Importance of Being Earnest Lighting Journal

By Quinn Schuster
Wednesday February 18, 7:57 AM
When there is a light and subtle cloud cover in the sky a lot of the color of the light being
projected onto the ground is removed and it appears to be a standard cool white color
temperature. The light and subtle cloud cover in the early morning right after sunrise softens
shadows, makes them very streaky and less pronounced, without wholesale removing them
entirely. Early in the morning right after sunrise half of everything is in a shadow because of the
stark and extreme angle the sun is projecting light from. The sun is very low in the sky and on
the horizon and cannot be seen often because it hides behind a building or tree. The strengthens
my idea that half of the ground is shadowed, and half the time a structure will hide the light
coming in from the suns steep angle. Early in the morning on a day with a very subtle cloud
cover the very bottom of the sky, near the horizon line, is a very washed out and extremely low
saturation blue. It pretty much is white but with a mild flavor of blue lingering. I acquit this to
being the fog, debris in the air. Especially the sky right behind low parts of the mountain, that is
extremely washed out and not very blue. Higher above that the color starts to build in gradient
fashion towards where the color is most intense, right above ones head when one directly
upwards. Even though this color is the most intense blue that can be found in the sky it still is
rather light, and appears as a primary blue paint with liberal amounts of white pigment mixed in
heavily. The light cloud cover is starting to diffuse the light a bit and throwing sunlight in a very
diffused fashion over top the shadows, giving them a less intense look and feel. They are very
streaky, soft edged, and not intense. Usually on a cloudless day there is a huge line of separation
between shadow and light, but this one is less pronounced due to light bleeding over onto the
shadow. The shadow is still there, just not as clear. On the tall trees that the sun is hitting at its

hard oblique angle, the parts sticking out remain at full vibrant illumination while the ones
beneath (in the Z dimension, away from the observer) fall into shadow. Every leaf and detail at
this angle, on the bushy top green part of the tree, of sunlight casts and shadow behind it. Once
again its a splash of light in the parts closest to the sun and observer, and then splatters of
shadow behind it. It sculpts the tree very nicely and the eye, because its been programmed to
understand why the shadows are there, innately understands all the details that stick out from the
tree and go back into the tree. Sitting in a classroom with all of the lights off allows for the
observation of the light flooding in from one blindless window. It bleeds openly onto the ceiling,
walls, and floor. People with their backs facing the window have the outlines of their heads and
shoulders glowing with white and colorless light. The shadows of things sticking off of the wall,
like the tray at the bottom of the white board, point back to where the sun is. The light is white
not biased toward any color. Its very clean, yet natural. The color of light is what one has been
programmed to know as just light. Its hard to tell where it begins or ends it just slopes down
on the wall through gradient. There is no outline on the light that is on the wall, projected
through the window sunlight.

Wednesday February 18, 9:41 AM

Later in the day as the sunlight angle becomes less extreme and oblique the shadows
shrink in size. The sun is moreso, but not quite yet entirely, overhead. Also, the early morning
crisp misty fog has drafted away and the shadows have hard edges again. Branches of trees have
harder more solid black shadows when they have high leaf densities. Branches that have low leaf
density, plenty of space between thin leaves, look very streaky and not as defined. I can only
liken it to a low intensity, soft focused breakup gobo. Concrete surfaces are easy to see shadows

on while blacktop is just subtly more difficult to see the small details of the shadow. A window
with blinds down has shadows on the inside of the blinds from the glass framing on the other
side in the pane. The light from an open door to the exterior projects all the way across the
ceiling to the other side of the room. The light on the ground is yellowish. It bounces off of
everything, even remotely light in color, when no clouds are present.

Wednesday February 18, 11:17 AM

When a subject is standing directly under the overhang of a tree and its branches, they
are still in full light in anything before mid day. If the subject, during this time of day, stands
with a tree in between the subject and the sun, or in the shadow of the tree, they are hit with
textured shadowy light. The shadows have unique darknesses with them each respectively and
different hardness depending on the species of tree.

Thursday February 19, 7:30 AM

Sitting in a room with no curtains, early in the morning shows the diffused nature of
morning light. In my bedroom the sunlight hits the building on the outside of my bedroom and
bounces through my window. The building next to my window is white and has a ragged and
stuccoed surface, so it reflects but also diffuses at the same time. This process gives the interior
walls of my bedroom an uncontrolled spill and splash of light everywhere. Because the surface
of the reflecting wall is white, not a lot of the reflected light is absorbed but rather bounced
directly off, so next to no intensity is lost. The light color temperature is very neutral, whitish
with a mild and extremely subtle yellow tint. I have yet to observe sunlight coming in through a
window directly and with no media for it to go through and nothing to stand in its way. I would

