This is my last post on the conference, as I leave for Santa Fe in a few hours and shift my focus to other things. There is a lot that I could discuss about USITT 2019, new friends and delightful reunions. However, I am going to end this section with reflections on painted, digital, and projected scenes.
When you visit USITT, it is almost as if you are attending two conferences. There are the expected educational sessions and displays, but there is also the EXPO. You can solely visit the EXPO floor without ever attending the rest of the conference, for a fee. Cutting the ribbon to open the EXPO is a big event and students rush into the space, going from one exhibit booth to another, collecting swag.
The EXPO includes booths advertising products, services, publications, universities and internship opportunities. In addition to student and employment opportunities, the largest presence remains vendors. USITT has made it easy for the vendors to identify those with purchasing power by attaching a black “Buyer” ribbon on their conference name tags. There are designs and new product exhibits interspersed among, and around, the vendors.
In past years, backdrops and projections lined the exterior walls, and a few booths. For this conference there were only a few. As usual, each accompanied a little placard with information about the manufacturer or venue where it once hung. This year, in one corner near a coffee stand, a poorly hung and lit backdrop was placed next to a rear projection screen. Despite the wrinkles and lighting hot spots on the painted scene, there is immediacy to the drop that was absent in the projection; apples and oranges really.
Part of the notable difference is that there is a greater contrast of values in the painted scene. The darks are darker than in the projections. The greater contrast in the painted scene gave life to the composition otherwise absent in the projection.
Now, it cannot go without comment that the painted drop was poorly hung and poorly lit; the wrinkles were pretty atrocious. If this were at any other event than a technical theatre conference, I might not be so critical of the final presentation. I can only wonder why; hazard a guess that it may have been time, poor communication or inexperience. Maybe I am simply overtly critical and wanted the painted versions to far outshine a nearby projection. However, I wonder if we have lost something, such as our understanding of how painted scenery needs to be lit? What I have witnessed over the years is that without a general top light, wrinkles and flaws in the fabric can be accentuated, such as was the case this year on the Expo floor. Some scenes only had strip lights on the floor, blasting color upwards and highlighting ever flaw.
This observation is also after we played with lights on historic scenery at the Louisville Scottish Rite the same week. Richard Bryant was running lights and we saturated with scenes with red and blue. The borders contained white, red and blue lamps. Even with complete saturation of one color, the composition was clearly visible. This is not the case with some contemporary settings, where portions of the painted scene would disappear.
The brilliancy of the projection, although effective for many purposes, does not have the division of value as the painted piece. There is a reality and immediacy of painted scenes that cannot be replicated – yet. This same can be said for digital drops. There is a quality that does not capture the life of a painted scene – yet.
When digital drops were first introduced, scenic artists should have embraced the technology and made it their own. Easier said than done, as I certainly didn’t; initially criticizing and dismissing digital drops. It wasn’t going to go away because a handful of people felt threatened and were fighting change. As our scenic art predecessors, we should have applied new technology and innovation to our trade all along the way.
The heritage of scenic artists is closely linked with applying new technology to an old trade. It is that of a scenic visionary. The scenic artist could be the intermediary, translating the vision for the stage. Scenic artists understand what works from a distance; the necessity to separate values and the appropriate application of color to make it visible from a difference. They understand the way that “painted” light needs to shape objects while reflecting the stage lights at the same time. The magician to make it digital scenery really work will be the person who designs the digital file, hopefully a scenic artist. Whether it is for a projection or print, an artist needs to finalize the scenic vision. I am certainly not the first person to propose this.
As I looked at a digital drop on the Expo floor this year, really studying the characteristics of the print quality, I realized something. The cut and paste approach of the digital design did not work here at all. Some sections were fuzzy and others crisp; some kind of stock art? Some sections were flipped, as almost a reverse and repeat. The problem was that the shadows were not consistent throughout the entire composition. Repeated objects had shadows on opposite sides. I would like to think that a scenic artist would have immediately noticed this in the design and corrected it. Do people notice? I wonder; that digital file was designed, approved, printed, used in performance, and hung at a theatre conference.
What is lost in translation, however, is the unity of the composition when the lighting is not consistent in the paint (or dye) application. It is the use of light and shadow in the design and painting that creates the illusion. Now there is nothing worse, than me casting stones at a person, product or company from a safe distance, commenting online well after the fact. This could be a productive conversation as we look toward the future. I hope that this will spark a debate.
To be continued…
