Household lamps can create mood lighting on the stage.
Mood lighting sets the tone for an onstage scene and helps the audience and performers connect emotionally with the material that is being presented. Whether you are lighting a drama, comedy, musical performance or even a lecture, mood lighting can enhance the performance in subtle ways. Mood lighting functions by casting shadows and highlighting certain areas of the stage and performers, which focuses the audience's attention and supports the emotional content of the scene or section.
Practicals
Practicals are light fixtures that are placed onstage and also act as scenic elements. Lamps, candles, and any scenery or props that include light elements are considered practicals. Create a romantic mood by lighting a scene with onstage lamps and electric candles. If you want to use real candles, make sure you contact your local fire marshal to go over regulations for live flame onstage. You may need to enhance your practicals with a dim glow from overhead stage lights. Place the lamps close to where actors will be delivering meaningful dialog so the audience members can see facial expressions clearly, and make sure all lamps are adequately shaded to prevent glare. Mood lighting for more sultry scenes might include an internally lit jukebox or other scenic elements that glow from within.
Footlights
Classic theaters used to have a line of footlights across the edge of the stage between the performers and the audience. These were used to fill in shadows cast by spotlights, but footlights can also be used as mood lighting, either on their own or in combination with other lights, to create a spooky or mysterious feel. Low-angle lights from the front will cast the performers' eyes into shadow, and using powerful lights can cast full-body shadows on a backdrop, so the performers' shadows seem to loom behind them. Color your footlights to enhance the mood. Use red for spooky scenes, blue or purple for mysterious scenes, or orange for a more sultry firelight effect.
Side Lighting
Use side booms or "light ladders" to light your performers from the sides. This technique is used frequently in dance performances because the shadows cast by side lighting help create a more three-dimensional look onstage. Use colored side lights from a single side to create a "moody" look, or cast them from both sides to achieve more thorough stage coverage, but add gobos (cut steel or glass patterns) into the lights to break up the light with shadows. Use leaf gobos and blue color filters for nighttime soft mood lighting, or try soft-focused abstract patterns and warm color filters for a mellow mood.
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