Painting with UV paint is not like painting with scenic paints. You must think of it as painting with light instead of paint.

• Notes
  • Paint used by Professionals is usually Rosco Clear Color Paints.
  • Paint can be watered down an still is quite effective.
  • The use of light sensitive paint is very helpful when one needs to separate areas such as night and day.
  • Textural differences between UV paint and scenic paint can give away the “surprise” UV paint creates.
    • Solution: Hide texture upon texture to create an illusion
• When you apply UV paint you should do it with incandescent lights and fluorescent lights off, UV lights on. This is obvious when you are painting with clear paint.
• The more paint you layer the more intense or “punch” it will have.
• UV backdrops and scenery can be used in conjunction with normal light fixtures as long as the normal fixtures are not lighting the UV elements and washing out the UV light. Scenery must be accommodated for the light which is being thrown onstage.
• Types of UV Paint
  • Wildfire invisible
  • Rosco Clear Color
    • Both are moderately intense when lit with UV light
• Wildfire Visible
  • Very intense and appears to glow well
• Rosco worked better for professionals when diluted
• Other types of paint that are not specifically UV paint do work. According to the pro’s at the seminar the paint needs to have the right amount of Nanameters in order to glow.
• It is possible to make your own UV paint but in the long run it is not cost effective.
• Actors can wear UV makeup
• Types of UV Light Fixtures
  • Wildfire Lights were considered as a good light source by the panel but one panel member claimed he was able to cover a large stage with one Altman fixture.
  • Light Effect Types
    • Completely invisible: Going from a blank canvas under normal light to a Huge mural under UV light on the same canvas
    • Dual Image: Normal paint with invisible fluorescent paint over the top. On a canvas under normal light you can have a picture of a sand colored dessert and under UV light the dessert transforms into a Mountainous blue mural deep in Antartica ß—- SWEET
    • Single Image: A single picture enhanced by UV light
    • 3D: Audience members wear 3D glasses, warm colors are enhanced and pop out and cool colors recede.

Sadly the session was not everything that we had believed it would be. It was geared to students and professionals who had never done projections before. UB, while we may not be the leaders in the use of projections, have created and used them successfully before.

Following the session my fellow USITT goers and myself went to the airport and flew home. This entire trip has been an eye opening experience and helped me to see just how large and important every part of our industry is. I am hoping to return to USITT next year and learn even more about our highly technical world.

So Long, Farewell!

Today (addendum: April 3rd) was our last day in Kansas City (rather last few hours after waking up).

I only did one thing today, I took one last trip to the Young Designer’s Forum. I went through the beautiful exhibits one more time. This time I really took my time looking through every single exhibit as slowly and as carefully as possible, being that there were a fourth of the people in the tiny room than there were last time.

The work was truly beautiful; from the mask work, to the scene artists, to the costume designers, to the scene designers. There is truly a huge amount of young competition out there for me, and I have a lot to live up to.

After this we began our long journey home, and here I am now. Sitting happily in my bed blogging.

So peace ya’ll update this tomorrow.

Today (addendum: April 2nd) was a slightly slower day than the rest, although there wasn’t any less information to absorb.

I started my day with a fantastic seminar by the Jennifer Tipton. She is one of the most famous lighting designers of all time, and has no formal training. She began her life as a dancer and through that fell in love with light. She has lit many shows on Broadway, and probably more than she can remember over all the rest of the country.

As I have never taken a lighting class, her session was basically a crash course in lighting for me. She taught us all about the dynamics of light and how speeding up or slowing down a transition can have any entirely different mood feel. She also taught me a whole lot about the angles of light, and how they’re incredibly important. For instance front light, with no back light can really flatten a person out, and down light alone will put someone in shadows, and make the floor more important, but if you add a shin splitter (named because of the fact that dancer’s split their shins on it because of location) you can light both the person and the keep them isolated in a circle on the floor.

This also helped me grasp what lighting can do to a costume (my field). A different lighting effect or color can truly change a whole outfit, which is why the lighting and costume designer need to work so closely together.

After this I went to the Young Designer’s Forum where I saw work of many grad (and a few very, very talented undergrads) from all over the country. This really helped me decide on my top four grad schools (You can never start looking too early right?): University of Missouri at Kansas City, North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Texas at Austin, and The Conservatory at Webster.

Peace kids.

Lastly, I’m attaching a time-line of lighting fixtures of the past.

Theater Lighting Before Electricity

A Time-line

• Lighting cues seem to have been written into Greek plays – the festivals played from sunup to sunset, and many of the lines refer to times of day.
• 1545:
Sabastiano Serlio — colored light liquids in bottles (red wine, saffron (yellow), ammonium chloride in a copper vessel (blue).
Brightly-polished barber basin and a round bottle as a lens
o 3 qualities of light: distribution, intensity, color defined
• 1550:
Leone de Somi – full illumination for happy scenes, but tragedy much darker (candles, crude oil lamps, torches, and cressets (hanging lamps).
Stagehands walked around and snipped wicks, the audience was lit
Candles were of tallow and fat
• 1638:
Nicola Sabbatini – writes book on theatre – suggests system of dimmers lowering metal cylinders over the candles
Giacomo da Vignola – ideal lighting angle is along the diagonal of a cube
(1930’s – Stanley McCandless writes it in book)
• 1783:
Candles ruled the day till the invention in 1783 in France of the kerosene lamp with adjustable wick
o Followed closely with a glass chimney – could make individual float lights
Used for 100 years
• 1791:
Illuminating gas produced in quantity – William Murdock – each building could produce its own
However, gas required constant attention and wasn’t easy to control
• 1803:
Limelight
Invented by Henry Drummond – heating a piece of lime with a flame of oxygen and hydrogen (for a followspot or to indicate sunlight). A green-ish tint.
o Was used as the first spotlight in Paris Opera houses
• 1845:
Drury Lane Theatre is the first to use gas in England)
• 1809:
Electric Arc — discovered by Sir Humphry Davy (or here) — took 90 years to be fully accepted.
• 1816:
First fully gas lighted theatre — Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia
Greater control of and more brightness (colorsilk cloth or woven cotton).
Increased heat and many fires caused, and had gas smell and green-ish tint.
• 1878-1898:
Henry Irving (and click here) (England) initiated lighting rehearsals, transparent lacquers of colored class to limelight with electricity to incandescents, footlights of different colors and broken into sections, and wanted to dim the house lights
• 1841:
First incandescent lamp patent – Edison – not practical
• 1846:
The first electric carbon arcs used as spotlights at the Paris opera – inefficient — not a serious threat to limelight
• 1879:
The Jablachkoff candle – the first useful light bulb – “electric candle” – used at Paris Hippodrome – a carbon arc (invented 40-50 years earlier, but limelight was too ingrained, even well into the 1920’s.
The first practical electric spotlight
• 1881:
Savoy Theatre in England – the first completely electric theatre