Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I received a
Speaker 1: request via Twitter, and remember you can reach out to
Speaker 1: this show by tweeting two Text Stuff H s W.
Speaker 1: And this tweet came from c t B. That is
Speaker 1: a Charlie Tango Bravo. The message said, I was recently
Speaker 1: looking up league lights and I wondered about lighting for
Speaker 1: recording TV and movies. You touched on it some in
Speaker 1: your recent Green Screen podcast. Would you have a podcast
Speaker 1: about TV movie lighting? You'd get to explain best Boy
Speaker 1: in Gaffer. I've actually talked about best Boy and Gaffer
Speaker 1: on another episode. I think I did a full episode
Speaker 1: about the different roles on a movie set. But we'll
Speaker 1: get to those again because they are relevant to this
Speaker 1: and CTB. I absolutely will do more than one episode
Speaker 1: on this topic. It's actually gonna require us to go
Speaker 1: back quite a ways to stagecraft and stage lighting to
Speaker 1: really understand how lighting has played a critical role in
Speaker 1: the way we present drama, comedy, and various entertainments. And
Speaker 1: so this episode, or actually episodes will be a little
Speaker 1: different from my typical episodes. I could just explain how
Speaker 1: these lights work from a technological point of view, but
Speaker 1: first that wouldn't take a terribly long time. It would
Speaker 1: be pretty short and sweet, and moreover, I think it
Speaker 1: misses the more interesting point, which is how artists leverage
Speaker 1: technology to create specific effects. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: difference between talking about how paint is made and how
Speaker 1: a master artist can take that paint and create a
Speaker 1: stunning piece of art. We're going to look at not
Speaker 1: just the science, but the art behind lighting. With film, television,
Speaker 1: or digital cameras, lighting is absolutely critical if you want
Speaker 1: your shot to look good. It's only with the careful
Speaker 1: coordination of camera and lighting departments that a shot can
Speaker 1: really look great. You could have an Oscar worthy performance
Speaker 1: going on, but without good lighting, no one will be
Speaker 1: able to see it. Moreover, lighting is an important component
Speaker 1: that contributes to the overall effect a director wishes to create.
Speaker 1: Great lighting can make a scene more intimate or harsh,
Speaker 1: or mysterious or scary. Precise control over lighting allows storytellers
Speaker 1: to shape a scene in a way that can better
Speaker 1: evoke the reaction they want out of their audiences. Great
Speaker 1: lighting can really enhance a scene, and terrible lighting can
Speaker 1: take away from it. Typically, really good lighting is the
Speaker 1: type of effect most of us don't really notice, but
Speaker 1: bad lighting can be downright distracting. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of science and art to this, and there always has been.
Speaker 1: Now let us remind ourselves why lighting is important in
Speaker 1: the first place, which is super obvious, but we have
Speaker 1: to start somewhere. Our sense of vision is dependent upon
Speaker 1: receptors in our eyes picking up light that is reflecting
Speaker 1: off of various things. When light hits an object, one
Speaker 1: of a few things can happen, or a couple or several.
Speaker 1: A transparent object will allow much of the light to
Speaker 1: pass through it, and this is what we would call transmission.
Speaker 1: The object is transmitting light from one side to the other.
Speaker 1: So a pane of glass that transmits light an object
Speaker 1: might absorb the light, in which case the light energy
Speaker 1: will convert to heat. And the darker an object is,
Speaker 1: the more light it's absorbing. Something like vanta black that's
Speaker 1: a material that's it up of carbon nanotubes can absorb
Speaker 1: up to nine nine point nine six percent of light,
Speaker 1: or the object might reflect light the light the object
Speaker 1: reflects might be across the visible spectrum like a mirror,
Speaker 1: so you get all the visible light, or it might
Speaker 1: only reflect a bandwidth of frequencies that correspond to particular
Speaker 1: colors of light. A red ball is reflecting light that
Speaker 1: largely falls in the four point three times ten to
Speaker 1: the fourteen power hurts frequency that corresponds to red light.
Speaker 1: That's just an example. By manipulating light that hits a scene,
Speaker 1: whether that scene is on stage or captured in a camera,
Speaker 1: you can affect how that scene looks. Again, that falls
Speaker 1: into common sense. But my goal is to explain why
Speaker 1: this works, not just how it works. And we'll do
Speaker 1: this by talking a lot about history, because you guys
Speaker 1: know I love to tackle topics way, and let's start
Speaker 1: with theater. I'd say that the art form of theater
Speaker 1: grew naturally from the older art of storytelling. By the
Speaker 1: time we get to the ancient Greeks, we see cities
Speaker 1: building structures specifically to act as performance spaces, and these
Speaker 1: were all outdoors. So the lighting came from natural sources
Speaker 1: that you know, being the sun, and performed in the daytime.
Speaker 1: But it didn't boil down to as simple an idea
Speaker 1: as let's build a big old space that people can
Speaker 1: sit in and watch their afternoon stories. A lot more
Speaker 1: planning went into it than that. The location choice needed
Speaker 1: to take into account when performances would take place, as
Speaker 1: the sun will be in different parts of the sky,
Speaker 1: depending not just on the time of day but the season.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to build a theater that was designed
Speaker 1: for late afternoon performances if the orientation would mean that
Speaker 1: the audience is going to be squinting into the setting
Speaker 1: sun for the full performance, that wouldn't be ideal. The
Speaker 1: typical Greek theater had a stage near the base of
Speaker 1: a hill, and the slope of the hill served as
Speaker 1: the seating area for the audience with wooden or stone benches,
Speaker 1: and then they could look down upon the action of
Speaker 1: the stage. There are some studies that suggest the specific
Speaker 1: orientation of theaters took into account not just the angle
Speaker 1: of the sunlight, but also astronomical elements. Because the Greeks
Speaker 1: would dedicate these theaters to specific gods in their religion,
Speaker 1: and typically they only held performances during times of the
Speaker 1: year where they were having holidays devoted to those specific gods.
