Which witch play did you design sick lights for? Which lights were witch lights?
So I assisted with lights on a student production about the witch trials.
I say assisted because a student was expected to do the lights with no knowledge or training whatsoever so those few days I was their teacher and mentor.
The best bit was when I "broke" my rule. As a rule of thumb do not, ever, use green lights, they are either ugly or too dark. This is a rule for people who are learning and once you know and understand the rule you can, and should, break it.
Green lights will make performers look ill. Humans have this weird evolutionary quirk where people who look ill make us feel subtly uneasy. We can use this to hotwire the brain into feeling really uncomfortable about what it sees onstage. But if you use it in a romantic magical forest scene it's gonna be shit. (use blue instead)
So we get to the dramatic climax of the play, the protagonist and her mother have been convicted of witchcraft, and are to be hanged. The woman who accused them of witchcraft is praying to god, (I can't remember the prayer but it was a very mundane prayer you'd find in a protestant community)
So what do we do to light this scene, the two women hanging and spasming upstage while the "innocent" prays downstage?
We use a warm tungsten top spot on the downstage prayer creating sharp and stretching shadows across her face, creating a gaunt looking human face with the texture, the warmth of the light and sincerity of the prayer contrasted by the uncanny valley shadows and the hanging women, lit in sickly green back lighting so they are silhouettes in the scene.
It was badass.
That green is affectionately known as piss green by techs
