Properties of Natural Light
Students move outside in the daytime on a sunny, in a circular group to observe the properties of natural light.
Direction
Intensity
Shape
Colour
Movement
Direction – Primary light source is the sun, DO NOT look directly at the Sun.
Intensity of the sunlight is dependent of the angle of the sun and atmospheric conditions . It is brightest at midday with no clouds. The East side wall is bright as it is directly lit, the rear South wall is lit by reflected light, so is not as bright.
Shape of the light beam is affected by objects in the path of the light beam. In the pictures, you can see familiar shapes of leaf shadows, most of the light is blocked by the tree. . The light source is full spectrum.
Colour of the light is dependent on how reflective the surface is and the colour of the surface, as most of the light spectrum will be absorbed, except mirrored surfaces.
Exercise
In a circular group, observe what side of a persons face is lit by the sun, how do the shadows look like, the difference in colours between direct and reflective lit areas of the face and body. The direct sunlight is the Warm light and the reflected light the Cool light that McCandless refers to. Using an analog clock face as a reference, observe how the lighting and shading changes as you look around the circle. Get the group to rotate the circle 180 degrees and see how the lighting has reversed. How can this be used on a stage to indicate time of day ?
look at buildings and trees to see the difference between hard shadows of building and softer shadows of trees. Can you see changes in the trees shadows if it is windy.
Explain why the bottom pictures looks different.
McCandless Method
If possible, watch Matt Kizers video The Lighting Design Process https://scenicandlighting.com/article/the-lighting-design-process/ on Youtube, it runs for 10:22 minutes, before doing this workshop.
Get the students to stand at the centre of the nine stage areas, DSL, DSC, DSR, MSL, MSC, MSR, USL, USC, USL. If possible, have them raise their arms up at 45 degrees and spread apart at 45 degrees to see where the Warm and Cool key lights should be. How well do the optimal positions line up with your theatres lighting locations?
Conventional Theatre Lights or Luminaires
These are the different types of conventional lights generally available to us that we can use for theatre lighting.
CAUTION
Theatre lamps are fragile and expensive so do not handle with bare hands, make sure that all focus controls move freely and do not jar the fixture.
Floods and Cyc Lights conventional lamps
The Flood has a symetrical reflector that produces a bright centre to the beam and reduces in intensity towards the outside edge of the beam. These were one of the earliest mass produced theatre lights.
These are very basic in shape and in general produce a rectangular beam that we have little control over the shape. They have provision for a colour frame to use a lighting filter to change the colour of the beam.
The Cyc or Cyclorama light has an asymetrical reflector that reflects most of the light downwards, so that when it is mounted at the top of the cyclorama, the intensity of the light is even from top to bottom of the cyclorama. acclaim-cyc_data
The top Flood is a Strand Patt 137 150W halogen flood with an ES or Edison Screw base lamp. Patt 137 Datasheet
The bottom Cyc Light is a Selecon LUI 1000W tungsten halogen flood using a linear lamp. Lui Cyc Datasheet