Speaker 1: The Romans followed suit, though they also made some additions,
Speaker 1: such as building awnings to cover the audience so that
Speaker 1: they didn't get too hot under the sun. As for
Speaker 1: the actors, well, they had to suffer for their art. Again,
Speaker 1: the choice was usually made to lay out the theater
Speaker 1: in such a way so that the sunlight could illuminate
Speaker 1: the stage while keeping the audience at least somewhat protected.
Speaker 1: But there was really no other means of controlling the light,
Speaker 1: so you were really just saying I needed to be
Speaker 1: bright enough for the audience to see what's going on.
Speaker 1: Everything else is going to be left to their imagination.
Speaker 1: During the Middle Ages, most theatrical displays, typically in the
Speaker 1: form of stuff like miracle plays, were performed outdoors. It
Speaker 1: might be at the entrance of a church or in
Speaker 1: a courtyard. A few plays were performed inside churches, which
Speaker 1: typically allowed light in through massive windows and supplemented that
Speaker 1: with candles that to provide, you know, more light, but
Speaker 1: there's no real record of any sort of special stage
Speaker 1: lighting even in Shakespeare's time. In the early Renaissance in England,
Speaker 1: most shows were still performed outdoors. The globe theater was
Speaker 1: an open air structure that relied on light from the
Speaker 1: sun to service stage lighting. The construction of theaters like
Speaker 1: the Globe typically meant sunlight would hit the stage while
Speaker 1: keeping those who were seated in the galleries relatively shaded.
Speaker 1: These were seats that were under an awning themselves, and
Speaker 1: then you had a large area in the middle where
Speaker 1: the groundlings could stand that was uncovered, and so if
Speaker 1: you were a groundling, you might be a little exposed
Speaker 1: to the sunlight. This meant that the stage crew, again
Speaker 1: had no real way of changing the lighting or even
Speaker 1: controlling it at all, and that any scenes that referenced
Speaker 1: stuff like the dead of night or massive storms relied
Speaker 1: entirely upon the imagination of the audience. They had to
Speaker 1: imagine that the scene they were looking at in full
Speaker 1: daylight was taking place at night. It also meant that
Speaker 1: shows had to conclude well before sunset because it would
Speaker 1: get too dark to see what was happening. Plus, in
Speaker 1: London there was specifically a curfew, and the Globe Theater
Speaker 1: was outside the London City gates at that time, so
Speaker 1: if you were caught out after the gates closed, you'd
Speaker 1: be kind of stuck. But there were also a few
Speaker 1: indoor theaters around this time, including the Blackfriars Theater, which
Speaker 1: was used primarily as a winter theater, since English winters
Speaker 1: were a bit too harsh for the outdoor venues. At
Speaker 1: one point, historians suspected that the shift to indoor theaters
Speaker 1: might be linked to changes in Shakespeare's own style, but
Speaker 1: this has since been largely contested, so it's not a
Speaker 1: done deal. Also, it took a lot of focus for
Speaker 1: me not to turn this into an entire episode of
Speaker 1: the technology of Shakespeare's stage, because I focused on Shakespearean
Speaker 1: studies when I was in college and I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit obsessed. So I'll try to stay on track. But
Speaker 1: if you guys ever want to hear about the full
Speaker 1: technical breakdown of what Shakespeare's stage was like, let me know,
Speaker 1: because it is kind of cool. Theaters like the Blackfriars
Speaker 1: would use candles, and some would also use torches to
Speaker 1: provide stage lighting. A couple of decades before Shakespeare was
Speaker 1: even born, there was an Italian architect named Sebastiano Serlio,
Speaker 1: and he proposed that one could put flasks, you know,
Speaker 1: glass bottles filled with different colored liquids, like an amber
Speaker 1: liquid or a blue liquid, and put that in front
Speaker 1: of a candle to produce new effects in lighting. So
Speaker 1: the stage, as you might say, was set, but the
Speaker 1: effects were surely modest. In effect. They relied still very
Speaker 1: heavily on the audience using their imagination in order to
Speaker 1: affect the brightness of the lights directed at the stage.
Speaker 1: You had special stage crew who had the job of
Speaker 1: going around and cutting back candle wicks to reduce the
Speaker 1: amount of flame that could provide light. And it was
Speaker 1: said that if you were really, really good at this,
Speaker 1: you could sneak on stage without really drawing any focus,
Speaker 1: and you could get there and cut it back, and
Speaker 1: just the effect of being able to cut back the
Speaker 1: light would be enough to draw applause from the audience.
Speaker 1: They were so appreciative of the skill it took, particularly
Speaker 1: if your sense of timing was really good, so that
Speaker 1: you were cutting back the wick just as a line
Speaker 1: was coming about a shift in the light. Audiences really
Speaker 1: seemed to appreciate that. These crew members were typically young boys,
Speaker 1: and they became known as snuff boys, which sounds pretty terrifying,
Speaker 1: but no, we're talking about snuffing candles, and really we're
Speaker 1: talking about trimming them back. The candles at that time
Speaker 1: were made largely from tallow. Tallow candles are made from
Speaker 1: animal fat, so these candles were not the cleanest. They
Speaker 1: were a bit smelly, they were very smoky. You could
Speaker 1: get bees wax candles. They were more rare, they're more expensive,
Speaker 1: but they also produced brighter light and much less smoke.
Speaker 1: So gradually, over time theaters began to incorporate more bees
Speaker 1: wax candles. Uh. It was hard to do because they
Speaker 1: were so expensive early on, but gradually people got better
Speaker 1: at making them and the price began to go down,
Speaker 1: and that's really when you started to see used in theaters.
