Much Ado About Nothing

[tech__girl]

I Need help with a simple lighting design for Much Ado about nothing!

 

Again the director wants atleast a rough copy in 2 days and I'm so confused..having actually never done lighting design ever before...Any help would be great...please??

 

 

xThanksx

 

 

Plus The M on my keyboard isn't working properly so sorry for the typo... :)

[Ynot]

Why are you being given just two days to come up with these designs???

 

Or is this a theoretical production?

[prolightdesigner]

What exactly do you need help with? The term "lighting design" is a very broad one. Do you mean a light plot, cue list, hook-up chart...? Unfortunately, without more information, you're not going to get much help here.

 

-Jeff

[karl]

What sort of help are you specifically looking for? What are the givens and what is the expected outcome?

 

Producing a lighting design in two days with know prior experience sounds like a lot to ask. I'm not sure how we can help with such a general and wide ranging plea.

[Just Some Bloke]

Do it outdoors in the daytime?

 

Do it indoors in a straw wash?

 

Seriously, do you have any idea of what is involved in a lighting design?

 

Ask yourself these questions:

What do I want the lighting to achieve?

How am I going to create that?

 

If you can't do the second part, bring us the answer to the first and we'll try to offer help and advice.

If you can't do the first half forget any idea of ever being able to do lighting design. Let someone else have a go. For a small(ish) fee I'll do it myself. :)

[Gerry]

Perhaps this , from her profile is significant "Pendelton 6th Form College

2nd Year Technical Theatre/Stage Management Course"

Sounds like she wants help with her assignment/ course work.

 

Cheers

Gerry

[tech__girl]

Well, I have 1 day to do it now and no its not for coursework. I would ask for help with coursework. But sorry for the short question I am quite...errr simple? Anyway I need help with the lighting plot I dont know how to do it. If it was coursework I'd ask my teacher.....Anyway I know what I want to achieve noting special just plain (pretty much) washes of straw maybe the odd leafy break up gobo for outside and such things but I dont know how to do the thing...The internet isn't helping much or a I just looking in all the wrong places??

[LXbydesign]

Student or not, its not good that this task should be dumped on you seeing as you have no experience or idea what your doing anyway - with respect!!

 

I would suggest getting in someone who deoes know what they are doing, can have a look at your set-up and then create something on the fly and "make it up as they go along" - normally what I end up doing half the time due to lack of info or being pulled in on a job last minute.com!!

[Ken Coker]

I, like the other posters I think, am a little puzzled.

Why are you doing this if you don't know what it is? (We can set aside the fact you only have 48/24 hours to do it)

 

The basic question to ask yourself is "What do YOU think lighting design is?" Write down six things you think it might be, then go and do them.

 

You might think lighting design is about hanging lights up ; go and hang some up, see what happens.

You might think lighting design is about thinking hard about the piece that needs "lighting"; go and do some thinking and see what happens

You might think that lighting design is about making some form of visual statement; how might you make that?

You might think that lighting design is merely creating a world that others happen to want; why not talk to the people making the piece with you?

 

Put one light on a stand; turn it on and point it at the acting. Is this a lighting design? If it isn't, what might make it a lighting design?

 

On a more prosaic level, if you're at a school doing technical theatre, why hasn't it got any books on lighting design in the library? (NB: I guess some might argue that lighting design has nothing to do with technical theatre and that most of the books are rubbish.....)

 

KC

[LXbydesign]

HeHehe Ken - if you put a light on a stand and turn it on and point it at something - it could well be classed as "lighting design", particually to all the 3D modern art peeps!! :)

 

tech girl , cant you work with somebody on this who is at the college? surely if its a specialised college , some other students must know a bit about lighting design / teching and the same for set.!! It all sounds a bit half baked TBH.

[karl]

A lighting design can do several things. The ones I always think of are:

 

1) Enable the audience to see what they need to see (and not see what they shouldn't).

2) Help establish time and place - indoors, outdoors, summer's afternoon, winter morning, etc.

3) Help establish mood and atmosphere - warm and comfortable, cold and edgy, romantic, etc.

4) Help focus the audiences attention on a particular character, place, action (this is an extension of item 1).

5) Create a visually pleasing picture.

 

There are probably many others and other people will probably work to a different list.

 

Item 1 is the essential one and could be achieved, as mentioned above, by using one big light pointed at the acting area or even just daylight. It is the addition of the other considerations that really makes a lighting design a "design". You need to go through the play and decide for each scene which of the points (2-5) are important and how you are going to achieve the task. By 'achieve the task' I'm not talking about technically, that comes later, I mean more generally - how light/dark should the scene be, what areas should stand out, what colour should the light be.

