Lighting position titles

Not to sound frustrated, and I probably should have worded my request better. I love you guys and the way everyone jumps in to be helpful, and the wealth of knowledge that is so generously given. But this is mostly stuff I know and teach already. I have kids coming in from all over each using different vocab, some right , some wrong and I was hopeful for an easy solution to get everyone on the same page and maybe cut down on some of the infighting I am experiencing. The different bits of impute you have all provided prove the point about how many variations we have in the industry. variations that can not be taught from a book. Which still doesn't give me a sheet or a plot that I can hand to students (and maybe some people in my community) with a list of the different names/terms that the same hanging positions may have depending on who and where you are at. Thanks all for the support and the feed back this community rocks.
 
And before I clicked on the thread the first time I knew by the title the answers would frustrate some. Its still an analog world.
 
I don't think there is -- and possibly, even should be -- a single resource that lists all the possible names, partly because a) many performance spaces have very different physical layouts; b) many theaters come from very different eras and cultures, and c) local slang tends to stay local, which means that many outside the doors won't know or understand the reference, and while that's perfectly okay, completists like yourself are going to want to incorporate that jargon. Somehow.

Sometimes the best you can do is assign whatever names you feel describe the position best, and enforce that through subtle and obvious means. If you label your furthest catwalk "Route 128" or "The Kuiper Belt," well -- make it stick. Students will still find new variations online or in textbooks -- or make up their own -- and try them out on you and their peers. That's okay. But what you say, and what shows up on your plots and channel hookups, will really make the difference.
 
Jay Ashworth said:
Well, by me, all lighting is discussed Stage L/R.

Whether your dimmers are numbered from R-to-L or not is up to you; it makes a tidy patch, if you're still down in the handle-per-channel stratum, but otherwise probably doesn't matter much -- my main house *is* Stage R-to-L (making the numbers go up from board-op left to right -- and my secondary house is SL-to-R (so they're 'backwards').

All *sound*, OTOH, is House L/R.

Short version: *NEVER* say "left" or "right" without prefacing it with "Stage" or "House". :)
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To further organize (or as some might call it "complicate") numbering schemes, as a holdover from days on submarines, I tend to have odd-numbered things to the "right" (starboard) and even numbers to the "left" (port). Now the only difficulty is trying to figure out wither Port is Stage Left or House Left! :stumped:

Then I had the recent issue where I did have the House battens labeled with #1 being closest to the curtain line. Then we added a batten!! I'm currently calling it #0 for lack of a better terminology.
 
OK, so this is a naming conundrum.

As in the photo, a space with 2 side catwalks/gallerys, running the length of the audience chamber, a rear crossing gallery/Catwalk, plus 3 raised crossing catwalks.

I thought maybe Catwalks 1,2 & 3 (US to DS) with SL and SR gallery’s and rear gallery.

Others maybe want Catwalks 1,2,3 & 4 with SL & SR Catwalks.

Any preference, or what would you expect to call it ?
 

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BillConnerFASTC said:
Not that you are in anyway wrong, I'd call them catwalks 1 thru 4, starting at stage as 1, and stage left and right galleries. Neat looking space.
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B**ch session.

There’s a whole lot of fluorescent work lights in the ceiling soffets that are out of reach of the catwalks. You need a scaffold or Genie with seating straddle to get to them. The space (they reused the fly tower/stage) went from 47 to 26 counterweight linesets with the last pipe 6” from the back wall, so no crossover. Some of the those loft blocks are welded to the grid, so we can’t knock sheaves. They chopped off 15 ft of the SL wing to build a useless hallway. It’s the same space that has the deluge manual pull stations.

A huge goddamed list of stupid design. Sad as it’s not a school where there’s nobody for the consultants to talk to about what’s going into the building. As well as a professional staff for the space, here’s a theater department with a ton of knowledgeable staff. The City University office pulled the plug on dialog about 8 years ago. The building has been 6 or 7 years under construction, kid you not. Really frustrating.

But, yeah, catwalks 1-4 sounds fine
 
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So let me take this conversation in a different direction, maybe a more esoteric one.
What is the point of naming the positions? I would argue it’s to efficiently communicate information about the location of a given fixture or other similar objects.
Instead of trying to come up with a one size fits all answer, why not focus on your specific space and I naming Policy that you define for your space. Then educate your students as to why in your specific space things are named the way they are. And then just be consistent. It really doesn’t matter if you name your electrics Bob, Jayne, and Sally, as long as everyone who uses the space uses the same names. Take this opportunity to explain why someone might label fixtures from stage left to stage right. Tie it into the history of why is it called upstage and downstage, or stage left and stage right. Ultimately explain how there are many different names for the same object, but in your space it is called “widget” That is what everyone will use.

Or not.
 
As has been discussed here, there are and have been naming conventions established over the decades that get taught to the new guys as well as students. Using names that most people use avoids confusion when somebody is in a different space. Bill Warfel, professor at Yale wrote a great little book called The Handbook of Stage Lighting Graphics (in current edition has a “New” tacked on the title). It’s a gem of reasons as to the naming nomclementure. I’ve also run into many students who don’t know it exists and wonder why it isn’t taught. Some stuff just doesn’t get passed along, sadly.
 
Our house has 3 permanent electrics, 2 "non"-permanent electrics (run to a portable rack, but not likely to move). We keep them separate by giving the permanent electrics an integer, and the movable get an added A after. E.G. 1, 1A, 2, 2A. (In all, 5 electrics in 27.5' of depth)
 
jtweigandt said:
Lighting position titles... I prefer "Illumination demigod" but mostly they just say Hey John
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Maybe it is just people named John that this happens to, but in my pretentious youth phase I had a shirt printed "Lord of the Lumens". My only excuse was that this coincided with my Tolkien phase.
 
I've always liked "Photonic Sculptor".
 
I once worked in a plant where the lighting positions were named (from house to cyc), Steels, Front Bricks, Back Bricks, First, Second and Third Torms, Cyc. Worked perfectly for us.
 
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