Speaker 1: They would also start to create these little mirrored chambers,
Speaker 1: these little cubbies in which the candles could sit and
Speaker 1: the mirrors would reflect and redirect light. So rather than
Speaker 1: just having a candle lighting out in all directions, by
Speaker 1: using the mirrors, you could redirect all that light into
Speaker 1: a more singular direction, and this helped tremendously. The typical
Speaker 1: indoor theater would have a row of candles or later
Speaker 1: oil lamps at the end of the stage, each housed
Speaker 1: in a little structure lined with reflected material like polished metal,
Speaker 1: and that way the audience wouldn't see the flame they're
Speaker 1: seeing the back of the chamber, but the light from
Speaker 1: the chamber would be bright enough to illuminate the action
Speaker 1: on stage, and these became known as footlights. They were
Speaker 1: at the foot of the stage. They were at the
Speaker 1: level of the actor's feet. That's footlights. It also became
Speaker 1: a common thing to install similar lights off to either
Speaker 1: side of the stage, out of the audience's view. This
Speaker 1: is in an area that is called the wings. Some
Speaker 1: theaters would also hide lights behind the proscenium arch. Now
Speaker 1: from the audience perspective, the procenium arch hangs above the
Speaker 1: front part of the stage. Typically there's a part of
Speaker 1: the stage that extends beyond the procenium line. This part
Speaker 1: is called the apron or sometimes the thrust of the stage,
Speaker 1: But then you've got the proscenium. Typically this is as
Speaker 1: far down as actors would walk in a in a
Speaker 1: normal production, we call it down stage in theater. Behind
Speaker 1: this is the main part of the stage. Then further
Speaker 1: back towards the back wall of the stage that's upstage,
Speaker 1: so the procenium arch lights would provide illumination for more
Speaker 1: of the upstage area. You would have lights mounted behind
Speaker 1: the procenium arch um itself, and that would provide a
Speaker 1: little more light so that the upstage area would be
Speaker 1: just as well lit as the downstage area. The transition
Speaker 1: from candles to oil lamps was also a really important one,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about candles and oil lamps. I did
Speaker 1: an episode not too long ago in which I described
Speaker 1: the wicking effect that candles have. The wick serves as
Speaker 1: a place where a flame can consume the fuel, which
Speaker 1: is not the wick. The fuel is actually the wax
Speaker 1: of the candle, or, in the case of a lamp,
Speaker 1: the oil from a lamp. So in tallow candles, the
Speaker 1: flame is feeding off the fuel of animal fat, and
Speaker 1: as it does so, it begins to draw more of
Speaker 1: that melted fat up into the wick, which then burns
Speaker 1: off and continues this effect of wicking away liquid fuel
Speaker 1: into the wick itself. With bees wax candles, the fuel
Speaker 1: is wax made from beeswax. With oil lamps, it's oil,
Speaker 1: and as the flame consumes the fuel, it raws moore
Speaker 1: fuel into it into the wick. That is, the wick
Speaker 1: itself also burns, It turns more or less into carbon,
Speaker 1: and it has to be trimmed back on occasion. That's
Speaker 1: when those snuff boys come back into play. A Swiss
Speaker 1: chemist named Amy Argonde designed an oil lamp that theaters
Speaker 1: would quickly adopt to replace the candles they had been
Speaker 1: relying upon. Oil lamps provide brighter, steadier light, particularly if
Speaker 1: the oil lamps used a glass chimney, which would protect
Speaker 1: the flame from breezes, and stage crew could also use
Speaker 1: different colors of glass for those chimneys. Typically the choices
Speaker 1: would fall more or less into clear glass, so just
Speaker 1: transparent glass or green glass. Some theaters out there their
Speaker 1: oil lamps with a green glass chimney that could be
Speaker 1: lowered onto a lamp with a lever, which would be
Speaker 1: in effect of dimming the lights. So let's say you've
Speaker 1: got a scene in your play that goes from daytime tonight. Well,
Speaker 1: by moving this lever, you could lower those chimneys into place.
Speaker 1: The lamps would remain lit, but that green glass would
Speaker 1: block some of the light, and you could have your
Speaker 1: nighttime scene and would still be visible to the audience,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't be as bright. This was used for
Speaker 1: transitions between scenes as well, or for really particular dramatic effects.
Speaker 1: But this was not a subtle change, right. There wasn't
Speaker 1: like a subtle dimming. It was essentially a move from
Speaker 1: light to dark, and for a long time this was
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of lighting effects in theater. Things would change
Speaker 1: again in eighteen sixteen with a theater called the Chestnut
Speaker 1: Street Theater, which is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'll explain more
Speaker 1: after we take this short break. Theaters had begun to
Speaker 1: switch from candles to oil lamps in the late eighteenth
Speaker 1: century around seventy about forty years later, things would change again.
Speaker 1: The Chestnut Street Theater in Philadelphia made a switch to
Speaker 1: gas lighting. Now the theater wasn't telling arriving audiences that
Speaker 1: they had just seen and really enjoyed a full show.
Speaker 1: Not that kind of gas lighting. This was using actual
Speaker 1: gas lights to illuminate a stage. Now, I've never done
Speaker 1: a full episode on gaslights and how they came to be,
Speaker 1: So we'll do a quick rundown here, and I'll have
Speaker 1: to do a full treatment sometime later. Scientists like Yawn
Speaker 1: Baptiste von Helmont had learned how to extract gas from
Speaker 1: coal as early as sixteen o nine, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: really any practical way to make use of it. People
Speaker 1: did figure out that the coal gas was flammable and
Speaker 1: it became kind of a party trick, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: really something that people could harness effectively. Nearly two hundred
Speaker 1: years after one yawn described the extraction process of coal gas,
Speaker 1: another yawn, This one yawn, Peter ming Eliers, a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Louvain, rigged up a lighting system
Speaker 1: that used the gas as fuel. This was in seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty three. In the seventeen nineties, a posh nob named
Speaker 1: Archibald Cochrane frequently referred to as being quota unquote eccentric,
Speaker 1: which really just means super duper weird, but rich enough
Speaker 1: so we don't talk about how he's weird anyway. He
Speaker 1: used gas to light his home. Cochrane's fellow countryman, a
Speaker 1: Scott named William Murdoch, would truly establish gas lighting as
Speaker 1: a means to illuminate spaces, both indoors and outdoors. William
Speaker 1: Murdoch was an engineer who was working for a foundry
Speaker 1: in England in the seventeen nineties. He reckoned that you
Speaker 1: could transport coal gas through pipes from a center of
Speaker 1: production to wherever you wanted to light a lamp. So
Speaker 1: by building out a network of pipes and lamps. You
Speaker 1: could supply numerous lamp with fuel from a centralized production
Speaker 1: source using coal gas. The lamps would have a nozzle
Speaker 1: through which gas could flow, and igniting the flow of
Speaker 1: gas would provide light. You would have a steady flame,
Speaker 1: or that flame could then be used to heat another
Speaker 1: element called a mantle, which would glow when it reached
Speaker 1: a high enough temperature. This is called incandescence, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about more a little bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: Keeping the gas under pressure would ensure a steady flow
Speaker 1: of fuel to the lamps, and before long, cities like
Speaker 1: Paris and London began to install gas lines and gas
Speaker 1: lamps and gas generators, not a electrical generator running on gas,
Speaker 1: but rather a specific device that extracts coal gas from coal.
