For four years, I worked on the lighting team of the Bellarmine College Prep theatre program. I began in 2015 as simply part of the crew up in the catwalks hanging lights and adjusting based on the designs. By early 2018, I was made the assistant head of lights and the head of projections until I graduated in 2019. I completed 12 theatrical productions on the lighting team, 3 as assistant head of lights and 2 as the head of projections. I mainly worked with AutoCAD as well as ETC branded equipment to operate and hang lighting instruments.
The set of "Newsies" (2019) with one of my projections and lighting turned on.
My team worked closely with the stage manager and set designer to establish what was necessary for each production prior to its full production initiation. We worked with AutoCAD to view the designed sets and plan lighting for each scene based on the blocking of the set pieces on stage. From there, we began hanging lights both in the catwalks and on fly rails when the production called for use of the main stage. When in the smaller black box theater, we would climb ladders to the top of the 15 foot ceiling to hang and adjust different lighting units as necessary.
Much of our designs were created using AutoCAD, being able to use the set pieces as reference as they were being constructed by another team. We would then implement our lighting, later returning to adjust when the director of the production requested set changes. Outside of the work we were enabled to complete using AutoCAD, I learned to operate ETC branded lighting equipment, mainly their entertainment control centers. I operated two different pieces of equipment and learned the in's and out's of how they operated.
As head of projections at Bellarmine, I was tasked to deliver projections for 2 different production runs. The first was MacBeth, where I filmed the actors of the show on a black background to later be projected on stage when 3 witches conjure a prophecy for the titular character. This video was projected onto the stage from the upper catwalks, which I operated every show. The second production I created projections for was Newsies, which can be viewed above. There were two sets of projections necessary for the show- the "STRIKE" writing from Jack Kelly and the advertisement windows in the cafe. Both of these were made by myself using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects.
