PRODUCTION: BISEXUAL LIGHTING RESEARCH

After the Tech run at the Tom Thumb Theatre, I wanted to look into the lighting which Jemma had talked about 'Bisexual Lighting'. Before researching into the lighting I searched on Instagram to see what would come up and found this photo:

The lighting looks to be a mixture of Blue, Pink and Purple, with potentially a fill light using a dimmed white light, this I could be wrong about though. However, I do really like the colours that this lighting brings out. It's very colourful and gives an almost club feel in this photo and for a performance I think I would work really nicely.

I researched into the lighting more and found this video online:

This helped me learn a little bit more about this type of lighting. Firstly I was right about the mixture of colours, the lighting is made up of Purple, Pink and Blue which are the three colours of the bisexual flag hence the name of the lighting. The lighting is becoming hugely popular for films, music videos and commercials due to its unique look. However this sort of lighting has been around for many years and in the video we see blue and pink lighting are often the choices for the '80s' look that we often get in films.

One film which is used as an example from the modern days is the film Atomic Blonde (2017) which has the main character bisexual and from this the films DOP Jonathan Sela chose to use bisexual lighting for the club scenes where the character would be flirting with other characters or kissing them. Examples of this are below:

 As well as this, the video talks about why this type of lighting could be so popular as currently it is being used a lot. One of the suggestions is that it's to show the support to the LGBT community and that it's becoming a trend, which would make sense as this does happen a lot, a few years ago Drag Queen performances weren't as mainstream but now we're getting more and more on TV both with reality shows like Ru Pauls Drag Race and documentaries such as Jamie at 16. The fact that the lighting is connected to the LGBT community, I can see why Jemma would want to use this lighting and it would work really nicely for the performance at the theatre. Likely to get this sort of lighting I would go with a simple set up with having either 1 or 2 key lights with blue gels on the performer, them a fill light to the left with purple and to the right with Pink to get the mixture of colours.

This is definitely lighting I could use for the performance with Tanya and I think would work really well with the performance. The fact we have the lights available at the theatre as well means I just need to get the gels to make the colours.