Attached below is a copy of my lighting draft for a scene from "Hidden Figures" That I will be lighting. Here, I will break it down.
On the Left side of the script, I keep my notes about Setup for the scene and more general lighting(Scenic/Place lighting). So what do all the different letters with colors mean on the left hand side? Well, let's break it down.
SL - Stage/Strip Lights. These are the lights above the stage that we use for scenic lighting.
LED - These are smaller LED fixtures that are more mobile. I currently have one hanging from the ceiling of the stage.
Liko - These lights are up on the tech deck and provide facial lighting - an off white color.
Spot lights - Self explanatory.
Moving lights - These are our "smart" lights that can move in a 360 degree rotation and are hung above the stage.
Full Day - This usually signifies that our Stage lights will be bright along with likes to provide a day time color.
On the left hand side, we have more direct notes. We will use red spots to signify anger, and white to signify innocence and purity, transparency in a way, because we finally see Katherine opening up.
We dim and fade spot lights to show who is the center of attention in the scene and a power shift. Since this is such a pivotal scene, we will fade the entire stage to show that nothing, not even the location matters here, this issue does not just include nasa, so we want a strong focus on what she is saying.
On the next page, we use the flash of the LED to signify the violent act of taking down the sign, and show how important it is, without having to actually tear a sign to pieces.
Now, would we have this many cues for a normal production? Probably not. This is a lot of lighting for just one scene and requires a lot of moving pieces. But my goal is to show what I have learned so far and showcase that in one small scene, rather in a large scale musical like I did for Shrek.
