To speak of special lighting effects is to refer to the search for visual sensations that impact an environment. Two different looks at a subject that has left the show to take over other everyday spaces.By: Lorena Stapff
Anyone has seen it: dark days impact people's moods. It is not the same to start a new day with a radiant sun, than to get out of bed with the most opaque of days. That is the capacity that light has: it modifies the mood of individuals and even creates atmospheres and sensations when accompanied by other sensory motivators, such as music.
The following text will deal with special lighting effects and their role in the world of entertainment, architecture and marketing. To do this, AVI LATINOAMÉRICA invited two people who work with light; the first of them from the architectural design: the architect Pedro Alejandro Garza de Yta, general director of Integral Architectural Maintenance, from Mexico; on the show side the guest is Maneco Quinderé, lighting designer of Maneco Quinderé Asociados, from Brazil.
Light is the protagonist
Invariably, special effects continue to be widely used in concerts, musicals, plays, and have gradually acquired prominence in other areas such as restaurants and residences of high strata, as Pedro Garza pointed out. This expert also added that "another issue in which this type of lighting is very fashionable is in the beautification of cities, highlighting the potential of light as an urban element and has acquired importance in the rethinking of public space and museums."
Maneco Quinderé said that special effects are becoming increasingly important for corporate events in large companies, which demand an enormous amount of equipment and elements for their launches. Garza agreed with Quinderé and added that "the strategy of using special effects is widespread in commercial and marketing spaces such as car distributors, clothing stores or any commercial establishment whose image to the public is important."
Nowadays LED technology has become popular in special lighting effects. "The most used today are THE LEDs, the screens made with this technology and the programming that can be done with them," said Quinderé.
On the types of lighting to generate different effects, Garza mentioned the grade, which is mainly used to highlight textures; accentuation effects "such as a follower effect in a theatre or a luminaire of a very closed beam that illuminates a painting in a very specific way". On the gradual change of technologies, he said that "in the issue of accentuation and special effects we have an open competition between incandescent light and LEDs."
What you can not miss
The two guests exposed from their area of knowledge what can not be missing when working with special lighting effects. Pedro Garza said that if it is taken into account that "everything that the human being sees is reflected light", an exhaustive analysis of the surfaces on which the project is going to be carried out must be made. "This must be complemented by the task that is going to be carried out in the place so that the lighting is what the human being needs to carry out a certain function."
This is considered important by the Mexican to be able to combine the architectural characteristics of the place with the use that people will give to the space, in order to integrate the appropriate components.
Maneco Quinderé, who has done the lighting design for many shows and plays inside and outside Brazil, considers that the theme of special effects is very broad and there is no key to what can not be missing, since everything depends on what you want to transmit and gave as an example a show with music: "If you need effects to harmonize with the music in a show, these effects will depend on the performance, the music, what you want to convey. The use of LED's or movie lights depends on the visual paraphernalia that makes up the set, the geometric design. The special lighting effects in a play, for example, depend a lot on the artist for whom the effect is performed, on the lyrics of the songs, the rhythm and the musical effects, because in music there are different dynamics of lights."
He further noted that there must be perfect communication and understanding between who is doing the lighting and who is designing the project; so much so that he said that this harmony between the two people is more important than the special effects themselves.
The challenges and the industry to come
When discussing the challenges and challenges that the special effects industry must face, both guests agreed that the main challenge has to do with energy saving and environmental care. The first to comment was Pedro Alejandro Garza de Yta and he relied on the words he once heard from a Japanese designer, in his view the most accurate ones he has heard in his journey through the industry: "the challenge is to look for more beauty with less energy".
According to Garza, an optimal use of energy is required so as not to waste natural resources or lighting infrastructure "so that the issue of energy consumption does not continue to make us have a hard time with the issue of ecology. A lot of the light that is generated on this planet, and that can be seen in the space photos, goes to the celestial vault, which becomes a waste of energy," Garza said.
Maneco Quinderé said that "the great challenge is to have equipment with low energy consumption and with more functions, not only in the change of color, but more visual effects. The challenge now that we have leDs, is to transform those light motions into lamps that consume less energy, because today greener things are needed, more ecologically correct."
The special effects industry is becoming more and more specialized. It is no longer the same as more than 100 years ago when there was only the incandescent bulb, hence lighting designers and installers have to be constantly training to know the new products and technologies and how to combine them to deliver better quality work to the end user.
On the future of the industry Garza said that "in the coming years we will have a technical offer that we will have to include with a special rationality so as not to be involved in a maelstrom of changes that can be ephemeral. These products will be very focused on energy saving, LEDs, fiber optics and miniaturized spotlights. This will increase the variables for decision-making."
Quinderé commented on the coming future that the main research will be aimed at technologies that use LED's and added that "the new effects of stage lighting will revolve around the low energy consumption and durability of the equipment."
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