Speaker 1: This theater in Philadelphia, the Chestnut Street Theater, chose gas
Speaker 1: lights to illuminate both the interior of the theater in
Speaker 1: general and the stage in particular. The company chose to
Speaker 1: install a as generator in its own building, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't dependent upon some off site source, and the method
Speaker 1: for providing light had changed, but otherwise stuff was still
Speaker 1: pretty similar to the older methods using oil lamps and candles.
Speaker 1: It's just that the gas lamps were replacing the oil
Speaker 1: lamps in footlights and the wings and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The following year a couple of theaters in London would
Speaker 1: follow suit. Now, one of the big advantages of gas
Speaker 1: lamps was that an operator could control the level of
Speaker 1: lighting from a centralized location. You didn't have to have
Speaker 1: people at each station in order to man specific lights.
Speaker 1: By opening or closing a valve that fed into, say,
Speaker 1: all the footlights, for example, an operator could bring lights
Speaker 1: up or down smoothly and without having to go near
Speaker 1: the stage and the lights and the auditorium itself could
Speaker 1: be brought down, which would increase the focus on the
Speaker 1: stage and allow the audience to become more immersed in
Speaker 1: the story. This would be the first time where you
Speaker 1: could easily control all the lights in the theater and
Speaker 1: be able to really direct the focus. Over time, the
Speaker 1: control methods would get more complex, with regulators and valves
Speaker 1: that allowed the operator to make more subtle changes to
Speaker 1: specific lights or banks of lights. This gave theatrical companies
Speaker 1: the ability to provide just the right amount of light
Speaker 1: to a specific part of the stage. The system of
Speaker 1: valves became a type of circuit, only one that facilitates
Speaker 1: the flow of gas to specific lamps rather than electricity.
Speaker 1: The operator would use a gas table to refer to
Speaker 1: which valves needed adjusting to produce specific effects, and this
Speaker 1: would be a predecessor to the electrical switchboards that you
Speaker 1: would find in operator booths in theaters today. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the switchboards in our next episode. But while
Speaker 1: this approach allowed for better lighting, it was also hotter
Speaker 1: than candles or oil lamps. You've got a lot more
Speaker 1: heat produced by this, and it also burned up a
Speaker 1: lot of oxygen, which could be a problem if say
Speaker 1: you're a diva in an opera and you're about to
Speaker 1: burst into an aria, you could actually be in danger
Speaker 1: of fainting. So there were some drawbacks. Now we're coming
Speaker 1: up on one of my favorite names in tech history,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the person, but the name is phenomenal. That
Speaker 1: name is Sir Goldsworthy Gurney. What a name anyway. Goldie
Speaker 1: was an English scientist. He was an architect, he was
Speaker 1: an inventor. You could call him a renaissance man, though
Speaker 1: he was post Renaissance. He was born in seventeen three.
Speaker 1: But among the many things he worked on in his
Speaker 1: life was a device that could supply a stream of
Speaker 1: oxy hydrogen gas. That's just a gas made up of
Speaker 1: oxygen and hydrogen, and he could supply that to a
Speaker 1: nozzle that could support a very high flame, and by
Speaker 1: controlling the flow of that gas, he can control how
Speaker 1: hot that flame burned, and they could get really hot.
Speaker 1: So the gas mixture is really flammable, and it puts
Speaker 1: out a tremendous amount of heat, which not only sustains
Speaker 1: the burning process. You know, once you've lit it, it
Speaker 1: remains lit as long as fuel and oxidizer is going
Speaker 1: to it, but it can also be used to heat
Speaker 1: some other element. Now, in this particular case, we're talking
Speaker 1: about hydrogen being the fuel, oxygen is the oxidizer, and
Speaker 1: then you add heat and you've got those three points
Speaker 1: of a triangle you need to support fire. Now. Enter
Speaker 1: Thomas Drummond who paired this oxy hydrogen blowpipe which could
Speaker 1: be used for lots of different stuff, and used a
Speaker 1: block of material made out of calcium oxide, which is
Speaker 1: also known as lime. When the very hot flame from
Speaker 1: this oxy hydrogen blow hype hit the calcium oxide, this
Speaker 1: calcium oxide or lime would begin to emit an extremely
Speaker 1: bright white light. The chemical reasons for this get complicated
Speaker 1: because it includes both incandescence and possibly cando luminescence. But
Speaker 1: let's take a stab at it. I mentioned incandescence earlier.
Speaker 1: What is it, Well, it refers to light produced through heat.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen a blacksmith working with metal and
Speaker 1: they pull the metal out of a forage and it's glowing,
Speaker 1: you see it's got that kind of reddish orange glow
Speaker 1: to it. Or if you look at the old filament lightbulbs,
Speaker 1: you'll see that there's a little strip that's suspended in
Speaker 1: the middle of that bulb, and that's what's giving off
Speaker 1: the light when you flip a switch. In both cases
Speaker 1: we're looking at incandescence. The key to that light comes
Speaker 1: in at the atomic level. Heat is a form of energy.
