Stage lighting Totally Explained

Everything about Stage Lighting totally explained

Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting.

Functions of lighting

Stage lighting has several functions, although to allow for artistic effect, no hard and fast rules can ever be applied. The functions of lighting include:

Illumination: The simple ability to see what is occurring on stage. Any lighting design will be ineffective if the audience has to strain to see the characters; unless this is the explicit intent.
Revelation of form: Altering the perception of shapes onstage, particularly three-dimensional stage elements.

Focus: Directing the audience's attention to an area of the stage or distracting them from another.

Mood: Setting the tone of a scene. Harsh red light has a totally different effect than soft lavender light.

Location and time of day: Establishing or altering position in time and space. Blues can suggest night time while orange and red can suggest a sunrise or sunset. Use of gobos to project sky scene, moon etc

Projection/stage elements: Lighting may be used to project scenery or to act as scenery onstage.

Plot: A lighting event may trigger or advance the action onstage.

Composition: Lighting may be used to show only the areas of the stage which the designer wants the audience to see, and to "paint a picture". While Lighting Design is an art form, and thus no one way is the only way, there's a modern movement that simply states that the Lighting Design helps to create the environment in which the action take place while supporting the style of the piece. "Mood" is arguable while the environment is essential.

Qualities of lighting

The four main qualities or properties of lighting are intensity, color, pattern and focus.

Intensity

Measured in lux, lumens and foot-candles. For any given luminaire (lighting instrument or fixture), this depends upon the power of the lamp, the design of the instrument (and its corresponding efficiency), the presence or absence of colour gels or gobos, distance from the area to be lit and the beam or field angle of the fixture, the colour and substance to be lit, and the neuro-optics of the total scene (that is, the relative contrasts to other regions of illumination).

Color

Color temperature is measured in Kelvin, and gel colours are organized by several different systems maintained by the colour manufacturing companies. The apparent colour of a light is determined largely by the gel colour given it, but also in part by the power level the lamp is being run at and the colour of material it's to light. As the percentage of full power a lamp is being run at drops, the tungsten filament in the bulb glows orange instead of more nearly white. This is known as amber drift or amber shift. Thus a 1000-watt instrument at 50% will appear far more orange than a 500-watt instrument at full. LED fixtures create colour through additive colour mixing with red, green, and blue LEDs at different intensities. This type of colour mixing is also used frequently with borderlights and cyclorama lights to create different colours on stage and on the cyclorama. Another form of colour mixing is CMY, or subtractive colour mixing. Cyan, magenta and yellow dichroic filters are used in different percentages to create different colours. Because it's often difficult to create true reds and greens, a green dichroic filter is often added to fixtures using this method of colour mixing.

Pattern

Further Information

Get more info on 'Stage Lighting'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://stage_lighting.totallyexplained.com">Stage lighting Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.