How Does A Lighting Designer Actually Run A Show?
by John Schlick
Published online at: BandMecca.com, July 2004

This Series of articles is geared specifically at evaluating the position of Lighting Designer or LD. In this piece I’m answering the question: How does a lighting Designer actually run a show?

At this point, you’ve hired a Lighting Designer and talked with them about the vision for what you will look like onstage, and they have gotten to the show and set everything up. The band is about to take the stage, what is the LD really going to do during the show to actually enhance your performance?

When it comes to running a show, there are three things I think of as important. Timing, mood control, and focus.

Timing is usually the first thing people look at with a new lighting designer. Do the lights change on the beat? Lights that change offbeat usually are more distracting than enhancing to a show. Unfortunately, this is often the ONLY criterion LD’s are judged on.

Second comes mood control. In a big bam-bam-bam kind of song does the LD choose to not change the lights? In a slow moody piece does the LD choose to change the lights for every note? One would hope not. The lights ought to visually expand the dynamic range of the piece. BIG pieces usually have more motion, slow gentle pieces have less motion. It’s the lighting designers’ job to figure out what these moments are and do the right thing.

It’s also important to note that every song you write has a different message, so every song an LD runs for you ought to have a slightly different look. It’s one of the great sins I see amongst LD’s, that they run every light in the rig in some simple pattern song after song after song. I call it the “full boat” kind of look.

It’s also important that the patterns of changes in the lights are different from song to song. When you get into larger spaces that have moving lights, to just have them go side to side for every song gets old and boring. It’s good to have specific motion patterns that are like a “signature” to each piece. It’s also good to recognize that where the changes in the lighting happen are different for each unique piece of music. In some songs it’s the kickdrum that determines the pace of the song, in others, it’s the snare, or bass line, or the symbol crashes, or the vocals, or… To only change based on one component of the music is a disservice to the music.

Part of setting mood is choosing colors that augment the “feel” of the song. Often one will turn to theatre to see how the blues or “cools” affect the audience mood, and how the reds or “warms” will brighten things up. Using the wrong color scheme can dramatically affect how a song is perceived by the audience. And of course there is the traditional “green is evil” sort of thing. But knowing when to use specific colors and when not to is important.

Lastly, we come to focus. When you talk to someone, studies have shown that comprehension of conversation goes way up when you can see the mouth of the person you are talking to. Our brains take that and use it to assist in processing what the words are. With music, it makes no sense to leave the singer in the dark when he or she is pouring their heart out. It also makes no sense to highlight the drums during a guitar solo. And again, I see many LD’s that have been in the business for a long time doing just that. They don’t seem to understand THEY are in control to a great extent of who gets focus onstage.

To get the maximum effect out of a lighting system, you must allow the audience to SEE what the band is doing, and what’s going on in the show. Hiding someone during their big performance moment just doesn’t help the audience to feel like they’ve just seen “the best show ever”. The bottom line is that the LD is in charge of who gets the focus onstage during the show, and you want someone who knows how to use that focus to your advantage.

When you get an LD that has skills in all three of these areas, you will get better feedback on how amazing the show was, even if the band is having an offnight.

How Do You Select A Lighting Designer?
by John Schlick
Published online at: MusicDish.com, July 2004

This article is geared specifically at evaluating the position of Lighting Designer or LD. In this piece, I’m going to answer the question: How do you select a Lighting Designer?

So you have decided the time has come to hire an LD. What’s really important when it comes to selecting a Lighting Designer?

Let me digress and tell you a quick “Bob” story, (and this is why I used the name Bob in another article). I was in a club acting as the lighting designer for one of my local Seattle clients, and we were on just before the main headliner. I got there early and did a focus for my band. Bob came in and was the lighting guy for the main act, it turns out that Bob was a friend of one of the band members, and they felt that he had to “do something” to get him in the door on the crew list. The whole band was thrilled Bob was going to be doing their lights. After all, he knew all the songs. My band was a 4 piece band, meaning that I had three band members across the front of the stage, and Bob’s band was a 3 piece, which had 2 members across the front of the stage. I had very specifically focused the front lights for my three people. When Bob walked up at the end of our set, I told him… “You realize that the front lights aren’t going to hit your people where they are setting up, you’d better do a focus for your guys”. Bob grunted, and proceeded to go look for his pitcher of beer.

When his guys took the stage, predictably, the front two bandmenbers stood in-between where I had focused the lights for my guys, and you couldn’t see the front two players, not with every light in the house on. It was no wonder then, at the end of the night, my guys came up to me and told me they were getting comments from EVERYONE that we had blown the headliner just flat out OFF the stage.

My point with this little aside is that there are flavors of lighting guys. First, when you talk about choosing to pay money to someone, you must pick someone that brings something to the table. Bob brought something to the table. He was friends with the band. But what did he bring to the performance of the band onstage?

When you set out to hire a lighting guy, find out if they’ve done it for a while. Experience doesn’t necessarily mean they are good, and inexperience doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad, but if you hire someone that’s been touring at or near your level for a while, they will at least know what that world looks like.

Find out if they have any theatrical experience. This is not necessarily an indicator that they are good or bad, but it shows the depth of their craft. If they have theatrical experience, they are more likely to think of the entire stage as a composition, as opposed to just thinking of backlights as flashy things.

Find out if they understand the technical side of the equipment they are running. (It’s like asking a guitar player the difference between a Fender Twin and a Mesa Boogie. I personally haven’t a clue what the difference in sound is, but I know it’s there.) If you have a lighting designer that doesn’t know a Leko throws a different texture of light from a Par 64, then you have a problem.

Honestly, the best way to hire a lighting designer is to do two things… First: Look at some of their work, see pictures in a portfolio, go to a show they are working, or have them do a trial show for you (I do a lot of that when touring people come thru Seattle), and Second: Just talk to them. See what their philosophy is, see if it matches what you are looking for. Tell them how you see yourself onstage, and then let them translate that into light and see if you click.

Once you have someone that’s going to do a show for you, a good way to evaluate things these days is to video tape a show, and then dissect it afterwards. This lets the band see what the audience sees, because it’s nearly impossible to see what’s really going on during the show. If you get someone that won’t work with you to make you feel good about what’s happening visually onstage during a show, DON’T hire them. My take is that people are paying to see you, and if you aren’t comfortable onstage, you can’t give your best performance, so hire someone that will work both for, and with you, to present you properly.