Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I 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 this episode is
Speaker 1: a continuation of my previous episode about lighting for stage
Speaker 1: and screen. These shows are in response to a request
Speaker 1: to talk about Kleig lights, which I had just managed
Speaker 1: to mention towards the end of my previous episode with
Speaker 1: the introduction of the brothers Kleigel, who started a stage
Speaker 1: theater lighting company in eight nine six. So for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to stick with stage lighting and we'll bring
Speaker 1: that up to the modern era before we switch gears
Speaker 1: to talk about lights that engineers developed specifically for the
Speaker 1: purposes of film and television, because they largely built old
Speaker 1: upon the lighting technology that was made for the stage.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, lighting was always important and that you
Speaker 1: want your audience to be able to see what's going on.
Speaker 1: But for centuries, lighting was almost entirely about visibility and
Speaker 1: not artistic expression. That really began to change around the
Speaker 1: very end of the nineteenth century and into the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Part of that shift was due to advances
Speaker 1: in technology. It was only through the transition to gas
Speaker 1: lights and then electricity where directors really had the capability
Speaker 1: to make more precise, fine tuned adjustments, to create new
Speaker 1: effects and moods, and to really make lighting part of
Speaker 1: a scene. By the early twentieth century, many theaters around
Speaker 1: the world were embracing electric lights figuratively. If you did
Speaker 1: it literally, you would get burned and or electrocuted. Typically,
Speaker 1: these theaters were installing incandescent bulbs in the foot lights
Speaker 1: and in the border lights and the strip lights. These
Speaker 1: are lights that are all around the stage that project
Speaker 1: light onto the stage itself, and that was just for
Speaker 1: the general stage lighting. Some would still use the older
Speaker 1: electric arc lights, the carbon arc lights for floodlights and spotlights,
Speaker 1: while other theaters would switch to extremely bright and very
Speaker 1: hot incandescent bulb lights, and these would be in the
Speaker 1: one thousand what range or more. Theaters began to phase
Speaker 1: out carbon arc lights and then the even older lime lights.
Speaker 1: Those were lights that used and oxygen hydrogen gas to
Speaker 1: heat up a piece of lime so that it would glow.
Speaker 1: They would get rid of those in favor of incandescent spotlights.
Speaker 1: And it's hard for us to get a full appreciation
Speaker 1: of how these changes allowed for new artistic expression, because
Speaker 1: now we live in an era where that is commonplace,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for us to remember that this had
Speaker 1: a pro found effect on audiences at the time, because again,
Speaker 1: we're used to it. But one example of how transformative
Speaker 1: these techniques would be involves an actor and theater manager
Speaker 1: named David Belasco. Like Sir Henry Irving, who I spoke
Speaker 1: about in our last episode, he was known for producing
Speaker 1: plays that didn't always meet with critical approval from a
Speaker 1: textual standpoint, but they were technically magnificent. Blasco was similarly
Speaker 1: known for his theatricality, if not for his contributions to
Speaker 1: high drama. Unlike Irving, however, Belasco didn't issue electric lights.
Speaker 1: Irving only wanted gas lights. Belasco went with electric lights.
Speaker 1: Belasco would end up producing a staging of the play
Speaker 1: Madam Butterfly, and in this production, he used a white
Speaker 1: backdrop at the back of the stage and he could
Speaker 1: light that in different ways to simulate various effects. In
Speaker 1: Madam Butterfly that included a fourteen minute sequence that featured
Speaker 1: a simulation of the passing of time by lighting the
Speaker 1: backdrop to mimic a sunset the night and then the
Speaker 1: subsequent sun rise. And one of the people who saw
Speaker 1: this production was the great Giacomo Antonio Domenica Michelle Secondo
Speaker 1: Maria Puccini, or Puccini for short. He's an Italian composer
Speaker 1: famous for his operas. Puccini didn't understand very much English,
Speaker 1: but he was so impressed by the artistic display he
Speaker 1: saw in that theater that he decided to adapt the
Speaker 1: story into an opera Madama Butterfly. And presumably without the
Speaker 1: theatricality to help convey the emotion and intent of those scenes,
Speaker 1: that never would have happened, we would not have that opera.
Speaker 1: Blasco's fame largely centered on his sense of the theatric
Speaker 1: and he was known for incorporating many complicated technical processes
Speaker 1: to create effects in the theater. His name on a
Speaker 1: production was enough to sell tickets, even as drama critics
Speaker 1: sometimes lamented that the material he chose wasn't necessarily elevated.
Speaker 1: But there's no doubt that his work really pushed lighting
Speaker 1: into a new level as far as theatrical presentations are concerned.
Speaker 1: One thing I mentioned in the previous episode was the
Speaker 1: use of gels or color filters to create different effects.
Speaker 1: These are transparent sheets of a colored material and they
Speaker 1: fit in front of a lens of a light source.
Speaker 1: So light comes out hits this filter and then you
Speaker 1: get uh color of light coming out of the end
Speaker 1: of your of your light source. And the colors can
Speaker 1: simulate different types of natural light or they can create
Speaker 1: other effects. And we had come a long way from
Speaker 1: using bottles filled with different colors of liquid in front
Speaker 1: of candles that had transitioned to pains of stained glass
Speaker 1: and then later lacquer gelatine. But what is gelatine. Well,
Speaker 1: gelatine is a tasteless protein produced from collagen, which is
Speaker 1: a connective tissue found in animals, like in our skin,
Speaker 1: the ligaments, all that kind of stuff. There's lots of
Speaker 1: collagen there. So this is a structural protein that helps
Speaker 1: hold stuff like well, us together. In Star Wars, they
Speaker 1: talk about how the force binds us. But when we're
Speaker 1: talking about animal bodies, we really shouldn't talk about the forest.
Speaker 1: We should talk about collagen, and that collagen is the
Speaker 1: base material for gelatin, which we use in all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff, including and primarily in food products. If you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed a bowl of jello or a gummy bear, chances
Speaker 1: are you were scarfing down gelatin. Frequently, producers will take
Speaker 1: the byproducts from other processes, like from a slaughter house.
