How did you learn? Teach me!

[Taylor Blais]

Hello fellow technicians and designers!!

I am just curious to find out how most of you learned how to do what you do. For the past 5 years, I have been designing lighting looks, setting up fixtures, running services, and just recently started getting my hands dirty in repairing fixtures. I am looking to learn more into how to fix fixtures, maintenance, floor plans, and how to be at the level of experts and masters in the field. I just want to start somewhere so I can really start learning more and more on how to do it the best way it can be done.

I am from the New England area, so if there is anything that anyone would recommend I would gladly appreciate it.

 

[CPayneLighting]

Well starting with repair, most companies offer repair certification classes through their manufacturer or distributor, but these can be very expensive. I would see if you can find anyone in your area that does repair, for example rental houses or the master electrician in your local theaters, and see if you can shadow them. If you have access to gear i would suggest taking it apart and seeing how it works while the fixture is running, but be careful modern moving lights have a lot of high voltage running through them and can be very dangerous. All there are many service manuals out on the web that you can look up to get an idea of what all is inside of the fixtures and some of the common problems they have.

For the design side of things I would suggest subscribing to magazines like Live Design, that regularly publish plots and interviews with Lighting designers so you can get an idea of what all goes into a show. I would also see if any of your local theaters have Lighting designers coming in that need an assistant of a shadow so you can learn from them. there are also many great books out there that talk about the basics of lighting design. I would suggest going on amazon and purchasing them.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Find places doing theatre, volunteer, and earn your way to key roles. I did it at schools - 6th grade through graduate school - but local producing groups also. For just lighting, hard to beat ballet for the chance to do and learn and experiment. And just keep doing it.