Lighting console

A lighting console addresses every fixture in the rig, stores looks as cues, and plays them back in order. The patch — which fixture is at which address, in which mode — is built first, and everything else depends on it being right.

Shows are run two ways and most use both. A cue stack is a fixed list stepped through on a call: walk-in, podium, panel, video, awards, dancing. Busking is live operation against music or an unpredictable room, which is how a band set or an auction gets lit.

The reason a console earns its place on a corporate show has little to do with effects. It is that the running order always changes. A speaker is moved, a video is cut, an award is added in the hour before doors — and a desk with named cues absorbs that in minutes, where a rig operated by hand has to be relearned.

Pre-visualisation matters for the same reason. A rig modelled before the truck is loaded lets the programmer build most of the show in advance, so the time on site is spent focusing fixtures rather than inventing looks. That is the difference between a lighting call that finishes before rehearsal and one that is still going when the client walks in.

Event lighting — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• DMX The control language every lighting fixture speaks — five hundred and twelve channels to a universe, a terminator at the end of the line, and a surprising number of shows undone by neither.
• Moving head A fixture that pans, tilts and changes colour, beam and pattern on command — bought in three distinct flavours that are routinely confused when a rig is specified.
• Followspot A manually operated spotlight that keeps a pool of light on somebody who is moving — still the only reliable way to do it, and a position that has to be built into the rig rather than added later.