Speaker 1: So in a way, you can think of gelatine as
Speaker 1: a method for us to make sure we use more
Speaker 1: of the animals were slaughtering for stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: meat production or leather or whatnot, So you can think
Speaker 1: of it as avoiding waste. To produce gelatine, you gotta
Speaker 1: take animal parts like the bones and skins of stuff
Speaker 1: like pigs and cows. Those tend to be the animals
Speaker 1: that we use to make gelatine. And then you've got
Speaker 1: to boil this stuff for a really long time, typically
Speaker 1: in the presence of a weak acid, and as it boils,
Speaker 1: the collagen breaks down into gelatine. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: filtration and purification that has to follow before you can
Speaker 1: get to the industrial gelatine that we produced today, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, that's the process anyway. One of the other
Speaker 1: things people use gelatine for was to make this transparent
Speaker 1: film that could be dyed different colors. The film would
Speaker 1: be used as the color filter for theatrical lights, and
Speaker 1: because they were made from gelatine, the industry began to
Speaker 1: refer to them as gels, and you can find gels
Speaker 1: and theater and TV film productions just regular video productions.
Speaker 1: But these days they are not made out of gelatine,
Speaker 1: and there's some good reasons for that. Gelatine, while cheap
Speaker 1: and relatively easy to produce, isn't the most resilient material.
Speaker 1: It could dissolve if it got wet, and it didn't
Speaker 1: stand up to the intense heat generated by lights for
Speaker 1: very long, so you would have to replace those gels
Speaker 1: fairly frequently. Now it doesn't really melt, but it does
Speaker 1: char and it also gets super brittle as it gets heated,
Speaker 1: so you would only get a little use out of
Speaker 1: one before it would break and require a replacement. Still,
Speaker 1: the development of gels gave directors and lighting designers more options,
Speaker 1: and they would be used in the industry up through
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies, even after engineers developed other solutions.
Speaker 1: Another lighting accessory that emerged was the gobo. A gobo
Speaker 1: is a screen that has designs cut into it to
Speaker 1: create a special lighting effect. For example, you might have
Speaker 1: a screen that has the shape of leaves cut into
Speaker 1: that screen, and when you place that in front of
Speaker 1: a light, the screen allows light to pass through the
Speaker 1: cutout shape and that gets projected onto the stage. That
Speaker 1: is where Gobo Fraggle's name comes from, the Gobo. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, we started seeing some of the earliest
Speaker 1: textbooks dedicated to lighting, such as Theodore Fuchs. Stage lighting
Speaker 1: seems pretty straightforward. It was around this time that some
Speaker 1: theaters began to incorporate a special kind of lens in
Speaker 1: theater lights to provide a more focused beam. The lens
Speaker 1: is called the Frenelle lens. That's spelled f r E
Speaker 1: s in e L. But it's named after Augustine Jean Frenell.
Speaker 1: Now he didn't actually invent this particular lens. That honor
Speaker 1: goes to George Louis le Clerc de Boeufon, who proposed
Speaker 1: this in seventeen forty eight. But what the heck is
Speaker 1: a Frenel lens? Well, first, we need to remember that
Speaker 1: the purpose of any lens is to redirect light. By
Speaker 1: creating a lens with a specific curvature, you can bend
Speaker 1: light coming from one side of the lens so that
Speaker 1: it exits the other side of the lens in a
Speaker 1: specific way. Eyeglasses do this. Eyeglasses bend incoming light, so
Speaker 1: that ends up hitting the retina in the back of
Speaker 1: the eye correctly to correct for some you know issue
Speaker 1: with the shape of the cornea, and the cornea is
Speaker 1: either directing light too far forward or too far behind
Speaker 1: the retina, which messes with our focus and it creates
Speaker 1: either far sidedness or near sightedness. Now, good old Georgie
Speaker 1: Boy proposed that you can make a lens by cutting
Speaker 1: concentric rings of grooves on one side of a pane
Speaker 1: of glass, and that would end up using less glass
Speaker 1: than a conventional lens. Lenses tend to be you know,
Speaker 1: bulb bus They're actually named after lentils, So if you
Speaker 1: think of the shape of a lentil, that's why we
Speaker 1: call lenses lens. They were thought they look kind of
Speaker 1: like lentils. But that means that lens is particularly big
Speaker 1: ones for big, big lights get really heavy because you've
Speaker 1: got that thick glass to deal with. Well, George, he thought,
Speaker 1: what if we take a pane of glass and we
Speaker 1: cut grooves in it to redirect light, and we'll just
Speaker 1: make sure that each groove is positioned in such a
Speaker 1: way that as light hits the back of that lens,
Speaker 1: it gets redirected towards the center. And this was a
Speaker 1: really clever idea. Of the concentric circles act as refracting surfaces.
