HowlRound: The choices the director and the scenic designer make are going to greatly impact the work and the relationship between lighting and media. How close is an acting area to a projection surface? Does the performer need to interact with the projections? Where performers are in relationship to projections effects how bright the lights for that area of the performance space needs to be.
3 comments:
As someone who intends to declare media design in December, this article was very informative and brought up some issues that I'm sure I will have to revisit in the coming years. It's true that the projections themselves are a light source, and often this is easy to forget when considering how the lights will look in a show. Something that the article didn't mention but ties into this conversation is the fact that often, when there isn't any media in a scene but the projector is still on, there will be a black rectangle left by the projector on the stage. This is usually unwanted and just doesn't look good. I know in some theaters they have a shutter mechanism for the projector that blocks off the black rectangle. It's a piece of outside equipment that interfaces with the light board and drops in whenever there's a light cue that goes with the media cue that the shutter is needed for. The problem with this that I encountered firsthand this summer was that the shutter occasionally malfunctioned, either because it had been programmed for the wrong cue or because the metal shutter itself had gotten stuck. It ended up working about 90% of the time, which I guess is better than having the black rectangle effect, but it was still nerve-wracking every time it was supposed to go down because you never knew when it would decide to stop working.
The one time I have had to light a show where there was media, the director had them one foot away from the projection surface. I tried to tell him that I would not be able to light them because the technical director told me that I was not allowed to light less than five feet away from the surface. While this was a case of huge miscommunication, it did not end up looking at all how I wanted it to and both directors had differing opinions on the matter. I think it is huge that the lighting and media designer communicate, because the whole media design can get ruined. I never thought about how important it was to communicate with the scenic designer, because in the end both designers are forming a world around the set. It would be ideal to have all three of those designers in the same room when discussing the designs for a new show. I also never thought of the chance that the lighting and media designer would be the same person, although it would be very helpful. In the end, you are both designing lights so it is integral to be on the same the entire process.
The integration of lighting and projection is really tricky. I think a lot of times it becomes a battle between the media and lighting designer - it becomes a battle of who's design is more important rather than what will support the story the most, which is sad. Media is often one of the first things cut because it is seen as "extra", or it is forced upon the lighting designer to take the media designers responsibilities. This isn't fair either - both can work together to make a very interesting, complex support system for the story.
I hope that when I declare media to take lots of lighting classes so I can effectively work with lighting designers to streamline this process. I would hate to stumble into tech and realize that you couldn't see any of the media at all.
Post a Comment