College Induction Project
During my first two weeks at college, with a group of my classmates, we had to produce a lighting show which we then displayed to the rest of the class and other students in the college. These pictures were taken by me and my classmates during the production and performance of the lighting show. These pictures show a range of different lighting designs me and my team produced and created, each different lighting design has a smooth transition to change to the different design. We did have some help from our teacher as this was our first time using this specific technology, but overall the final piece worked
Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein is a play written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks about the grandson of a famous scientist trying to prove his grandfather was not crazy by trying to recreate his invention, proving to the public that he was not crazy, and his idea was revolutionary and worth paying attention to. This musical was what my lighting assessment was based on. The original play has a similar setting to Frankenstein so my research included going back to the original play and finding some of the scenes that we could base our writing on. My assessment is to take scene 10, from the screenplay and create a lighting display with a sound show that relates to the scene to show my progress and understanding in lighting design, programming, and running a show. It will also include creating a sound show with sound effects to go with the lighting display to make the scene more realistic, more believable, and more intense. Because this is the first time my group will be seeing the script we will have to do a lot of research to understand the script in depth and what we can use to help create our lighting and sound design.
Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein is a play written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks about the grandson of a famous scientist trying to prove his grandfather was not crazy by trying to recreate his invention, proving to the public that he was not crazy, and his idea was revolutionary and worth paying attention to. This musical was what my lighting assessment was based on. The original play has a similar setting to Frankenstein so my research included going back to the original play and finding some of the scenes that we could base our writing on. My assessment is to take scene 10, from the screenplay and create a lighting display with a sound show that relates to the scene to show my progress and understanding in lighting design, programming, and running a show. It will also include creating a sound show with sound effects to go with the lighting display to make the scene more realistic, more believable, and more intense. Because this is the first time my group will be seeing the script we will have to do a lot of research to understand the script in depth and what we can use to help create our lighting and sound design.
The Planning Process
My assessment is to take scene 10, from the screenplay and create a lighting display with a sound show that relates to the scene to show my progress and understanding in lighting design, programming, and running a show. It will also include creating a sound show with sound effects to go with the lighting display to make the scene more realistic, more believable, and more intense. Because this is the first time my group will be seeing the script, we will have to do a lot of research to understand the script in depth and what we can use to help create our lighting and sound design. Once we understand the script I can then start creating a brief design of a lighting display including colours and matching lighting effects to the sound effects.
Interelations
During a progress meeting, we discussed what each member of the team was going to program and operate during the assessment. During this meeting, we also discussed how the sound and lighting will interrelate to make the display the best it can be. The job of lighting would be to design, program, and operate the lightboard during the duration of the assessment. Their hard skills would be making each lighting cue unique, this could be by changing the position of the lights, changing the colour, and adding any effects to the lights. The job of the sound would be to design, edit, program, cue, and operate the sound using QLab. The key skills of the sound operator would be understanding how QLab works, and being able to input and edit sounds so they were accurate to the scene we were referencing the scene from. These two roles must interrelate to work together to create a scene that perfectly relates to the scene, this means that the lighting must reflect the sound and the sound must reflect the lighting. An example of this is in the script there is a thunder and lightning stage direction so during this moment we used a thunder sound effect, and we made a white flash of lightning to play in unison to give the full effect.
Lighting
In the theatre, we used our cue sheet containing all of the lighting frames we wanted for our display and started entering our lighting cues into the desk to start visualizing our design. Every member of my group had a chance to cue in a few of the lights to refresh our memory of how the lighting desk works and how to position and add a gel to each fixture. I recognized the fixture channels and easily placed each light in the correct position with a moment of practice. I then added colour gels to assist in reflecting the mood and telling the story, colours ranging from reds and yellows to greens and blues were used to create a dark and sinister tone to portray the intensity of the scene. From this task, I learned how this specific lighting desk works and how to design and program a lighting display for a show from only the script and brief which were provided. I also was able to add in most of the lighting cues as in the group I was decided to be in charge of programming the lighting onto the computer as I was able to do it quickly and efficiently. Challenges I had were coming up with the initial design for the lighting of the scene and remembering how to program as this was the first time I had programmed a lighting display in a while. If I could go back and improve the lighting, I would use more gobos to add complexity and I would use more colours to exemplify the tone and mood of the scene to create a sense of fear and anticipation in the audience. Attached is the lighting and sound channels, cues, description, duration, colour, and Q-point.
Sound
On the third day of working on the project, the music and sound effects were added to our lighting display so that when the actors performed the scene, they would have lighting, music, and sound effects to help the audience become immersed and portray the correct mood and tone of the scene. We programmed, edited, and performed our sound show using QLab. Using QLab is simple when you understand how to use it and all of the features that come with it. The features on QLab can be used to edit and program many sounds in great detail to the second of a sound file. On QLab you can add, edit, group, and cue sounds to make it easier when we perform our assessment the transition from one sound to the next will be smooth and it will not register to the audience that we have moved from one sound cue to the next. During the recording of the assessment, I was sound operation which gave me a large responsibility of listening to group members reading the script and pressing the go button as soon as possible. Some of the sound effects we used were a thunder crash, generator noises and more, which made the scene more immersive as it sounded like you were in a real laboratory, where the scene is set.
Final Design
The final design worked very well with every member contributing equally to the project and creating the best piece of work possible at the time. The positive of the final design is getting to work with a time limit and a strict deadline as it has given us a chance to work under the pressure that working for a professional company would give us. Working with a deadline has also proven to myself and my group what quality of work we can produce in three short days. The purpose of the deadline was to push our teamwork abilities and knowledge to the limit to create the best work possible. Another advantage of the final design is to see how a lighting show works in real time in a semi-professional venue. Since the lighting fixtures are provided by an industry-standard company all of the lighting fixtures and the lighting desk are what would be provided in a professional setting of a theatre, meaning in the future I will have worked under pressure in a semi-professional venue. A negative about our final design is that it was not the best quality work we could produce as I had a very short period to work on this piece. It was also simple and included minimal colours, with more time I believe we could have added more colours, more complex designs, and more gobos to create patterns with the lights.
Evaluation
My Young Frankenstein project was to create a sound show and a lighting display for Scene 10 of the Young Frankenstein play. Overall, the lighting and sound shows complemented each other perfectly. When programming the lighting I struggled a bit to understand the rig plan but once I had gotten used to programming, I was quick at adding in our lighting cues. However, if I were to repeat the project, I would do research beforehand to understand the desk I would be using, this would mean that when it comes to programming, I would be quicker, and my work would be of better quality. In the industry, I would need to define this key skill to make sure that I know how to program lighting to be efficient at the job. To improve on lighting as well I would add more gobos and colours, to make a more complex design. Overall, the sound worked well. All of the sounds and the QLab file were created in advance, and we were able to create a sound show with music which went with the scene very well. More time on this project would allow me to look through gobo and gel combinations that I could use to make the scene more realistic. In the industry, I would need to know where to get specific sounds from and how to find them to make the sounds sound realistic enough to sound as if they were happening on the stage. My impact on the assessment was cueing some of the lights and running the QLab file during the filming of the assessment. Working in a group for this project has allowed me to expand my teamwork skills, my communication, and my organization skills. Working in a group has also given me knowledge of what I understand about lighting and sound design and what I understand when given a reminder.
