Week 2: Disney- Where Themed Lighting Dreams Come True (Mostly)

In the many, many years that I have spent weekends, days, and nights in Disneyland, I never realized just how much lighting made a difference in all the attractions. I always knew that lighting played a large role for how magical everything felt at night, but even then, it wasn't until recently that I realized theatrical lighting bled into the lighting for a theme park. Our field trip made me pay way more attention to what lights were doing and what each of their jobs were- perhaps facade lighting, theatrical lighting, or character lighting. 

While I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked to, I did manage to get a few pictures of specific things I wanted to address. In the picture above, you can see what I am talking about for night time magic at Disneyland. The only reason we see anything is because of light. But if you look closely, you can also see that while a lot of the light was mostly done by an art director designing the attraction. However, there are also lights that illuminate the pathway, which a lighting designer may have come in and added to provide enough light for disney-goers to walk around at night. 

While on the subject of outdoor lighting, a buildings architecture often gets lost when the sun goes down. This is where architectural lighting comes in. In the photo to the left, you can see the tower illuminated with a backdrop of black night. The building itself is quite beautiful, but without all upward lighting in the top sections of the building, we wouldn't see all the detail. Architectural lighting is perhaps one of my favorite kinds of lighting. The idea that a designer can come in and say "I want this to stand out, lets add a light here" has always sounded like an interesting job to me. Often with architecture, seen a little here and definitely more throughout this section of the park, you can see how light from certain angles create shadows that almost transform the building completely from day to night. It's really quite beautiful.

As I mentioned before, there are different types of lighting fixtures used within the attractions. In the picture to the right, characters are hanging all over the room and are actually being used to illuminate this section of the area (you can also see Lonnie). This lighting designer filled the space up with many different shapes and kinds of light, and it worked out very well, in my opinion. Despite being all different, they kept with the theme of the room. While the room below was completely lit from theatrical lighting.

This room had an assortment of theatrical lighting. Some of the lights were Source 4's and many of them were actually moving lights. It was interesting to see how the lighting designers provided what was needed for both of these environments. The space above was purely for aesthetic-creating a soft, warm cozy feeling. While the room to the left was all about multimedia and complimenting the images being show on the screens. The colors of the lights would shift with each different disney movie being highlighted at the time. This was probably one of my favorite aspects- the fact that lighting designers can record their light cues to time. I don't remember what this was called, but I still thought it was really cool. 

All in all, I think the field trip to Disneyland was very successful for seeing how themed lighting affects amusement park-goers- both subconsciously and consciously (but mostly subconsciously...)