Lighting a Black Box on a Shoestring
A student is the lighting designer for a 20-minute school production in a black-box studio. The rig consists of six fresnels (two front, two side, two back), four LED wash units (two upstage, two downstage), and one follow spot that is unreliable and sometimes flickers. There is one lighting board with 12 recorded cue slots and no moving lights. The director wants: a warm domestic opening, a cold 'memory' sequence, a stark interrogation scene with hard shadows, and a final blackout with a single figure lit. The student has one plotting session of two hours and one dress rehearsal. The stage is 6 m wide and 4 m deep; the audience is on three sides (thrust).
1. Design a cue and rig plan that achieves the director's four requirements within the constraints, explaining the function of each unit and how you would allocate the 12 cue slots.
Read the worked answer
The judgement is to allocate by function, not by fixture count, and to protect against the unreliable follow spot.
Rig functions.
- Front fresnels (2): general face light and the warm domestic wash. Soft-edged, good for naturalistic warmth.
- Side fresnels (2): the interrogation scene. Side light from low angles produces hard shadows and a sculpted, threatening look - exactly the 'stark' requirement.
- Back fresnels (2): separation and the 'single figure' final image. A back light isolates a silhouette against darkness.
- LED washes (4): colour temperature control. Downstage units can shift warm→cold for the memory sequence; upstage units can provide colour backlight and low-level fill.
- Follow spot: treat as optional, never load-bearing. Do not build a cue that fails if it flickers.
Cue allocation (12 slots):
- Preset (dark)
- Warm domestic (front fresnels + warm LED)
- Domestic shift (subtle)
- Transition to memory (LEDs to cold blue, front dims)
- Memory sequence (cold wash, backlight)
- Return (warm partial)
- Interrogation (side fresnels hard, front out, LEDs low)
- Interrogation intensify
- Release (side out, backlight up)
- Final approach (back fresnel only)
- Single figure (one backlight + minimal front)
- Blackout
Thrust consideration: with audience on three sides, front light from one direction leaves the opposite side dark. The side fresnels must be cross-fired so both sides of the stage receive light, and the final 'single figure' should be lit from upstage so all three audience sides see a silhouette rather than a face lit for one side only.
2. The follow spot flickers during the dress rehearsal. Explain how you would manage this risk for performance and what you would change in the cue plan.
Read the worked answer
A flickering follow spot is a single point of failure and must be removed from any cue the audience depends on. The principle: never let an unreliable unit carry meaning.
Immediate diagnosis. Check whether the flicker is a lamp/connection issue (seated plug, heat) or a board/DMX issue (channel conflict, dimmer). If it is a loose connection it may be fixable; if it is the lamp, it will worsen under heat. Assume the worst for performance.
Risk management options, in order of preference:
- Replace its function with a static fresnel. If the spot was to follow the final figure, replace it with a fixed back fresnel aimed at the figure's standing position. The figure must then hit a mark precisely; this is a blocking solution as much as a lighting one, so it must be rehearsed.
- Reduce its role to a non-essential fill that can be faded out without the audience noticing.
- Cut it entirely and reallocate its cue slots.
Changes to the cue plan. Cue 11 ('single figure') currently may rely on the spot; rewrite it to use a back fresnel plus one side fresnel cross-fired, so the figure is visible from all three thrust sides without the spot. Free the spot's slot and use the 12th slot for a safe blackout hold. Add a contingency note on the cue sheet: if the spot flickers, the operator kills its channel and continues; the scene must still read.
Rehearsal action. In the remaining dress rehearsal, run the final sequence without the spot at least twice, so the actor and operator both know the fallback. The design should be judged on whether it survives the failure - that is what technical judgement means.