Speaker 1: They all bend those parallel light rays into a common
Speaker 1: focal length, and otherwise that would require a much thicker
Speaker 1: traditional lens. Each ring of this lens focuses the light
Speaker 1: hitting that section towards the center, and for Nell's contribution
Speaker 1: was to actually take this type of lens and install
Speaker 1: them in lighthouses to produce that powerful focused beam rather
Speaker 1: than a more diffuse one. So if you ever think
Speaker 1: about what it looks like when you see the the
Speaker 1: beam of light emerging from a lighthouse, that's because the
Speaker 1: light is passing through Fennell lenses. The you of Frenelle
Speaker 1: lenses in theaters was so new in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties that that stage lighting textbook that I mentioned it
Speaker 1: from nineteen twenty six, it didn't even have an inclusion
Speaker 1: of Frenelle lenses in it, although they were starting to
Speaker 1: get used around that time, and while a few theaters
Speaker 1: were making use of the Frenelle lens. The popularity of
Speaker 1: it would really take off in the nineteen thirties. It
Speaker 1: significantly reduced the weight of the lights that were being used,
Speaker 1: and it also created a more concentrated beam that could
Speaker 1: be directed towards the precise location. So this was a
Speaker 1: big advancement in lighting now. In the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: a lighting designer named Stanley McCandless published a textbook on
Speaker 1: stage lighting, and this would be the beginning of many
Speaker 1: of his contributions to the greater knowledge and expertise on
Speaker 1: lighting techniques for the stage, and many referred to McCandless
Speaker 1: as the father of modern stage lighting, though at least
Speaker 1: some of the sources I have encountered also suggests that
Speaker 1: the those techniques really belonged to another era of theater,
Speaker 1: that in the modern era we're starting to see a
Speaker 1: move away from those techniques, and that it's probably a
Speaker 1: good thing. We always want to see art evolve. McCandless
Speaker 1: argued that stage lighting really serves four purposes visibility, form, naturalism,
Speaker 1: and mood. That is, any decision made by a lighting
Speaker 1: designer should be done with the goal of fulfilling at
Speaker 1: least one of those four functions. If the light serves
Speaker 1: no purpose belonging to one of those four categories, then
Speaker 1: it's a distraction it shouldn't be used. On top of that,
Speaker 1: McCandless was working on designs that relied on the technology
Speaker 1: of the time, which mostly were all about lights that
Speaker 1: were mounted on rigs that had to remain stationary. Now,
Speaker 1: these lights typically hang from rigs that are above the stage,
Speaker 1: often in front of the stage, and they might be
Speaker 1: masked from view of the audience or they might be
Speaker 1: in full view. The lights typically hang from a scaffold
Speaker 1: like structure called a box boom, not a boom box
Speaker 1: that's a different thing, and they're mounted in housings that
Speaker 1: have points of articulation. So during the rehearsal process, the
Speaker 1: lighting designer's crew will carefully hang and aim each light
Speaker 1: toward the stage per the designer's direction. And because a
Speaker 1: production might need to represent many different lighting moods, perhaps
Speaker 1: to simulate different environments and different times of day, the
Speaker 1: crew might have to hang lights close to each other
Speaker 1: and then repeat the process of aiming each one at
Speaker 1: this particular point on the stage many many times, and
Speaker 1: once the lights are all in position, they pretty much
Speaker 1: stay that way. For decades, there was really no way
Speaker 1: to redirect light in the middle of a show, with
Speaker 1: the exception of perhaps follow lights or spotlights, and those
Speaker 1: would require a human being to operate those manually. Instead,
Speaker 1: the tech crew would control which lights were on during
Speaker 1: any given scene using the switchboard, so lighting could change
Speaker 1: from one moment to the next, but the lights themselves
Speaker 1: would remain stuck in whatever position the crew had put
Speaker 1: them in. You wouldn't have lights move from one part
Speaker 1: of the stage to another, they would just be in
Speaker 1: that one static angle. By the way, a little side note,
Speaker 1: I used to do this for my high school. I
Speaker 1: was in a couple of shows back in high school
Speaker 1: shortly after the invention of theater, and I was also
Speaker 1: a scrawny little kid back in those days. And our
Speaker 1: main light rig our box boom was tucked away in
Speaker 1: a little kind of hidden chamber up above the first
Speaker 1: few rows the audience, and it was just big enough
Speaker 1: for a tiny little person like I was to crawl
Speaker 1: back there and position the lights. And when I was
Speaker 1: doing it, the work was really hot, it was stuffy,
Speaker 1: it was dusty, and it was hard. Plus I was
Speaker 1: perched on a tiny little ledge above a twenty ft
Speaker 1: drop or so down to the floor with no real
Speaker 1: way to secure myself. Good times. Mccannle would go on
Speaker 1: to publish many more textbooks on stage lighting, becoming the
Speaker 1: foremost authority in the field for many years. The basic
Speaker 1: principle of the McCandless method is to light each area
Speaker 1: of a stage where actors are going to perform with
Speaker 1: two lights from above and each at an angle of
Speaker 1: forty five degrees to the stage and on either side
Speaker 1: of the center of the performance area. This creates an
Speaker 1: effect that makes more shadows and enhances the sense of
Speaker 1: separation of the actors from the background, makes it more
Speaker 1: three dimensional, and that is better than just lighting actors
Speaker 1: from the front that tends to create a more flattening effect. Now,
Speaker 1: I promise we're nearly getting done with stage lighting. When
Speaker 1: we come back, i'll talk about a few more advances
Speaker 1: that would follow, and then we'll transition towards film and television.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take a quick break. Around ninety three,
Speaker 1: stage theaters begin and to use ellipsoidal lights. And this
Speaker 1: is the type of light that I had to work
Speaker 1: with when I was in high school. So what the
Speaker 1: heck is an ellipsoidal light. Well, an ellipsoid is a
Speaker 1: type of shape, and it's what you get if you
Speaker 1: have a sphere and then you deform that sphere. So
Speaker 1: imagine you've got an inflatable beach ball and you press
Speaker 1: down on it, the ball deforms, and now you've got
Speaker 1: yourself a type of ellipsoid. So an ellipsoid light has
Speaker 1: a bulb that sits in a reflector, and that reflector
Speaker 1: is ellipsoidal in shape. The reflector typically is made up
Speaker 1: of little panels of reflective material, though it can be smooth,
Speaker 1: and the whole purpose of this is to direct light
Speaker 1: out through the lens in a very focused, concentrated beam.
Speaker 1: And this is really effective when it comes to directing
Speaker 1: as much light that that bulb can put out as
Speaker 1: possible toward the stage. Around this time, the bulbs that
Speaker 1: were in use were largely in the one thousand, fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred and two thousand what range. And again those incandescent
Speaker 1: bulbs that we used to light our houses, those typically
Speaker 1: were in thirty forty five or sixty watts, So this
Speaker 1: is way way way brighter. Now. The Kleigel Brothers produced
Speaker 1: an ellipsoidal Cleague light that stage theaters used, and the
Speaker 1: Polo Grounds in New York purchased Cleague lights in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three for a production of Romance of the People,
Speaker 1: and that is one of the earliest, if not the
Speaker 1: earliest use of Cleague lights in the theater. Around the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, another advance would change lighting a bit, and
Speaker 1: this was the development of color filters made not out
Speaker 1: of gelatin but acetate. Acetate is a synthetic polymer, and
Speaker 1: the polymer is a long chain molecule. Acetate falls into
Speaker 1: the category of thermoplastics and it's used in lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: including glue, but it can also be used to make
Speaker 1: thin sheets of transparent material that can then be dyed
Speaker 1: and like jella, and it's super cheap to produce, so
Speaker 1: it became a standard in stage lighting around or so.