imagine it would have harder shadows and it would be easier to distinguish where the light end
and where a shadow begins. I also theorize that the time of day can dictate how much of the
interior of a sunlit room will be lit and shadowed. Early morning and late afternoon, times of day
in which the sun sits at a very steep and oblique angle in the sky, would produce more shadows
in a room. While late morning, midday, and early afternoon where the sky is at a regular
overhead angle would produce more thorough coverage of light on the interior of said room.
When curtains are brought into the equation a room gets considerably darker yet the square of
space surrounding the window and its curtains become glowing with the light that reflects and
bleeds around the outside of the curtain. Certain types of curtains each have their own opacities.
The ones in my room have about a 10% transmission-90% reflection rate, meaning the room can
remain naturally lit while the curtains remain closed. I hypothesize that most curtains in Paris (in
the 1920s at least) served the purpose of insulating the temperature of a room. That purpose can
only be achieved with thick, completely opaque curtains. Blinds however provide striped texture
on the ground in front of them, as well as letting in a bleed of diffused light. The angle to which
the striped texture on the floor and anything in front of the blinded window makes with the
window itself all has to do with the time of day. I am going to try not to observe fluorescent
tubes that much, because their effects are rather simple. Also as we all know parisians in 1925
had no tubes like that in their homes nor in any theaters. Clouds dont appear in the sky until a
few layers towards the top. In the morning you have the bottom layer of the sky, which is a
washed out whitish blue. The you gradient up a little bit to a more saturated healthy blue. THEN
upwards a little further clouds start to appear which today are very streaky and stretched like
white lines across the entire sky. Then further in the sky we have where the hue is most vibrant
and easiest to pick out, which is directly overhead.

Thursday February 19, 10:50 AM

When the surface that a shadow is going to appear on is close in proximity to the object
blocking the light, the shadow has sharp edges and is defined. The three variables that control the
sharpness of a shadow are the closeness of the light source to the blocking object; the diffusion
or sharpness of the light traveling to the blocking object; and the proximity of the blocking
object to the surface in which the shadow will appear. Studying the garden environment, where
all the trees are exactly, and the time of day and quality of air in the second act of this show will
help crafting accurate shadows.

Monday February 23, 7:28 AM

Rain and water sitting on concrete and blacktop produces an interesting affect for
lighting. It, in dual action, both reflects and diffuses the light that passes onto the blacktop. The
light passes down through a few layers of the water and then is reflected back out of it. While the
light moves past the very many droplets of water sitting on top of the blacktop it gets refracted
into many directions. Its a very interesting and beautiful phenomenon to observe. However,
thematically and based on the time of year, use of rain and clouds in telling the story isnt going
to do us many favors and might confuse the audience a bit. Clouds and rain are interpreted and
perceived by the audience as worrying, depressing, anxiety inducing, and overall not positive nor
amusing accept in a few unrelated and rare instances which do not apply for our show. A happy,
funny, and very amusing show taking place in the middle of the summer in Paris should not have
rain; plain and simple. A few very light, fluffy, and pretty clouds might work however in Act III
as it takes place in late afternoon and some early morning mist might be good for Act I.

Tuesday February 24, 8:37 AM

The issue of color temperature and its use in this production is going to be a very tricky
aspect to get right. There are quite a many variable to consider in order to mix some accurate and
visually appealing color on stage. There also need to be a few design and story decisions made in
order for everything in the color mix to remain cohesive. Firstly, the color temperature of a
tungsten halogen lamp, much like those found in Clocks fresnel and S4 fixtures, produces light
very similar in color temperature to that of sunlight itself. I feel if we play it correctly with
regard to intensity we might be able to accurately capture the look of sunlight color without the
assistance of any filter. Now the tungsten lamps of the 1920s were very warmer and more
amber/orange in color temperature than that of the cleaner ones of today. Should we include
fixtures allocated for both natural sunlight and both emulated vintage lighting instruments on our
primary front light system? Also the color temperature from a standard incandescent bulb which
might be found in a practical in Algernons apartment or in the drawing room of Jack is different
from the color temp of that of both sunlight and of vintage stage lighting. Honestly I think we
can make the practicals light scenes just by alloying some fill fixtures like PARs or Fresnels
from directly above the practical in toplight, maybe sidearmed so the it is at a good throw
distance and doesnt spill too much all over the set. I will ponder this quandary more as time
goes by and think more about interior color.

Tuesday February 24, 3:26 PM

The harsh angle of morning light pouring into a window can arguably only be emulated
emulated through the use of a boom directly outisde of the building's window, or offstage on

whatever sude we deicede the sun is going to be coming in from. Also the easiest, not neccesarliy
the best decision, would be to have the sunlight just be represented by front light, and have the
sun be coming "from the audience." Meaning the oblique angles from early morning light could
be achieved through mezz lighting, and as the sun moves up in the sky we could use truss
lighting and then move onto backlight and a sunset from the cyc. That wouldn't be too difficult
and in our space I think that is the best way to convey the changing light in a day.

Wednesday February 25, 11:25 AM

The Importance of Being Earnest will present challenges to lighting design in the
following places: accuracy, realism, mood, and vintage feel. We have to accurately paint the
scenes in light as they would appear in real life in a way that the audience will percieve
everything in what they know to be realistic. The "feel" and mood of the show is going to reflect
and parallel the changing arc of a romantic relationship over the course of one day. We also want
the "show within a show, theater within a theater" motif, meaning we need the lighting to look
like it was designed in 1928, with a French stylistic twist.