Not everyone can provide great stage lighting. While there are those who don’t have the skills and experience, there are also some people who overdo it–a frequent error that many stage designers make.
Stage lighting is not just about filling the stage with various lights. The way that beams of lights enter and exit a stage can make a strong impact in the overall vibe of an event. Stage lighting, though quite exciting, requires careful planning to ensure the success of an event.
Read on to learn more about the most common mistakes in stage lighting to avoid and why it is important for your event.
Reasons Why You Will Need Stage Lighting
Just in case you find yourself asking “Why does your event need stage lighting?”, here are four of the main reasons why you will need stage lighting to drastically improve your event.
Visibility
Stating the obvious, stage lighting provides illumination to an object or person in a platform to make them visible enough for the crowd. After all, the main purpose of a stage is to center everyone’s attention to the performers on stage–which, clearly, stage lighting can help with.
Mood
If you want to set a certain mood for an event, you can rely on stage lighting to achieve your desired atmosphere for your audience. The use of brighter lights to convey cheerful vibe and playing with shadows to add drama are just two of many ways you can use stage lighting in creating a mood.
Action
Sometimes, events need more “action” effect but could not afford to make this happen with physical, locomotive materials. With stage lighting, you can add such effect without having to get props. The movement of lights in a stage can keep the event from going stagnant and monotonous. Syncing the light with the event’s music and sounds improve the mood of the event as well.
Emphasis
Stage lighting such as spotlights is used to direct the focus to a specific person or elements on stage, leaving everything else in the dark. You can easily draw the eyes of your audience by utilizing lights in your show.
3 Common Stage Lighting Mistakes to Avoid
Stage lighting can make or break a show. The days of hard work that you spent to ensure the success of your event can put to waste because of poor lighting.
To guide you, here are three common errors in stage lighting that you should avoid to make your event a success.
Eyesoring Color Flashes
A lot of lighting designers unknowingly commit this mistake, thinking that the more lights, the better. Playing with lights in your event may be enjoyable, but unfortunately, your crowd can find the too quick changing of lights overwhelming–or worse, annoying. Especially when it’s completely unnecessary, colored light explosions can ache your audience’s eyes instead of pleasing them.
Stick to the mood you want to set in your event when choosing the colors of your lights–and make sure that colors will complement each other. Also, it’s important to limit the number of tones of lights to be used.
Inappropriate or Bad Timing of Lighting Cues
The action of lights must be in accordance with what’s happening on stage, or else it would make the production look messy. Ensuring the perfect timing of entrance and exit of lights on stage is also a challenge for stage lighting designers and directors.
For example, if the band on stage is playing a mellow song, you know that keeping bright lights on won’t suit the current show–instead, you would want to dim out the lights and opt for warm lights.
Not Enough Budget
Failing to invest in premium lighting equipment for the show can negatively impact the overall stage lighting design. When it comes to perfecting your event, it’s a must to get your resources prepared if you don’t want the quality of your show to suffer.
Carefully planning your event budget before anything else can help you decide how much your event needs for lighting. After your overall budget has been laid out and allocated to various aspects of the event, get a journal to keep track of your next spending.
By knowing which mistakes to avoid in stage lighting design, you are already halfway there to a successful show!
Have you committed any of these stage lighting mistakes? Share your story by leaving a comment below.