Speaker 1: But next on our list is an invention that would
Speaker 1: necessitate yet another shift in color filters, and that next
Speaker 1: big thing is the halogen light, which really started getting
Speaker 1: its use in the theater and film industries in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties. Now, if you're a bit rusty on
Speaker 1: your chemistry, the halogens are a group of chemically related
Speaker 1: elements There groups seventeen on the periodic table, and they
Speaker 1: include fluorine and chlorine and bromine and iodine and a
Speaker 1: couple of others. And the word halogen comes from too
Speaker 1: Greek roots, how which means salt and gen which means
Speaker 1: to generate or to produce. And yes, all these elements
Speaker 1: produce sodium salts. There's sodium chloride for example, that's table salt.
Speaker 1: They also have another property that makes them really useful
Speaker 1: at high temperatures. They can combine with tungsten vapor, and
Speaker 1: tungsten is the substance of choice to serve as the
Speaker 1: filament in incandescent bulbs. Now, the idea of using a
Speaker 1: halogen gas in this case it would be chlorine back
Speaker 1: in lamps that that dated all the way back to
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. Chlorine gas very dangerous stuff, by the way,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until General Electric patented technology in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, this time with iodine as the gas, that
Speaker 1: we started seeing these kind of lights go into production.
Speaker 1: Halogen bulbs are a bit different from incandescent bulbs in
Speaker 1: a few important ways. First, as we've covered, they contain
Speaker 1: a halogen gas rather than the inert gases in incandescent bulbs,
Speaker 1: they are also much smaller and the bulb part the
Speaker 1: what would normally be glass with an incandescent bulb is
Speaker 1: actually a little envelope that's made out of quartz, and
Speaker 1: it has to be made out of something other than
Speaker 1: glass because halogen lights give off enough heat to melt glass.
Speaker 1: Just as with an incandescent bulb, the tungsten filament inside
Speaker 1: to halogen lamp heats up through resistance and then incandescence,
Speaker 1: and it also begins to vaporize. Bits of tungsten actually
Speaker 1: evaporate off of that filament. But with halogen lights, the
Speaker 1: tungsten vapor combines with the halogen gas and at a
Speaker 1: high enough temperature and interesting reaction begins to occur. The
Speaker 1: gas will start to redeposit the vaporized tungsten onto the filament.
Speaker 1: Now with light bulbs incandescent light bulbs, you can actually
Speaker 1: see the deposits of the tungsten on the inside of
Speaker 1: the glass bulb. That's why they get dark after a
Speaker 1: light bulb burns out, like they had a little dark spot. Well,
Speaker 1: with halogen lights you actually get a recycling process. The
Speaker 1: vaporized tungsten is returned to the filament that actually extends
Speaker 1: the useful life of the bulb. Halogen lights will last
Speaker 1: much longer than incandescent lights of a you know, equivalent brightness,
Speaker 1: and you can run the lights at a higher wattage
Speaker 1: with halogen bulbs, So that also means you can produce
Speaker 1: more light as a result, and that is perfect certain
Speaker 1: applications like a car's headlights, or stage lights, or film
Speaker 1: and television production lights. But there was one problem. Halogen
Speaker 1: lights get so hot that you couldn't use acetate color
Speaker 1: filters on halogen lights because the acetate would just melt.
Speaker 1: So the industry shifted to more durable polymer based products,
Speaker 1: like a polyester based material or milar polycarbonate. Neither the
Speaker 1: acetate sheets nor these newer materials were related to gelatin,
Speaker 1: the original stuff that everyone used. But everyone kept on
Speaker 1: using the term gel to describe these color filters, so
Speaker 1: even though it was no longer even remotely gelatin, the
Speaker 1: name gel stuck. Another big innovation that plays an important
Speaker 1: role not just on stage and screen, but in our
Speaker 1: everyday lives is the dimmer switch. Now, for a long time,
Speaker 1: you pretty much had two choices when it came to
Speaker 1: your lights, they were either off or they were on,
Speaker 1: and when they were on, they were as bright as
Speaker 1: they could be until they burnt out and that was it.
Speaker 1: But the dimmer switch allows you to control the intensity
Speaker 1: of light, moving from gradations between wow, it sure is
Speaker 1: dark in here to uh, holy cats, that's a bright light.
Speaker 1: But how does a dimmer switch work Well, the earliest
Speaker 1: demmer switches worked on the principle of a variable resistor.
Speaker 1: So a resistor is an element in a circuit that
Speaker 1: resists the flow of electricity. It doesn't prevent electricity from flowing,
Speaker 1: but it does make it, you know, harder for current
Speaker 1: to flow through. If we think about it in an analogy,
Speaker 1: like in terms of friction. You can imagine something like
Speaker 1: a floor that has a very rough carpet on it,
Speaker 1: and it would be very hard for you to shuffle
Speaker 1: your suck footed feet across such a floor. And like friction,
Speaker 1: we see some of the energy that used to be
Speaker 1: in one form convert into heat. That heat is lost.
Speaker 1: So a variable resistor is a component that has an
Speaker 1: adjustable electrical resistance. You can change the amount of resistance there.
Speaker 1: Typically you would have a piece of resistive material, and
Speaker 1: you would have a static contact arm. That means it's stationary,
Speaker 1: it's not moving anywhere, and you would also have a
Speaker 1: movable contact arm. Now the stationary contact arm is connected
Speaker 1: to one end of this resistive material, and you know,
Speaker 1: because it's stationary can't move. The movable contact arm can
Speaker 1: slide along the length of this resistive material. You can
Speaker 1: make it very close to that first contact or you
Speaker 1: can make it further away. So if you create more
Speaker 1: distance between the two contact arms, that means the electricity
Speaker 1: has to move through this resistive material in order to
Speaker 1: complete the circuit, to go through the full circuit. But
Speaker 1: if you decrease the distance between the two contact arms,
Speaker 1: then the amount of resistance that the current has to
Speaker 1: deal with also decreases. This is a fairly elegant solution,
Speaker 1: though primitive. So, since the resistor converts some of the
Speaker 1: electrical energy into heat, we see a voltage drop in
Speaker 1: the circuit, and that means less energy is available to
Speaker 1: power the low on that circuit, which in our case
Speaker 1: is a lamp. So the reduced amount of energy means
Speaker 1: the lamp doesn't have the juice to put out a
Speaker 1: full blast of light, and you get less light. As
Speaker 1: a result, Modern dimmer switches are a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than this, and that requires a quick explanation of alternating current.
