Purposes and Objectives
Stage lighting has four important objectives: visibility, naturalism, composition and mood (atmosphere). Visibility, of course, performs the obvious function of making objects visible on stage. Time and place is created through naturalism. Composition highlights objects on stage in such a way that forces the audience's eye toward it. Mood, or atmosphere, anticipates the emotional aspects of the play and the audience's reactions to them.
Lighting Qualities
Color, optics, lenses, lighting and projection equipment, reflection, refraction and absorption create certain qualities and forms of light. The intensity of light defines how strong the source of light is being emitted. There are different forms of intensity regarding stage lighting. This includes illumination, which is the amount of light striking a surface, brightness and visibility.
Lighting the Stage and Objects on Stage
Lighting affects forms. It enables the human eye to identify the size, shape and position of objects on the stage. The distribution of light, therefore, can bring softness to the stage's outer edges, create harder and more defined edges, or produce or eliminate shadows. It can also create depth. Stage lighting fixtures, which create fixed forms of lighting (such as a spotlight) can be used to distribute light and create forms. Image projectors are light fixtures that are often used to create a limitless amount of lighting possibilities for the stage.
Direction and Movement
The most important aspect of stage lighting involves direction or movement. Lighting can be placed at any direction, depending on how it will affect objects on stage. Low front lighting, high lighting, multiple lighting sources or lighting that is positioned in strategic places will all affect the mood and naturalism on stage. Reflection is also a form of direction. The stage floor can reflect light, thus creating a source of illumination. This is certainly true of other objects that can reflect light. Therefore, objects become a part of the lighting design on stage.
The movement is defined by the intensity, color, form and direction. It also includes light that can move physically and rapidly over time, such as a search light, moving projections and mirrored balls. Movement can have an impact on naturalistic lighting. For instance, light can be shifted imperceptibly to affect the movement of time, such as a day to night. Since the 1980s, automated lighting fixtures move light physically from one point of the stage to the other, as well as change color or effect wheels at a rapid pace. This has enabled stage lighting designers to change and combine various effects of intensity, form, distribution, color and movement with greater freedom and complexity.
