Tim  

Karin

 

There are three aspects of lighting to learn before you can do it on your own:

1. The technical workings of the system on hand

2.  The technical processes concerning how light functions on stage

3. Developing a vision for the lights using the above.   You are closest to having a developed vision from what I can tell, but are very clueless about the first two, and if you knew more about the first two, it would actually affect your vision.

 

To learn how the technical parts of your system workings, I'm sorry to say the best thing to do is read the instruction books that come with every piece of equipment.  Your facility is new, so anything in textbooks has been out a few years and is just outdated enough to frustrate you if you try to apply it to your system.  Any theater lighting text would also be good to have on hand simply so you can look up terms and understand what the instructions are trying to say.

 

The technical aspects of how light works is something you really need to witness before you'll understand.  For example, I can say that red light has a tendancy to null and void all colors into shades of red, but until you witness it in action, you don't really know what I mean by that.  I can say that having only front light will make people look flat, like cartoons, while having light from at least three directions will help people look well rounded, but until you've witnessed the difference in person, you won't understand why that differentiation is important.  I can say that twilight is best with pinks and yellows, but until you've seen someone try to achieve twilight in blue and fail and THEN observe twilight in the real world to understand why, your gut will tell you to go with blues because blue feels darker... and is indeed best for night.  As you can see... it can be a very complex learning process, and yet when it's hands on it feels a lot more simple than that.

 

Vision becomes even more complex to learn.  To an extent, it begins with an instinct that you either have or you don't.  (However, like learning to play an insturment... some people have a natural inclination and learn quickly and easily, but even non-gifted people can mechanically learn to play some songs on the piano.)  The closest anyone has ever gotten to being able to teach that kind of artistry in paper form is a book called "The Dramatic Imagination," but that gives you the art part without the technical part, so then there's still putting it together.  If you seriously want to learn, find someone to teach you in a hands on way.  It's really the only way to learn lighting.  (If you try to teach yourself, you may find the high school students were more skilled than you realized.)

 

So, to begin you may want to hire someone to teach you, so that in the future you, as an obviously enthusiastically involved parent, can get the results you will continue to want in years to come.  (You also obviously seem interested in the subject.)

 

As for the discussion that has been taking place on a TD kind of person for the space... students are transient... they come and go every few years.  Some are responsible and some aren't.  Even responsible ones can make beginner mistakes that can hurt equipment.  Having a consisitant figure of authority is very important to the longevity of equipment in an educational space.

 

Hope that helped,

Laura