“In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.” — Henri Matisse To learn something about yourself, try this: Take a crayon or some other temporary marker and write the letter “B” on your forehead. (As tempting as it might be to grab the Sharpie in your Anvil case instead of walking to the production office to find a more temporary marker, don’t!) Now look in the mirror and notice whether or not you can read the letter you wrote. If you can, then you’re outwardly focused; if not, then you’re inwardly focused.
Here’s anther exercise to learn more about yourself. To see if you’re more focused on lighting, video, or audio, take out one of your business cards and set it down in front of you. If the word “lighting” appears in the title, then you’re more focused on lighting; if the word “video” appears in the title, then you’re more focused on video. If you can’t read, then chances are you’re in audio.
I was recently programming the lights at a show where there was a lot of video. The video content was apparently produced in a secret undisclosed location outside of cell phone range and without Internet contact because it suddenly appeared out of thin air at the last minute. Luckily, we had a whole hour before doors to change the color palette for the entire show in order to match — or at least avoid clashing with — the colors in the video content.
Maybe it was the cloud of confusion surrounding the front of house or the beads of sweat running down my forehead and into my eyes, but I had a very difficult time getting the colors I wanted. It was particularly hard to get a deeply saturated red, which puzzled me because I was using some incandescent automated fixtures with CYM color mixing. I know there is lots of red in the spectrum of an incandescent lamp, but the best I could get was an orange-red. Having the video red side-by-side with the automated lighting red revealed a lot about color matching and color mixing systems.
Fast forward to InfoComm, the largely video-oriented trade show that was held in Las Vegas in June. I was standing in front of the Digital Projections Inc. booth admiring the colors in the video being plastered over every square inch of their stand. They had large venue projectors, medium venue projectors, and smallish projectors, and each one produced magnificent reds, many variations of blue, and even brown colors. Why, I wondered, can a projector produce all of these colors and subtle variations in color when, after all, a video projector is nothing more than a light source with color filters?
A few minutes later I went inside for the presentation. The president of the company, Mike Levy, addressed the group that had gathered to watch the demonstration. My mind is still five minutes back, wondering about color and projection. One of the first things that Levy said was that their new projector, the Titan Pro II, is actually lower in brightness but higher in contrast than the previous model, yet it appears to be much brighter. He said it was better in a controlled environment, meaning one in which the ambient light is very low, like in a movie theatre.
Any lighting pro worth her pay doesn’t need a video expert to tell her that her lights look better in a dark room than in a not-so-dark room. That’s a battle we fight on a regular basis. In order to get the best performance from our lights, we don our ambient light armor, mount our trusty FOH steed, and charge against every stray footcandle dragon we encounter. But the exit signs, stair tread lights, and sometimes even the house lights can get the better of us, washing out our saturated colors. Our response it typically to spec brighter and brighter lights.
But people with “lighting” in the title of their business cards can learn a lot from people with “video” in the title of their business cards. For example, how is it that one device called a video projector can produce better color than another device called a luminaire? Both have a light source, often very similar in nature, both have color filters, also very similar in nature, yet the outcome, to my eye, is not the same.
I asked Mr. Levy that question after his presentation. After a bit of discussion, he said something that struck me. I’m not sure if it’s proprietary to DPI, but they use what he called a “bit-spreading” technique, meaning that they project colors on top of each other but not with the same duty cycle. For example, to make a certain color, like purple, they would project red for a fraction of a second and then blue. By controlling the duration of the red and blue projection, they can craft just the right color.
Seeing is a whole body experience. The cones in our eyes gather the light energy reflected from a surface or emitted from a source, but our brains process the information. Seeing is a physiological response, not simply a physical response. We believe the colors we “see” because our brains tell us so. There are a lot of conditions that affect the color we finally “see.” Our perception of color is conditioned by the environment (ambient light, surrounding colors, the intensity of the light, etc). It’s affected not only by the tools we use, but also how we use them.
As video continues to gain in popularity in the performance arts, it’s imperative that the lighting community learns to select the right tools for the job and use them correctly. For some of us, this is an ongoing process and we learn from every project we undertake. And as Henri Matisse pointed out, we don’t have to know exactly what we are doing as long as we can control the outcome.
Richard Cadena is the editor of PLSN. He can be reached at rcadena@plsn.com.