Speaker 1: So direct current is pretty easy to understand. You've got
Speaker 1: a circuit that acts kind of like a one way street.
Speaker 1: Electricity can go down the street, but it can't go
Speaker 1: back the way it came. One terminal is always negative,
Speaker 1: the other one is always positive. That is easy to understand.
Speaker 1: With alternating current, the positive and negative connections switch many
Speaker 1: times per second, and that means the current flowing through
Speaker 1: the system is reversing direction every single time that happens. Now,
Speaker 1: I've done episodes explaining why the world moved toward alternating current,
Speaker 1: specifically for transmission purposes, so I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into that here, but it means you can think of
Speaker 1: voltage of an A C circuit as a sign wave.
Speaker 1: The center line represents zero voltage, and the tallest point
Speaker 1: above and below the center line represents the peak voltage,
Speaker 1: which we would represent with both a positive value for
Speaker 1: the side that's above the line and a negative value
Speaker 1: for the site that's below the line. In the US,
Speaker 1: you would have sixty of these sign waves connected to
Speaker 1: represent one second of A C transmission because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a one and twenty volt a C that's sixty
Speaker 1: positive and sixty negative. But they don't cancel each other out.
Speaker 1: They're actually additive. It's a little confusing. Modern dimmer switches
Speaker 1: effectively chop up this sign wave and they shut off
Speaker 1: the light circuit every time the current dips below a
Speaker 1: certain voltage in the A C circuit. Then they turn
Speaker 1: on again once the voltage climbs up above the value.
Speaker 1: So if you think of like a a roller coaster hill,
Speaker 1: so every time the roller coaster dips down a certain level,
Speaker 1: the lights go out, and every time the roller coaster
Speaker 1: comes up past that certain level, the lights come on again.
Speaker 1: That's essentially what these dimmer switches are doing in a way.
Speaker 1: So by a see the dimmer, you adjust the voltage
Speaker 1: value at which the circuit will turn off or turn
Speaker 1: back on again. Now there's a lot more to it
Speaker 1: than that, including a semiconductor device called a trayack, but
Speaker 1: that's a story for another time. Another big invention that
Speaker 1: would end up being important for all sorts of applications,
Speaker 1: not just stage lighting, was the development of multiplexing, and
Speaker 1: this refers to the practice of sending multiple signals over
Speaker 1: the same medium, typically a wire, simultaneously, and the telephone
Speaker 1: system does this. If it weren't for multiplexing, only one
Speaker 1: set of signals could go over the same line at
Speaker 1: the same time, which means you would need a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different cables to handle everything, and as systems
Speaker 1: got more complex, you would have a real mess on
Speaker 1: your hands. Like imagine that you would have to have
Speaker 1: a phone line direct from your house to everyone you
Speaker 1: know in order to be able to have your conversation.
Speaker 1: They would have to have one to use so that
Speaker 1: their signal could come back to you because it couldn't
Speaker 1: be on the same line as the signal going to them.
Speaker 1: That's a huge headache. So multiplexing was already a thing
Speaker 1: with a telephone system, but it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies that the Strand Century created a protocol called a
Speaker 1: m X one nine two for stage lighting, and it
Speaker 1: was called a m X because the system allowed for
Speaker 1: the creation of one two different channels of signals across
Speaker 1: the same pair of wires, and that significantly cut down
Speaker 1: on the complexity of circuits that were necessary to control
Speaker 1: multiple stage lights, including the use of demmers, which previously
Speaker 1: required their own dedicated wires. There are lots of different
Speaker 1: methodologies for multiplexing, but it all gets really terribly complicated
Speaker 1: and it would require its own dedicated episode to it.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to spare all of us for now.
Speaker 1: I'm skipping over tons of tweaks and fine tuning to
Speaker 1: the various technologies that made up stage lighting because honestly,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, while really important, I don't want
Speaker 1: to diminish them in any way. They're really important from
Speaker 1: for the technical opera ration of theaters. However, they represent
Speaker 1: relatively minor changes from a technological point of view. So
Speaker 1: I would argue that the next really big development for
Speaker 1: stage lighting came out in the nineteen eighties with motorized
Speaker 1: moving lights. So the mountings for these lights are automated
Speaker 1: and motorized so operators can move them with electronic controls
Speaker 1: rather than having to actually manually manipulate the lights so
Speaker 1: that they're pointed wherever you need them to go. Now,
Speaker 1: most theaters don't actually have that set up. It's really expensive,
Speaker 1: it can break down and then you've got to fix everything.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of the type of thing you
Speaker 1: might see in a really fancy theater or maybe in
Speaker 1: arena shows, but your typical theater will rely on the
Speaker 1: old box boom, scaffolding and hanging lights that have to
Speaker 1: be adjusted manually, and that's all done during the rehearsal process.
Speaker 1: We also saw the emergence of various computer systems that
Speaker 1: would allow crews to program light settings so that the
Speaker 1: crew can automatically switch from one queue to the next,
Speaker 1: rather than having to hit a bunch of switches manual lee.
Speaker 1: So during the tech rehearsal, the light crew gets all
Speaker 1: the lights adjusted the way the lighting designer and the
Speaker 1: director want them to be, and that includes where the
Speaker 1: lights are pointed, how bright they are, whatever gels or
Speaker 1: go bos are on them. And once it's all set
Speaker 1: and you know exactly which lights you want for that
Speaker 1: particular queue, the crew will then designate that set up
Speaker 1: on a switchboard like you could think of it as
Speaker 1: Q one, and you press a button and Q one
Speaker 1: comes up and those lights come on at that intensity.
Speaker 1: So when the crew selects that setting, that set up
Speaker 1: lights up, and then when they switch to the next setting,
Speaker 1: it goes to a totally different set of lights. You know,
Speaker 1: so very great way to keep things nice and streamlined.
