Lighting Design Work
Skills Developed/Practiced: Creative communication - Creative collaboration requires understanding of the storyteller’s goals and how you can support those goals with your work.
- Subsequently, it requires understanding how to communicate that work to the storyteller.
On the fly problem solving - Sometimes ideas work on paper, but are less effective in practice.
- This was a lesson Nickey learned many times in theatre, and success was often measured in his ability to reconsider, compromise, and adjust under pressure.
Visual communication of ideas and meshing style with function - Playing with brightness, color, and lines are all well and good, but the actors (or dancers) still need to be able to see and be seen.
- Nickey learned through practice how to prioritize storytelling aspects and where to compromise on certain creative ideas in order to maintain proper functionality.
Projects:
This was the final project of my lighting design studies with Rachel Steck at Willamette University. The task was to create a full lighting design for a play of my choice which entailed:
Researching the play.
Researching lighting qualities for each scene.
Compiling reference photos.
Drafting a lighting plot that enabled different light qualities, textures, and colors from angles viewable from two sides.
Deciding on lights, colors, textures (gobos), and focus angles.
Composing a look for each scene with furniture and capturing this look from both viewing angles.
Future Voices Dance Concert at Willamette University in 2018 Performers pictured: Kiki Drum Bento, Diego Arias, Olivia Denay, McKenzie Potter-Moen, Mondara C. Granados, Uriel Mejia, Ellen Turner
Photographer: KJ Johnson
The Future Voices Dance Concert was a series of individual choreographed pieces all performed sequentially with an overarching theme. The theme of the concert itself was connection through time, past, present, and future. Nickey was the lighting designer for three student choregoraphed pieces, where he worked with the choreographers to understand their message and prepare necessary lights, colors, and textures alongside Rachel Steck to support the final performance.