L is for LIGHTING DESIGN

Welcome to Yes, This Will Be On the Test.

Waving to visitors, new followers, and fellow A to Z participants. I’m sending virtual hugs to you all for taking a moment to stop by.

I’ll be sharing my “take-aways.” All those snigglets, golden nuggets, and lessons learned from other creative sources.

Scroll down this link to find other wonderful A to Z participants.

In my previous life, I was a theatrical lighting designer. Lighting design is expected to fulfill multiple goals onstage, such as:

MOOD - How do you want the audience to feel?

Sense of fun - Singin' in the Rain from the  Bon Voyage Shipboard Review - Queen Mary

Dramatic foreshadowing - In the Sweet Bye and Bye - Back Alley Theater

Nightmare sequence - An Original Jimmy Shine - UCLA

VISIBILITY and FOCUS - What and how much do you want to reveal to the audience? Where do you want them to look?

Found a Peanut - Back Alley Theater 

DIMENSIONALITY - Define the shape of the actors and the scenery. At times light becomes part of the scenery.

St. Joan - UCLA

Hawk - UCLA

Hawk - UCLA

TAKE AWAY:

Even though lighting was my visual form of storytelling in the pictures above, the same elements and purposes must resonate to create depth in the stories I tell with words.

Have you brought elements from other art forms into your writing?

Designing a Character: Using Light-Purpose

In the spirit of: "It ain't nice 'til you've read it twice," here's the next installment of the Designing a Character Series from last year.

Why do we need light?  Illumination, right?  Ding, ding, ding…correct.  Ah, but illumination has a myriad of subtexts.

DIRECTING OUR FOCUS: We look where the light is strongest.  It guides our line of vision.  Is your current action bathed in the brightest light?  Are distinct pools of light guiding your reading through moments?

CONTRAST:  We may be looking at the light, but who or what is lurking in the shadows.

MOOD: A character walking out in the midday sun projects a different purpose than a character strolling through the dappled sunlight filtering down along a tree-lined path.

STABLE VS. UNSTABLE: Dependable electric lights shining in a room at night give a secure feeling, safety from the darkness.  The light of a candle or the fire in a fireplace is not so constant.  What are we missing in a character’s face lit sparsely by a flickering light?

STRONG VS. WEAK: Are you exposing your characters with sharp, crisp rays, or do more diffuse beams gently reveal them?

Play with the concept of light.  Let it be a tool to bring an added layer of dimensionality to your characters and scenes.  Try visualizing light that would not be expected in a given situation.  How does that change intention or outcome?