September Extra Blog

During this month, I was able to operate lights for a country cover band concert for a place I work at. From this, I learned that concerts and shows (musicals and plays) have a different way of doing lighting. For shows, lighting designers have all their cues in a specific order and all the designs programmed before a show, while for concerts, it's live. Some lights are programmed, but most of it is just done on the fly and I just listened to the beat of the music and mood to see which lights to use. This is also called busking or "flash and trash" since LEDs and colorful lights and other fancy lights are used a lot.

The board I was working with

A computer screen that shows me what shows me what's going on

Since this was my first concert, I didn't really know if what I was doing was ok, especially during the first night. For the first night, I used a lot of "flash and trash", and I think it was too much for the older people in the audience. However, by the second night, I started getting the hang of it, and I think I did a better job because the lighting designer said he approved. Overall, I had fun, and I got to listen to some music.

The set up of the stage from where I was sitting during a short break