Boy oh boy… I’ll just bet you’re salivating over this juicy topic… lol… Sorry to bore you, but I read a post over on Mookie’s site and it kinda gave me the creeps thinking that there might be a teacher out there telling students things are so black and white… (ok… I couldn’t resist that one…)
This is really just going to be an introduction… I wouldn’t profess to be an expert, though I work with this medium on a constant basis… It takes a lifetime to really master the subtlety of color, and many never get there… Now, that said, let me break this down into a couple different areas… Light, and Pigment… Light being what comes from a lamp… (no, not a friggin’ bulb… you use bulbs in your table light, a lamp is a bit broader definition that covers all the different types of light sources we use in theatre… A bulb is a lamp, but a lamp is not necessarily a bulb) Pigment is what is found in paint, dye, stain, or is inherently in some material….
Today, I’m going to do pigment, which in all honesty, I am weaker on as I personally hate painting…
Any good designer is going to pick a color palette to build their show around… Quite often it is 3 colors, and many times those three will be somewhat equally spaced on a color wheel. You find that to be the case because then the designer has the freedom to convey all of the emotions associated with the various qualities of color… (and yes, you can use color to stimulate emotion, but it is not best done with a heavy hand, often an audience will be amused by a heavy color choice to convey a character, rather than just getting the feeling you want without even knowing why.) There are other times that a designer will pick a very “tight” palette… Tight meaning that the 2 or 3 colors will be very close to each other on the wheel… (red, orange, yellow, or even red, red-orange, orange as an example) A tight palette like that lets the designer convey for example a very consistent setting, where the people are either very in tune with their surroundings, or they are simply part of the surroundings having little life of their own… With a tight palette, you can interject a small amount of a contrasting color, and it will really pop out… Just because you have picked a particular palette, does not mean you are not going to use other colors, the palette simply gives you the base idea…
In pigment, black is the theoretical presence of all the primary pigments. (it never works out that way no matter how hard you try to mix them in paint) White would be the absence of all pigment. This is because pigment is a subtractive process. The pigments absorb the various wavelengths of light, and only reflect back the color that you see… (In light it is an additive process…)
Some people have tried to associate different colors with absolute emotions. Honestly, it just doesn’t work… You can play the game now and again if you are doing a melodrama, giving the villain a big red light to step in to while wearing all black (with the obligatory evil guy moustache and minor chord piano music in the background), but that isn’t going to work in the vast majority of shows… In many cases (particularly theatre in the round) the scenic designer has to provide a very neutral setting, neither good nor evil… Warm or cold (emotionally)… Rich or poor… It is left to the costumer then to have to help the characters along. (ok… now I’m really in unfamiliar territory, but the theory is similar) They more than anyone define the look of the character, and therefore the feeling people get when they first see them on stage… Rich/poor is usually pretty easy, and often isn’t subtle at all… Good/evil is usually the hardest to convey without making the characters, caricatures… Warm and cold can be subtle, or bold, mostly dependant on the palette… Naturally there are other aspects that one needs to convey, but those are just an example… The important thing to remember here, is that there aren’t any real rules… Yes, you need to consider the “generic” response of people to colors… That doesn’t mean that you have to stick with that, if you can make you choices make sense… Remember, you are trying to communicate to an audience, you aren’t going to be able to sit there and explain what you did. Sorta like the rule on jokes… If you have to explain it, it doesn’t work…
In Mookie’s post, there is a discussion of where different wood tones are used… (Mookie, if I’m reading that wrong, please tell me, and I’ll update this, and apologize) There really is absolutely no validity to one kind of wood representing an emotion… All manor of wood can be found in any situation… For example, Oak can naturally be made into fine furniture, however, that same wood is used to make shipping palettes and crates… There really isn’t anything inherently happy of funny about pine, nor does black walnut infer darker emotions… What you need to consider is a) time and place (various woods were common on one area or time and rare in another area) b) the use of the wood (obviously, a fine china cabinet made from mahogany, is going to convey something different than the mahogany used as ship planking) c) the overall color quality of the wood (your audience is not going to be able to tell maple from birch on stage from more than 10 feet away, from 20 feet, oak will loose a most of its definition, 30 or 40 feet and pine is just another “wood tone” )(obviously it varies with the theatre, but in many cases you have to design for much farther away than 40 feet, as that may just be your front row of seats)(and yes, some people can see different wood at distance, but that’s because they work with it all the time, carpenters are not your usual audience)
Posted by Backstage at September 30, 2003 07:17 PM