Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The bones of cinema and opera aren’t nearly as different apart as some might think.
There’s the obvious difference that the music in opera is far more central to the medium than it is on camera. That said, the instrumental music in TV shows and films is a direct outgrowth of operatic scoring conventions. Both mediums are highly collaborative and involve a variety of artists, from movement and dance choreographers to costuming departments to sound design and lighting specialists.
5 comments:
I’ve said that I LOVE lighting and find it absolutely fascinating, but I’ll never do it. That’s just because that tech is to my knowledge, not my cup of tea. However, thinking of them conceptually, and obviously observing lighting design is a thrill for me. What I’m thinking of is that music and light have an unusual inherent connection with each other. I think about concerts and how integral light is. I also think about dance and how enhanced it is with lighting because of its cooperation with the music. I have yet to see a real, full-scale opera in my life, which is something I very much want to do. I literally watched a movie fully in Italian last night and really enjoyed it. I like hearing the delivery of the language it was written in and then putting the meaning to it from the subtitles. The art of lighting design is so specific - another element to it that I love is the color theory involved and how complex that gets.
Lighting was my first love in theatre. I grew up in church and in youth groups and we would go to conferences and there would be lighting there, and I became fascinated. Though we were at a church camp singing gospel music that was meant to make us feel a certain way, the lighting did help contribute to those feelings. Once I eased away from religious lighting and into theatrical lighting, I learned that lighting still is used to make the audience feel and be transformed into a moment on stage. I often relate color to everything. Subjects have a specific color, emotions, people, anything really. I use that in my lighting design because, often times, people recognize those colors with certain things. If one light is on an actor on stage, then there’s an important and most likely emotional thing happening. Lighting and the actors or dancers are so collaborative and that’s why I love it. It lets me be on stage without having to be on stage, and it lets me be an audience member too.
I was originally drawn to this article because I find opera’s intriguing. Having never worked on one, I have always been intimidated by them. They seem like beasts to do in general, I can’t even imagine trying to create more meaning through the technical elements than the words of the play. However, I am inspired by this Carnegie Mellon alumni, Crystal Manich, who is working with another alumni to create an emotional and story based light design. The view that Manich has about how lighting cues dictate how an audience portrays a story, is one that I wholeheartedly agree with. I find that when I am watching a show, the lights and sound elements fully immerse me in the story. With the lighting cues I become aware of what parts of the story I should focus my attention on, with the sound cues I become immersed in the atmosphere. Together, I am transported into a world of opera, in this case, I’m specifically transported to a drama in Scotland about a princess.
This article was very interesting for me to read. I started my lighting design Endeavors when I was in late Middle School, but I only started it because I thought that it was something cool, not because of the emotional impact that I was making on people. As I grew to enjoy lighting design more throughout High School and got more involved in the art, I started seeing it as something that could make an impact rather than something that was just cool to me. When I decided to take AP Art my senior year of high school, I knew that I wanted to do something with photography, but nor did I know what elements it would involve. my first thought was to use photography to guide the viewer through a music album of my choosing, but when I decided against this I thought that using something with the lighting element would be much more of my alley. I ended up deciding to use lighting design and photography to take the viewer through the stages of grief. I spent time researching the colors that correspond to every emotion that someone may feel going through the cycle of grief, and made sure to encapsulate those feelings through both mediums.
Hearing different perspectives on the purpose and impact of lighting design is always an interesting read. It’s also really cool that Crystal Manich is a CMU Drama alumni. Lighting is so essential to the way we as the audience and the viewer respond to a piece. As Manich points out, lighting can make a moment intimate or spark a series of other emotions that are pertinent to the scene. Lighting can bring us in and out of focus - and is so much more important than is often perceived. I’ve always heard the mantra of theatre tech tends to be at its most successful if it’s not at the forefront of your mind and while I’ve heard it more in reference to sound design and mixing, I think it can be applied to lighting as well to a degree. Great lighting often helps enhance a scene (but sometimes it can be directly noticed)! All of the elements of tech help pull the story together as a whole, and I’m glad that this lighting design has been highlighted in this article.
Post a Comment