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Lighting Design: A Process

Video Case Study

Here is a video of Tony Award and Olivier Award-winning lighting designer Paule Constable discussing her design process for Warhorse at the National Theatre.

The Art of Theatre Lighting - War Horse for The National Theatre Links to an external site.The Art of Theatre Lighting - War Horse for The National Theatre

Since each lighting designer's process will vary, the below is just one possible way of going through the process. 

The below steps are essentially the greatest hits: the steps that most lighting designers will use in one form or another.

Like most designers, the lighting designer's process shares a great deal of steps with those for the set designer. However, there are a few key differences to take note of.

 

Info Establishing the World

  1. Read the script. The script is the first and foremost resource a designer has for the show. Most designers suggest reading the script the first time as "an audience member." Try and avoid the impulse to start planning or taking notes just yet. The goal for the first-read is to come away with an impression of the show and an emotional response to it.
  2. Meet with the Director and the other designers. Talk about the show, what you liked, what you have questions about, and discuss the director's plans and visions for the show.
  3. Read the script again and take notes. This time, put on your designer hat. Examine the action of each scene, the dialogue, take note of the time of year or time of day for each scene, jot down reactions or specific needs for each scene (such as a match being struck, a lantern, the sun setting, etc.)
  4. Do visual research. These can be photos, paintings, films, or whatever else that speaks to the show, the historical period, or the location for you as the designer. Your research should focus on qualities and properties of light that are unique or of interest for various scenes, locations, moods, or themes. This research doesn't need to be particularly cohesive or refined yet. Grab a little bit of everything or collect a lot of variety. If it feels like the show to you, it is fair game.
  5. Share your research with the rest of the team. You never know what image might spark either your imagination or those of your collaborators. 
  6. Decide on a path forward. Get on the same page with the director and the rest of the creative team of how you all would like to approach the show and what you want to focus on.

 

Project Designing

  1. Continue to talk about the show. Lighting is ephemeral, meaning we can not touch it with our hands. So how a lighting designer best communicates their ideas with the director is by explaining them and talking about them in-depth. Many lighting designers will spend more of their time at first with the director talking about the story itself, desired mood, the internal action and proposed blocking for the show than they will individual lighting choices. Being on the same page with the director early one for what needs to be felt by the audience, communicated to them, or emphasized is often far more valuable than saying, "Act 2, Scene 5 should be dark blue sidelight and a pale green backlight."
  2. Draft the show. Similar to set draftings, the lighting designer's draftings are to-scale technical drawings that communicate the important details of the show to the lighting technicians. These drawings show each individual light in the show, their type, wattage, and placement on the lighting positions and in the space. They are the road map to where to hang each individual lighting instrument to accomplish the design for the show.
      • the Lighting Plan or Light Plot - is a birds-eye view of all lights (called units or instruments), lighting positions, lighting practicals (like table lamps), special effects (like fog or haze), masking, a basic representation of the set design for reference, and the theatre architecture itself.
      • the Section - 2-d side profile view of the theatre. As if the entire stage and audience area was cut in half and you are looking out from within the center of it. Used to illustrate the lighting positions - both their height off the ground (called trim height) and relative size and placement within the space, plus any major architectural obstacles that need to be avoided. Used to also determine trim heights for masking like borders and to make sure that the lighting equipment and the scenery (flown or on the ground) will not interfere with each other.
      • the Details - zoomed in drawings to illustrate a single element of a scenic piece in order to more accurately depict the desired outcome or shape.
  3. Make the paperwork. Lighting designers have a large list of paperwork that they make to facilitate both the work of the technicians but also their own design work on the show.
      • the Instrument Schedule - lists all of the lights in the show - their type, wattage, color, gobo, accessories, and channel - broken down and organized by hanging position name.
      • the Channel Hookup - similar to the instrument schedule; lists all of the lights in the show and all of their information, but is broken down and organized instead by channel order.
          • channels are unique identifiers for each light and are how the lighting designer refers to, controls, and cues each light in the show
      • the Magic Sheet - a graphical chart or illustration of each channel in the show and how it relates to different scenes, locations, or system of light.
          • systems are essentially an idea of light in the space (i.e. amber backlight, blue sidelight, tree foliage texture, etc.). There are typically many systems of light per show and each system can be made out of just a few lights, or possibly dozens of lights.
  4. Sequence or work through the entire show together on paper. This would be with the director, the whole design team, and often the stage manager, and the purpose is to discuss how everything needs to fit together moment by moment, scene by scene, transition through transition. This is sometimes also known as a dry tech and might happen closer to the start of technical rehearsals rather than towards the beginning of the rehearsal process.
  5. Attend rehearsals. If at all possible, a lighting designer should go to as many of the acting blocking sessions and rehearsals as possible. Why? Because it is their job to light it, to sculpt it, to emphasize moments and movements, and to bring all of the other elements together to form a cohesive and impactful world. So you need to know where a scene is blocked, how a dance number is choreographed, and how the actors are portraying their characters.

