2. Introduction
If you are reading this, you have been assigned the holy and utterly
essential duty of lighting for the Lakeridge Theater Program. As you
increase in skill, you will amass about a fourth of the knowledge
necessary to run any theater production, the other three-fourths held
by actors, sound, and general tech. While it is nice to have a
flawless show with perfect lighting, the lead thought in your mind
should always be getting it done!
Lighting: As Easy as 1,2,3!
Most productions can be split into three steps:
1. Design
2. Implementation
3. Run time
Step 1: Design
Introduction
Designing for a show may be as simple as a sketch on a piece of paper,
to as complex as a multipage channel markup and set design spec.
However, all of these approaches boil down to first finding out how
you want to set up your lighting set, and then writing it down so you
and others can implement it later down the road. Feel free to
experiment or deviate from your design if it is clear that there is a
better way.
Optional Step: Reading the script
Yes, it seems slightly strange that you wouldn’t read the script for a
show for a show that you yourself need to design for. But often, your
ideas and the director’s ideas for the show’s lighting from the script
can be different. Ask the director what they want directly if you know
that they would be fine with your asking. The director often knows
better than you on what they want for the show, and no one wants to be
at dress rehearsal to find out that the cool effect you spent weeks on
was “too extreme” for the director. Other times, it may just be easier
3. to watch the show to find out what moods and lights are needed. If you
do end up reading the script, use this procedure:
1. Read the script once
a. Get the general theme of the play. Is it a comedy musical?
Is it a drama? This will affect how you design the lights
later.
2. Read the script again
a. Note times of day, musical numbers, especially moody parts
of the play, etc. You may need a light/ set of lights gelled
a specific way for different parts of the play
3. Write down a general list of what lights you will need for
different parts of the play
a. Day/night time parts of the play may need their own special
washes, musical numbers will need extra effects and color,
etc. Plan accordingly.
Once you have read the script, you will need to actually design a
lighting plot for the play. This plot may be scratched on a piece of
paper or made in software, but the design process will be the same.
Designing your lighting
When designing your lighting, a number of considerations must be made:
How long do I have?
From the outset, you should be asking how long you have to implement
your design. Don’t create the ultimate lighting show if you know you
only have a few hours to hang.
How should the stage be lit?
Lighting designs may be split into a number of basic components:
The General Wash
A general wash is a set of lights that cover (wash) the entire stage
in light. Nearly all scenes in a show will use a general wash.
Considerations will need to be made on how many lights are needed to
cover the entire stage. The stage should be split into areas the same
size as the beams that are cast by the lights, and should be in odd
numbers so that there is a set that casts directly in the middle of
the stage. The general wash may be set up in a number of ways:
4. The Flat Wash:
The flat wash involves a single row of lights pointed directly at the
stage.
Pros:
● Uses comparatively few lights
Cons:
● Looks “flat” to the audience, doesn’t offer 3d effect.
● Uses only one color, looks unrealistic
The Cross-hatch Wash
The cross hatch wash uses differently colored lights pointed at 90
degree angles to each other. The colors on each set of lights may be
different to create different moods on the set. Two shades of pink
will create a brighter mood, a blue and a pink will make neutral/cold,
5. and so on. The colors may alternate or be in sets along in the bar,
the only difference this makes is that turning off one set will either
have alternating or uniform light/dark distributions on the actors.
Use this style when possible!
Pros:
● Looks good
● Can create more fine tuned moods/colors on set
Cons:
● A bit harder to focus
● Uses more lights
Sidelights:
Sidelights highlight the actor’s body and are good for dance numbers.
They exist on the sides of the electrics and in the wings.
Downlights:
Downlights give color to the stage and offer additional mood to a
scene. Work lights commonly are dark purple/blue colored downlights
that offer light between scenes and during scenes.
Backlights:
Cyc lights are an easy way to offer a large wash of color on the back
screen or onto the stage. Expect to use them extensively every
production.
Specials:
Specials are often single lights that highlight a single area or actor
and can accentuate the mood of the scene.
Spotlights:
Spotlights are a great way to give focus to a single actor or set
piece dynamically throughout the show.
What lights do I use?
Here are descriptions of all the lights we have in the theater:
Source 4 Lekos:
6. ● Convenient for general washes because they are already set in the
catwalks
● Good for specials and wing sidelights also
● Have multiple angles for different sized beams(Use 26/36/50 for
washes, 19 for sidelights and specials).
Fresnels:
● Good for side/down lighting on stage or onstage/black box general
washes.
● Have a knob that adjusts beam size
Source 4 Pars:
7. ● Good for specials, worklights, backlights, downlights
● Use changeable lens to change beam size
Altman Lekos:
● Progressively breaking from bulb socket corrosion
● Use only if they’re going to be the only thing lighting the stage
at any moment
Parcan:
8. ● Good for worklight/downlights
Cyc lights:
● Used to light cyc or give large swath of stage backlight
● Good for providing scene mood
How many lights do I have?
Take into account of how many lights you actually have to use before
implementing a design. You may see a full list of all the lights in
the Lakeridge theater here.
