Night Play

[Illuminatio]

Morning, all. I have lit many night time scenes but I now have to light for the first time in my experience a play that takes place entirely at night: Act I 11pm - 12pm, Act II 1am to about 1:30am. It is summer, and (conveniently) there is a moon behind the audience. The director wants the same lighting throughout.

 

I need to find suitable colours for front general cover, back-light, and I also have some bar-ends I could use for some cross-light. I want to concentrate illumination in the centre of the stage, with breakups around that to give a dappled effect fading out to darkness. I also intend some warm backlight gobos to suggest light through the windows of a building.

 

My question is what choice of colours should I use (generic rig) to avoid the audience getting tired (or bored!). Is a general cover in, for example, 117 going to be tiring on the eyes? Would some side light in 142 liven it up a bit? It needs to be dark enough for the characters plausibly to find it hard to see, but obviously the audience need to see what's going on.

[pjrails]

HI

the last night time scene I used this combination from both front side and back with some great results Lee 196 and 132

See link here:

 

 

link

 

 

Hope this helps

 

PJ

[alistermorton]

Try L147 from one side, L118/117 from the other, and for face L200 at low level (yes, I know it's supposed to be "sunlight" but at low level it's bluey green) or L601 for a sort of murky grey but that allows you to see what's happening.

[Jivemaster]

"Night"may mean high contrast and even lights in the field of view.

[andy_s]

my suggestion is to persuade the director to relocating the play's setting to the Shetland Islands in August, as it never gets dark there and you can use all your usual daylight colours...

 

but on a more serious note, isn't this a fascinating challenge - to make each lighting state perfectly fit the moment in the play, while giving the impression that nothing has changed? beautifully subtle lighting can be a great thing. As a self confessed old fogey, I slightly resent the new fangled lighting equipment where the main function is to draw attention to itself rather than to the thing it's pointing at...

 

apologies for slightly derailing the thread.

[Illuminatio]

Many thanks for all the suggestions so far. I am going to use 196 for the general cover, 132 for backlight, 147 and 118 for side cover. I've got some surrounding breakup in 119 and currently 117 for some fill in the faces from front, though I may try the 200 as suggested. All very traditional (I'm an old fogey, too). The 600s are a bit new-fangled for me, though I did use some 603 last week. I've also got a warm wash for the curtain call - probably 151.

[jmdh]

Hi,

 

Other more experienced types have given some good advice - the one thing I'll add specifically addressing "It needs to be dark enough for the characters plausibly to find it hard to see, but obviously the audience need to see what's going on." is that managing audience fatigue could be a real challenge here, regardless of colours. I'd imagine starting each act at a daringly low level, and having some long-running fades to cheat things up so that the audience doesn't get tired.

[Jivemaster]

Audience dark fatigue will be alleviated with some places where night logical lighting is brighter, -streetlight, shop window, car headlights etc, letting unimportant things go almost unlit and important things happen in the light.

[kerry davies]

Audience dark fatigue will be alleviated with some places where night logical lighting is brighter, -streetlight, shop window, car headlights etc, letting unimportant things go almost unlit and important things happen in the light.

Perzackly. Light is only the absence of shade and it is the shade that suggests night to an audience. Take a google at "film noir images" and figure out how they got such bright pools and detailed face lighting to show nighttime scenes. It is that contrast, more than the easy stuff like moonlight gel washes, that can be used to trick the viewer.

 

"It needs to be dark enough for the characters plausibly to find it hard to see

I used candles at every opportunity and created pools of light around them rather than a wash and effectively achieved as much light where I needed it as a full on flood across the stage. An actor in a pool of light peering into a darkened patch of stage doesn't need to "act" that much.

 

Play around with odd angles as well. Long master fades are also useful tricks.

Edited June 29, 2019 by kerry davies

[Jivemaster]

The most obvious scheme is the lighting of village roads. Occasional street lights at important places with the lamp in view, and occasional lit and maybe curtained windows.

On an urban street the lamp posts may still be in view and pools of light may be closer, and some pools of light will come from lit advertising and lit windows.

 

 

What environment is your proposed performance set in.

 

Even in a dark room you could use a "window" for moonlight to come through and even "passing traffic/trains" to cause some moving light to show up otherwise dark corners. Even cyclic red/amber/green "traffic lights" could pass coloured light into a black box room set to allow action to be seen to the corners.

 

 

Think of an old film where someone with candle goes up a creaky spiral stair in the dark with just a candle. The candle illuminates the face and the walls get a little light at head height BUT the steps and floor level walls get almost no light, - That's night lighting with the faces adequately lit and the rest almost unlit, which IMO is what you need.

 

Steady colour wash will be wasted after a few minutes. When driving people will totally accept as "white" sodium yellow, tungsten, discharge and mercury streetlamps after a few minutes. Working in a darkroom I used to become totally accustomed to deep red light.

 

Beware that the statutory lighting (emergency/fire etc) and occasional indicator LEDs will make significant light to fail to let things really go to black

[Illuminatio]

Thank you so much for the further replies. I certainly want to avoid audience fatigue, which was my main concern. The environment is late 16th century, urban exterior for one scene and early 20th century exterior for the other. I can cheat a bit with some light cast from off-stage house windows, but no street lighting as such.

[Jivemaster]

light from windows is one option, twentieth cent should be able to take some street lighting, gas? Get the light sources IN the scene then close to it is bright and far from it is dark. Give some cast some (led) candles? if the scene permits.

 

Remember that the human eye accommodates bright clear noon sun to moonlight so hoping that the audience will see simply dark as an effect is no go, they'll just see "hard to see" and miss the point of the drama. Could be a use for VNSP or pinspots to put a little light exactly where you need it so that the action can be seen in the darkness.

[alistermorton]

A particularly effective scheme one of my colleagues used for the night-time cliff top scene in Daisy pulls it off was a surprisingly brightly lit stage. He used a very low level from the FOH bar with a neutral wash that doubled for his indoor light - 152+744 - to pick up the faces, then the main wash was just 4 Cantatas in 716 and 4 743s in 601 - it gave a very believable nighttime feel without being hard to see what was going on.