Budding Lighting Designers Wonder about Sound and Vision

 

 

Friday 18th July was a great day for a group of St Wilfrid’s students, when Michael Mackey Clark from KAVE Theatre Services came in to run their professional sound and vision work shop.  We were also pleased to welcome a group of Year 6 pupils from our local Primary School, St Robert Southwell, as part of our community outreach programme.

 

The day was split into three parts; Health and Safety, Lighting and Sound.  Health and Safety was handled carefully, as electricity needs a great deal of respect and professional equipment is very expensive.  The student’s mathematical skills were stretched as Ohm’s Law was discussed in detail, showing the practical applications of their science lessons in a role such as Lighting Designer.  As we all know, Ohm’s Law is V = IR, where V is the potential difference between two points of interest in volts, I is the current in amperes, and R is a circuit parameter, measured in ohms (which is equivalent to volts per ampere), and is called the resistance….

 

Once the students saw the effects of bad wiring on melted plugs, fuses and lighting boards, it was time to start setting up some lights for real.  Different types of lights were examined and displayed, causing many ooo’s and ahh’s from the students, especially when the different gobos and gels were applied.  The most impressive set up was the Intelligent Lighting System, which could be programmed to change colour, direction and gobos beforehand and set to run automatically in a production.  Students were allowed to experiment with the Intelligent Lighting System to their heart’s content, creating some interesting and sometimes blinding displays!  Finally, the use of a PC in the modern theatre was examined, showing what effects it could achieve by programming the lights digitally.

 

After the break it was time to look at sound in the final session of the day.  The sound board looked incredibly complicated, causing exclamations of “cool!” from the students.  Michael Mackey Clark from KAVE Theatre patiently talked them through the various sliders, switches and buttons.   The different types of microphones, such as radio mikes and the expensive mikes the BBC use were shown and heard through the sound set up, with their benefits and disadvantages explored in detail.

The students had lots of questions, and all were answered with examples of Michael’s extensive experience in real theatres and events.  Such interactions with active professionals in the industry are invaluable for our students. 

 

Holly Myers, Business and Community Manager at St Wilfrid’s, thoroughly enjoyed the workshop, “I learnt so much! I know the students did as well, as they were buzzing with ideas by the end of the day.  I would like to thank Michael of KAVE Theatre Services, who treated the students like the budding Light and Sound Engineers they are.”