Stuart R
Member
Hello all -
I've got a fun situation where the stage director at my middle school believes he should get playbill credit as the LD. Here's the situation: I arrived this fall as the new arts program director. There was no budget for an LD, and since I have a reasonably strong background in lighting design, I took responsibility for the lighting this year. Because we have lots of varying events in the space, and little time for complete resets in between, I decided to design a rep plot that we'd use for everything this year, reserving a number of extra instruments for use as specials and so forth. I installed the rep rig with some help from a couple of other people on staff. When our fall/winter musical rolled around in January, I met with the Director to talk about his needs and concept for the show, and tweaked the rep plot accordingly. Based on the director's requirements and my own sensibilities, I created submasters for various types of area lighting, chose the gel colors, got some gobos going, etc. in anticipation of writing the cues.
At this point there was a collision with past history. It turns out that for the last few years, my predecessor (also a capable lighting person) also took care of the show lighting, but in a strangely passive way, functioning more as an ED than an LD. Basically, he and the director would set up a marathon lighting session, and starting at the top of the show, go through the script page by page, with the director dictating lighting instructions, more or less in the moment. "Ok, for this one, I want some nice blue light coming from over here, and a special light for the soloist right... here," and the (ED) would run up a ladder and hang and cable the instruments.
One feature of the "design" was a line up of PARs in the first FOH position to serve as general illumination. [My GI is a modified McCandless style approach with Source4s or Fresnels for key/fill, and top/back/side washes for blending and toning.] When I removed the array of FOH PARs in preparation for hanging the rep plot, the director was horrified.
In any case, the guy before me allowed the director to call the shots, though I'm sure he offered his own advice and ideas along the way. When it was time to put together the playbill for the show, there would be no LD or ED listed.
Back to this year. I introduced the idea of the rep plot to the director, explaining that we'd have lots of "ingredients" with which to bake our "cake," but would need to use what we already had in the pantry, plus a few special requests. I assured him that the stage could be subdivided into all kinds of areas for isolated lighting, that there was color available from all angles, and so on. I then scheduled a couple of 2-3 hour sessions for cue writing, in lieu of the killer overnight sessions undertaken in the past.
We got to the cue sessions, and I immediately found that my draft cues were ignored. Rather than calling out "I need you to hang three lights over here pointed in this direction," the director said "what do these look like over here?" and soon after that started dictating the cue placement, timing, and contents directly to the board op. I put in my two cents, but wasn't really heard by the director, who was in his accustomed creative playing-with-lights reverie. I quickly figured out that it was a much better idea for me to sit with the board op and have him tweak what the director had just asked for, rather than trying to challenge the director, um, directly. [Later, I continued to adjust the cues based on what I saw. I didn't make any major or wholesale changes, but generally made what the director had in mind look much better.] When it came time to do the playbill, I listed myself as the LD.
So now we're going into Musical #2, and I'm about to schedule the cue setting sessions (once again using my rep plot as a starting point, with some extra instruments available as needed). Meanwhile, I just heard from the graphic artist who does the playbill. The director submitted a list of the production staff, and listed himself as LD, and me as (co) TD with the guy who does AV for the non-performing arts events in the space. IClearly, the director thinks that because he takes such an active role at cue writing time, he is the de facto lighting designer. My opinion is that he is no more the LD than he is the set designer or the costumer designer, even though the professionals in those roles are, to a certain extent, responding to his vision in their designs and their execution.
[Years ago, I witnessed a major blow up between a director and set designer, with the director thinking of (and treating) the set designer as his personal draftsman, rather than a creative professional. The director had all of his staging planned out, and wanted a door here and a window there, and maybe a windmill over there, and could the designer make the backdrop look something like *this* (shows photo of someone else's show) but using more earth tones?]
Just because the director got the last guy to roll over and be his b%$&#, doesn't mean that I'm going to do the same. The last time around, I was brand new, and let him assert control a little more than I should have, but things will be different this time. I will insist that we use my draft cues as a starting point, and will also establish a rule where I am the only one communicating programming instructions to the board op. It could be ugly. We'll see. I
In any case, I'm just curious if any of you have encountered this sort of phenomenon/situation. What do you think?