Speaker 1: The crew just has to really pay attention to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're activating the correct Q as the show progresses.
Speaker 1: So it's a remarkable innovation. Today it's possible to have
Speaker 1: a fully motorized computer controlled light system, including light that
Speaker 1: have special peripherals that turn into color slide projectors and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And the industry has also seen advances
Speaker 1: and multiplexing, so now it's possible to run more than
Speaker 1: five hundred channels of signals across a group of about
Speaker 1: five wires. And all of this is really impressive, but
Speaker 1: it's really tough for us to pull down the curtain
Speaker 1: on stage lighting so we can switch over the film
Speaker 1: and TV lighting. And we're gonna do that after this
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, finally we're gonna get into talking about
Speaker 1: lighting for film and television, and a lot of what
Speaker 1: I have to cover really just overlaps with stage lighting.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna double dip. I'm not gonna re explain
Speaker 1: stuff you guys have just heard. Instead, let's build upon
Speaker 1: what has already come before. It does mean that we
Speaker 1: do have to jump back a little bit just before
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, However, and this also
Speaker 1: means that we need to remind ourselves about the nature
Speaker 1: of photographic film. So this is a material that's been
Speaker 1: treated with photoreactive chemicals, and that means that these chemicals
Speaker 1: undergo a reaction when they're exposed to light. Through the
Speaker 1: careful exposure of this material to light, you can create
Speaker 1: a record of the light that was present in that environment.
Speaker 1: And since everything we see is really just light reflecting
Speaker 1: off of various objects, that means you can create a
Speaker 1: visual record of what someone would see were they in
Speaker 1: the camera's position at that particular time. Early photographic film
Speaker 1: wasn't terribly good at capturing light, or rather, it was fine,
Speaker 1: but it took time because the chemical process wasn't very
Speaker 1: efficient and it needed to absorb as much light as
Speaker 1: it possibly could before the shutter on the camera closed.
Speaker 1: In the end, the shutter as the way to control
Speaker 1: when the light hits the film and when it's dark,
Speaker 1: because if you just kept the light on all the time,
Speaker 1: you would eventually have an unrecognizable photo. Now, we have
Speaker 1: not developed, no pun intended, the right chemical for this
Speaker 1: process to make it super fast, so you couldn't just
Speaker 1: snap a shot and the shutter would open up in
Speaker 1: the fraction of a second, and the camera lens would
Speaker 1: bring light in expose some film to light, and then
Speaker 1: the shutter snaps closed and again. It all took place
Speaker 1: in the blink of an eye, and you would end
Speaker 1: up with a perfect photograph that was just not possible
Speaker 1: in the old days of photography. Exposure required many seconds
Speaker 1: or even minutes, which is why people in those old
Speaker 1: photographs looks so darned dour, because you would have to
Speaker 1: sit for several minutes for a photograph to be taken,
Speaker 1: and holding a smile would get uncomfortable pretty quickly. But
Speaker 1: over time, engineers and chemists created a film that could
Speaker 1: capture an image in a fraction of a second as
Speaker 1: long as there was enough light coming in through the
Speaker 1: camera lens to hit the film with the proper intensity.
Speaker 1: If there wasn't enough light, the image would be dim
Speaker 1: and maybe even impossible to make out, so lighting was
Speaker 1: incredibly important. Many early films were shot outdoors because a
Speaker 1: sunny day provide did the light that was needed for
Speaker 1: film to capture images effectively. They couldn't really managed to
Speaker 1: do that inside. Indoor lighting just wasn't up to snuff.
Speaker 1: One of the early attempts at shooting indoors was Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison's special eighteen two studio called Black Mariah. This was
Speaker 1: a building that was mounted on a rotatble base and
Speaker 1: it had a retractable roof that would allow sunlight to
Speaker 1: come in. The crew could actually rotate the building so
Speaker 1: that it would follow the progress of the sun and
Speaker 1: this would keep the studio lit throughout both the morning
Speaker 1: and the afternoon. Edison could have the roof opened to
Speaker 1: different degrees, and he also used curtains to control the
Speaker 1: lighting so that he could shoot sequences indoors and get
Speaker 1: the effects he wanted. There were crew who would use
Speaker 1: long poles with hooks on the end of those polls,
Speaker 1: and they would hook those curtains to be able to
Speaker 1: pull the curtains further apart or allow them to fall together,
Speaker 1: and they would do this as de erected and those
Speaker 1: polls are known as gaffs. That's a term that comes
Speaker 1: not from the theater, but from sailing. Sailors used gaffs
Speaker 1: to grab hold of a line or rope that might
Speaker 1: be out of reach, like a line has fallen in
Speaker 1: the water. You grab a gaff, you've got a hook
Speaker 1: on the end, you hook the rope, you bring it
Speaker 1: back over so you can do whatever you need to
Speaker 1: do with it. So the crew responsible for manipulating the
Speaker 1: curtains ended up getting called gaffers because they were using
Speaker 1: these gaffs. That term would stick around in the film industry. Today,
Speaker 1: we use it to refer to the chief lighting technician
Speaker 1: on set, and they're also the head of the electrical department.
Speaker 1: It's also important to remember that with film, there's no
Speaker 1: way to know if what you are capturing on that
Speaker 1: film is what you're actually seeing in person until you
Speaker 1: go through the whole process of developing that film. A
Speaker 1: lot of early cinematography was trial and error to determine
Speaker 1: how much light was necessary to get clear images. So
Speaker 1: if you made the wrong call, you would end up
Speaker 1: with a bunch of useless footage, but you wouldn't know
Speaker 1: that what you had was useless until you developed the film.
Speaker 1: In eight a filmmaker named Oscar Mester opened up an
Speaker 1: indoor studio in Berlin. He relied on artificial lights, primarily
Speaker 1: carbon arc lights. Just like the stage theaters were the
Speaker 1: lights needed to be powerful, which also meant they were large,
Speaker 1: they were really hot. They were difficult to operate and
Speaker 1: they required a lot of electricity, and this would be
Speaker 1: true for much of the early days of cinematography. Another
Speaker 1: type of light that was used in early cinema, usually
Speaker 1: to complement the carbon arc floodlights, were the mercury vapor lights.
