XII- Lights:
Like all of the other elements of design, lights are a very useful
tool to enhance the play and to stimulate visually the sensory perceptions
of the audience members.
This process also takes place 2 or 3 weeks prior to the performance.
When designing lights, the designer has some basic tools to enhance
his/her conception of the design. These are:
Color: Colors are added on to the lights by using gels, thin pieces of cellophane
looking paper. Colors are divided between warm and cool tones. Warm colors
are reds, oranges and yellows; cool colors are blues, purples, and greens.
Warm colors suggest passion, heat, evil, any any other emotions associated
with these. Cool colors suggest winter, stiffness, etc. Keep this in mind
when designating colors for any specific scenes.
Intensity: The intensity of the lights is measured in percentages, and it
is normally recorded on to the computer when the cues are entered.The intensity
is first given to the lighting designer by the director on paper in the preliminary
cue sheet. If any of these percentages dont look good, they may be adjusted
in the cue to cue rehearsal.
Time: The amount of time that each cue takes in fading in and out is also
an important element of design; for instance, an abrupt fade out causes a
very different impression in the audience than a fade out that takes five
seconds.
Type of lights: In a theater like the Statler Auditorium, there are three
types of lights:
1-) stage lights
2-) house lights (lights in the audience)
3-) conference lights, which light the area in front of the stage curtain.
A. Duties of the lighting designer:
Meet with the director and discuss the general concept for the play.
If you think that additional lights/ equipment needs to be rented due
to special circumstances, it may be ordered from Cornell Productions. The
information to contact this group is provided in the general contact sheet
in the production section of this packet.
Attend rehearsals and be familiarized with the staging of the play.
Two or three weeks before the performance, the director will provide
the lighting designer with a ground plan of the set along with a design on
paper of the way he/she would like the lighting design to be. The easiest
way to design lights on paper is by allocating a letter to each of the areas
in the ground plan (see attached ground plan). Each of these areas named by
a letter is called a plot.
On the preliminary cue sheet that the director will hand in to the
designer, the cues will be identified by a number i.e. cue #5 (to differentiate
them from the letters for the sound cues). The cues should be numbered using
the multiples of 5, leaving plenty of free numbers between them in case any
other cues need to be added later on.
On the paper design cue sheet, the director will indicate which plots
need to be lit for each specific cue. In addition to this the intensity, color,
time, page number in the text, and cue from the actors must also be specified
in this chart. The lighting designer must have studied this information before
rehearsals in the theater begin. Time in the theater is very limited, and
therefore it needs to be used wisely.
Rehearsals in the theater:
The first rehearsal in the theater is a spacing rehearsal. While the
set designer accommodates the set to the new space, and the actors get used
to these changes, the designer is in charge of studying the lightboard and
learning how to use it.
The next step is to determine which lights will be useful for the purposes
of the staging. The individual lights are connected on to the computer by
means of channels which vary in terms of intensity and may control more than
one light at a time.
Each light has a number. More than one light can be assigned to one
channel. This is called patching. Patching is very useful when
more than one light is needed to illuminate a plot.
Record the general light plots on to the computer. ( In the case of
Violines y trompetas, the lighting designers would have recorded the plots
labeled A-F identified in the enclosed ground plan).
Once the spacing for the set has been determined, the next step is
to focus the lights. For these matters, the actors should not be on stage.
They should only come on stage if the director/ designer requests them to
do so.
After the lights have been focused, all the cues should be recorded
on the computer as specified on the design on paper. These cues will be adjusted
during the cue to cue rehearsal, which is the next step.
During the cue to cue rehearsal (for more information see the sound
section of this course packet), the designers and the director/stage manager
need to be in constant communication. They will run cues for both lights and
sound in the order that they appear in the play. It will be necessary to make
adjustments in the lighting design as it has been recorded on the computer.
These changes should be made as the cue to cue progresses and the actors should
be available to repeat the cues for the designers.
After the cue to cue is completed, have as many run-throughs as possible
to make sure that the designers clearly understand and know all of their cues.
Please stay until the very end of the rehearsals. Notes are as important to
the designers as they are to the actors.