LIGHTING DESIGNER
Will Wagner
Hi, my name is Will and I design the lighting for events, concerts, plays, films, pop videos etc. From a young age, I was interested in the way things work and was constantly taking things apart and putting them back together. I got interested in Lighting Design at school when I started to create lighting for school theatre productions.
In my job, I spend about a quarter of my time working with my team and making sure everything is going to plan and the rest of my time is spent designing and implementing projects. During my career I have worked on Lighting Design for the London Eye, pop concerts such as Kylie Minogue and the opening ceremonies of both the Sydney and Athens Olympics! I've also been able to travel quite a bit across Europe and to America, both for projects and trade shows.
Learn more about Lighting Designers and jobs in lighting design.
Did you know?- Lighting Designers tend to start on a basic wage of between £22,000 and £26,000 but can rise dramatically as senior freelancers can earn up to £1227 a week.
- You never know where the next project will take you and have the opportunity to work all around the world.
- You get to work with directors, stage managers, artists and bands.
- Lighting designers not only need to learn about how lights work, but how different spaces, materials and fabrics respond to light.
- Electrical Engineering and Physics degrees are useful for the technical side of the role. For both of these degrees, A-levels in Science and Maths are essential.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:Hi, my name's Will, and I'm a Lighting Software Designer.
I design and build systems for controlling exciting lighting shows.
Projects we do involve lighting effects on the outside of buildings, cruise ships and here's a very cool UFO that flew under a helicopter and terrorised various cities all round the world.
Here we are, a little project I'm working on at the moment. We're at Wembley Stadium, standing in front of the Claw U2 stage. The video screen, which moves up and down and gets bigger and smaller is what I controlled with my maths. We had to work out how to make it go up and down at the right speed without falling to pieces and falling on Bono's head.
The workplace is a lot of fun, nothing's taken too seriously. It's a very good industry to work in.
I use my maths to make sure I can do good design of the lighting systems, and I need my physics so that I correctly understand how it works in the real world.
Hopefully, the end result is a technical system that works, but we get a visual effect in the show that's exciting.
And this is one of the best projects I've worked on, the London Eye, and here's a light show we've designed for you.
This job's great, because you take the maths and you get to apply it and see real results, putting on a real show, and that's all because of the maths you've done. Without the technical work we do life would be much more boring to look at.
Interested in becoming a Lighting Designer? Find out more about it here, check out our Useful Links section or talk to a careers advisor at school.