Speaker 1: These are kind of similar to fluorescent lights today. So
Speaker 1: you've got an air tight tube inside which are your electrodes,
Speaker 1: and you have a mixture of air and mercury vapor
Speaker 1: and typically are gone and those are all at normal
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure. In fact, the mercury vapor at normal temperature
Speaker 1: is liquid, it's not gas at all. So you have
Speaker 1: a separate electrode and that ionizes the argon on gas
Speaker 1: when you supply electricity to this bulb, and that creates
Speaker 1: an electrical arc that heats up the mercury and turns
Speaker 1: it into vapor. It evaporates, it also ionizes, and once
Speaker 1: it's ionized, then it's a gas that's capable of conducting electricity.
Speaker 1: So now the arc can travel through the mercury, and
Speaker 1: initially as the bulb starts to heat up, it will
Speaker 1: give off a violet and then a blue glow, and
Speaker 1: if it gets hot enough, the pressure increases enough, it
Speaker 1: will start to give off photons of other colors and
Speaker 1: it will produce a light that's sort of white ish.
Speaker 1: Was also the year that the Klegal brothers founded their
Speaker 1: stage lighting company, and they would play an enormous role
Speaker 1: in the history of film lighting. And I mentioned the
Speaker 1: Kleague light earlier, and that term has been used to
Speaker 1: refer to lots of different lights. In fact, all the
Speaker 1: lights that the Klegel brothers created were called Kleague lights.
Speaker 1: But even more confusing than that, people in the industry
Speaker 1: will use the word Kleague light to refer to any
Speaker 1: major light that are using to light a scene, so
Speaker 1: it could be used for floodlights and spotlights and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, and that gets super confusing. But generally
Speaker 1: we're talking about a light that had an ellipsoidal reflector
Speaker 1: and a frenelle lens to create intense beams of light
Speaker 1: that could be used to light scenes for film. And
Speaker 1: the source of the light in the early Kleague lights
Speaker 1: was a carbon arc light, so that pair of carbon
Speaker 1: electrodes with the electric arc between them. However, later the
Speaker 1: Klegal brothers would move toward incandescent and then halogen lights.
Speaker 1: Uh and again these lights didn't always come from the
Speaker 1: Kleigal brothers, but as I said, the term was used
Speaker 1: to describe more of a form factor than an actual manufacturer,
Speaker 1: kind of like how everyone refers to copy machines as
Speaker 1: Xerox machines even if they're not made by Xerox, or
Speaker 1: everyone refers to tissue paper as Kleenex, even if it
Speaker 1: doesn't come from clean X. The light produced by these
Speaker 1: things was so bright it was bright enough to cause
Speaker 1: damage to your eyesight. There were actually cases of actors
Speaker 1: who suffered damage to their eyes as a result of this.
Speaker 1: They would even call it clee guy in the industry.
Speaker 1: They would have to. If you had to film in
Speaker 1: front of these things for too long, then you had
Speaker 1: really a danger of hurting your eyes as a result.
Speaker 1: The carbon arc lights could provide the brightness needed, but
Speaker 1: they were also really noisy. Now that wasn't a problem
Speaker 1: early on, but they did have to go once talking
Speaker 1: pictures came around. You wouldn't be able to hear anything otherwise,
Speaker 1: So that was when the industry saw a shift towards
Speaker 1: incandescent lights, which could operate at a much quieter level
Speaker 1: than a carbon arc light. And like I said, other
Speaker 1: companies began to manufacture lights for the film industry, but
Speaker 1: on sets, the term cleague light was pretty much used
Speaker 1: universe later refer to big lights used to light sets,
Speaker 1: no matter where they came from. So these lights were
Speaker 1: designed with specific purposes in mind a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: like to mimic sunlight or something. Other lights might just
Speaker 1: be used to illuminate a scene, but they all followed
Speaker 1: similar paths as the stage lights have already talked about
Speaker 1: in the this episode in the previous episodes, so we're
Speaker 1: not gonna go through every variation. Film, TV and video
Speaker 1: production would see other lighting elements come into play, such
Speaker 1: as bounce boards. A bounce board is a reflective surface
Speaker 1: that can bounce light back onto a subject. This is
Speaker 1: helpful when you're working with a limited number of lights,
Speaker 1: or it would be impractical to hang or position more lights,
Speaker 1: like there's just nowhere where you could easily put them
Speaker 1: where they would both be out of the frame of
Speaker 1: the picture and also still get light to where you're going. So,
Speaker 1: as someone who has done a lot of video work,
Speaker 1: I can tell you I hate bounce boards. Typically you've
Speaker 1: got some member of the crew whose job is to
Speaker 1: hold the bounce board and position it in a way
Speaker 1: where it will reflect back on a person and I
Speaker 1: hate that person, not because of who they are, but
Speaker 1: because of what they have to do to me. And
Speaker 1: if you're already in a video, if you've ever done
Speaker 1: this yourself, you know you're already being lit at a
Speaker 1: level that seems ludicrous. It seems like it's way too
Speaker 1: much light, but it's actually all necessary to get good
Speaker 1: effect on film or video because the light captured by
Speaker 1: cameras is only a fraction of what light is actually there.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily super dark compared to what reality is,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely darker. So if you want a well
Speaker 1: lit scene in the final product, you're gonna need to
Speaker 1: light the heck out of it when you're actually shooting it.
Speaker 1: This is true even if you're doing something like making
Speaker 1: YouTube videos or live streaming. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: YouTubers and twitch streamers out there who have special lights
Speaker 1: to create nice, even well lit images for their viewers.
Speaker 1: It might be a ring light that goes around the
Speaker 1: cameras of the camera shoots through the ring and that
Speaker 1: way the light isn't affecting the lens directly, but you
Speaker 1: get a nice illumination, or it maybe separate stands of
Speaker 1: L A D lights. It really does make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: If you find someone just starting out who hasn't had
Speaker 1: the chance to invest in lights, you can tell. And
Speaker 1: if you find someone who has the means to light
Speaker 1: their set up, well it really stands out. Now I'm
Speaker 1: running out of time, so I can't really get into
Speaker 1: stuff like LED lights that requires its own separate discussion.
