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*tilts head, smiles ruefully* Rewatched Les Mis. It's as good the second (third, really third-and-a-half, but who's counting?) time around. But ... It's really, really hard to watch something, then try to babble excitedly at people about it, when most of what you're babbling about is the lighting.
I just ... I have this thing, with the lighting on screen and in stage. You know when you go to see a production of Shakespeare for secondary school (Junior Cert, for our year, so we'd have been 14/15-ish)? Ours was Romeo and Juliet (also King Lear for Leaving Cert two years later, but all I remember from that one was that the lad playing Edmund gave him an awesomely vicious, sleazy air). And most of what I remember from the production was a) the poor chap in the audience who realised, very audibly, that, yes, the actress playing Juliet was at least partially naked in the sex scene, and b) that whoever had done the lighting for the funeral/tomb/suicide scenes was a genius, especially with the bare-bones set-up they had to work with (lovely cold spotlighting on the tomb, wonderfully done).
Now, I don't actually know anything about the technical challenges and techniques of stage lighting (or set lighting). My dad did some amateur lighting on the local scene, and he used to have a model stage with a basic set up made of flimsy wood that he showed me when I was a kid, tried to explain what the flies are, and the different depths of the stage and what you use them for ... *smiles, chin in hand* Not a lot of it penetrated, but there are some nice memories there.
But I can ... Watching stage-work, something about the lighting just ... I'm always conscious of it. I really am. And while I may not know the details of how it's done ... I just love when it's done well.
And the lighting in the O2 for Les Miserables, 2010, was awesome. The set-up is awesome, to start with, with the mobile gantries, the layering along the back walls, the sheer height above the stage (which served all-round, actually, tiering first the orchestra and then the choir back above the stage). The set-up is good and deep and high and complex to start with, which let them do a lot. And the lighting directors took it and ran with it.
The mobile gantries were used so perfectly. You know the rise of the chandelier in Phantom of the Opera, the movie? In the opening, to the swell of the opening chords? For Les Mis, they raised three of the light gantries off the stage to the swell of the opening. It was awesome. They used them again for the barricade scenes, lowering them down just below the big back-screens, glowing red and white and evil, for the construction of the barricades and the opening of hostilities, using red and white spots flaring manically for the battles (with sound-effect backing). It was ... gods, it was so beautiful. Well, not beautiful, as such, but so perfect.
And the rest ... the spot-work all through is gorgeous, the ambient lighting leveled up and down and coloured for mood-setting, as much part of the production and setting as the stage itself. The rows just above the choir-level are used for the patriotic red-white-blue background, particularly in the big crowd songs - with the big yellow spots on the side rows on full. The whole back wall beneath the upper gantries is used ... with the gantries set in place like an arch vaulting above the stage, raising and lowering them changes the shape and height and oppression of the stage. The back wall ... The Stars solo had a starfield rising slowly on the screens behind Javert, the single spot trained on him. When it comes to his suicide, the back wall goes black as pitch, and it's narrow gantry spots focusing on him from across the width of the ceiling, sending threads of light like rain around him as he sinks into night. I ... fuck, that kills me. Really.
And then, other scenes. Things like the sewer scenes immediately following the barricades. It's all lit in ghastly green and fog, out of which Thenardier emerges like an evil goblin, singing about how the world is an evil place where the dogs eat the dogs. It's goddamn brilliant.
It's just ... Sweeping the full white spots upwards like the rise and fall of curtains. Changing the whole shape and tone of the stage using the lighting. The full, 360 field of lights, side, front, back of stage, the whole back wall, the mobile gantries. Layering colour and texture and mood with layers of lights. Arranging the lights around the big screens to get best use out of all of them. I just ... shit. I love this stuff, you know? The lighting directors? Geniuses. The programmers? Also geniuses. Whoever had their finger on the buttons, orchestrating the whole thing? Fucking genuises. Whoever set it up. Genius. Just ... geniuses.
I love it, when the lighting is a fully integrated part of the production, when they have the technology and money and care to make it that much a part of the show. When you can use the lights to shape the space around them, the tone, the mood, the focus. When you can, and you do, and you make it work.
