After teaching student lighting designers for over twenty-five years, I have witnessed hundreds of errors, many of them quite silly. When my editor assigned me this article, I thought, “Great! I am sure that I have countless stories to share with my readers concerning common mistakes that young lighting designers make.” However, after compiling several dozen, I quickly realized that even the most experienced lighting designers with hundreds of productions behind them still make mistakes. I believe that the difference between the rookie and the professional is that professional knows how to survive the mistakes.
Below are the top five common mistakes made by rookie lighting designers. I could have easily listed dozens more, but these may be the most important. Enjoy!
1. Writing Too Many Light Cues
Let's face it, lighting design is fun. And it can be even more fun when you have the time to write a lot of light cues. However, if you are not careful with your cue writing, you may end up distracting the audience instead of supporting the story.
This is probably the most common mistake that young lighting designers make. They try to express everything the actors are saying through light. Sometimes, creating one atmosphere will be enough to tell the story. I have designed many shows, some with hundreds of light cues, and some with only a handful. The number of cues you write pertains to what is necessary to tell the story, and as told in the next example, is usually affected by the time you have to actually create the light cues. Plus, by writing fewer light cues, you have more time to finesse and fine-tune the light cues you have already created.
You must also figure on how much weight (cable and fixtures) your lighting positions can hold. This is critical when it comes to the safety of your crew and congregation. This alone could limit the number of fixtures you hang. Power is another consideration when you specify the number of fixtures. You cannot use more lights than the electrical and dimming capacity of your facility.
Finally, you can't hang and focus lights without time and help. It takes several electricians many hours to adequately hang and circuit a light plot. For some of my larger productions I use a crew of about ten. Once the plot is hung and circuited, it takes an average of 90 seconds to focus each light. If you know how many hours you have allotted to focus, simple mathematics will inform you on many lights you can hang.
My first professional mentor, Gilbert Hemsley, used to design light plots that would have many unassigned fixtures. When I asked him what these fixtures were, he answered: “GMOOTS, my dear boy… GMOOTS!” I asked him what exactly a “GMOOT” was, and he answered, “Get Me Out Of Trouble lights!”
This was my first experience with the most useful lesson I ever learned about saving my butt in the theater. Although more lights does not mean that you are insured against unforeseen circumstances, a few strategically placed spare lighting fixtures may help you pull a rabbit out of your hat.
There is nothing wrong with questioning the leaders’s opinion, but you must learn how to phrase the question in a way that promotes a deeper exploration.
2. Exceeding Your Limitations
One of the most important considerations that a lighting designer must make is to understand what the limitations may be on a particular project. Limitations include time, budget, and labor. You cannot fully plan out the scope of the project, or how many lights you can hang, focus and program, until you know what your limitations are.
Same as in theater, time seems to be always running out in the planning church services. Even when you think that you have everything organized, something happens that puts a stop to the proceedings. An experienced lighting designer is prepared to alter their schedule to make up time, or even cut some lights (or cues) out of the show to make up the time. Adjusting to changes in schedule is a crucial skill.
When you receive your contract to design the show, look carefully at the section specifying the lighting budget. If your budget is very modest, don't expect to be able to afford renting moving lights or LED's. The budget number will give you a very good indication on the scope of the production.
What is usually not on the contract is the labor schedule. I always inquire how many electricians I will have for how many days. In addition, I ask for a detailed technical schedule so I know how much time I have to focus and set lighting cues. With a good programmer I can write about twenty cues an hour. If I know that I only have seven hours to program the lighting, then I know ahead of time that I can only plan on 140 cues (or less).
3. Using Over-Saturated Colors
Let a young lighting designer go and suddenly you see what all those 60's hippies saw while on LSD: Colors, colors, and more colors! Color is a powerful quality of light and can be quite easily overused. It can also pose dangers to both the story telling and to the lighting designer's health.
Using over-saturated colors can distract the audience into wondering why the actress who just entered the stage turned into the color of a Muppet. Or why did that wall just turn red? Unless there are strong reasons in the script to make these effects happen, then I would choose paler colors. This is because pale colors allow the true colors of the actors' skin to reflect back to the audience. Modeling the face is an important function of light. To see the face, you must see the colors of the face.
Which brings me to why using over-saturated colors may be harmful to the lighting designer's health. I have seen rabid costume designers chase down lighting designers who have destroyed the colors of the costumes due to over-saturated lighting. This is a sure way shorten your career.
4. Blacking Out the Stage Without Warning the Actors
Paler colors allow the true colors of the actors’ skin to reflect back to the audience.
This is another common mistake that rookie lighting designers make, and a dangerous one at that. Lighting designers have an enormous amount of power when it comes to controlling what can and can't be seen, so they have to be careful when they dim and brighten the lights. This is especially true when there are actors and crew on stage.
I have seen accidents occur when the lights suddenly go out, or change radically without warning the actors. The actor could step off a platform and fall. Or maybe a flash of light disorientates the actor causing a trip or fall. In any case, all this can be avoided with a simple loud warning command from the designer like: “Lights Changing”, then an acknowledgement response from the actors: “Thank You Lights!” This will assure that the actors and crew are prepared for unexpected changing light levels. If you ever take the lights to black, you should always yell: “Lights Going Black!” with the response “Thank You Lights!” from the actors.
There are other instances when the lighting designer makes a drastic change in the lighting cues without the actors on stage. In these cases it is the responsibility of the lighting designer to inform the stage manager of this change. The stage manager would then be responsible to inform the actors of the change to help protect them from an unexpected lighting moment during the rehearsal or performance. Again, I have seen this occur on several occasions, with some unfortunate injuries.
Remember, safety is the number one concern when you light a production.
5. Arguing With the Director (or Worship Leader)
Working in the church production is a very rewarding experience. This is mainly due to the process of artistic creation in the theatre. Theater production teams are made up of the director along with artistic specialists from various areas (lighting, set, costume, sound, etc.). These teams collaboratively create the visual and audio design elements of the productions. Church production teams may have different components (worship leaders, pastors, producers, video directors, sound engineers etc), but they are still members of a team.
Sometimes differences can occur between members of the team that may result in some people questioning the decisions made by others. As creative collaborative artists, these individual members must find a way to work out these differences, with the one of them having the final say. That is where the buck stops.
I have seen designers take it a step too far. There is nothing wrong with questioning the leaders's opinion, but you must learn how to phrase the question in a way that promotes a deeper exploration of the story. In other words, the questions must always be constructive: “How can we make this idea clearer?” The theater directors I now work with don't just hire me because I am a good lighting artist; they hire me because they know I also think like a director. So my directors know that they are hiring another person on the team with strong opinions about the story. They also know that when all is said and done, they will have the final decision in the storytelling.
So where do you draw the line? If you cannot understand what the director (or leader) is trying to say, then ask more questions. If you just don't agree with the director, go with and support the director's decision. You never want to be subversive. Remember, you want to keep the joy and synergy of the collaborative experience going. So display your support. Be a positive team player even if you disagree with the decision.
Hopefully, the above examples will guide you away from the most common mistakes made by young lighting designers. When all is said and done, it really comes down to preparing ahead of time, and using your common sense. If you keep the errors to a minimum, you with have much more time to have fun in lighting design.