Speaker 1: By pouring energy into atoms, you start to push the
Speaker 1: electra ron's that orbit their nuclei out into higher energy shells.
Speaker 1: They're being pushed further out from their area of orbit,
Speaker 1: and this means that they're occupying higher energy states than
Speaker 1: they normally would. Now, the electrons naturally want to gravitate
Speaker 1: back to their home energy states, and when they do
Speaker 1: pop back down, they have to release the excess energy
Speaker 1: they've absorbed. They can't occupy those lower energy shells with
Speaker 1: excess energy. They have to get rid of it. They
Speaker 1: do this by releasing energy in the form of heat
Speaker 1: and light. Technically, objects are actually glowing all the time.
Speaker 1: We're all in condessing all the time. It's just we're
Speaker 1: doing so at a light frequency that we humans cannot see.
Speaker 1: Any object that is above absolute zero in temperature is
Speaker 1: emitting light in the infrared spectrum. And if we could
Speaker 1: see infrared, everything around us would be glowing at some
Speaker 1: level of intensity. But by pouring energy into atoms, we
Speaker 1: can boost the electrons so that they release photons in
Speaker 1: shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies than you find an infrared light.
Speaker 1: And that's where we get to the visible light spectrum.
Speaker 1: If you remember your roy g BIV, you know red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Speaker 1: You know that red represents the lowest energy state of
Speaker 1: visible light. So the glowing red orange metal the Blacksmith
Speaker 1: handles represents a relatively low energy state for those atoms
Speaker 1: compared to something that might be glowing with a brilliant
Speaker 1: white light from say limelight incandescence goes from red to
Speaker 1: orange to yellow to white. By the way, you don't
Speaker 1: heat something up until it glows blue. But what about
Speaker 1: candle luminescence? An article in issue seven of Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the Society for Analytical Chemistry defines it this way. Quote
Speaker 1: Cando luminescence the term used to describe the luminescent emission
Speaker 1: from certain solid materials placed at the edge of a
Speaker 1: hydrogen diffusion flame. The emission is stimulated in the surface
Speaker 1: layers of the solid matrix, such as calcium oxide, only
Speaker 1: if they contain small amounts of impurity metal ions activators.
Speaker 1: This phenomenon was observed frequently in early blowpipe analyzes and
Speaker 1: has been studied sporadically since eighteen forty two. End quote. Moreover,
Speaker 1: candle luminescence describes a phenomenon in which a material brought
Speaker 1: to temperature with a flame is going to glow at
Speaker 1: a greater intensity than we would normally expect if it
Speaker 1: were brought to that temperature by other means. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, you've got a material that might glow red
Speaker 1: if you were to heat it up, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like to seven hundred degrees celsius in a forge, but
Speaker 1: by doing so with a flame rather than with coals
Speaker 1: or something, the object actually glows yell low, not red well.
Speaker 1: This would be an example of candle luminescence. The scientific
Speaker 1: explanation for why this happens is still a matter of
Speaker 1: some debate, and I should add there are some physicists
Speaker 1: who are skeptical that the lime and lime lights was
Speaker 1: an example of candle luminescence at all, and it may
Speaker 1: have just been merely incandescence. What we can definitely say
Speaker 1: is that a very hot flame would heat a piece
Speaker 1: of lime to the point that that lime would give
Speaker 1: off a brilliant white light. By focusing this light through
Speaker 1: a lens, Drummond could create a really powerful spotlight, which
Speaker 1: was useful for stage lighting, sometimes used as a follow light,
Speaker 1: where you have a light following a specific actor as
Speaker 1: they walk back and forth across the stage. And thus
Speaker 1: we get the term limelight, and that term would become
Speaker 1: a saying to describe being the center of focus or attention.
Speaker 1: You know you're in the limelight. Theaters first began to
Speaker 1: use limelight for spotlights around eighteen thirty seven. Gradually, these
Speaker 1: sorts of lights began to replace footlights and could be
Speaker 1: used for other effects such as simulating sunlight or moonlight
Speaker 1: when paired with colors of panes of glass like think
Speaker 1: of like stained glass, but maybe not so dramatic. Putting
Speaker 1: that in front of a limelight would allow you to
Speaker 1: cast a specific color of light onto the stage, and
Speaker 1: operating a limelight was no small feat. Each light had
Speaker 1: to have its own operator, not just to direct the
Speaker 1: light so that you could follow the action appropriately, but
Speaker 1: also because the operator would need to reposition that block
Speaker 1: of calcium oxide. It would get burned down by that flame,
Speaker 1: and if you just left it there, eventually that light
Speaker 1: would start to dim because too much of the calcium
Speaker 1: oxide would have been burned away. So you would have
Speaker 1: to reposition that block of calcium oxide using you know,
Speaker 1: actual UH tools on the light itself. You didn't have
Speaker 1: to region there, you would have burned your hand off. Also,
Speaker 1: the operator would have to make sure that the tanks
Speaker 1: of hydrogen and oxygen still had gas in them and
Speaker 1: then would have to replace those canisters whenever the fuel
Speaker 1: ran out. I imagine it also had to be a
Speaker 1: really warm occupation because those lights put out so much heat.
Speaker 1: Gas lights would end up having a relatively short run
Speaker 1: in theaters, however, as engineers were making steps towards the
Speaker 1: next big development and lighting, which would be electrical lamps.
Speaker 1: The earliest electrical lights for the theater were carbon arc lamps,
Speaker 1: which I talked about not too long ago on this show.
