Lighting Journal Entry 3

Prompt

Watch the video of Pachelbel’s Canon in D embedded below. Make notes of the conductor’s and musician’s interpretation and expression of the music. Listen to the piece without watching the video. Make sketches and written notations of how you might interpret and express the music through light. What direction, color, and textures. What painting(s)/photos, memories, stories, or imagery come to mind? Upload your paintings, photos, drawings, and notations to your portfolio.

Reference Images

Sketches

Lighting Design Concept Statement

Pachelbel’s Canon In D is a journey through a nature wonderland for animals. With bunches of animals singing. In a story told through the contrasting illumination between the stage area at large and the action that which is thus happening upon in.

General Approach for Lighting Design for this Piece of Music:

As a listened to this. This is the story that we visualized as what the music would look like. Like for us if this music were to be given physical form this is what this music would be. We then took that series of events, and pulled out frozen moments in time from it. Sketched those moments out. Then pulled out stuff from those sketched out moments and converted them into a series of lighting cues.

Story

-Moment 1 Story: A bird is lying in a grassy field. There is a bond off in the distance in the field. There is a forest off in the distance also.

-Moment 1 Music: Music has peaceful mood in this moment

-Moment 2 Story: Another bird has joined the first, and the two birds in love are flying around each other in an fanciful dance.

-Moment 2 Music: Intertangled melody of a set of two wind instruments and two string instruments

-Moment 3 Story: Elsewhere at the pond there is a flog slowly hopping across the water jumping from lily pad to lily pad.

-Moment 3 Music: The music has a hopping forward rhythm to it.

-Moment 4 Story: Elsewhere in the forest there is a fox slowly trotting through it.

-Moment 4 Music: There is a very rich and intense and forward pushing wind and string instrument section.

-Moment 5 Story: The four animals seen earlier all come together to sing a song.

-Moment 5 Music: All the instruments come together for a grand finale whose last note trails off at the end.

Lighting Cues

-Cue 1: Orchestra in surrounded in bright and warm toned light pool. The rest of stage is bathed in a wash with pink and blue undertones. Cue time: 3

-Cue 2: Wash on non orchestra part of stage stays the same. Left ½ of orchestra now in red pool of light. Right ½ of orchestra now in yellow pool of light. Heart projected against back wall. Cue time: 30

-Cue 3: Non orchestra part of stage bathed in blue. Wash is not even. There are intentionally areas of varying intensity. Non principal part of orchestra is in pool of green. Principal part of orchestra in mauve pool that hops around as parts in music change. Cue time: 2

-Cue 4: Non orchestra part of stage bathed in a gentle green that has a top of tree gobo in it. Orchestra part of stage bathed in orange. Intensity increased of time. Cue time: 3

-Cue 5: Entire stage is split into 4s. With upstage left 4th being mauve. Upstage right 4th being orange. Downstage left 4th being red. Downstage right 4th being yellow. Cue time: 5