And yes, I realise that the lighting is not the part of the show you're supposed to be focusing on (and to be fair to me, it wasn't, as such, it was just the part that kept catching me at odd moments and making me squee), particularly when you're as uneducated as I am about how it works. But ... *grins sheepishly* I just wanted to babble, a little. I've been doing it at random people all day. My dad got an earful, earlier. My granddad spent ten minutes staring at me in some bemusement as I went into rhapsodies about the lighting on Javert's solos (though, again, totally his fault - he was more makeup than lighting, but the love of theatre was totally his fault too).
Um. In summary? I'm a nerd. I love lighting. And the lighting in Les Mis was, it bears repeating, genius. *grins, shakes head, shuts up*
Now, I don't actually know anything about the technical challenges and techniques of stage lighting (or set lighting). My dad did some amateur lighting on the local scene, and he used to have a model stage with a basic set up made of flimsy wood that he showed me when I was a kid, tried to explain what the flies are, and the different depths of the stage and what you use them for ... *smiles, chin in hand* Not a lot of it penetrated, but there are some nice memories there.
But I can ... Watching stage-work, something about the lighting just ... I'm always conscious of it. I really am. And while I may not know the details of how it's done ... I just love when it's done well.
And the lighting in the O2 for Les Miserables, 2010, was awesome. The set-up is awesome, to start with, with the mobile gantries, the layering along the back walls, the sheer height above the stage (which served all-round, actually, tiering first the orchestra and then the choir back above the stage). The set-up is good and deep and high and complex to start with, which let them do a lot. And the lighting directors took it and ran with it.
The mobile gantries were used so perfectly. You know the rise of the chandelier in Phantom of the Opera, the movie? In the opening, to the swell of the opening chords? For Les Mis, they raised three of the light gantries off the stage to the swell of the opening. It was awesome. They used them again for the barricade scenes, lowering them down just below the big back-screens, glowing red and white and evil, for the construction of the barricades and the opening of hostilities, using red and white spots flaring manically for the battles (with sound-effect backing). It was ... gods, it was so beautiful. Well, not beautiful, as such, but so perfect.
And the rest ... the spot-work all through is gorgeous, the ambient lighting leveled up and down and coloured for mood-setting, as much part of the production and setting as the stage itself. The rows just above the choir-level are used for the patriotic red-white-blue background, particularly in the big crowd songs - with the big yellow spots on the side rows on full. The whole back wall beneath the upper gantries is used ... with the gantries set in place like an arch vaulting above the stage, raising and lowering them changes the shape and height and oppression of the stage. The back wall ... The Stars solo had a starfield rising slowly on the screens behind Javert, the single spot trained on him. When it comes to his suicide, the back wall goes black as pitch, and it's narrow gantry spots focusing on him from across the width of the ceiling, sending threads of light like rain around him as he sinks into night. I ... fuck, that kills me. Really.
And then, other scenes. Things like the sewer scenes immediately following the barricades. It's all lit in ghastly green and fog, out of which Thenardier emerges like an evil goblin, singing about how the world is an evil place where the dogs eat the dogs. It's goddamn brilliant.
It's just ... Sweeping the full white spots upwards like the rise and fall of curtains. Changing the whole shape and tone of the stage using the lighting. The full, 360 field of lights, side, front, back of stage, the whole back wall, the mobile gantries. Layering colour and texture and mood with layers of lights. Arranging the lights around the big screens to get best use out of all of them. I just ... shit. I love this stuff, you know? The lighting directors? Geniuses. The programmers? Also geniuses. Whoever had their finger on the buttons, orchestrating the whole thing? Fucking genuises. Whoever set it up. Genius. Just ... geniuses.
I love it, when the lighting is a fully integrated part of the production, when they have the technology and money and care to make it that much a part of the show. When you can use the lights to shape the space around them, the tone, the mood, the focus. When you can, and you do, and you make it work.
And yes, I realise that the lighting is not the part of the show you're supposed to be focusing on (and to be fair to me, it wasn't, as such, it was just the part that kept catching me at odd moments and making me squee), particularly when you're as uneducated as I am about how it works. But ... *grins sheepishly* I just wanted to babble, a little. I've been doing it at random people all day. My dad got an earful, earlier. My granddad spent ten minutes staring at me in some bemusement as I went into rhapsodies about the lighting on Javert's solos (though, again, totally his fault - he was more makeup than lighting, but the love of theatre was totally his fault too).
Um. In summary? I'm a nerd. I love lighting. And the lighting in Les Mis was, it bears repeating, genius. *grins, shakes head, shuts up*
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