Inside the light desk: how a show is lit

The lighting designer gets the setlist, the stage plan and a few words from the artist about how each song should feel. For Nkem Lux's Gold season tour, those words were: warm, gold, then a storm, then gold again.

From that, the designer builds a plan for every song: which colours, which fixtures, where the beams should point, and the moments that matter, like the first chorus or the drop.

A cue is a saved look. It records which of the 48 moving heads are on, their colour, their position, how wide the beam is and how fast it moves to get there. A song might have 20 cues. A full show has 300 to 600.

You do not see the cues. You see a room that seems to breathe with the music.

The cues on our home page, amber sweep, violet wash, crowd scan and house lights, are four of the looks we use most.

The night before a big show, the lighting team programmes in the empty arena with haze in the air, so the beams are visible. They play the songs through the system and adjust every cue until it lands on the beat.

This is also when we check the safety rules: no fast strobes, no beams pointed at eye level in the gold pit, and house lights ready at the touch of one button.

On show night the designer sits at the desk beside the sound engineer, headphones on, following the band. Most cues are fired by hand, because live bands never play a song exactly the same way twice.

The follow spots are run by two operators in the roof, who keep the artist lit as they move. If you have stood in the gold pit, you have probably been in a follow spot for a few seconds without noticing.

When the house lights come up, the work is not over. The team saves the show file, notes what worked, and packs the rig for the next event, which might be a graduation the following morning with completely different needs.

If you would like to learn lighting, our community programme runs free Saturday workshops for young people from Onitsha every term.