Stage Lighting: The Technician's Guide

"Stage Lighting: The Technician's Guide" landed on my desk last week and I just got a chance to take a close look at it while I was on a plane today. It's designed to be a textbook for new lighting students in college or high school, but I think it's a great book for anyone in the lighting industry. I learned a lot from it just picking topics at random and reading.


The format of the book is simple. It's divided into three parts: Lighting Technician, Lighting Designer, and Lighting Resources. Part One: Lighting Technician has two subsections — Lanterns, Dimmers, & Control - getting down to basics, and Part Two: Lighting Designer also has two subsections — Lighting the Performance Space and Lighting the Show. As the first subsection implies, it is all about the basics but there is enough information to keep it interesting for any level of lighting tech, programmer, or designer.


The Lighting Resources section is fairly ambitious in that it lists a lot of gear, manufacturers, and other information in a time when everything is changing. New products are being introduced at an incredible rate and the nature of the products is changing, especially in the area of LEDs. Nevertheless, there is a lot of valuable information and it's the kind of information that you'll want to keep at arm's reach, which is one of the reasons the author says the book is intended to be a reference as well as a textbook.


It also comes with a DVD that is very well produced and fun to watch. It shows very clearly how lighting instruments are hung, patched and run. It explains in a very easy to understand way a lot about lighting instruments, dimmers, control desks, color, gobos, effects, and safety. The chapter on lighting design covers lighting angles, focusing, color, terminology, design, lighting a scene, and more. The DVD is a pleasure to watch and it conveys a lot of information in a short amount of time.


The book and DVD are written by an Englishman named Skip Mort and it's published in London. Some of the terms and spelling is less familiar but it's not hard to get past that. It makes little difference to me if we're talking about color or colour, nor does it matter if the lighting instruments are called lanterns or fixtures. Light behaves exactly the same in Europe as it does in North America and the rest of the world. The song remains the same. In fact, it's a great way to learn more about how things are done in other parts of the world and, who knows, maybe we can learn from each other. Why not use a PC or profile zoom? After all, isn't that what a followspot is?


This is a great book and DVD! It's well worth the $39.95 price tag.