Lighting Design is the primary role of a lighting designer. Lighting designers work with set designers, theater directors and costume designers to put together an overall look and feel for a show, with special focus placed on issues of light and visibility.
In especially large theatrical shows, the light designer will typically work closely with the stage manager on show control programming. In very small or amateur productions, the light designer is usually responsible for many of the hands on and set up tasks that are reserved for light crew workers on large projects.
In these amateur productions, a light designer may be responsible for hanging and testing lights, as well as programming light boards and other manual tasks related to lighting.
Lighting designers will nearly always read entire scripts in order to make proper and well informed notes on the various changes in time and place that happen from scene to scene.
Lighting designers usually have regular meetings with the director or directors of a production, as well as the production manager. Oftentimes there will be separate meetings with these individuals, as well as larger meetings with both the production manager and the director simultaneously.
During these meetings, the pre-production phase is used to discuss ideas for the content and to establish scheduling and budget parameters and details. During this process, the lighting designer will attend any rehearsals so that he or she can observe the way the actors are being directed and are using the stage.
A lighting designer will have on hand an up to date plan of a theater's lighting positions and a list of the equipment that is available to the production company.
Taking many things into consideration, the lighting designer then goes ahead and creates a lighting plan that will, in general, create the mood and ambience that is overlaid onto the set by the way of lighting.
A lighting plot is a list of all of the lighting states or changes that the lighting designer wants to use for each specific scene or potion of the program. Optimally, a pre-production lighting plot will include levels particular for every lantern and up and down times for every cue or lighting state.
Though there is a set plan, it is accepted that there will often be many changes that take place during he technical rehearsal of the given program.
The lighting designer on a theatrical project is responsible, in concert with the production's independently hired electrician, for directing the electrics crew in the manifestation of her or his designs during the technical rehearsals.
What this means is that you will only have a window of opportunity in which to get across to the creator of the piece that you see and understand what it is that he or she is trying to accomplish with the lighting and ambience surrounding a piece.
Even after a show has opened and is public, a lighting designer will view many performances and take notes about changes that should be made. Though this process takes place during the preview phase, generally, by the time a show has totally opened to the public there won't be any additional lighting changes.
