Concept

Conceptually with SKM, I was interested in breaking away from Dnd's standard formula. Homebrew based games allow players to create any kind of world they want. If you want robot goth lizard people that fight armies of time traveling Victorian era soldiers, by all means go ahead. Did I take it to that level of inspiration? No. But I was drawn to the fact that Tilly's Dnd module is a homebrew. It's anything she wants it to be. However, the Tilly that Agnes, our main character, interacts with throughout the show isn't really her. Tilly died in a car crash before the story starts. So my team and I were faced with an interesting challenge. Are we creating Tilly's world how she imagined Dnd? Or, do we the audience, view the story through Agnes' perception of Tilly's world? Ultimately, this story is about escapism vs reconciliation. In order for Agnes to understand her late sister, she would need to accept Tilly for who she was, and allow that to shape the world in her eyes.

SKM concept

Research

Tron was my first research rabbit hole that I dove straight down into. I always loved the idea of a character being thrust into a world unknown, consequentially giving it life. I imagined, what if Agnes is the spark that ignites the power source of the world, Tilly. Through emotion, their energies feed off one another and in turn conveys some form of magic. At this point in the process, I wasn't sure what magic looked like for lighting, but I knew it was important, so I put the idea on the back burner and looked at more material. I explored cyberpunk, portals, natural portals, escapism, and bio-luminescence vs bio-fluorescence.

Tron Inspiration

Cyberpunk Inspiration

Man Made Portals

Natural Portals

Escapism

French Escapism

Bio-Luminescence

Bio-Fluorescence

Additional Research

After a few meetings with the group, I realized that I had spent a lot of my time figuring out what the rules of the "magic" were, and how they impacted the lighting. I was left feeling unsure about how I felt about the physical locations. There needed to be a clear distinction between Athens Ohio, and New Landia the Dnd world. I was reminded that we're viewing the world through Agnes' eyes. Athens should feel blurry and numb. While in New Landia, there should be a flavor of magic that exist in the world. It's subtle and only appears through strong emotions. I then looked at rock concerts, something that Agnes has probably seen, and logically would be her first explanation of magic. The steel work and burning was my way of conveying the energy and danger of our emotions. The ocean floor images aligned with research that Mollie brought forward, and it was a great way to merge lighting and scenic inspiration.

Storyboard

My storyboarding of the show came a little later on in the process than usual. My biggest challenge with it was justifying lighting to convey a change in location. To me, going from warm light to cool light doesn't help communicate that we're moving from a comic book store to a demon's dungeon. I decided to reach out to Taylor, and together, we sat down and spit balled some ideas. This was helpful, as it alleviated some pressures she was feeling creatively too. I'm glad we were able to come out of our silos and figure out what the show needed.

SKM Storyboard

Magic via Technology

After all the dramaturgy and research that I had done, I came away feeling that light could be used in a way to suggest magic. I think this can go in many different directions on they achieve special effects with magic. Whether that's props, projections, and even some illusionist based tricks. Ultimately, I felt the best way to communicate magic was to connect to the emotions of the characters. When Agnes became upset with Tilly, she loses her ability to "see" and "feel" the magic of New Landia. But as she begins to understand her sister more and more, the magic begins to reveal itself. We collectively decided that the best way to stay somewhat true to the basic rules of Dnd and our own concept, it would be great if we could give the characters something that could light up and glow. Tilly is the badass paladin, so she got a cool glowing sword. Other characters like Orcus (a demon) and Kaliope (an elf) would have glowing horns and glowing belt respectively. Many of the props were being built custom made by all of our different shops. They would have had ardunio technology built in so that they all could have been controlled wirelessly from the light board.

Along with the props and costumes having lighting elements built in, Mollie designed us a fantastic stage to use. Underneath the 2" acrylic glass was about 400' of pixel tape for me to control and play with. Using Entecc's Elm software, we were able to map all of the pixels in an outside software, and then relay that into our light board. I truly felt that we were pushing our technological resources to levels that hadn't been attempted before. Some of my favorite memories was talking with the technology shops folks and looking around saying "wait can we do this?". It brought out a childhood like excitement that I think we all need from time to time. Thanks for the help Jeff.

Below you can find examples of Entecc's software controlling the pixels on the desk. The Light Plot package is available on request.

Scenic Model w/ Lighting

This model was made by our Scenic Designer Mollie Singer. It's an amazing representation of what the lighting was going to look like within the set.

Pixel Mapping

Besides simply glowing like in the photos above, here are several other examples of the capabilities of our set. What you're seeing is a top down (looking straight down) view of the set. Imagine the set like a TV screen. Tvs have thousands of RGB pixels that create the images we see. This is a similar concept, except with fewer pixels. Imagine a video of a circle getting smaller and then bigger. That video file is then played on the set like a tv screen. The set of course has gaps in it so you don't get the full picture. However it does create some interesting and inspiring effects nonetheless. The set was a reservoir of magic that lived below our characters. When Tilly would go to cast a review spell, the set could pulse like a defibrillator. My greatest challenge was always going to be having all this incredible technology and control at my hands, and finding the appropriate ways to still make magic feel subtle and special.