Speaker 1: I'll have to say that for another episode. But cinematography
Speaker 1: and lighting are so entwined that it's impossible to really
Speaker 1: talk about one without mentioning the other. A dramatically lit
Speaker 1: scene is a true work of art. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite scenes that plays with light and darkness comes from
Speaker 1: The Prestige, which is an okay movie, but there's a
Speaker 1: great moment with a Hugh Jackman and Andy Cirkus as
Speaker 1: they're standing out in a field of light bulbs that
Speaker 1: Tesla is supposedly illuminating through wireless power, and it's just
Speaker 1: a really great scene that shows how how effective lighting
Speaker 1: can really punctuate the emotional intent of a scene. I'll
Speaker 1: conclude this episode with a very quick rundown on some
Speaker 1: terms and lighting and filmmaking. But just keep in mind
Speaker 1: that we've pretty much covered the basics of the technology,
Speaker 1: so here we go. We talked about gaffers, but what
Speaker 1: about best boy. So the best boy refers to an assistant,
Speaker 1: and typically it's the assistant to the gaffer or the
Speaker 1: head of lighting. There are also best boy positions that
Speaker 1: can be assistance to the key grip, and the best
Speaker 1: boy is in charge of keeping track of stuff like
Speaker 1: where equipment happens to be, where the crew are. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of paperwork, it's a lot of management and supervision.
Speaker 1: It's logistics, and this frees up the gaffer to light
Speaker 1: the ding dang darn scene. So the gaffers they're doing
Speaker 1: design work and making decisions, and the best boys job
Speaker 1: is to make sure that everything is where it needs
Speaker 1: to be when it needs to be there. As for
Speaker 1: the name itself, well that's something more of a mystery.
Speaker 1: There are explanations, mind you, of where best Boy came from,
Speaker 1: but they might be apocryphal. However, the generally accepted origin
Speaker 1: is that in the old days of filmmaking, when someone
Speaker 1: on crew needed a hand, they would send a message
Speaker 1: over to some other department and they would say send
Speaker 1: over your best boy to lend a hand. The idea
Speaker 1: being that the other department head gets the message and
Speaker 1: picks out somebody who is best suited to do whatever
Speaker 1: the job is that needs doing. Now, Is that true?
Speaker 1: Beats the heck out of me? All right? Some other
Speaker 1: terms three point lighting. This refers to using three separate
Speaker 1: lights to illuminate your subjects so that it or they
Speaker 1: or whatever stands out from the background. It's to give
Speaker 1: it definition so that it doesn't just fade right into
Speaker 1: the background. Key light This is the light that is
Speaker 1: the most prominent in the frame. So if you look
Speaker 1: at a single frame from a film or show, let's
Speaker 1: say it's an interior shot, you should be able to
Speaker 1: tell just by looking at that picture where the key
Speaker 1: light is, because it's going to be the light that's
Speaker 1: providing the brightest spot in that frame. So if it's
Speaker 1: a close up on someone and say the upper right
Speaker 1: side of their face is really really bright compared to
Speaker 1: the rest, you know that that's where the key light
Speaker 1: was pointed. Then you have fil lights. These are lights
Speaker 1: that the name suggests that they're used to help fill
Speaker 1: in the shadows that otherwise would really be in frame.
Speaker 1: So like, if you've ever used a flashlight to do
Speaker 1: the spooky face thing, you know, you hold the flashlight
Speaker 1: directly under your face in the dark and you start
Speaker 1: talking like spooky voice. I know I'm not the only
Speaker 1: one who's done that, right, tell me I'm not that weird. Well,
Speaker 1: if you do that, you get these really really dramatic shadows. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know the lights are using in film and television.
Speaker 1: They're super bright, and the shadows that would be cast
Speaker 1: would be really really sharp. So phil lights help remove
Speaker 1: some of that stark contrast. They're not meant to evenly
Speaker 1: light someone all over necessarily, but they do cut back
Speaker 1: the intensity or the contrast between the light and dark
Speaker 1: sides of a scene. A backlight is typically used to
Speaker 1: help light the rear portion of whatever it is you're filming,
Speaker 1: and these lights are usually elevated and they're usually pointing downward. Uh.
Speaker 1: You might also have a kicker light. Those can be
Speaker 1: used to create a rim of light that can provide
Speaker 1: almost like a halo effect on a subject. You might
Speaker 1: also hear terms like soft lighting versus hard lighting that
Speaker 1: generally refers to how light and shadow appear in the frame.
Speaker 1: So an image with that has subtle shadows would have
Speaker 1: soft lighting. One that has really dramatic shadows, like like
Speaker 1: the band of light that regularly appears across Captain Kirk's
Speaker 1: eyes and old Star Trek episodes. That's hard lighting. And
Speaker 1: those are just a few terms in the lighting world. Now.
Speaker 1: I know I didn't spend a ton of time focusing
Speaker 1: just on film and TV lights, but again, that's because
Speaker 1: those technologies grew out of the world of stage lighting.
Speaker 1: So by understanding stage lighting, we really understand how film
Speaker 1: and TV lights work. Things get a little more complex
Speaker 1: these days. I mean, you've got a lot of very
Speaker 1: specific style lights to create different effects, way more than
Speaker 1: you did back in the old stage days. But they
Speaker 1: all basically do the same thing. They just do it
Speaker 1: in a very specific set of parameters. I hope this
Speaker 1: episode and the previous one we're interesting to you. I
Speaker 1: always love talking about the entertainment industry. It's got a
Speaker 1: place in my heart. I've been an actor and a
Speaker 1: writer for that industry before. Nothing major, like more on
Speaker 1: an amateur level. I don't want to toot my own horn.
Speaker 1: It's not like you're gonna go and find some amazing
Speaker 1: piece of work that I've been in, but I have
Speaker 1: an ongoing fascination with it. If you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should cover in episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: get in touch with me and let me know. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show on Twitter is text Stuff H.
Speaker 1: S W. I look forward to hearing from you, so
Speaker 1: please leaves. If you've got a suggestion, shoot it my
Speaker 1: way and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.