Speaker 1: The invention of the carbon arc lamp dates back to
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, but it would take nearly a
Speaker 1: century to really find its use in theaters. A man
Speaker 1: named Sir Humphrey Davy invented the carbon arc lamp, and
Speaker 1: it was the first practical electrical light, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: practical for every kind of use anyway. A carbon arc
Speaker 1: lamp has a pair of carbon electrodes attached to the
Speaker 1: positive and negative terminals of a battery or a dynamo
Speaker 1: or generator, whatever it's connected to. You apply a voltage
Speaker 1: to these electrodes, you create an electrical potential between them.
Speaker 1: You have a negative electrode and a positive electrode, and
Speaker 1: you can think of it as creating a build up
Speaker 1: of electrons on the negative electrode side and an absence
Speaker 1: of electrons, or rather holes for electrons to inhabit on
Speaker 1: the positive electrode side, and we know that opposite charges attract,
Speaker 1: so you can think of it as the electrons on
Speaker 1: the negative side really want to be on the positive side.
Speaker 1: When you bring these two electrodes into contact with each other,
Speaker 1: you complete a circuit, and that strikes the arc, an
Speaker 1: arc of electricity as electrons flow from the negative to
Speaker 1: the positive, although we say that the current flows in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction thanks to Benjamin Franklin. The carbon in
Speaker 1: the electrodes, specifically on the negative side, begins to ionize
Speaker 1: and vaporize, and it becomes a plasma or ionized gas.
Speaker 1: This gas can conduct electricity just as a solid wire would,
Speaker 1: so that arc of electricity can be sustained. Pulling the
Speaker 1: electrodes apart slowly creates a space between the two, and
Speaker 1: electricity can still pass through this plasma. The light produced
Speaker 1: is very bright as long as those electrodes are the
Speaker 1: proper distance from each other. If they're too far apart,
Speaker 1: the arc will start to stutter. It can't sustain itself.
Speaker 1: If they're too close together, then the arc won't be
Speaker 1: bright enough. So you have to have that distance just
Speaker 1: right between the two electrodes. But when it is just right,
Speaker 1: that light is incredibly bright. The electrodes do eventually wear
Speaker 1: down as they ionize. The negative electrode specifically, it starts
Speaker 1: to get thinner and thinner, and then the positive one
Speaker 1: starts to get thicker and thicker, so they have to
Speaker 1: be replaced occasionally. There are some other drawbacks to carbon
Speaker 1: arc lamps. That include is the fact that they give
Speaker 1: off ultra violet light as well as visible light, so
Speaker 1: you can actually get a sunburn from a carbon arc lamp. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: putting a glass diffuser mitigates this because glass can transmit
Speaker 1: visible light and also block ultra violet light. Carbon arc
Speaker 1: lamps also create a sort of buzzing sound when they're
Speaker 1: in operation, and if you position the electrodes too far apart,
Speaker 1: they start to sputter. Like I said, So, they're a
Speaker 1: little delicate and they can be loud, but they were
Speaker 1: also brighter and cheaper than operating gas lamps, and by
Speaker 1: the time theaters began to use them in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, they had improved significantly from Sir Humphreys's original design.
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little bit more about that when we
Speaker 1: come back after this quick break. The first theatrical use
Speaker 1: of electrical lighting that I can find dates back to
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six. The Paris Opera installed carbon arc lamps
Speaker 1: for spotlights, but at this stage, nearly forty years after
Speaker 1: their invention, the arc lamps are still too inefficient to
Speaker 1: be considered a solid alternative to the gas powered lime lights.
Speaker 1: It would take another thirty three years before theater started
Speaker 1: to consider the carbon arc light a viable upgrade from
Speaker 1: lime lights. The Paris Opera did continue to pioneer the
Speaker 1: use of electric lighting, however. They installed a rainbow projector,
Speaker 1: and they installed a lighting effect for a fountain as
Speaker 1: well as a carbon arc spotlight with a housing that
Speaker 1: was lined with reflectors and lens that had a shutter
Speaker 1: on it, so the operator could adjust how open the
Speaker 1: shutter was and be able to adjust the amount of
Speaker 1: light coming out to hit the stage to create different effects.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, there was an actor in England named
Speaker 1: Henry Irving who became the manager of the Lyceum theater
Speaker 1: in England, and this was in eighteen seventies, and he
Speaker 1: introduced some concepts that today we considered standard, but they
Speaker 1: were revolutionary at the time that he became manager of
Speaker 1: the Lyceum. There's a term in theater called MSS on scene,
Speaker 1: which refers to the visual arrangement of a scene. Originally
Speaker 1: it was just used for theater, but we also used
Speaker 1: this in television and film, and it's the art of
Speaker 1: arranging all the components, including the actors, the set pieces,
Speaker 1: the props, and the lighting to create the visuals that
Speaker 1: you want the picture the director wants the audience to see.
Speaker 1: And for centuries, lighting was more about just making this
Speaker 1: stuff visible to the audience. It wasn't really part of
Speaker 1: designing the scene itself. Irving was one of the artists
Speaker 1: who would change that. Irving still relied on gas powered lights.
Speaker 1: He thought the electrical lights were vulgar and that they
Speaker 1: couldn't provide the effects he wanted, and he refused to
Speaker 1: use them. He would have stage technicians place pains of
Speaker 1: colored glass in front of limelights to create different lighting effects,
Speaker 1: and he would regularly dim the lights and the audience
Speaker 1: before a performance. And while that had been done in
Speaker 1: the past, he was the one who really made it
Speaker 1: a practice, and according to multiple sources, he was the
Speaker 1: first manager to arrange for lighting rehearsals so that the
Speaker 1: technicians would actually learn how to change effects on Q
Speaker 1: This was a rehearsal mainly for the technicians, not for
Speaker 1: the actors. It blows my mind that it took that
Speaker 1: long before this became a common practice. Today, we think
Speaker 1: of this as part of tech week for a show. Typically,
Speaker 1: tech week is torture for actors because it usually involves
Speaker 1: having to stop and restart scenes repeatedly so that the
Speaker 1: tech crew can mark down their cues appropriately in practice
Speaker 1: those those changes. Uh. And for actors this is terrible.
