As a programmer and a lighting director, my job is to receive the information from whichever creative guru has chosen to hire me, transfer that information into colored photons and consistently repeat that vision until the money runs out. Opening my ears is the easy part. Interpreting the data that is flowing into my brain is the hard part. All designers have their own unique way of transferring the work of art in their head to my fingertips, through the buttons and arriving on stage. I have picked up a few keywords that have been consistent from designer to designer…A case in point: “Ethereal” (adj.): Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world. “Ethereal” means that the person asking you to make a look has no idea what they want, but they want it to look insanely good and out-of-this-world. I have found that, by putting every single light in a wide open Congo and then taking three to five center spot fixtures and put them in a very slow alternative rotating starry sky gobo aimed DSC, nine times out of ten, the creative director will smile and say, “Yup, that’s ethereal.”
—Chris Lose, from “LD-at-Large,” PLSN, Sept. 2018 page 84
