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Resource: Wilson and Goldfarb, Chapters 5 and 6
Objectives for this lesson:
Students will examine:Background:Background FunctionsFactorsDesigners
- The Process of Set Design
- The Costume Designer
- The Lighting Designer
- Sound Design
Costumes and mask-making are quite old.
Sound is a brand-new technology.
Lighting - may go back to the Renaissance - with gaslight in the 1800's, lighting came into its own
Designers are more vulnerable to shifts in technology
Designers are both artists and artisans (craftspersons).
Chapter 5 -- Set and Costume Design
Scene Design
1. Help set the tone and style of the production
2. Establish the locale and period in which the play
takes place
3. Develop a design concept consistent with the director's
concept
4. Provide a central image or metaphor, where appropriate
5. Ensure that scenery is coordinated with other production
elements
6. Solve design problems
( **the following is from Cameron and Gillespie...
1. help tell the story
2. provide mood, color, emphasis
3. enhance concept
4. create environment in which actors can create convincing
life
5. be aesthetically pleasing on their own )
Establishing tone, style, and mood:
1. Tragedy vs. Comedy (Julius Caesar's Rome must look and feel very different from the Rome of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum)
Plus subtleties of environmental mood
2. Level of Abstraction -- "natural" or "stylized" -- "realistic" or "nonrealistic?"
3. historical period
If updating, retain mood of original
What does the audience think it looks like? (Cowboy hats of the 1940's movies were not realistic, but audiences probably thought they were. "Realistic" concepts change: new images of the past are grittier - Lion in Winter and The Three Musketeers in 1976 were very dirty-looking).
4. Geographical location
Quality of light, is the sound coming from inside or out?
What is the essence?
5. Socio-economic circumstances
How do clothes and light and dealing with sets differ in characters' socio-economic circumstances?
How important is it to differentiate? (In O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, class is essential; in Maeterlinck's impressionistic dramas, it is not.)
6. Aesthetic effect
Even intentional ugliness can be beautiful - ugliness beautifully arrived at.
Factors of Design:
Physical Aspects of Scene Design:
1. Line
2. Mass
3. Composition
4. Texture
5. Color
Materials of set designers:
Traditional "flats" (107)- 1 x 3 " wood frame covered with muslin (a rough cotton fabric) and then painted - can look like walls or other solid structures, yet very lightweight.
Platforms and parallels (collapsible platforms) are also common (note: see images when you click on "flats" above...)
Wood, plastic, and metal, etc. are becoming more widespread.
Cyclorama - U-shaped back of stage, for sky or background.
Renderings - loose free-hand drawings of early impressions.
Ground-plan - a bird's eye view.
Three-dimensional models
Thumb-nail sketches
Elevations (scale drawings).
Instructions for building.
Technical director oversees construction.
The scene designer also often does the Properties (Props) that are not
part of the regular scenery, handled by actors (canes, furniture [handled],
letters, etc.)
Props are usually:
designed and built or
bought or rented
stolen -- ! :) :)
Costume Designer's Objectives:
1. Help establish tone and style of the production
2, Indicate the historical period of a play and the
local in which it is set
3. Indicate the nature of individual characters or
groups in a play: their stations in life, their occupations, their personalities
4. Show relationships among characters: separate
major characters from minor ones, contrast one group with another
5. Meet the needs of individual performers: make
it possible for an actor or actress to move freely in a costume; allow a performer
to dance or engage in a sword fight, for instance; when necessary, allow performers
to change quickly from one costume to another [I was playing Joey in the musical
Pal Joey, and in the first part of the first act, my costume changes
were so quick that I had to wear THREE costumes at the same time; each
one got taken off to reveal the other ones as the act went on...]
6. Be consistent with the production as a whole, especially
with the other visual elements
costumes are often rented or bought ("pulling costumes"), built from scratch , or rebuilt, or borrowed.
-clothes must be "right" for the character.
-comfortable to actor (within reason) and usable.
-aesthetically pleasing - can make a big difference to actor's character.
Designer must analyze:
Given circumstances - sex, age, health, social class, focal importance
Shape - silhouette (outline) pleasing.
Movement of costume.
Texture and draping.
Enhancement or suppression of body lines (different periods have different styles: pushed up bosoms of the French Empire, flattened bosoms of the 1920's, codpieces in medieval and Elizabethan, togas in Rome).
Individual actors - long necks, skinny arms, etc.
Costume shop foreperson executes the designs.
Costume designer's resources:
1. Line, shape, and silhouette
2. Color
3. fabric
4. Accessories
Makeup, hairstyles, and masks-- all related to costumes.
Chapter 6 -- Lighting and Sound Design
Lighting not an important factor in design till 1830's with limelight, but even then needed sharper control
Electricity was the key
to imitate natural effects
to enhance: change shape, mood and tone
Now high-tech, computerized
Objectives of Stage Lighting
1. Provide visibility -- let the performers and other
elements be seen
2. Help establish time and place
3. Help create mood and tone
4. Reinforce the style of the production
5. Provide focus onstage and create visual compositions
6. Establish rhythm of visual movement
Lighting instruments - the term used to refer to the units that deliver the light (including the housing and the light bulb, or lamp).
The lighting designer can influence only five things in lighting: Color, direction/distribution, intensity, form, movement
1. color - changed by using gels -- colored
pieces of plastic (heat resistant - the only color light that will get through
is the color of the gel)
mixing of
colors -- warm lights (amber, straw, gold) with cool colors (blue, blue-green,
lavender)
can produce depth and naturalness
2. direction / distribution - can be up to 150 lights in a production
3. intensity - brightness -- controlling the amount of current to instrument - "dimmers" control that amount
4. form -- the shape of the light
5. movement -- alterations in the other factors
will give impression of movement - this would also include the movement of a
"follow-spot" (powerful spotlight as that swivel and shine on different places).
fades, cross-fades,blackouts
can suggest movement and form
Instruments: (see the photos in text)
a. spotlights: ellipsoidal reflectors - long distances,
sharp and clear
b. fresnels (pronounced "fruh-nel'" - named after
Frenchman Fresnel who designed a "step lens" - the lens had less and more even
mass, so it would heat evenly, avoiding the problem of regular convex lenses
heating unevenly and thus cracking - "fill" light - diffused, to "wash" or
"blend."
c. striplights, footlights: footlights used very
little these days, but strip lights used to add "fill" light.
d. flood lights: no lens, no color - for a "flood"
of light
Click to see other Lighting Instrument
pictures
Sound design has always been used in some way (rolling cannonballs for sound of thunder), but with modern technology, more precise sounds are possible.
Reproduction -- the use of motivated (called for by the script) and
environmental (help create more illusion of reality) sounds (135)
includes sound effects...
Reinforcement -- the use of amplification
Modern practice of "mic'ing", sound effects, background music - further technology (some discussed on 138) and expertise may increase sound capabilities, as it appears to be one of the hardest to control.
Different kinds of mikes.
See these related links:
Technical
Theatre Terms
Glossary of Theatrical Terms
The Development
of Theatrical Spectacle
You can take short study quizzes based on textbook materials by going to the
Student
Online Learning Center page for our textbook...
Next Section: History of Stage Lighting
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This page and all linked pages in this directory are copyrighted © Eric W.
Trumbull, 1998-2007.
Last update: November 16, 2007