Speaker 1: Also for directors, this is terrible because we actors tend
Speaker 1: to get bored and if we're not paying attention, it
Speaker 1: slows everything down. Uh, it's a nightmare. But that's for
Speaker 1: a totally different podcast. Critics at the time weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: big fans of Irving's textual approach to his material, but
Speaker 1: they did have a nearly universal approval for his technical
Speaker 1: process his lighting techniques. In particular, when Irving's theater company
Speaker 1: went on tour in America, he actually brought along all
Speaker 1: his technicians and lighting effects, which they would install in
Speaker 1: the theaters that were hosting them along the tour. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to compromise on his vision. Other artists would
Speaker 1: build upon Irving's dedication to incorporating lighting in scene design.
Speaker 1: In eight there was a Swiss architect named Adolph Appia
Speaker 1: who pioneered important work regarding lighting and performance space. He
Speaker 1: wanted light to be an intrinsic part of creating a scene,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to incorporate a sense of depth in
Speaker 1: the theater. He also wanted to incorporate the manipulation of
Speaker 1: light into scenes, particularly with the operas of Wagner, so
Speaker 1: that the audience would see stuff that aligns with what
Speaker 1: they are hearing. And these are all things that seem
Speaker 1: common sense to us now that through the dynamic manipulation
Speaker 1: of light you can create specific effects and really punctuate
Speaker 1: the overall intent of a scene. But it was only
Speaker 1: towards the turn of the twentieth century and the proliferation
Speaker 1: of electricity that we really gained the fine tuning ability
Speaker 1: to make such quick, precise adjustments. I mentioned a bit
Speaker 1: ago that carbon arc lights would get an upgrade that
Speaker 1: made them more suitable for theatrical applications, and that upgrade
Speaker 1: came in eighteen seventy six, although it wasn't really used
Speaker 1: in theaters for a couple of years. A Russian engineer
Speaker 1: named pavel Ya Blotchkov came up with a neat way
Speaker 1: to build a carbon arc lamp without having to manually
Speaker 1: separate those electrodes to create the arc. Some called it
Speaker 1: the electric candle, and others called it the blutch CoV light,
Speaker 1: and it worked on the same basic principle as a
Speaker 1: standard carbon arc lamp, but in this case, the two
Speaker 1: electrodes would be held apart from each other by a
Speaker 1: mass of something. There be kind of a gap between
Speaker 1: the two that's held there by a solid material, typically
Speaker 1: something like plaster, and then connecting the two electrodes would
Speaker 1: be a very thin conductive wire. So when you supplied
Speaker 1: electricity to this lamp, a current would run from one
Speaker 1: electrode through that thin wire to the other electrode. The
Speaker 1: thin wire would very quickly heat up and break, but
Speaker 1: it would also spark the arc between the two electrodes,
Speaker 1: so the conductive wires gone. It's sort of like a
Speaker 1: filament in an incandescent bulb burning out. The arc would
Speaker 1: stay lit until the electrodes were spent, or the material
Speaker 1: between the electrodes had melted to a point that the
Speaker 1: two electrodes got closer together and they weren't generating enough light.
Speaker 1: As a result, they typically could stay lit for about
Speaker 1: two hours. Once extinguished, you would actually have to replace
Speaker 1: the electrodes in the candle, the plaster and the conductive
Speaker 1: wire would have to be replaced as well, and then
Speaker 1: you could light it again. But it proved to be
Speaker 1: a step up from gas lighting. The first theater to
Speaker 1: install these electric candles was again in Paris, this time
Speaker 1: the Hippodrome. After your Blotchkov had demonstrated the efficiency and
Speaker 1: the power of these electric candles during the Paris Exhibition
Speaker 1: of eight One of the big draws pun intended of
Speaker 1: this particular technology is that it didn't require as much
Speaker 1: electricity as other carbon arc lamps. It was more efficient,
Speaker 1: so you could actually light way more of these candles
Speaker 1: than you would with classic carbon arc lamps, which would
Speaker 1: typically require a generator for every single lamp, and that
Speaker 1: got not just expensive but strategically difficult to handle, like
Speaker 1: where do you put all these things when you're building
Speaker 1: out a theater space, So this was a big improvement.
Speaker 1: In eight eight one, the Savoy Theater in London became
Speaker 1: the first to convert entirely to electricity, no longer using
Speaker 1: gas lighting at all. Some of these theaters were embracing
Speaker 1: carbon arc lamps right as a man named Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: was leading a team to produce what would become the
Speaker 1: arc lamps death sentence, and I'm talking about the incandescent lightbulb.
Speaker 1: This is the old style of light bulb that uses
Speaker 1: electricity to heat up a filament to the point that
Speaker 1: that filament begins to incandesce. Edison did not invent the lightbulb,
Speaker 1: nor did his team invent the light bulb, but his
Speaker 1: team was able to improve upon the earlier invention of
Speaker 1: the lightbulb to create something that was more practical, that
Speaker 1: could burn brighter and longer than earlier attempts. Edison's original
Speaker 1: lightbulbs used a carbon filament, but it incandessed fairly well.
Speaker 1: It just didn't last very long. It burnt through too quickly.
Speaker 1: It would vaporize and break and then your your light
Speaker 1: is dead. And that happens with all incandescent light bulbs.
Speaker 1: The filament heats up, it vaporizes, that vapor deposits on
Speaker 1: the inside of the bulb, and meanwhile the filament gets
Speaker 1: thinner and thinner until it eventually breaks, and then the
Speaker 1: light extinguishes. So in nineteen o four you had a
Speaker 1: pair of engineers named fran Johannemann and Alexander Yost who
Speaker 1: improved on the design by replacing the carbon filament with
Speaker 1: a filament made out of tungsten that required less electricity
Speaker 1: to incandesse, and it also lasted longer. Then others began
Speaker 1: to fill bulbs with an inert gas that further extended
Speaker 1: the life of the bulbs, and other people found improvements
Speaker 1: on the way to weave tungsten so that you've got
Speaker 1: a more efficient burn of a light bulb. But this
Speaker 1: isn't an episode about the evolution of light bulb. I
Speaker 1: actually did an episode about that already, So let's get
Speaker 1: back to theater. In eight two, the Munich Exposition in
Speaker 1: Germany included a theater that was lit entirely by incandescent bulbs.
