Just what is the primary function of the Lighting Designer?

[Ashley R]

Just on a side note, I cant watch the video due to not being in the UK, I remember there being a while back a proxy or something to get around this, but I cant remember what it was!

[Just Some Bloke]

Fascinating responses to my intentionally controversial post. Apologies for my mis-spelling of 'laser' - strange, as spelling pedantry is normally one of my fortes!

 

I want to reiterate my main point, which I still agree with 100%, that lighting design (along with all the other support disciplines) is there to compliment, not to comepete with, the dancing. Admittedly I exagerated in my first post: there were times when you could see all of the dancers movements, but there wee also times when you could not and that is wrong, in my opinion; whether it's the fault of the director, the LD or the camera operator, it's wrong. The show is not called "So You Think You're A Lighting Designer" - it's all about the dancers. Much as we try not to, we all (and I include myself in this) end up thinking that the one that used the best piece of music was the best routine and the one with the boring lighting wasn't as good, and the one that, for instance, might have had that brilliant prop where 2 people appeared magically from a space that looked too small for one person, was a really good dance. But in the end we're supposed to be judging the dancing itself and so everything else should compliment, and not overshadow, that.

 

I suppose my point was that there is a difference between brilliant lighting (which this was) and appropriate lighting design which, IMHO, this wasn't.

 

Keep the replies coming! :)

 

 

 

 

P.S. Ken, I will need a little more time to read your paper, but I certainly will do so and am looking forward to it already!

 

 

 

[added later]

P.S. Ken, I will need a little more time to read your paper, but I certainly will do so and am looking forward to it already!

 

So, I've read the paper now. There are loads of comments I'd be happy to make relating to it, but all of them . I'll just point out that Pilbrow seems to agree with me here. As quoted by you, Ken:

 

"the designer must... [be] constantly testing in his mind his duty to the actors" Pilbrow 1997, 30

[Gerry]

Just on a side note, I cant watch the video due to not being in the UK, I remember there being a while back a proxy or something to get around this, but I cant remember what it was!

Ex pat shield from http://www.expatshield.com/

Cheers

Gerry

In Sunny & Warm Spain

[Ken Coker]

The issue is, Eric, I fundamentally disagree with Pilbrow. Any piece of performance is a set of multiple narratives, with all the creative participants using differnt techniques. I see my job as LD as proactive and no less than the job of director, designer or actor.

 

This is an paper by Ric Knowles which you might find of interest. It's hard to read as I had to upload a stored web page. Apologies, but if you want me to send the file let me know.What would be really good is if the CTR let the paper out into the free world. As it happens, this paper was the inspiration behind most of my initial PhD work.

 

I'd be interested in your views, off-topic or not - and I guess quite a lot of my paper was!

 

KC

[kerry davies]

That is what makes it worth doing, Ken'n'Eric, we all bring ouselves and our own creative endeavours to the party. My proudest moment in LX was the reponse of my stepson to how he thought the lighting was on a play in a church.

 

"What lighting?" is to me a massive compliment but others would disagree, that is why the thing is worth doing in the first place. It should be an individual creative skill and my approach is through ambience and atmosphere at which I am pretty good. I can't and don't want to do the flash, effects laden stuff and even on rock used them sparingly as I believe that what is a highlight used once is a mess used a dozen times.

 

However there is a place for all approaches and there is, as usual, no right and no wrong. I will read Ken's paper with interest and reserve the right to agree or disagree, it doesn't matter what I think to anyone but me.

[Just Some Bloke]

I see my job as LD as proactive and no less than the job of director, designer or actor.

 

I don't see myself as any less of a creative than any of those either, but the production (in the widest definition) comes first. Whatever we're trying to achieve is what we are all required to work towards - performers and creatives alike. If you were lighting the scene in Mme. Butterfly where she kills herself for the sake of her child and made it look bright and happy with the emphasis on the stunningly painted clock that the set designer had put upstage left, then it may be very pretty but would equally be wrong*.

 

In this case the production is all about chosing the best dancer from a choice of 20 so everyone's role is to allow the judges (in this case the TV audience) to be able to chose. Therefore the LD's job is to enable us to see the dancing, not to throw lasers in our eyes that detract from that dancing. He can be as proactive as he likes and can (and should) be considered equal to everyone else who contributed, but the brief should be to compliment the dancing so we can see what they're doing. I think perhaps the brief in this case was to do a stunning laser show. In which case - congratulations it was a stunning success! This is why a production needs a Producer, to pull all the creatives together and get them all working to the same end. For me there was a conflict between the lighting and the dancing. It's a personal opinion, but I didn't see a reason for that conflict and so I interpreted it as "wrong".

 

 

 

* Unless you had some brilliant and unexpeceted justification, obviously!

[billy jim]

I would definitely agree that the performance is utterly naff (I'm allowed as an ex-twirlie), and I actually quite liked the lighting- it fit to the music, you could see what was going on, but I could definitely see why it would annoy some people...

 

I'm in the camp of lighting should be noticed when it should be noticed and invisible when required.

[indyld]

... lighting should be noticed when it should be noticed and invisible when required.

 

But required by whom? Director? Cast? Audience? LD's four year old daughter? All of them? Surely this is the crux of the matter and is the key to both Ken and Eric's positions.

 

Taking out the "realities" of a societal structure based on the commercial imperative, it's an interesting point for discussion. But as that reality cannot be removed in anything but the most theoretical of notions, there seems to be only one answer.

