collisionwork | (no subject)

The last three days have been spent mostly on The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice at The Brick, which I've been lighting, and has turned out to be harder to make look right than I figured.

The set is all white/blue/icy - the floor painted, with curtain "mountain" backing on three sides - and looks great under the fluorescent work lights. Under stage lights, of course, everything bounces everywhere, the color temperature never seems quite right (identical instruments with identical bulbs, diffusion, and everything, can now be seen to be putting out two different shades of very light yellow), and there's a fine line between "enough light to make everything seen properly that should be seen" and "flat and looking like ass."

Most of the show is meant to look cold and harsh, though the show itself is an hysterical comedy - I asked Hope, the director, if she wanted "comedy" lighting (without telling her I hate that - everything bright and cheery-looking because "it's only funny that way") or "deadpan comedy" lighting (or as I also called it, referring to the lead actor in the show, who is brilliantly funny in his flat, affectless tone, "Richard Harrington" lighting). She (and the playwright, Jeff) assured me they wanted the deadpan, cold lighting, as if this was a SERIOUS, HEAVY work, which does work great when I can get the levels just right. I had to shuttle things carefully up and down a point at a time more than usual. After the first tech Monday, Hope asked me to go back and fix a more colored section a bit more to her liking (she was right - I had honestly thought I couldn't get it to look better than I had and I was wrong), and I took care of that last night. Tonight I have to go back to make some tiny little fixes and this'll be done. If I can fix these last little spots that were still bugging me last night (and two that Hope just emailed me about), I'll be happy with my work here.

It's a VERY funny show. Preview tomorrow night, opens Friday. Again, fun-NEE. Great cast, almost all of whom I've worked with many times, just knocking some big laffs out.

Saturday, I'm in a free reading of a play by Trav S.D. Here's the info:

Beach Blanket Bluebeard

When Johnny Guitar shows up to play his way-out music at the local surf-beach, all the kids go wild – and some of them wind up DEAD.

featuring
Gyda Arber, Eric Bland, Bob Brader, Maggie Cino, Cory Einbinder, Rainbow Geffner, Ian W. Hill, Kalle Macrides, Pete Macnamara, Josh Mertz, Dina Rivera, Mike Rutkowski, and Trav S.D.

ADMISSION: Free!

Saturday, December 6, 2008, 7.00 pm

Voorhees Theatre
City Tech
186 Jay Street (near the base of the Manhattan Bridge)

Subway:
C, F, A to Jay Street & Borough Hall
2, 3, 4, 5 to Borough Hall
M, N, R to Lawrence Street/Metro Tech or Court Street

Again, great cast, fun script, sure to be a laff riot.

And now, back to The Brick to finish out my work on the show . . .

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WFMU just pointed me to:

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/GG/Barbary_Coasters_-_I_Want_A_Monkey_For_Christmas.mp3

The thing is, though, while comedy lighting is aesthetically unsatisfying and arguably hacky... it tends to work, and work much, much better. I've seen plenty of shows go from the occasional chuckle to lotsa laughs simply by bumping all the instruments up 10%. If you're going for deadpan comedy, or squirm comedy, then you have some leeway, but for straight comedy, I'm not so sure boring old comedy lighting isn't simply the best plan.

Comedy tends to resist a lot of aesthetic devices, actually---for most film comedy, as evidenced by Superbad, the best directoral approach is usually to just get a medium shot, and let the camera do nothing so we can pay attention to the actors. I think it's maybe because comedy is so human---you really don't want to feel the heavy hand of the artist distracting you from the experience.
-D McK

(no subject)

Must be the day for weird beach music references ...

Comedy lighting