Teaching a Lighting Class

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by gafftaper

Session four is EXTREMELY BASIC lighting design, wrap up, and review. Basically for the lighting design all I do is some magic sheets based on artwork. We take paintings and do a magic sheet of "if this was a set how would you light it and what types of instruments do you think you would use".

Originally Posted by bdkdesigns

Wow, I love this idea. I can't believe I've never thought about this in the basic idea for stagecraft.

In a longer class I take this idea and run with it significantly farther. I use more and more complicated pieces of art. The simple magic sheets lead to selecting instruments and colors. Then we create a ground plan for the set design used in the painting and eventually do full light plots based on more and more complex paintings. Pretend this painting is the picture of a set of a play produced in our theater. Do a ground plan for the set, magic sheet, light plot, and circuit paperwork. If you can get large copies of the painting it's great because it's easy to do a class discussion of how difficult areas of the painting can be handled.

[derekleffew]

Originally Posted by gafftaper

In a longer class I take this idea and run with it significantly farther. I use more and more complicated pieces of art. The simple magic sheets lead to selecting instruments and colors. Then we create a ground plan for the set design used in the painting and eventually do full light plots based on more and more complex paintings. Pretend this painting is the picture of a set of a play produced in our theater. Do a ground plan for the set, magic sheet, light plot, and circuit paperwork. If you can get large copies of the painting it's great because it's easy to do a class discussion of how difficult areas of the painting can be handled.

Interesting that what you consider a classroom exercise, someone else considers an occupation.