Lights, Camera....

Walking off the plane, we were greeted by emerging sunlight and warm air. It's funny seeing L.A. locals looking chilly in 60 degree weather...


After cruising the 401 North (with the help of "CR," our explicitly named, free GPS unit in the rental car), we arrived for a special tour of NBC studios. Aside from the size and scope of the studios and the aura of all the set pieces that don't seem to exist outside our television sets, what struck me most were the lights- their dwarfing size, blinding intensity, and volume in the gridded web on each ceiling.

When we think L.A. and Hollywood, we think light: the bright sunlight, the white-washed pavement... and, of course, the movies. Essentially, all movies (the part that we see with our eyes, anyway) are just light. Photons travel through the lens of the camera and activate the film emulsion or camera chip. When we watch the movie, light bounces off the film screen from the film projector, or from the pixels in our TV screens. Of course, the images created by this light are decoded in our brains as having meaning, but we often forget that at its simplest essence, all filmic media is, quite simply, light.

Perhaps this has something to do with our obsession with Hollywood culture. We rely on light to survive- the sun's rays gives us Vitamin D, which is essential to the our bone structure. We make sense of our surroundings by absorbing light through our retinas. And yet if you have ever seen a movie set, it is clear that the light used to create a scene is hardly lifelike; cinematographers manipulate light to influence certain feelings and tones in the piece almost subconsciously, pleasing our eyes in a way that cannot be satisfied by nature alone.

Yet, for some reason, we are drawn to it on the screen and off. There is something about light that can define space (much like music) in a way we cannot describe with words, bypassing language in some all-consuming way...