A week ago, lighting designer extradoinaire Bryan Rosengrant taught me how to design the lighting for my school’s theater. I have been doing lights for the past year and half. We had about 15 lights, so there wasn’t much “designing”. The exciting thing is that we just got about 40 new lights and 3 moving lights and huge grid on the ceiling to hang them from. So here is the basics of what I learned.

-Design in areas on the stage.
-Front light should be neutral colors.
-Back light comes from lights hanging over the stage and is on the back of the actors and actresses.
-For backlights you use 3 PAR cans on each area with different colors.
-Side lights add dramatic effect and are pointed at the stage from the side.
-”Specials” are for “special” areas, things, places that need to be lit.

And then I learned a bunch of other stuff that was more technical and detailed, I didn’t feel like typing it all out.

Here is my first draft of a lighting plot for Aladdin, the middle school musical.