 

Sometimes authors are 'nice' and make things easy e.g. setting tense scenes in the morning so you can use the 'cold hard light of day' to create the atmosphere. Other times it's a balancing act - the time and place says warm and cozy the mood says cold and stark - you have to decide which is more important.

 

When you have done all of that, then you can start to work out how you achieve what you want technically. What lanterns to use, where to put them, how to focus them, and so on. This is probably the easier part to give advice on but it requires a pretty concise description of the environment and what you are trying to achieve (as in what you have concluded from the previous non-technical bit).

 

Not sure any of that helps in the slightest but maybe it might.

[andy_s]

HeHehe Ken - if you put a light on a stand and turn it on and point it at something - it could well be classed as "lighting design", particually to all the 3D modern art peeps!! :blink:

well, it's been done. Modern Dance company, mid eighties, set consisted of black drapes and dancefloor. Lighting design consisted of a tower on wheels, at the top of which was a 5kW light. This could be adjusted remotely from the bottom of the tower. Dancers moved the tower to new position, applied the brakes, adjusted the light to point in the right direction, adjusted barn doors, flood / spot, hard / soft (all from the bottom of the tower) and then danced away to their heart's content in the pool of light. Can't remember the name of the company or the show, but I think they were based in Newcastle?

 

This isn't of course the answer to our poster's question.

 

In simple terms, I think lighting design (at least in the theatre world) is the process of deciding how to use relative light and shade to help tell the "story" of the piece. this is what makes it more than simple illumination. The most basic process would be to make a list of scenes. decide what the differences between each scene might be (indoors or outdoors? night or day? etc). Decide how that might be indicated or emphasised with lighting (brighter? darker? more directional or less? different colours?) then decide roughly where these changes might happen in the script (end of the scene? beginning of the scene? middle of the scene? in response to a specific cue line - eg "I'll switch the light on now"?) Then decide what equipment to use to achieve these ideas, and where to hang it. this may be by looking at a list of kit available in the theatre, or by deciding what you want to hire (if you have a decent budget). then you just need to rig, focus and plot. and then replot during the technical rehearsal to take account of all the changes since the run-through, and then re-plot during the first dress rehearsal to incorporate the changes since the tech, then hopefully sit back and watch the second dress and first night, and receive the plaudits of the audience and company colleagues....

 

Simple, really.

 

But there's plenty more you can do. Help drive the show along by punctuating it with cues - fast or slow changes. Help the audience decide who the important person on stage is by making their area a little brighter than the rest of the stage. The most important person might be a different character at any given point, so rebalance to redirect the audience's attention. Suggest emotional state by colour (but do this subtly - bright green for jealousy might be a bit like upper case in an email - a bit too shouty). And so on and on.

 

All this takes a bit more than 48 hours of course.

[pete LD]

Anyway I know what I want to achieve noting special just plain (pretty much) washes of straw maybe the odd leafy break up gobo for outside and such things but I dont know how to do the thing.

 

It sounds to me like your asking for help converting your simple idea into reality?. If you are you need to look at the theatre space your trying to light and look at the available lighting positions. Then you need to look at what kit you have in the venue and work out what the best use for it is. For your gobos you need profiles, so have the venue got any? if yes what kind of beam angle are they? Have they got gobo holders?. Then do you want a full gobo wash of the stage or just an area? Do you want it to be realistic i.e. only coming from one side of the stage as sunlight would or is one lamp each side of the stage more your thing?. When you have decided put the relevant symbol on a plan in the place you want it. This then needs repeating with your colour washes, how many fresnels have they got? How many colour washes do you want, Etc Etc Etc.

If this isn’t what you meant, and you wanted to know about proper lighting design then all the other advice from Ken, Karl and andy s is very good (I have learnt stuff from reading it.....)

Hope this is helpful,

Pete

[woody74]

Bottom line for me is that the answers you need to complete this task are not answers that can be put into words on a message board (and be of much use).

 

Your timeline suggests that you need a flesh-and-blood person with you to talk it out in real time, not back-and-forth with delay and a ticking clock...

 

I would compare this to getting on an automotive message board and saying "I have a pile of parts in my driveway, how do I make a car?".

 

One man's opinion,

-w

[son of lx dad]

Only in this case we have no driveway or parts...