The One with The Winter Gala 2018

Each year, the Overseas School of Colombo has two main musical events: The Winter and Spring Gala. This musical evening consists of a series of performances, ranging from a concert band to theatrical music scenes from plays to group dances. Although, I do not have any musical skills when it comes to performances, I do have the logical and technical skills of shining the light to someone’s spotlight. For this year’s Winter Gala, I participated as the Master of Lights. I have experience in this job as I also did it for this year’s Senior Production. However, last time I had a co-partner to work with (Oliver Smith), this time I had to work alone. Which I was alright with because I was confident with my job and working with Mr. Lakshitha. Mr. Lakisha handles all the technical work for the auditorium for the past 6 years, he is very experienced in his job and knows most of the lighting and sound commands inside and out. Something else very different from when I did light for the Senior Production compared to the Winter Gala was the timespan for rehearsals. For the Senior Production, we had multiple rehearsals the technical crew had to attend prior to performance night which gave us time to practice and learn all our lighting cues. However, for Winter Gala, the only time I had to create the lighting cues and practice them were during the dress rehearsals which were 2 days prior to performance night. This also meant I got the opportunity to practice each act once as I needed the performers to be there as well to balance and perfect the lighting, which I found was insufficient to the practice time I really needed or was used to. However, I took on the new challenge and concentrated thoroughly in the limited time I had to practice each cue.

Each act was different and due to the immense amount of variety in the Gala, I had a lot of opportunities to be creative and test out different color schemes and combinations. This, once again, was something else that was very different to the Senior Production. During the production, I was given a premade set of lighting cues that were composed by Mr. Tray and Mr. Lakshitha. However, for the Gala, I had to compose each lighting cue and decide each effect, color and intensity level for myself. This had its own pro’s and con’s, for example: a pro would be that I could have the fun of testing different colors of the RGB scale. However, a con would be that I had only so much as 3 minutes to set the lights for each act as that was the average timespan of one.

Notice how in the image above, there is enough light to present the performer’s face however there is a tint of purple to add vibration to the act overall. This sort of an addition is very effective and makes each act significant from each other. Another thing I had to keep in mind when deciding the combinations of lighting was the brightness levels, this was driven by the fact that most the performers had not memorized their notes and that they had to still be able to read them. Each performer is different, and some people are more responsive to light change than others. For individual performers, I worked with them as each act was carried out because it was a simple question of which level of brightness was comfortable for them. However, for ensembles and group performances, I set the brightness at a moderate amount and then changed it dependent on their requests.

With regards to the Gala as a whole, it was far more challenging but much more fun as an experience. I cannot wait for the upcoming Spring Gala in April and hope to play the same role of master of lights, as I did for this time.