Finally got around to posting to this. Here's some pictures of the first show (and probably last) that I did the lighting for. It's West Morris Central Central
Theatre's 2016-2017 fall drama- Irena's Vow. Our production of the show has been nominated for 8 total awards at the Montclair State
Theatre awards, including Outstanding achievement in new media/special effects (that's me!), Outstanding achievement in live or original music (a friend of mine wrote a musical score for the entire show- wow), The Peter Filichia Award for pushing the
envelope in academic
theatre, Outstanding performance by a lead actor, by a lead actress, and by a supporting actress in a drama, Outstanding production of a drama, and Outstanding overall production.
Before this show, I didn't know much about lighting, or the school's system- I've acted in all three of my school years prior to this, and have only worked the booth to do simple stuff (like put up a
wash for a concert, or operate equipment on a smaller scale for scenes and performances in my
theatre class). So I stayed at the school almost every day for rehearsal (getting a ride home was no big deal, since my sister was in the cast), and really buckled down and did my research and tinkering (I had to keep myself from tearing everything open, since I'm that kind of guy). By the time tech week was about two or three weeks away, I was completely ready to
tackle the actual physical lighting.
Here's what resulted from my countless hours of work, reading, and just thinking (to the
point where people wondered if I was still conscious or not)
Sadly, there was this one light that I found the perfect blue
gel for, which there weren't any pictures of. The light was used whenever there was a nightmare or solemn scene that's supposed to be more figurative than literal- it was a regular old Source 4
PARNel with the best blue
gel ever- a crisp feeling blue, one that made you feel cold when you saw it, it had a certain aura to it that made you just know something bad was going to happen, and made you wonder if the scene really happened in the script's storyline, or if it was a conjuring of a character's scrambled and pressured mind or a memory the character may not be so fond of.
All of the lights were rigged,
gel'd, and aimed by me, the only exception being some of the front
ERS lighting, which we wound up having somebody come in to just fix due to time constraints. Building the lighting cues was a collaborative task between me and the director, bouncing ideas off of each other, pretty much just seeing what we liked. I also did all of the special effects work, such as figuring out how to make our
cyc stop being a
cyc and become a
projector screen, figuring out how we could get some delay and
reverb on one actor's mic for when he was off
stage and knocking on the door and yelling like the police would.
