Music and light
Oct. 1st, 2012 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexhttp://audioporncentral.com/2012/10/skye-featherlight-2.html
I already noted that Skye Edwards, the recently returned frontwoman for Morcheeba, had released a new single. I wanted to pull this one out because the video reminds me of a past life.
First, Skye is a beautiful woman and she is essentially all there is to this video. Second, in that past life I used to do theatrical lighting and this video and image are a lot about lighting.
Lighting black skin in theater is, excuse the term, a bitch.
When you put up theatrical lighting and want caucasian skin tones to look natural to the audience you're going to be using mostly red lighting, with some blue. You can't use green unless you're doing a zombie/undead thing, and you can't use (too much) yellow or people start looking like they have jaundice. Theater scenes that call for 'sunrise' lighting are thus hard as hell to do and you mostly do them with very pale blues and some pinks.
The challenge when someone with an african - particularly sub-Saharan-African - skin tone steps on stage is that almost all your lighting is wasted. The red lighting doesn't work on that skin tone, and can make the person look ill or distorted. If you're going to light just a person with that dark a skin tone, you'd use a ton of blue, and maybe some good saturated reds. A person with deep color to her skin (think Grace Jones) will drink up that blue and shine. She'll look awesome.
Likewise, with a person who has that dark of a skin you can put a lot of nearly bare (or frosted) light on them which you wouldn't dare do on light skin lest the person's expressions be entirely washed out. Bright or frosted light will bounce off highlights on African faces like cheekbones and give their face depth and expressiveness. Pale yellows can be used to warm their expressions. You can even get away with a certain amount of green.
Sadly you rarely get to light a stage with just one person, or even just one person with a deep skin tone. Usually black actors are a minority of the cast and you have to light so that most people look good and then do something to compensate. If you're lucky your black actor is in a lead role and you can run a frosted spot on them for the whole time they're on-stage or your budget is big enough you can double up lighting certain areas so that when they hit their mark you pop the right lighting onto them.
Watching Skye's video I was reminded of these dilemmas - the palette used in the vid is almost all deep saturated blues and lots of the shots throw in the towel and just go with black-and-white. This works because Ms Edwards has both great skin tone and good bone structure. But that part of me that used to do theatrical lighting couldn't help noticing and wishing for more.
P.S. I went and looked at Daniela Glunz's Web presence (http://dglunz.de/) - she's a very talented fashion and glamour photographer, which makes some of the choices in the video more understandable. She's fond of glitter and body-paint, clearly. But I want to see a Skye video shot by someone who knows theater lighting comma dammit.
I already noted that Skye Edwards, the recently returned frontwoman for Morcheeba, had released a new single. I wanted to pull this one out because the video reminds me of a past life.
First, Skye is a beautiful woman and she is essentially all there is to this video. Second, in that past life I used to do theatrical lighting and this video and image are a lot about lighting.
Lighting black skin in theater is, excuse the term, a bitch.
When you put up theatrical lighting and want caucasian skin tones to look natural to the audience you're going to be using mostly red lighting, with some blue. You can't use green unless you're doing a zombie/undead thing, and you can't use (too much) yellow or people start looking like they have jaundice. Theater scenes that call for 'sunrise' lighting are thus hard as hell to do and you mostly do them with very pale blues and some pinks.
The challenge when someone with an african - particularly sub-Saharan-African - skin tone steps on stage is that almost all your lighting is wasted. The red lighting doesn't work on that skin tone, and can make the person look ill or distorted. If you're going to light just a person with that dark a skin tone, you'd use a ton of blue, and maybe some good saturated reds. A person with deep color to her skin (think Grace Jones) will drink up that blue and shine. She'll look awesome.
Likewise, with a person who has that dark of a skin you can put a lot of nearly bare (or frosted) light on them which you wouldn't dare do on light skin lest the person's expressions be entirely washed out. Bright or frosted light will bounce off highlights on African faces like cheekbones and give their face depth and expressiveness. Pale yellows can be used to warm their expressions. You can even get away with a certain amount of green.
Sadly you rarely get to light a stage with just one person, or even just one person with a deep skin tone. Usually black actors are a minority of the cast and you have to light so that most people look good and then do something to compensate. If you're lucky your black actor is in a lead role and you can run a frosted spot on them for the whole time they're on-stage or your budget is big enough you can double up lighting certain areas so that when they hit their mark you pop the right lighting onto them.
Watching Skye's video I was reminded of these dilemmas - the palette used in the vid is almost all deep saturated blues and lots of the shots throw in the towel and just go with black-and-white. This works because Ms Edwards has both great skin tone and good bone structure. But that part of me that used to do theatrical lighting couldn't help noticing and wishing for more.
P.S. I went and looked at Daniela Glunz's Web presence (http://dglunz.de/) - she's a very talented fashion and glamour photographer, which makes some of the choices in the video more understandable. She's fond of glitter and body-paint, clearly. But I want to see a Skye video shot by someone who knows theater lighting comma dammit.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:19 pm (UTC)Is it a bitch because it's inherently more difficult, or is it a bitch because it's different from lighting white skin?
no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:27 pm (UTC)Also, from a color standpoint, the darker the skin the harder it is to light. Pale/fair skin will take on almost any color and is reflective of much more of the spectrum. Dark skin drinks in a lot of the light and you can get highlights/reflections but if you want the audience to be able to get the most out of a dark-skinned actor's expressions you really have to work harder and be more careful.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:37 pm (UTC)I am less enamored of glitter, sadly.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:48 pm (UTC)