Theatre Lighting is a mixture of technical and artistic skill. It takes about 12 hours to cover all of the following so it is recommended to do it in several sections. As an overview it can be covered in 4 hours. There is no shortcut to good lighting.
TECHNICAL SKILLS – Stage Lighting Mechanics
Stage safety.
Safety Guidelines For The Entertainment Industry can be found on the Live Performance Australia website https://liveperformance.com.au/resource?keyword=safety
Regulations
Health Public Buildings Act http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/cproot/1718/2/Public%20Buildings%20Guidelines%20Final.pdf
Working At Heights Code Of Practice https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/model-code-practice-managing-risk-falls-workplaces
Rigging safety.
Lighting Bars – http://www.jands.com.au/brands/jands/lighting_bars/jlx_lite
Lantern yoke, locks, safety wire, colour frame, accessories
Ladder safety
Platform ladders – http://www.sydneytools.com.au/shopexd.asp?id=16921&bc=no
Scaffold
Elevated Work Platforms
Objectives of stage lighting.
Illumination or Selective Visibility
Dimension or Composition – keeping it 3D
Selectivity – revealing and hiding
Atmosphere or Mood – controlling the audiences perception of time or place.
Properties of light
Direction
Intensity – Dimmers, neutral density gels
Shape – shutters, barndoors, gobos, edge focus, smoke or haze.
Colour – black and white are colours
Movement – walking through gobos, rotating gobos, moving lights, projection.
Electrical safety. – http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg247.pdf
Lethal current
Earthing of lanterns
Circuit breakers
Fuses
Cables
Visual Inspection before Every use.
Testing and Tagging
Basic lantern types.
Floods
Profiles – Base Down and Axial or Ellipsoid
Gobos
Fresnels – lens – barndoors
Parcans
LED’s
Lighting angles.
McAndless method – front keylights 45 degree each side and up and backlight
Dance – Sidelight, backlight and frontlight
Music – Atmospheric, light sheet music, liaasse with musicians
Lighting desks
Basic Presets
Modern theatre desk – programming and use
Computer based – Light Factory – programming and use.
Moving lights desks –
Calculation of Power usage
Watts is power consumption of a fixture
Three phase power
Dimmer Racks
Conventional
Sine Wave
Switching options
Patching and cables.
Colour.
Additive Mixing – Primary RGB, Secondary CMY
Subtractive Mixing
Gels – Swatch books – The Art of Light – Lee http://www.clearlight.com.au/media/Lee_Filters/lee_filters_brochure.pdf The Rosco Guide to Color Filters http://www.clearlight.com.au/media/Rosco_Filters/rosco_filters_brochure.pdf
Split gels
Dichroic colour filters
Colour Scrollers
Special effects.
Gobos – fixed and moving
Effects projectors – Flame, water ripple, clouds, snow, strobes, u/v, moons, stars
Lamps, candles, scrims, haze, smoke
ARTISTIC SKILLS – Stage Lighting Design
Basic stage lighting design.
Stage areas – usually same as director – DSL,DSC,DSR, MSL,C,R, USL,C,R
Script Analysis – read through to get feeling, then to get cues and state changes
use a pencil and put tabs of pages for lighting cues.
Lighting plans.
Drawing Scale – usually 1:25 –
Scale plan and side elevation of the set
Stencils – speed up drawing plan, protractor, ruler, erasor – http://www.clsa.com.au/sales/stencils/stencils.html
Legend
Fixtures
Circuit or patch – octagonal box
Desk channel – circle
Dimmer channel – square box
Documentation.
Script analysis.
Rigging a show
Focussing.
Square one rig.
Technical rehearsals
Desk plotting.
Setting Fade Times
Stage workers for scene changes
Recording Scenes
Editing Scenes
Recording Stacks
Assigning Stacks
Editing StacksRunning s show
Lamp checks.
Page updated 15 May 2023