The most important mantra to remember in lighting is that it’s art first, science second. Lighting is a tremendously powerful tool for communicating varying moods in a scene, and developing your own signature style will allow you to create a lighting scheme that adds to the drama of a performance, intensifying emotions that are often just attribute to actors. Whether you’re designing a high-key lighting atmosphere similar to what you’d find on game shows, or the dark, ominous lighting of a typical murder-mystery production, it’s the degrees of emotional intensity in your design that really convey the message to your audience.
Mastering the art of altering mood with lighting can be easy if you remember a few basic principals. The hardness or softness of light effects mood dramatically; the more diffused the light is, the softer and more smooth it will look. A great trick for remembering this fact is by looking at a shadow cast by the sun. On a bright sunny day the shadow is dark and the edges are very sharp because the sun is a strong, intense light. We call this hard lighting. On an overcast day, the shadows have very little definition and are soft at the edges. This is because a huge diffusion layer of clouds covers the sun. This is soft lighting.
Lighting can create a happy, sad, mysterious or even dangerous atmosphere. Mood lighting is a careful art that’s fairly easy to achieve once you have figured out which settings and arrangements work best for you, and since Valentine’s Day is upon us, let’s take a look at setting a romantic mood on the stage.
Romantic lighting is simple and can set the perfect environment so long as you have the right room and the right lights. But there are also a few scientific aspects of lighting that genuinely make a setting more romantic. Color is the key to creating the mood or directing the emotion of any scene, especially romance. The use of hues and saturation in the lighting of your stage helps to convey what is going on, about to happen, and to redirect the emotions of the audience. While it may be those decades of amber-hued lights or the gentle flicker of candlelight that have fashioned our notions of what we identify as romantic lighting, there’s also the effect of the light itself to take into consideration.
Light with a low color temperature (-3000K, or ‘yellow’ light) produces a very interesting effect on surfaces. These lights, which are standard for most incandescent lamps, soften features and improve appearances. The next step is to keep the lights dimmer than usual. Dimmer lighting creates a closer, more intimate feeling to any room; but there is a trick to this. Don’t simply remove a few light bulbs from the dining room - you should be using an actual dimmer. Uneven lighting tends to be jarring and distracting, so removing lamps or relying on recessed lights that have been dimmed can skew the effect. Uneven lighting isn’t cozy; it’s distracting, so utilizing a dimmer switch will produce the best results. Just be sure to match your dimmer to the type of lights you’re using. If you plan to use LED lamps, you should verify that the dimmer is compatible with your chosen brand of LEDs.
Even lighting doesn’t necessarily mean, “equal throughout the room”. Even lighting in this case is designed to highlight focus areas. Think about how restaurants stagger their lighting, with islands of light above each table and muted lights elsewhere. For the ideal effect, find a fixture that focuses a soft light where you’ll be spending your time while ambient lighting casts a light glow everywhere else.
Intensity, or the amount of light or brightness that is transmitted by the light, can range from a dim glow to an explosion of light. This is what gives theatrical lighting its dramatic effect and appearance. For example, think about how you are trying to set a romantic mood on stage; in most theatres for safety reasons using real candles are a hazard. So to set a romantic atmosphere you will not have the stage lighting at 100%. Loud lighting does not set the mood for romance. Instead, set the light at 35-40%, as a lower intensity can is more appropriate for a romantic scene. If you are using colors such as varying hues of pinks to light reds, lower lighting helps even out the intensity.
Another technique to try when setting the mood for your romance scene is a silhouette effect. This adds a sense of danger, forbidden romance, or maintaining a secret identity. For this setup to be effective, you have to make sure that no spill light is reflected onto the talent. Point a single light at the set behind your talent, lighting the background while leaving them in shadow.