I've got a fun situation where the stage director at my middle school believes he should get playbill credit as the LD. Here's the situation: I arrived this fall as the new arts program director. There was no budget for an LD, and since I have a reasonably strong background in lighting design, I took responsibility for the lighting this year. Because we have lots of varying events in the space, and little time for complete resets in between, I decided to design a rep plot that we'd use for everything this year, reserving a number of extra instruments for use as specials and so forth. I installed the rep rig with some help from a couple of other people on staff. When our fall/winter musical rolled around in January, I met with the Director to talk about his needs and concept for the show, and tweaked the rep plot accordingly. Based on the director's requirements and my own sensibilities, I created submasters for various types of area lighting, chose the gel colors, got some gobos going, etc. in anticipation of writing the cues.
At this point there was a collision with past history. It turns out that for the last few years, my predecessor (also a capable lighting person) also took care of the show lighting, but in a strangely passive way, functioning more as an ED than an LD. Basically, he and the director would set up a marathon lighting session, and starting at the top of the show, go through the script page by page, with the director dictating lighting instructions, more or less in the moment. "Ok, for this one, I want some nice blue light coming from over here, and a special light for the soloist right... here," and the (ED) would run up a ladder and hang and cable the instruments.
One feature of the "design" was a line up of PARs in the first FOH position to serve as general illumination. [My GI is a modified McCandless style approach with Source4s or Fresnels for key/fill, and top/back/side washes for blending and toning.] When I removed the array of FOH PARs in preparation for hanging the rep plot, the director was horrified.
In any case, the guy before me allowed the director to call the shots, though I'm sure he offered his own advice and ideas along the way. When it was time to put together the playbill for the show, there would be no LD or ED listed.
Back to this year. I introduced the idea of the rep plot to the director, explaining that we'd have lots of "ingredients" with which to bake our "cake," but would need to use what we already had in the pantry, plus a few special requests. I assured him that the stage could be subdivided into all kinds of areas for isolated lighting, that there was color available from all angles, and so on. I then scheduled a couple of 2-3 hour sessions for cue writing, in lieu of the killer overnight sessions undertaken in the past.
We got to the cue sessions, and I immediately found that my draft cues were ignored. Rather than calling out "I need you to hang three lights over here pointed in this direction," the director said "what do these look like over here?" and soon after that started dictating the cue placement, timing, and contents directly to the board op. I put in my two cents, but wasn't really heard by the director, who was in his accustomed creative playing-with-lights reverie. I quickly figured out that it was a much better idea for me to sit with the board op and have him tweak what the director had just asked for, rather than trying to challenge the director, um, directly. [Later, I continued to adjust the cues based on what I saw. I didn't make any major or wholesale changes, but generally made what the director had in mind look much better.] When it came time to do the playbill, I listed myself as the LD.
So now we're going into Musical #2, and I'm about to schedule the cue setting sessions (once again using my rep plot as a starting point, with some extra instruments available as needed). Meanwhile, I just heard from the graphic artist who does the playbill. The director submitted a list of the production staff, and listed himself as LD, and me as (co) TD with the guy who does AV for the non-performing arts events in the space. IClearly, the director thinks that because he takes such an active role at cue writing time, he is the de facto lighting designer. My opinion is that he is no more the LD than he is the set designer or the costumer designer, even though the professionals in those roles are, to a certain extent, responding to his vision in their designs and their execution.
[Years ago, I witnessed a major blow up between a director and set designer, with the director thinking of (and treating) the set designer as his personal draftsman, rather than a creative professional. The director had all of his staging planned out, and wanted a door here and a window there, and maybe a windmill over there, and could the designer make the backdrop look something like *this* (shows photo of someone else's show) but using more earth tones?]
Just because the director got the last guy to roll over and be his b%$&#, doesn't mean that I'm going to do the same. The last time around, I was brand new, and let him assert control a little more than I should have, but things will be different this time. I will insist that we use my draft cues as a starting point, and will also establish a rule where I am the only one communicating programming instructions to the board op. It could be ugly. We'll see. I
In any case, I'm just curious if any of you have encountered this sort of phenomenon/situation. What do you think?