October 08, 2003

Color Theory Part 2

Well, as I sit here in my office over the weekend, waiting for paint to dry, I figured I should get started on this...


Part 2 - Color Theory of Light in Theatre


There are a couple important physical differences in light and pigment color.  Light is an additive process, while pigment subtracts light.  What this means is as opposed to theoretically getting black when all the pigments are present, you get white when all the wavelengths of light are present.  The primary colors are also different in light and pigment.  Red, Yellow and Blue in pigment, while it is Red, Green and Blue in light. 


When designing lighting for a theatrical production, (and that is massively different than TV or Film lighting... perhaps that may be another post...) the lighting designer's primary, most important job is to provide visability, or the lack there of.  Now that's easy, you could do that by just leaveing a bunch of lights on stage, and turning off the switch when you need a blackout.  That however is not the only function of the designer naturally... As a Lighting Designer (LD) you have to know quite a bit about basic electrical theory so you design a system that will work in the space.  You also have to understand how light reacts to many different surfaces, and skin tones.  You often have to work with a given set of equipment rather than being able to pick your exact units. (most theatres have a stock of lighting equipment rather than renting everything all the time.)  You need to know what is available in terms of color media (colored plastic that sits in front of the lighting unit so it only produces that color of light) and patterens. (patterens are steel or glass that you can insert into certian lighting fixtures to project that image)  You need to read and understand the script, as well as working with the director on the concept that your production is going with. (it would do no good to have a flourescent light in a scene in the 15th century) You need to work with the scenic designer and costume designer on their selection of colors so you know what your reflective surfaces are going to be. (remember, you generally do not see light directly, almost always you are looking at light reflected off something else)


Once you have all that information, you can start on your design.  You really need to consider where light is coming from in a scene.  Is there a table lamp, is it moonlight, sunlight, fireplace, etc... Most people talk about this as the "motivation" for the light.  It helps you determine the direction your lights come from as well as their color.  Now you can't simply use that as the only light source usually... Remember, visibility?... So you will add additional light sources from different directions to "fill" the area and remove some shadows.


Ok... Back to color...  Now, lets assume you have a scene set in a log cabin, in the winter at night... What are your first thoughts on the colors and where they come from?... Probably you thought fireplace right away... Ok... Add to that the cold crisp light from the moon streaming in a slightly frosted window... Where is your cabin in history?... If its modern, you'll probably have some regular lights here and there, possibly some flourescents in the kitchen area... If its in the middle of noplace, or further back in history, then you'll have candles, and oil lamps... Ok... Now, with that you get to work... You're going to have some yellow/amber/orange from the fireplace... That light is most likely going to come from several units so you can make them flicker a bit to give that "fire light" look... Moonlight through the window is going to be something in a light blue most likely... Sometimes people add a tint of green, or pink dependant if they want a "strange" moon, or a "happy" moon... For your regular lights on tables, you can use straight white light, but that actually looks wrong to most audiences, so you would probably pick an amber... The flourescents you can get away with white as well, though adding a tint of green will make it really read as a flourescent... Candles and oil lamps are usually in the same range as your fireplace, just without the flickering so much... 


So you say, hey, wait, there are already all these lights on the set, why not use them? Well, you do enough for the audience to beleave that all the light on stage is coming from them... They just will not have enough punch to light the scene for an audience... Also, we do try to avoid real fire on stage all the time, so many candles and fires you may see on stage are faked with lights and a variety of physical effects...


Ok... Back to the cabin... What is you feeling with all that amber/red/yellow light and a shaft of moon coming through the window?  Most people will perceive it as a warm scene, untill an actor steps to the window... Someone steps into that blueish light and all of a sudden, you feel cold... What changed?... Nothing... Its still extremely hot for that actor up on stage... The temp in the audience chamber didn't change... Its a human perception, based on color... That is why lighting is such a powerfull tool in the theatre... There are less "rules" in lighting than scenery, and costuming... There are naturally the common conventions such as what I used in my example, but really, the best way to work through your color choice it to visualize what you are going to see, and try to understand peoples reaction to it...


Ok... That's basically what I wanted to talk about, but I didn't work in a good way to explain one of the most common methods of lighting out there.  If you pick two complimentary colors of light, together, they will make white light... One of the tried and true methods out there to provide front light (lighting from the audience to the stage, usually pretty high up) is to take those colors and angle them so they are 45 degrees off straight on to the actor... The most common colors are amber and blue, and they work really well for this... You end up with a fully lit actor, with basically all the wavelengths of light, but because of the angle, you get more definition to texture and facial features... (basically you get the definition from the little shadows that are more blue or more amber dependant on the side of the surface they are on...)  Stanley McCandless Came up with this theory back in his book Method of Lighting the Stage.  He was the electrician, for David Belasco's theatre projects... Those two are responsible for many of the ideas, as well as much of the equipment we have to draw from in lighting today... (not moving lights... we have rock 'n roll to thank for those little widgets) McCandless was the engineer that made Belasco's ideas work.


Hopefully some of this made sence... I wanted to get this posted before my admin went down again...


 

Posted by Backstage at October 8, 2003 07:13 PM
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