Sins to avoid: Simultaneously blinding the talent while removing light from the sheet music she / he WAS reading.Tldr; I am between beginner and intermediate adeptness and have run into a wall finding resources to level up my skillsets.
I originally posted on reddit a while back, and was frustrated by most of the responses being along the lines of "get more expensive fixtures". And that is the most frequent response I get on reddit regardless of how clearly I try to specify how . So I need to make it very clear from the beginning. What I'm looking for are resources to learn new design concepts or get inspiration on how to utilize my lights creatively, not advice on what hardware to use. I firmly believe that while good equipment is important, what matters most is how you use whatever is at your disposal, and that your skills and capabilities are the most significant factor in any endeavor.
So, I've had a good eye for lighting since high school, and I ended up choosing DMX lighting/programming as my quarantine skill as it was relevant to my industry. I started out with a 192 channel controller and two Wash FX 2's, and now I'm started to get hit up to bring my rig out to events and run lighting for them. It's been really fun, and something I can sit and design/program/research for 30 hours a week and not be bored. I’ve had a blast but about 4 months ago I started hitting a wall with finding YouTube videos or blog posts to help me advance my skillsets. Most of the videos I find fall towards one of two extremes: novices (“How to program a chase on an RGB par”) or experienced designers beyond my skill level (“How to still scrape by with just a paltry 10 universes at your disposal"). I need something in the middle because I feel like I’m starting to program the same kind of scenes over and over again. I'm also aware that I need to spread out laterally in my skill range and do more with the tools at my disposal before trying to tackle more advanced things.
In lieu of having guidance I've been looking up more about color theory, additive and subtractive color wheels, and how the two kinds interact when light meets material. How to use hues rather than the pure colors and not make things too rainbow or too monochromatic, etc. I particularly want to know how to make better use of my beams. I’ve looked at festival shows, but their setups can be so massive (and expensive) that it can be hard for me scale it down to what I have. For the past couple of months I've been learning how to program for pixel control while building my own pixel bars & e1.31 control hubs.
So where could I be looking for design ideas and ways to mentally approach the design aspect? Since my setup is personally funded it's going to grow slowly, and I want to focus on HOW to be a better LD so that no matter what gear I have, I can do a good job.
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