Question for our Lighting Professionals here

[kindm's]

last night I was watching Brainiac (its a show like mythbusters on G4TV, I think it was originally a BBC show) and they were doing this \'thing\' where they would flast a word like RED but the color of the word was Not red.

for Example

RED

Orange

White

And the idea is that the brain has difficulty doing 2 things at once. It was extremely disorienting.

My question is Are there certain "rules" that lighting guys don\'t break becasue they cause similar effects or is it a free for all ?

[leith]

Well I am not sure what "rules" you would be asking about.
What was the reason behind the experiment? Were you supposed to see Red even if the word was not red?
I know as an LD i run into optical illusion problems all the time w/ keystoned gobos and color temperatures. Most of the time it is a free for all though.
Now if you are using video, there are rules to white balancing.

[jking]

in stage work, i learned a couple neato tricks with colors. put yellow and green together and it makes people have to pee. think back to any sample in the jar and, if you remember, those were the colors used! you can make people feel cool or hot with various colors (tweezer always had black spaces and bright whites with blues and greens and yellow to make you feel freezer-ish). red and blue together will strain the eyes if used too long (think 3D glasses). and you always have to double check the costumes under the lights to make sure that your lights don\'t change the color of their costumes.

as for \'rules\', not really, but lots of handed down knowledge mostly gained from finding out the hard way.

[leith]

Yeah making people feel hot and cold is a big thing in setting mood with a band\'s music. It is such a big help. Chris Kuroda was a master of this no doubt.

[FreeSpirit]

last night I was watching Brainiac (its a show like mythbusters on G4TV, I think it was originally a BBC show) and they were doing this \'thing\' where they would flast a word like RED but the color of the word was Not red.
 the idea is that the brain has difficulty doing 2 things at once. It was extremely disorienting.

I learned about this in psychology classes - it\'s called the "Stroop Effect"
here\'s an interactive site where u can try it out:
http://www.thewritingpot.com/stroop/

[obsession600]

The Stroop Effect seems confined to specific instances of color and text and because of this would lend itself to a limited number of applications. Handy if you have a moment where you are doing a visual mindfuck with your audience but not so useful the rest of the time.

There are shortcuts (based on the audience\'s culture) that you can take in lighting. Most of these are color-based. Blue=cold/moonlight, red=hot/sunny, purple=royalty/authority, green=plants/supernatural. Some of these vary from culture to culture. These are handy if you need/want the audience to make quick assumptions about the scene/song.
Your eyes will play funny tricks on you if you saturate them with some colors and starve them of others (commonly seen on websites that have a limited color pallette none of which are white). Because of this it is good to vary your colors on stage. Even if you have an all red stage you want to use a variety of reds between your washes so as to introduce more of the spectrum.
These are guidelines but for the most part there are no rules except those that you impose on yourself. If you establish a color/template/angle and associate it with a character/mood/scene the audience will recognize this and adopt the symbolic language into their vocabulary.

I can\'t say I have ever heard about the "yellow and green=pissing" theory.

[jking]

I can\'t say I have ever heard about the "yellow and green=pissing" theory.

we did a short play my sophmore year, student written, called \'the line\'. it was about waiting in a bathroom line and the various and sundry things that can happen in such a line. we lit the whole thing in green and yellow (based on a prof\'s suggestion) and at the end, there were lines for both bathrooms. sure, the subject matter had a bit to do with it, but later on there was a class being held in the theatre and we told them we had to do a lighting check. we lit the theatre in variations of green and yellow and the kids had to keep taking bathroom breaks. we got "talked to" for that one....

[Todd]

rotfl

[kindm's]

This was exactly the kind of responses I was looking for. I knew you guys wouldn\'t let me down.

I knew "rules" wasn\'t the best term I just couln\'t figure out a better word to use to describe what I was thinking.

I have to say these responses are top notch. might be the most intelligent non-political / religion post ever made on this site.

:thumbsup