dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · Drama · Year 10

Golau’r Harbwr (The Harbour Light): the lighting pack

The scene, the village of Porth Eithin, the characters and the lighting designer are invented for this lesson. The lighting terms come from the glossary in the WJEC GCSE Drama specification.

1. The scene

A harbour wall in Porth Eithin, a fishing village on the Llŷn peninsula, one evening in autumn. ELIN (15) is waiting for her father’s fishing boat, which is late. Her grandfather, TAID, joins her. The scene lasts just over 4 minutes. The times on the left are minutes and seconds from the start of the scene.

TimeLineScript
Before the audience comes in: the preset. House lights are on. A dim deep blue glow on the cyclorama.
00:00The house lights fade. Slowly, a warm sunset rises on the harbour wall. ELIN sits on the bench, centre stage, staring out to sea, towards the audience.
00:121ELIN: He said half six. It’s gone seven.
00:182TAID: (entering up stage right with a flask) He said half six on the phone. The sea never promised anything.
00:303ELIN: Don’t do that. Don’t be calm at me.
00:364TAID: (sitting beside her) Paned?
00:455ELIN: No. (Beat.) Yes. Diolch.
01:006TAID: The sun’s going. Look at that. Red sky at night.
01:107ELIN: Shepherd’s delight. You say that every single time.
01:208TAID: Because every single time it’s true.
01:30The sun sinks. The warm light drains away and the harbour turns cold and blue.
01:50Out on the point, the lighthouse begins to flash: once every 5 seconds, until the end of the scene.
02:009ELIN: (counting under her breath) One, two, three, four, five.
02:1010TAID: Every five seconds. Fifty years it’s been doing that.
02:2011TAID stands and walks down stage left, away from ELIN, into his memory.
TAID: The winter I was your age, I went out with my father for the last pots before Christmas. The fog came down in ten minutes. Ten minutes. I couldn’t see the front of the boat. My father cut the engine and we just sat there, listening. Water slapping the hull. A gull, somewhere. He didn’t say a word, and that frightened me more than the fog. We drifted. An hour, maybe more. I was so cold I stopped shivering. And then…
03:1512TAID: …and then we saw it. The light on the point. And I knew we were home.
03:20The memory fades. Night returns.
03:2513ELIN: You never told me that.
03:3014TAID: (going back to the bench) You never asked.
03:4015ELIN: (standing, pointing out to sea) Taid. There. Red and green.
03:4816TAID: Red and green. That means she’s heading straight for us.
04:0017ELIN: Always late…
04:0518TAID: …never lost.
04:05 to 04:08They watch the boat. Three seconds. Blackout.

Why “red and green”: boats carry a red light on the left side and a green light on the right side. If you can see both at once, the boat is coming straight towards you.

2. The lighting rig

This is a ground plan: the stage seen from above, with the audience at the bottom. Stage left and stage right are the actors’ left and right as they face the audience, so stage left is on the right of the drawing.

Cyclorama (the sky), lit by Ch5 (sunset orange) and Ch6 (deep blue) from a ground row harbour wall rail Ch9 red, Ch10 green: boat lights bench Ch3 special Ch4 water gobo Ch7 lighthouse beam (sweeps across the sky) DOWN STAGE RIGHT DOWN STAGE LEFT UP STAGE RIGHT UP STAGE LEFT FOH bar (front of house) 1 2 1 2 1 2 3, 4 Ch1 warm wash (amber) and Ch2 cold wash (steel blue) each cover the whole stage. AUDIENCE
ChannelLanternWhat it does
Ch1Warm wash (amber)Lights the whole stage in warm, golden light.
Ch2Cold wash (steel blue)Lights the whole stage in cold, blue light. The actors can still be seen.
Ch3Special: spotlight, down stage leftA tight circle of white light on one spot.
Ch4Gobo: rippling water pattern, down stage leftA stencil in the lantern throws a rippling water pattern on the floor.
Ch5Cyclorama flood (sunset orange)Turns the sky orange and red.
Ch6Cyclorama flood (deep blue)Turns the sky dark blue, for dusk and night.
Ch7Lighthouse beam, up stage rightA narrow beam across the sky. Can flash.
Ch8House lightsThe lights over the audience.
Ch9Boat light (red), up stage centre, lowA small red point of light out at sea.
Ch10Boat light (green), up stage centre, lowA small green point of light, next to Ch9.

3. The rules of a cue sheet

A cue sheet is a list of instructions that must be followed in order, exactly as written. In other words, it is an algorithm. The lighting operator does nothing that is not on the sheet.

  1. Order. The operator works down the sheet from top to bottom, one GO at a time, so cues must be written in the order they happen, with numbers going up. A new cue can be slotted in between two others with a point number, such as LX 5.5 between LX 5 and LX 6.
  2. Only changes are listed. A cue lists only the channels that change. Any channel not listed stays where it is. Lighting desks that work like this are called tracking desks.
  3. Levels go from 0% (off) to 100% (full).
  4. Fade time is the number of seconds the change takes. A snap is a change in 0 seconds.
  5. One fade at a time. On this production, a cue’s fade must finish before the next cue’s GO.
  6. Repeating patterns. Lighting desks can run a repeating pattern as an effect (sometimes called a chase). Write it as: REPEAT [the steps] UNTIL [the cue that stops it]. An effect keeps running until a cue stops it.

4. Lighting words from the WJEC glossary