Others will surely comment on the technical and artistic aspects, but an often overlooked side of this is global manufacturing and regulatory compliance. The reality is that
tungsten is dying. As David Lincecum and/or Steve Terry pointed out at
ETC's conference last summer, the tooling and processes for refining
tungsten filaments is quite complex and regulatory compliance is driving demand for
tungsten way down. An initiative in the EU for a brief moment required the discontinuation of
tungsten almost completely in that region. The industry fought hard for an exemption for
stage lighting but that exemption is temporary and the industry is going to have to
lobby for that in 1-2 years whenever that's slated to be sunsetted.
My understanding is that USHIO, Osram,
etc, have committed to continue producing
HPL series
tungsten lamps for at least the next 4-5 years, but as demand dwindles the cost of these lamps may go up as the manufacturing overheard for making those lamps gets diffused across a smaller and smaller volume of sales.
This isn't prophesying a doomsday scenario for
tungsten though. It could still end up being around for another decade and a half but at a minimum the cost for relamping is going to go up. There will also always be the risk that you're one clueless senator away from losing your source of lamps.
A consequence of
LED's though is that there is a heavier burden on having skilled programmers. Many community theaters, schools, semi-professional venues, and bars, have relied on being able to
throw faders and put on a show like playing a keyboard. That's simply not possible with
LED's unless you as a
programmer go through the deliberate process of setting your
console up to be able to mimic that.
Another unintended consequence is that many school and community theaters currently thrive on inventories of
tungsten fixtures that are 2-3 decades old and were donated to them by a professional
venue replacing their fixtures.
LED fixtures are more likely to have a finite, useful life span before the
power supplies or
PCB's fail, or the brightness and color consistency degrades. It will be less feasible to donate a large inventory of fixtures to another group -- in part because upgrades at pro venues are going to cost more so they need to milk their inventories for as many years as they can -- and because the fixtures may not be in a suitable condition to donate -- or if they are, may be too expensive for the receiving group to repair.
The truth of the matter is your professor is doing you a major disservice if they aren't teaching how to effectively design, assemble, document, and program LED-based events. I had a similar professor who was willfully ignorant of
LED's, insisted on
tungsten fixtures, and who lost his bananas when they replaced a pair of
Express and Obsession consoles with a
Gio and an
Element. He took his entire
Intro To Tech class up to the booth one day for a demonstration and couldn't even figure out how to turn the consoles on, much less produce light on
stage to any kind of artistic
effect. The greatest burden on the design process for
LED's that students need to be cognizant of is that it's tempting to postpone many artistic decisions on looks and colors until tech week. Big mistake. If you are using a Q2Q to sculpt your lighting for the first time as you see the lights come up on
stage, you will be lucky to make it to the end of the first couple scenes by the time tech week is done. Q2Q's should be for setting levels and making minor tweaks to colors and
fade times -- absolutely should not be the first time the designer makes decisions on the overall composition of looks and colors palettes.
Some will argue that a designer only needs to know how to design -- that the technical aspects like programming,
DMX signal planning,
etc, are someone else's responsibility. That may be true in certain circumstances, but those who can understand and
swing between multiple roles are the most employable. If shows start picking back up this fall/winter, it will be to small audiences and fewer shows per run. There will far fewer jobs for techs/designers -- it will be more competitive getting work, more important to control costs by reducing unnecessary expenses, and so on. If you know every side of production, you have a fighting chance. If you only know how to
throw faders for
tungsten or prepare light plots in
Vectorworks, good luck -- it will be difficult earning a living wage under a limited skill set for the next 2-3 years. Meanwhile, the
programmer or designer/
programmer combo who can
throw a show file together in a few hours with a blindfold on and has their own
busking file ready to
build from is going to be in high demand.