (called a snap) to very slow. When one character who is ‘shady’ in their dealings! lighting state fades into another slowly, the audience may not notice the change until it Remember: ‘reading’ a stage is complete or nearly complete. Some When an audience looks at a lighting design, designers use this to great effect in they will believe that what they are seeing is performances, slowly shifting the mood on important and significant. We say that stage or the time of day represented. When audiences ‘read’ the design: they identify the stage is left in complete darkness a important elements of the lighting and work blackout occurs. Blackouts can be useful out what they think these mean.