Lighting Engineer

A lighting engineer designs and implements the lighting arrangements for live and pre-recorded media events such as concerts, television shows, movies and public events.

A lighting engineer is crucial to any production. Lighting is key to setting ambiance, mood and style to any staged event.

At the outset, a lighting engineer will be directed in his work by the production director, who will explain what he wants from the lighting and it is the lighting engineer’s job to bring that vision to a reality.

Working with stagehands, riggers and electricians, the lighting engineer sets up configurations of lights that are then remotely controlled via a control board.

During the production, the lighting engineer may sit at this board and set different lighting effects in action at pre-determined cues. Often, series and sequences of effects are configured with computer programming.