In Shakespeare’s day, the primary concern surrounding theatrical lighting was whether or not the “stage lights” – or candles – would cause a fire. If the playwright employed any theatrical lighting specialists at all, they would have known more about fire prevention and less about creating a suitable mood for whatever production was being staged. Today’s theatrical lighting professionals have much more to worry about than their Elizabethan counterparts, usually necessitating the inclusion of several lighting personnel for one event.
David Jacques, lighting designer and a professor at California State University at Long Beach, explains the difference between lighting designers and lighting technicians: “The lighting designer is much more of an artistic member of the creative team, where they decide what atmosphere to create in support of the show. A lighting technician in a church is the person who actually runs the lighting during the services – even though the lighting designer might have previously set the cues. The lighting technician actually controls the technical elements of the lighting.”
Today’s lighting systems may condense the work of many lights down to one, but these added capabilities make the operation of these systems more complex. “Lighting control is extremely sophisticated – especially when it comes to moving lights,” says Jacques. “You may think it is simpler to have one light do the service of 30, but there are a lot of moving parts in these lights and many ways of controlling them. With this technology, you have to be trained.”
An understanding of how electricity works is a mandatory requirement for any lighting technician. “We often find that people are locating fixtures too far away, or coming at too low an angle and it becomes visually uncomfortable for the celebrants,” says Ross De Alessi of Ross De Alessi Lighting Design in Seattle, Washington. “They need to study basic electricity and theatrical lighting. You can take a theatrical lighting class at a good college or university and come out understanding as much as you need to do practically anything for your congregation.”
Jacques, who teaches courses on theatrical lighting, agrees. “It’s interesting, because when I go out and consult for churches that want to move into more high tech systems, the one thing that people always seem to gloss over – and it’s crucial – is training,” he says. “I always make sure that whomever they buy their equipment from offers training.” Jacques, with the assistance of one of his graduate students, will also conduct three-day seminars for church faculty in need of instruction.
Roger Zobel, president of Television Production Service (TPS) in Atlanta, Georgia, notes that moving light technology has added to the lighting technician’s job description. “Churches that are really polished in their productions use moving lights selectively – maybe even to replace banks of fixtures because you can refocus fixtures between scenes,” he says. “The need to plan for this requires more effort on the part of the lighting technician.”
While the technology has grown more complex, it isn’t impossible to learn. “I haven’t met anyone I couldn’t train to do this,” claims Jacques. “If you are setting up a small system that is going to be permanent and it’s just a matter of reprogramming the lights from week to week depending on what the service is, then by all means you can have people in-house who are trained to service and run the lights.”
Still, De Alessi cautions against installing systems that are too technically complex. “Some people go way overboard in taking advantage of the technology that is available,” he says. “With some of the mirror and robotic fixtures, when one of these has to be fixed, you are sending a $4,000 fixture back and forth to be repaired. It’s not fun.”
Bridget Williams, LC, a California-based lighting consultant, advises churches to assemble a proper crew to maintain the lighting systems. “They have to have people who are willing to run the fixtures and learn how to use the computer equipment in addition to actually maintaining the equipment,” she says. “A lot of this moving equipment requires much more maintenance than simply screwing in a light bulb and turning it on. They need, if not one person, then a small staff of technicians who are willing to run the lights and maintain them, or who at least know who to call when things require maintenance.”
When staging large-scale productions, such as elaborate Christmas pageants, Jacques recommends enlisting the services of a professional. “You want to bring in professional electricians, because of the safety issues involved,” he cautions. “Some of these lights weigh up to 200 pounds; you don’t want people who are untrained in rigging to be up on a truss pulling these lights. Whenever you are bringing in a lot of equipment, you need to budget in skilled labor because you don’t want to endanger anybody.”
Large productions also require extensive programming – another task that is best left to a pro, according to Jacques. “For a Christmas pageant, there could be 1,200 lights in the show,” he says. “Some of the productions I have been involved with have taken two weeks to program. It depends on the scale of the production.”
Since most productions include supporting video footage, lighting technicians must be conscious of what their counterparts in the video crew are attempting to achieve. Thanks to the inroads that have been made in video projection technology, the relationship between lighting and video has grown more symbiotic. “In the old days, you had to be very careful not to wash out the projector with the lights,” Jacques recalls. “They are getting more powerful and the resolution is getting higher – especially DLP projectors, which have much higher resolutions and higher intensities.”
Still, lighting techs must be aware of the projectors’ presence. “If you carelessly focus a room with a number of projection screens, ambient light will hit the screens and wash them out, or one screen may appear darker than another,” Zobel warns. “The technician has got to be skilled enough so that they keep as much light as possible off of those projection surfaces. That may require accessories to be added to the lighting fixtures themselves, such as half-hats, top hats, lighting control devices, and barn doors.”
As services and productions become more complicated, some churches are adding trained lighting personnel to their staff rosters. “Technical directors are realizing that this is pretty complex,” Zobel observes. “They are saying, we have ministers of music and other trained people; maybe we ought to be looking at lighting people who are trained on a formal basis.”
[Editor’s Note: In the next issue of CPM, we will be covering the topic of maintaining proper lighting color temperature when lighting for live video for broadcast or IMAG (image magnification)]
Carolyn Heinze (carolyn@churchproduction.com)
works from her office in Vancouver, Canada.
