lighting feature | amateurstage
>lighting states Robin Lambert continues his series on Lighting Design with an insight into creating a realistic moonlight scenes. One of the skills of a lighting director is to turn a mediocre set with plastic shrubbery and a dodgy backcloth into a realistic location. As well as being a challenge, it’s fun and very rewarding, nothing more so than a night scenario. There’s always someone who will stand at the back of the hall and loudly proclaim “Moonlight’s not really blue you know”. Point them in my direction and within an hour I’ll have them screaming “I give in! Moonlight’s whatever colour you say it is!”. Right let get the science over with. Moonlight is sunlight reflected form the light grey surface of the moon. So it’s white. Simple, we don’t need to know exactly what white, or if it’s a paler shade of white because what we see is something completely different. Are you sitting comfortably? Well, I’ll begin then. It all starts with a bloke called Perkinje who was on his way home in the early hours of the morning after a night of debauchery when he noticed that the blue flowers in his garden seemed brighter than the red. Immediately he sounds like a lighting guy but, instead of blaming it on something he smoked, he did a bit of scientific stuff and discovered that in low light conditions our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than to red. In other words, when there’s very little light around, we see it as being slightly blue. So, although moonlight is, strictly speaking, grey, we see it as being on the blue side. To make matters even more convincing, up until a few years ago most artificial light was reddish. Candles, oil, gas and tungsten are all towards the red end of the spectrum so any moonlight seen at the same time looked blue in comparison. So when Mr. Know-itall states that moonlight isn’t blue, just explain that we see it as blue, which is all that matters. Which blue though? Have a look at your Lee Swatch (remember, I told you how to get a free one from www.leefilters.com) and you will see dozens of different blues. The skill is in selecting the right “moonlight blue” for your scene. Strange as it may seem to those who live in the real world but there are fashions in moonlight, especially in movies and television (welcome to my world, step inside it’s a nightmare!) where moonlight changes colour regularly. At the moment it’s a blue-green colour, around LEE 116 for the swatchers amongst you. On stage this looks convincing but very cold and uninviting. Fine for Dracula, not good for a rom-com kissing scene.
The previous generation of movie moonlight was an almost colourless CTB blue which was cold and neutral. On stage a 202 half blue gives a crisp moonlight providing it’s not dimmed too much. Very good for naturalistic moonlight coming through windows and it doesn’t affect skin tones too much if an actor walks through it.
give the impression that there’s a fire engine parked nearby. Also remember that we only have one moon, so moonlight beaming through windows stage left AND stage right will look a bit strange. The audience might not realise it at first but at some point they will and will take great delight in pointing it out to anyone nearby.
In the last century (wow, as a kid I never thought I’d be saying that phrase) moonlight, tended to be a lavender colour. I’ve discussed lavenders last month and I’m sure you read, digested and learnt it by heart so I won’t repeat myself except to say that a Lee 137 lavender is a nice romantic moonlight which works nicely on skin tones. Or, if you did what I suggested and got a roll of 702 special lavender, then add a sheet of half blue 202 and voila (no, it’s not a musical instrument) you have a luverly warm moonlight.
Moonlight looks better coming from the rear. So, in a moonlit scene, have the moonlight as a backlight rather than as your key. Especially if you have a full moon gobo (you were paying attention last month weren’t you?) on the backcloth. Moonlight should also be crisp. The moon is a point light source after all, and always comes from above head height.
Back in the sixties and seventies moonlight was an electric blue. Still seen in some amdrams. Be very careful when emulating moonlight and remember subtle is better. Avoid “flickering” moonlight. You don’t want to draw attention to the effect and having a strong blue shimmering moonlight might
So, when that annoying person (usually the director) tries to tell you that moonlight isn’t really blue, just tell him that it may not “be” blue in real life but it looks blue, which is why your stage moonlight is blue. Next month we’ll have a look at sunlight. I don’t know if you remember it but it usually makes an appearance for a few days in August, just before the floods start.
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