TRAINING
Lighting Technician
The lighting technician is the person who turns a design into actual light: rigging the fixtures, focusing them, programming the desk and operating the show. This Instalia section brings together the training and skills of that role — stage lighting, control and protocols, operating at events and shows — along with the programmes of the centres that train them. It is distinct from Professional Lighting, the field’s technology hub, and from Sound Courses, which covers audio training. The kit applied on stage has its own section in Stage Lighting.
- Stage lighting
- Control and DMX
- Professional operation
Latest content for lighting technicians
Training, skills and technical news for the role that rigs, programmes and operates the lighting for a show.
Explore the rest of the lighting field
The general training hub, professional lighting technology and its specific application on stage.
The sector’s general training hub: courses, seminars and technical days.
The technology hub: fixtures, control, sources and manufacturer news.
Light applied to the stage: rigs, tours, theatre and live performance.
Skills and technology for lighting technicians
The work starts on paper. The lighting plot sets out which fixture goes in each position, with what optic, in what colour and at what height, and from there come the load distribution, the addressing and the channel list. In the venue comes the rig: hanging, focusing, patching and checking that each unit responds where it should. Control rests on DMX512 and, increasingly, on Art-Net or sACN networks over Ethernet infrastructure.
Programming is the other half. Grouping, building cues and sequences, writing the show down so it can be repeated night after night and, when it comes to it, improvising without breaking it. Added to that are the things nobody sees: power consumption, electrical distribution, working at height and get-in times. The technology involved is followed in Professional Lighting and its stage application in Stage Lighting.
Want to feature on Instalia?
If your centre trains lighting technicians, you can present your programmes, course openings and news to Instalia’s professional audience.