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Describing Dynamic Lighting


indyld

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OK, so yesterday I spent the day teaching busking moving lights to music. Not so uncommon for me, weekdays or weekends. :-)

 

However, during yesterday's session I realised that every section of music that arrived immediately put a fitting lighting look/move/dynamic into my head. It's completely clear inside my brain: "OK, this is a tight, closed, jabby thing", "now we are building up to the music 'opening out' and getting wider". "Now it's time to break out the swooshiness?" "And SMALL!!!" "And STOP!" (this is all happening in my head, BTW). Along with this, my hands and arms also are able to join in with this: waggle, shimmer, figdety, looong and slooooowwww, big fish, little fish, cardboard box .......etc.

 

When it comes to actually speaking about this, things get tricky. Oral sounds are easier than words but this with the arms and hands waving does make me seem rather bonkers. In theatre lighting, we have a fairly easy to access vocab about light which uses angle, colour and such, along with more abstract things like mood and emotion. When it comes to more dynamic lighting situations, we can either describe things in musical terms (that doesn't always describe the light or look too well) or in direct terms such as 'open white sweeps pointing out', 'beam splits, slow rotate'. That latter is a technical rather than creative description.

 

I'd love to hear what people think of when the imagine dynamic light and if particular words spring to mind. How would you describe the dynamics of a particular track when it came to putting visuals to music? Perhaps it would be good to pick a track on YouTube and then post some words to go with it. Would be good to the ideas of others and their ways in which they communicate this phenomenon.

 

Thanks in advance.

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When it comes to actually speaking about this, things get tricky. Oral sounds are easier than words but this with the arms and hands waving does make me seem rather bonkers.

I think I speak for many when I say that you should make a video so we can all judge for ourselves how bonkers you look :)

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This is something I've also been considering. I have a shorthand which works for my own notes when out touring with a band on busking setups, I'll try to format a few examples for sharing, but this tends to the technical or just placeholder notes ("something big", "pull it back", "MORE", etc.).

Musical terminology also works well for me (as a drummer rhythm and motion seem to tally across both percussion and lighting), but isn't necessarily accessible for the non-trained, nor always genre appropriate.

 

Can we break it up into aspects, much like Reid's model of illumination/atmosphere/selectivity/sculpture? Perhaps taking into account the haze and movement /chases typical of busked music gigs we could use something like texture/motion/atmosphere/illumination?

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