Speaker 1: The reaction was really positive, and that year saw a
Speaker 1: lot of theaters around the world start to install electrical
Speaker 1: lighting in their buildings and use the incandescent bulbs rather
Speaker 1: than the arc lamps. This transition would also mean that
Speaker 1: the gas tables of the previous century we're making way
Speaker 1: to electric switchboards, and that allowed a single operator to
Speaker 1: turn specific lights on or off with various banks of switches,
Speaker 1: and an entire bank of lights could be wired to
Speaker 1: a master switch, which allowed a single operator to turn
Speaker 1: on numerous lights all at once. So instead of turning
Speaker 1: individual switches on, so that light number one, light number two,
Speaker 1: light number three, light number four, and so on all
Speaker 1: come on, you wire them through a master switch. You
Speaker 1: flip that one on. All the individuals, which is are
Speaker 1: also flipped on. All the lights come on as a result,
Speaker 1: it was a brilliant way to really simplify things. In
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six, brothers John and Anton Kleigel founded the
Speaker 1: Kleigel Brothers Universal Electric Stage Lighting Company. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk a lot more about them in the next
Speaker 1: episode on this topic because their lights would be used
Speaker 1: not just for the theatrical stage, but also in cinema,
Speaker 1: which was an art form that was just beginning to
Speaker 1: take shape at the end of the nineteenth century. The
Speaker 1: original request for this episode was to talk about Kleague lights,
Speaker 1: and they take their name from this company. The brothers
Speaker 1: were born in Bavaria, but they had immigrated to the
Speaker 1: United States in eighty eight, and then in the following
Speaker 1: decade they founded their company. They were both in their
Speaker 1: twenties when they did this, and they would produce the
Speaker 1: first product they called a Kleague light in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: This was a carbon arc flood light and it would
Speaker 1: find its use in indoor filmmaking projects. It is also
Speaker 1: not the only product they made they called a Kleague light,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk more about them in the next episode.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o two, Mariano Fortuny created a new method
Speaker 1: of lighting stages. So rather than aiming lights directly at
Speaker 1: the stage, he set up silks of different colors near
Speaker 1: the stage. He would direct the light at the silks,
Speaker 1: and the silks reflected light back onto the stage different
Speaker 1: colors of light, and reportedly the results created a more
Speaker 1: natural lighting for the stage. Theaters began to install incandescent spotlights.
Speaker 1: They were replacing the limelights and carbon arc lamps with
Speaker 1: one thousand what bulbs, and this started around nineteen thirteen. Wattage,
Speaker 1: by the way, describes the rate of energy transfer, and
Speaker 1: it can be thought of as a way of expressing
Speaker 1: energy per unit of time. Now for incandescent bulbs, higher
Speaker 1: wattages essentially correlate with brighter bulbs, so a sixty what
Speaker 1: bulb is brighter than a forty what bulb? And so on.
Speaker 1: In the theater they were using one thousand what bulbs
Speaker 1: By night, some theaters were beginning to experiment with motorized
Speaker 1: color wheels, and a color wheel is a wheel with
Speaker 1: different panels of different colors of transparent material like glass.
Speaker 1: So think of a wheel kind of like a pie,
Speaker 1: and each slice of the pie is a different color.
Speaker 1: An operator would position the wheel in front of a
Speaker 1: light so that the light is shining through a single panel,
Speaker 1: and then if you rotate the wheel, you move a
Speaker 1: different color of glass or whatever in front of this light.
Speaker 1: Attaching a color wheel to a motor allowed a single
Speaker 1: operator to manipulate the color of light hitting the stage
Speaker 1: and meant you didn't have to swap out pains or
Speaker 1: later gels for specific lights as much. And a gel,
Speaker 1: which i'll talk about a little bit more in our
Speaker 1: next episode, is just a transparent piece of film that
Speaker 1: has a color or sometimes a pattern or sometimes both
Speaker 1: on it, and it fits in front of a light.
Speaker 1: So a lighting technician would outfit a light with a
Speaker 1: specific gel and it would stay there. You typically don't
Speaker 1: swap gels out in the middle of performance, but you're
Speaker 1: doing it to create specific effects. So light designers use
Speaker 1: combinations of colors to create a more natural or dramatic light.
Speaker 1: Some lights might have blue gels to help simulate a
Speaker 1: nighttime scene, for example, So you might have three or
Speaker 1: four lights that have blue gels and you turn those
Speaker 1: on for your nighttime scene and you turn them off
Speaker 1: for all the other ones. Other lights might use orange
Speaker 1: or yellow or red gels to simulate sunlight and so on. Well,
Speaker 1: we still have a ton of stuff to cover on
Speaker 1: this topic, and I think the thing I most want
Speaker 1: to communicate again is that this is a great way
Speaker 1: for us to look at technology and how it plays
Speaker 1: an important part in creativity and expression. So it's not
Speaker 1: enough that we understand how the technology works, but also
Speaker 1: how to best put that technology to use to create
Speaker 1: It's something that's more than just illumination. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we will continue down the stage lighting path a little
Speaker 1: further so that we can get up to modern day,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to switch over to how lights
Speaker 1: were used in filmmaking, which is gonna mean that we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to backtrack a little bit, because all of
Speaker 1: this is really happening at the same time, but I
Speaker 1: think it's easier to follow if we stick with one
Speaker 1: path before we jump onto the other. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you guys have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me on Twitter like Charlie
Speaker 1: Tango Bravo did, and that handle once again is text
Speaker 1: stuff H s W. I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.