Before You Commission a Lighting Plot: A Checklist for Studio Teams

Start with the room, not the fixtures

Most disappointing lighting plans fail on facts about the room that nobody wrote down. Before you ask anyone to draw a plot, measure what you have: grid or bar height, the weight each bar will carry, how many power circuits reach the studio floor, and where the cable routes run. A plot that assumes a clear four metres of throw is useless if a ventilation duct crosses the ceiling at three.

Photograph the space from the camera positions you expect to use and from the corners of the floor. A handful of dated images, with a rough sketch showing doors, pillars and the set footprint, saves a full site visit's worth of back and forth. Include anything that cannot move, such as fire exits, emergency lighting and the position of the control room window.

If the studio is shared, note when the grid can be accessed and by whom. Plans that cannot be rigged during the hours you actually have are only drawings.

• Grid or bar heights and safe working loads
• Number and rating of available circuits
• Fixed obstacles: ducts, pillars, fire equipment
• Hours when the rig can be accessed

Agree what the cameras need to see

Lighting for television is judged on the monitor, so the plan has to start from the camera brief. Write down how many cameras will be used, their lenses and approximate positions, and the widest shot the director expects. Key light positions follow from those sightlines, because a fixture that is perfect for a presenter can throw a shadow across a guest sitting two metres to the left.

Settle the look as well as the level. A bright, even news-style wash and a warmer, more contrasty magazine set need different ratios between key, fill and backlight, and the choice affects how many fixtures and how much power you need.

Ask what the camera operators and vision engineer expect to do. If exposure will be adjusted live, the plan can allow more variation across the set. If it will be locked off, the lighting must be even enough to hold.

• Camera count, lenses and positions
• Widest shot and any planned camera moves
• Key to fill ratio and overall look

Decide who sits where, and how often it changes

A set that always hosts one presenter at one desk is a different job from one that serves interviews, panels and standing pieces to camera. List every position a person might occupy, and mark which ones are used every day and which only occasionally. The plan should light the daily positions well and cover the others with flexible fixtures, rather than spreading effort thinly across the lot.

Think about skin tones and clothing too. Guests arrive in all colours, and white shirts or dark suits push exposure in opposite directions. A sensible plan leaves headroom for both.

If the layout will change from one programme to the next, say so now. Fixtures on pantographs or lighting bars that can be lowered are easier to refocus than those fixed to a high grid, and the extra cost is usually recovered in rigging time.

• Daily positions versus occasional ones
• Guest variety: clothing and skin tones
• Frequency of layout changes between shows

Check dimming, patching and control early

Dimmer patching is where good plots become hard to operate. Ask how many channels you have, how fixtures will be grouped, and who will run the desk. A tidy patch, with channels numbered in the same order as the plot, lets a new operator find a fixture in seconds, while an improvised one costs minutes during every rehearsal.

Confirm the control protocol of the fixtures you own or intend to buy, and whether the desk can address them all. Mixed generations of equipment often need extra interfaces, and these should appear in the budget, not arrive as a surprise on rigging day.

Decide whether lighting states will be stored as cues. A studio that repeats the same looks daily benefits from saved presets, labelled in plain words rather than numbers.

• Channel count and grouping logic
• Fixture control protocol and desk compatibility
• Stored looks and how they are named

Be clear about power, heat and colour

Total load matters more than the number of fixtures. Add up the wattage of the proposed rig, compare it with the circuits available, and leave a margin so that nothing runs at its limit. Check that the supply is shared sensibly with cameras, monitors and the control room, since a tripped breaker mid-recording is a poor way to find out.

Heat is the quieter problem. Tungsten fixtures warm a small studio quickly, and presenters notice. LED fixtures reduce this, but their colour rendering varies, so ask for a test against your cameras before committing to a whole set of them.

Keep a single colour temperature across the set unless a deliberate effect calls for something different. Mixed sources are one of the commonest reasons skin looks different from one camera to the next.

• Total wattage against available circuits
• Heat output in a small or poorly ventilated room
• Colour temperature and rendering across fixtures

Ask what you will be handed at the end

A lighting plan is only useful if the people who inherit it can follow it. Before you agree to any work, ask what documents will be delivered: a plot showing fixture positions and focus, a channel and patch list, a note of the intended looks, and a short guide to rigging and striking. These should be readable by someone who was not in the room when they were written.

Ask also what happens when something has to change. A plan that cannot be updated by your own staff will need a fresh visit every time a presenter moves a chair. Good notes explain why each fixture sits where it does, so adjustments follow the same logic.

Finally, agree how the plan will be checked. A short walk-through on camera, with the operator holding the plot, will show quickly whether the paper matches the floor.

• Plot, patch list and look notes
• Rigging and striking instructions
• A camera walk-through to confirm the result

None of these questions needs a specialist to answer. Work through them with your producer, vision engineer and whoever holds the keys to the grid, and write the answers down. A brief built from real measurements and clear looks gives any planner far less to guess at, and it makes the eventual lighting plot easier to build, rig and hand on to the next team.