A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, 2nd Edition

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A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO STAGE LIGHTING

As production or creative staff meetings con-

tinue, the relationships between the lighting and other

aspects of the production evolve. The wireless micro-

phones, for example, will require pockets to be sewn

into specific costume pieces to contain the base packs.

The lighting and scenic designer will need to mutu-

ally choose the fabric used for the china silk, in order

to make sure the right material works for both them.

Maybe they can go to a fabric store together. On the

other hand, there may be no time for anyone to collec-

tively get together again until just before load-in.

Hokey Cue Master, Version 2

Throughout all of these meetings, the lighting designer

has been absorbing and notating everyone’s individ-

ual and collective input, recording the information on

a legal pad or a laptop. For the time being, there are

still only two core design documents, the cue master

and the systems and specials sheet.

Figure 3.5 shows the results of the first updating of

the cue master for Hokey. Several rows have been added

so that all of the added beats and moments that were

revealed in all the meetings can be added. To help make

a distinction between the songs and any other action, the

song titles have been bolded. The information in the col-

umns on the right-hand side may not have everything in

the right place, but the first priority is to collect all of the

available information into a single document as rapidly

as possible. Every new beat or moment, every blocking

or staging notation, and every song style indication has

been included. All of the scribbled notes from the other

meetings have now been absorbed into this single docu-

ment. Entering the information as soon as possible after

the one-on-one meetings often calls up other verbal notes

that happened so quickly they weren’t written down.

Assembling and viewing the notes allows the designer to

compare fresh information. This might include notes on

costume colors, which may become particularly useful

when examining color choices for the translucency.

Obviously, not all of these lighting change ideas will

survive into the light cue level setting session. At this

point, however, this document is a repository for every

conceivable lighting change, listed in a sequential format,

with some sense of when and why it would take place.

One of the benefits of the cue master is that it

allows the lighting designer to have a more global view

of an entire scene, and place it in the context of the

entire production. It makes it possible to begin com-

paring cues to one another—the lighting designer can

see that Act 1, scene 1 looks like it may potentially

repeat or restore to some degree during Act 3, scene 1.

As the cue master expands, it allows the designer

to define cue placement choices for more subtle move-

ment of light, as well as for obvious cue points. The

qualities and movements of light, now described in the

cue master, can now be viewed by the lighting designer

in much the manner that a composer would view a

musical score. The lighting designer now has an over-

view of all of the scene names, characters, and song

titles—the beginning of the language for the show.

Since all of this information is collected on a few pages,

it’s possible to easily refer to almost any aspect or point

of the production, and see adjacent scenes or songs, or

see where they are relative to the rest of the show.

Hokey Systems and Specials, Version 2

Once the cue master has been updated, it’s printed

out and studied. Then, any applicable information

about the systems or blocking notes gets transferred

over to the systems and specials sheet.

Figure 3.6 shows the result of this first updat-

ing session, compared to Figure 3.3 at the begin-

ning of the chapter on page 66. Already the amount

of information and structural analysis have dra-

matically expanded. During this updating process,

ideas about colors, angles, and cueing thoughts have

begun to emerge. And now, that information may

be turned around and re-entered back into the cue

master.

At this point in the process, many of these

thoughts may still end with question marks by them.

But as the information gets more distilled, and as the

big looks and recipes for each scene continue to be

developed and honed, patterns and similarities of col-

ors, angles, and mental pictures start to emerge.

As Figure 3.6 shows, not all of the information

is strictly in the correct column. As a complex show

grows and changes, it’s common to see information

overflow from one column to another, until another

column is added. As new systems are decided, this

type of document often increases in size, and can

quickly require multiple pages with larger paper

and smaller fonts. Sometimes lighting designers start

by rotating the document to a landscape layout,

expanding it onto legal-sized paper, and adding col-

umns for each direction of light. In this way it can be

easier to see repetitions and patterns emerge.

The important thing is to condense the looks

of the show into the most compressed possible lay-

out. Then it’s possible to compare systems used in

various scenes to one another, and then see how

much any system is used throughout the show.

As more information and more cue sequences are

added to the cue master, the overall number, color,

and purposes of each system or special series is

expanded, contracted, or eliminated altogether.

Each system is constantly reviewed, decisions made

about the color and amount of coverage can then be