 

Q: What is the primary function of the Lighting Designer?

 

A: It depends on who is paying the bill.

 

:-)

[Matthew Robinson]

Matthew - I don't pretend to be an expert on lighting design, but I would say that for lighting a band creating an atmosphere or lightshow can take precedence over just keeping the act visible.

 

I said illuminate them, not flood them with light! Yes, there should be a light show, but not so much that you can't see the band!

 

That's what I meant last night- tiredness got in the way of clarity.

[gareth]

take ordinary talent and surround it with whatever tricks of the trade you can to make it look like something or indeed anything!

 

Or, as sadly seems to often be the case these days, no talent ...

 

Maybe, just maybe, sometimes the lighting we see on some primetime LE shows is the way it is partly because the production company needs to be shown where the lighting budget has gone ...

[lightsource]

Well, sort of reminds me of last years Britain's Got Talent competition.

 

I'm sure we can all remember Spellbound's preformance at The Royal Variety Show, camera's everywhere, video mixing was atrocious, one of the worst production jobs I've ever seen. There is another topic on this forum that goes into more detail.

 

Regarding JSB's OP....Is this any different?

 

There really was no talent in what they did, the Lasers were distracting and the dancers were cr*p.

 

But then, it's a show on BBC primetime, so what more should we expect? A feeding frenzy for 8M viewers.

[ramdram]

Lightsource you were too kind...surely your ultimate sentence omitted the word "undiscerning"?

[Ken Coker]

 

made it look bright and happy with the emphasis on the stunningly painted clock that the set designer had put upstage left, then it may be very pretty but would equally be wrong*.

 

but I didn't see a reason for that conflict and so I interpreted it as "wrong".

 

* Unless you had some brilliant and unexpeceted justification, obviously!

 

It is notions such as "bright", "happy" and "wrong" when applied to lighting that I set out to explore in my research. For better or worse, lighting design can now be studied as an academic discipline. More accurately, perhaps, It is possible to get a BA in lighting design and thus, in my book, it is an academic subject. What this means is that as an academic discipline, lighting design is subject to all the intellectual and analytical tools that are used in other subjects. Using these disciplines, words such as "wrong" need to be subjected to scrutiny; what is "wrong" lighting? Can we define it? Why this is important is that I believe the most important tool the LD has is the ability to think; the "rightness" or "wrongness" of a fixture cannot be defined merely its lens type or source. What is it that makes a light "right"? This is a question of aesthetics if not philosophy.

 

I think the problem of the nature of lighting design and thus the problem with the notion of defining the function of a lighting designer is wrapped up in some of the following point:

 

1. Lighting design has no vocabulary of its own. It borrows from a number of non time-based forms which may not be appropriate to it, and is unwilling to define these terms.

2. There is an unwillingness, also, to grapple with duallism inherent in the process of lighting design. By this I mean the idea that part of our work is to reveal the work of others. One could argue that we're are not alone in having to cope with this issue; cinematographers, it could be argued, face a similar problem. However, texts such as Sharon Russell's “Semiotics and Lighting: A Study of Six Modern French Cameramen” exist in the world of film studies and I would contend that until we approach lighting design from the point of view of proper academic study we will never move on nor answer the question of what exactly it is we do. To approach it from the Pilbrow based “manual”-style view is no longer good enough; certainly not good enough if one is teaching and researching it.

[Just Some Bloke]

All very true, Ken, but I would argue that sometimes we really can use the word "wrong" in relation to any of the arts.

 

An example: I also do some freelance work as a Musical Director and/or keyboard player. One of the MD's roles is to set the tempo of a piece of music. Some pieces get performed by me many times in many different situations. I may do the same song in the afternoon for a wedding and then in the evening at a party. It may feel "right" to play the piece slower at the wedding and may feel "right" to play it faster at the party. I may even be unaware that I'm doing this and it may need a 'scientist'* to say "why did you play the piece at 72bpm in the afternoon and 80bpm in the evening?". The answer I might give could be "it just felt right at the time". Others in the room on both occasions (e.g. the rest of the band) may agree with me that it did, indeed, feel right on both ocacsions. So if we all agree that it felt "right", then we must also agree that playing the piece, say, at 100bpm in the afternoon and 60bpm in the evening would, therefore, be "wrong". I've even been at ocasions when I've heard other musicians play a piece at a tempo that just feels "wrong".

 

Likewise, if I'm lighting a band playing a piece of music at 120bpm and I flash the lights at 125bpm that can equally look "wrong". If I'm lighting a scene that's meant to be set at night and I make it look like daytime then my lighting is wrong.

 

It's lovely to think in abstract about everyone bringing their creative juices ogether to form a beautiful whole in which everyone brings their own genius to the table to create a whole that's greater than the sum of the parts, all of which are equal and beautiful in and of themselves, and where nothing can ever be "wrong", but in the real world all of us are doing a job: actors, directors, LDs, etc. In any job you need to be able to be sacked if you do something horribly wrong. If the LD goes over budget then (s)he's done something wrong. Equally if his/her lighting doesn't suit the piece then it's also wrong. I stand by my use of the word 100%.

 

:)

 

 

* Used here to mean the opposite of 'artist'

[Gerry]

Perhaps instead of saying it is "wrong" you should say "it is not appropriate for this situation or occasion"

 

Cheers

Gerry