Saturday, October 17, 2009

Lighting renderings from LD Kia Rogers

Hi, I'm the LD for MIH. To help facilitate design ideas I like to render some of the intimate moments from the play and then bring them to my design meetings. Some make it to the show, some don't, but the pictures let the director know where my head is creatively and opens dialogue with the other designers. Here are several renderings. I have often been asked why I render on black paper...I simply don't see the picture until my light hits a surface, be it the character's face, a specific piece of furniture, architecture or atmosphere. It feeds my imagination to start in the dark and paint with light.

You can see bigger versions of these renderings by going to my Flickr account, or by clicking on them.

I really wanted to push the idea of starting intimate and then opening up. A gesture of being shy, then trusting the audience with very personal stuff. With the mirror, we allow the boys to "hide" just a little before revealing themselves. The mirror also represents an honesty and willingness on the boys' part that they do accept themselves. A strong angled light would be focused on the mirror to reflect on the boys' faces, and another instrument would light their upstage faces and with a blue wash across the stage we see them but not fully until they move away from the mirror and the room opens up to realistic lighting motivated by table lamps and recessed lighting over the dinning table and bar.

We open the scene with the character action of turning on a lamp, from this motivated light the area around the sofa will softly glow and broaden to see the scene play out.




I wanted to use practicals as much as possible, and then once we established the "look" the stage would open up subtly to see all the action. In this rendering the motivated light is from the table lamp and a blue wash colors the rest of the set to create a late night feeling, but still see the characters. As the scene progresses the light will radiate from the source of the table lamp and fill the surrounding area but the corners will remain darker.

Here we have a moment where I wanted to take us out of reality and highlight the group in an isolated look. There is a front spot that will start on the boys in the middle and then grow larger to incorporate the two new "members" of the family. The audience should feel like this is all going to work out at this moment, and the characters should sparkle. There are dedicated back light and front side light to assist the spotlight.

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