Chapter 12 – Image Makers: Designers (Lighting, Sound, and Technical Production)

I feel that light is like music. In some abstract, emotional, cerebral, nonliterary way, it makes us feel, it makes us see, it makes us think, all without knowing exactly how and why.

—Jennifer Tipton

Chapter Summary

• In today’s theatre, lighting, sound, and computer technologies affect what we see, how we see, how we hear, how we feel, and often what we understand.

• As areas of theatrical design, lighting and sound, along with the new “machines,” are essential to the modern stage’s theatrical effectiveness.

Lighting Design: Background

• Ancient Greece:– Torches, fires, sunlight

• Medieval Europe:– Torches, cauldrons of flame and smoke, reflecting

metals (outdoor)– Oil lamps, candles, reflecting glass (indoor)

• Renaissance:– Candles, oil lamps, panes of colored glass illuminated

from behind, colored lanterns, transparent cloth veils, fireworks

Lighting Design: Background

• English theatre:– Onstage candles (lit before play, snuffed at end)– Chandeliers lit start to finish– Footlights (c. 1672)– Argand (“patent”) oil lamps (c. 1785):

• Replaced candles

Lighting Design: Background

• Gas (c. 1850):– Replaced oil– Limelight (prototype of spotlight)– Operated by technician at “gas table”– Drawbacks:

• Fumes• Heat• Live flame onstage

Lighting Design: Background

• Incandescent lamp (1879):– Replaced gas lights– Advantages:

• Not a fire risk• Allowed for lightening and darkening different

areas of stage• Provided source of mood• Allowed for different colors

– London’s Savoy Theatre first to be fully lit with electricity (1881)

Lighting Design: Background

• Adolphe Appia:– First modern lighting designer – Argued for light as the guiding principle of all design– Established standards for lighting practices– Believed light could unify all production elements– Defined role of modern lighting designer

The Art of Light

• Light designer’s tools:– Form:

• Shape of light pattern

The Art of Light

• Light designer’s tools:– Form– Color:

• Mood achieved by filters (thin, transparent sheets of colored plastic, gelatin, or glass) or by varying degrees of intensity

Death of a Salesman, with Lighting by Mary Louise Geiger

Courtesy W

ill Ow

ens/ PlayM

akers Repertory C

ompany

The Art of Light

• Light designer’s tools:– Form– Color– Movement:

• Changes in form and color using dimmers, motorized instruments, and computerized control consoles

Courtesy of H

igh End S

ystems

The Designer’s Process

• Read script:– Note visual images, practicals (lamps, chandeliers,

etc.)• Meet with director and designers:

– Work out basic questions about lighting• Create a design:

– Light plot

The Designer’s Process: Light Plot and Focusing

• Light plot:– Map of lighting instruments:

• Location of each instrument to be used• Type of instrument, wattage, color filter• General area to be lighted by each instrument• Circuitry needed to operate instruments

• Focusing:– Lights pointed toward area they will illuminate

The Designer’s Process: Cueing

• Operators provided with cue sheet:– Chart of control console showing instrument settings

and color– Each cue numbered and keyed to script

• Designer and operators fine tune intensities, colors:– Each change marked on cue sheet

• Some shows use computer-programmed cues.

Special Lighting Effects

• Lighting effects:– Mirror balls– Searchlights– Projections– Holograms– Fireworks

• Gobos:– Slide inserted into gate of spotlight to project images

The Designer’s Assistants

• Assistant designer:– Helps prepare light plots– Compiles instrument schedules– Acts as liaison with technicians– Locates special equipment

• Master electrician:– Oversees safety issues– Maintains equipment, checks before performance

• Lighting crew:– Installs, operates, maintains all lighting equipment

Theatrical Sound: Background

• Earliest theatre:– Music– Choral chanting– Actor’s voices

• Elizabethan theatre:– Thunder machines (series of troughs for cannonballs

to rumble down)– Thundersheets (sheets of tin that made a rumbling

sound when rattled)– Thunder runs (sloping wooden troughs for rolling

cannonballs down)

Theatrical Sound: Background

• Since 1900:– Telephone, doorbell ringers– Door slammer

• Since 1970s:– Audio recording, playback technologies, sound

systems– Microphones, amplification

Uses of Live and Recorded Sounds

Sound

Foghorn

Hourly chime

Birds

Rain, thunder

Toilet flushing

Scream, howling wind,creaking floorboard

Telephone, door knock

Helps establish:

Setting

Time of day

Season

Weather conditions

Realism

Mood

Onstage cues

Music

• Functions:– Evokes mood – Establishes period– Heightens tension– Intensifies action– Provides transitions between scenes and at endings

• Implementation in production managed by sound designer

The Sound Designer: Process

• Reads script, makes note of cues

• Meets with director, designers, composer

• Researches sound libraries, records sounds, music

• Prepares sound track• Plots effects/music on

cue sheet

Special Effects with Sound

• Function of special effects:– Capture audience’s attention– Increase emotional impact

• Examples:– Offstage noise (e.g., car door slam)– Recorded music (e.g., to underscore emotional

scene)• Aids in telling story, reinforces intended impact of scene

Computer-Aided Design

• Computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacture (CAM):– Help designers configure space “virtually”– Allows for preview, change of designs before

manufacture– Access to virtual libraries– Allows for “virtual” design meetings

Technical Production Team

• Production manager (PM):– Coordinates staffing, scheduling, budgeting for every

element of production• Technical director (TD):

– Manages scene shop, construction and operation of scenery, stage machinery

• Costume shop manager:– Manages costume inventory and budgets, buying

fabrics, building, buying, and/or renting costumes and accessories

Technical Production Team

• Production stage manager (PSM):– Coordinates the director’s work in rehearsals with the

actors and the technical departments– During show, responsible for running entire onstage

and backstage operation• Assistant stage manager (ASM):

– Responsible for the smooth operation of technical systems and actors’ exits, entrances, and costume changes.

Core Concepts

• All design elements in the theatre serve the play and enhance the storytelling quality of the theatre.

• In collaboration with the director, designers (in tandem with actors) transform the “empty space” into the living world of the production.

• The theatre’s production and stage managers, along with the many technicians, provide the technical support system without which no theatre can open its doors.