7 Video Excerpts

After viewing the Stage Door blog and looking at all of the videos, I have selected 7 to share along with a description of why I thought the technology added to the clip.

1. The video begins off dimly lit but quickly the special effect of lightening wakes the audience up using visual and sound effects. Then towards the middle, the mixture of red and yellow spotlights creates a warm friendly environment and the use of background dancers excites the crowd. At all times, a mixture of smiling people surround Harris as he sings out about the proposition of life becoming more like theater. If that were true, we would need a constant crew of people trailing us around the handle the lights, camera, make-up, costumes etc.

2. If you watch the curtains behind the bed right as the video begins, you can see light coming from behind them and you can see them blowing which gives off a feel of outdoors in her bedroom as she sings. Also if you look at the ground around 2:05 you can get a good view of a colorful disco effect. There are several blue green and yellow circles spiraling across the ground the give the whole scene a star-gazing kind of feel.

3. In the video, the entire set is the yellow couch upon which Kristen sits, but the use of the spotlight that follows her around on stage makes her shine even brightly as she sings. I laughed at the interaction between her and the orchestra in the beginning. It made the audience laugh and reminded me that music really is a technology because it is one of the main factors when it comes to mood.

4. Oh my gosh! The amount of colors, extravagant costumes, lights and glitter. I see the electric "passionelle" sign in 0:04, petals falling from the sky in 0:25, and the black background with the twinkling sparkles in 2:45. This Broadway show seems to revolve around glitz and glamour at first glance but as I watch the brief previews of the rest of the clips it seems to be a conflicting tale based on Genesis from the Bible. Any show with Kristen is entirely glamorous in my opinion. 

5 and 6. Look at the difference between the sets and costumes in the first video in 1960 and the second from the 21st century! I am just amazed how far theater has come. The 1960 Peter Pan video reminds me of the video style from the Brady Bunch. Their costumes are a plain cloth brown while the second video has belts, colors, different textures and add-ons. The background in the second video is also much more elaborate. The trees in the 1960 video look crafted by an elementary school child whereas the audience can really believe Peter is in a mystical world in the more modern video. The    updated technology gives the story a more "real" feel.

7. While most stages have three walls and one "fourth/imaginary" wall, this stage is very uniquely set up, sort of like a game show. The walls and floors both lit up and the lights not only change color but move. This video has similar technologies to the Patrick Neil Harris video. The flashier stages also tend to break the fourth wall (like Glitter and Be Gay). I think it would have been an added touch if the inner circle of the circular stage span while everyone was singing in unison. If not possible, they could make the stage rise at the end and then when the lights go off, an attached staircase at the end would get them down safely.