Step 2: Implementation
Introduction
Now that you’ve designed your lighting, you need to actually implement
it in the theater.
9. The Phases of Implementation
Implementing your lighting may be split into a number of steps:
1. Allocation
a. Find and collect all the lights you need to hang
b. Find or cut all the gel you need to put in your lights
2. Hanging/Geling
a. Hang and gel all the lights you specified in your design.
Your design will come in handy at this point because you can
have multiple people hanging from one design
3. Focusing
a. Move your lights to the correct areas specified in your
design
b. Feel free to take more time in this step. Poor focusing
wastes more time later on fixing and will look bad to you
and possibly the audience
4. Setting up the board
I want to discuss specifically how to set up the board, because a lot
of theory goes into how the board works and how it is organized.
The configuration
The lighting board communicates with the lights in a configuration
like this:
10. The lighting board tells the server that it wants a specific light to
be at a specific level, the server relays that command as a high
voltage signal, and the light turns on. This configuration is also
important to troubleshooting, because a light not coming on could be a
fault at any one of the points on the above chart.
The board
The lighting board uses the following bottom-up hierarchy to represent
physical lights:
● Patch
○ A representation of a physical socket that connects to a
light.
○ Patching groups sockets together into a single channel that
will all be brought up together when a handle (slider) on
the board is brought up.
○ Channel
■ A collection of patches
■ Organization of channels is arbitrary, do what suits
you
■ Bound to a single handle (slider) on the board
11. ■ Often represents a single light
■ Submaster
● A collection of similar channels
● Represents things like washes, groups of colors,
etc.
Your setup of the board will follow a similar hierarchy: First
patching sockets into a channel configuration that makes sense to you,
and then grouping those channels into easy to bring up submasters that
will be quick to use when making scenes.
Scenes
Scenes represent a grouping of channels that will be all brought up
together at a specific rate. Scenes are great because they let you
bring up or down sets of lights using only one button press on the
board. If scenes are not a concept on the board you are using, you can
substitute them with submasters brought up and down manually, with one
submaster representing one scene.
Step 3: Run Time
Introduction
Think of running the show as your well deserved victory lap. The
hardest parts of lighting production are over, and now you just have
to press a button at the right times during the show. This is not to
say that you shouldn’t be too careless. Running a show actually takes
a lot of focus and tempo to pull off.
Before the show
Before each show, you should always turn on each channel to make sure
that all the lights turn on. You should also do a cue by cue run
through of the show to make sure that all the scenes look correct. It
may seem unnecessary, but it’s better to find faults before the show
than during it.
During the show
Ideally, you should be engaged in the show for the entire duration of
the show. But after a couple of watches, a show may start to seem old,
12. and maintaining focus may become difficult. It helps to be engaged at
least around the areas you have cues on because, as the most
knowledgeable person about the lighting show, you may find times when
the stage manager is wrong with the timing of their cue for you, and
it pays to be able to accurately second guess their command. Keeping
calm is also important. You don’t want to accidentally press the
button to change scenes at the wrong time because you panicked.
After the show
Make sure to shut down the board and keep your area generally clean.
Turn on any lights that need to be on after the show. If it’s the last
night, do a bit better job of cleaning up everything.
Other notes
Troubleshooting
When trying to figure out why a light isn’t working, you may use this
pattern:
● Socket fault?
○ Check the same socket with a different light
■ If the other light works, then the first light either
has a bad bulb or some other electrical fault.
● If replacing the bulb doesn’t work, unscrew the
plug attached to the light and check to see if
the leads are seated or use a different light
○ If you reseat them and the light still
doesn’t work, get a new light
■ If the other light doesn’t work, TURN IT OFF AT THE
SERVER ROOM FIRST, unscrew the plug attached to the
socket and check to see if the leads are seated.
● If the leads are seated and the light still
doesn’t work, check for a server fault or use a
different socket.
● Server fault?
○ Check to see if a relay on the server is tripped.
■ If there is one tripped, untrip it and try again
● If that doesn’t work and you’ve ruled out a
socket fault, use a different socket
13. ● Board fault?
○ Sanity check your patching and make sure you’re bringing up
the correct patch
○ Make sure the master handle is brought all the way up
○ Make sure there isn’t anything overriding your command
○ If no lights are coming up, make sure all the cables on the
board are plugged in
Links
All the lights in the Lakeridge Theater categorized by type with fault
information:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Ly9B3pgx_GQKnSgAkcWxXBRnCcp8d
P6bHJIwTa-c2Q/edit?usp=sharing
Etc Express 72/144 manual
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rj
a&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiY9ff3-NHOAhVX8WMKHVSEA6cQFggcMAA&url=https%3A%2F%
2Fwww.etcconnect.com%2FWorkArea%2FDownloadAsset.aspx%3Fid%3D1073746080
0&usg=AFQjCNG_XqELHgXl3ibOfKLzx1oAj39OMg&sig2=MnvkobfCr37U6lyWpkF7dA
Strand 200 manual
http://www.theatrecrafts.com/archive/documents/200series_console_manua
l.pdf