 

Example draftings: Download She A Gem_Light Plot.pdf

Example hookup: Download Channel Hookup - She a Gem.pdf

Example magic sheet:  Download She a Gem magic 021119.pdf

Resources The Build and Technical Rehearsals

This point in the process is where the lighting designer's true work begins.

Build

During the hang of the plot, the lighting designer is often interacting with the crew remotely - answering questions, solving problems, and making adjustments via email, texts, and phone calls as the crew gets the lighting ready for the designer's arrival at the theatre. A lighting designer is hardly ever hanging or cabling the lights themselves, with the exception of small, low-budget shows.

Designer Run

Once the show is close to going into technical rehearsals, the director and stage manager will schedule a designer run for all of the designers to come to the rehearsal studio and watch the show from beginning to end. The lighting designer will especially make sure they are in attendance.

During this run-through of the show, the lighting designer will annotate their copy of the script with placements for and notes about lighting cues (individual snapshots / looks of light onstage). These placement and cue decisions can be influenced by everything from the blocking and choreography, to the music, to even things like how long a scene change or costume change needs to be. By the time they leave this rehearsal, the lighting designer will have most of the show planned out on paper and in their head.

They will also spend some time in the hours or days after this run communicating these lighting cues to the stage manager, who will be responsible for calling them and making these cues happen night to night, performance to performance.

Focus

While all the lights have at this point been hung, cabled, and are ready for the designer to turn-on, they are not yet ready to start cuing with. To be able to reach that point, the lighting designer and technicians will get together for a work session called the focus call.

During this time, the lighting designer will direct the technicians where to point each light to onstage in order for it to do the job that they drafted it to do, and they will make any adjustments to the plot that are needed based on what they saw during the designer run. Since light plots can often contain hundreds of individual lights, this focus call can take many hours or even days to accomplish. But by the end of this call, all the lights will be focused correctly and ready to light the area onstage or the set piece that they are supposed to.

Technical Rehearsals

All of their earlier work has led up to this moment. This is when the lighting designer actually starts to create their design for the show with the actual lights, scenery, and actors onstage. Unlike with set designers or costume designers who can make sketches, renderings, and models beforehand, this is when the lighting designer begins to be able to actually show the director their proposed design.

It can be a stressful time. There are often hundreds or thousands of lighting cues to write in only a handful of days or weeks. And to add to the pressure, everyone (director, other designers, stage manager, actors) all are watching the lighting designer work. It would be like making a painting in front of a crowd while getting notes from that crowd on what you are making the entire time. This process requires a ton of pre-planning, efficiency, adaptability, gut reactions, and proficiency in the craft in order to do successfully. Not to mention nerves of steel.

Lighting designers might also work on cuing the show during hours the cast is not onstage in order to get ahead or catch up to the place they need to be. And all the while, they are making notes about how their design is starting to look onstage and what fixes to cues or lighting focuses they need to make in order to make their design the way they want it to be.

Opening night will come quickly though, whether or not the designer is ready for it. By that day and time, they need to be done with their work.

Read This Optional Reading

"The Painter: An Allegory, By Lighting Designer Cory Pattak." https://thetheatretimes.com/the-painter-an-allegory-by-lighting-designer-cory-pattak/ Links to an external site.