Lighting terms

Soft patch

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The soft patch is the console-side mapping of fixture addresses to control channels, letting a designer renumber the rig logically regardless of physical addressing. The counterpart of the hard patch.

Leko (ERS / profile)

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Leko is the colloquial name for an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight (ERS; "profile" in the UK): the hard-edged, shutter-framing, gobo-capable workhorse of front light. The name descends from the Lekolite brand.

Fresnel

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A fresnel is a soft-edged wash fixture named for its stepped lens, with a spot-to-flood focus and barn doors for shaping. The classic soft workhorse of theatre and studio rigs.

Cyc light

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Cyc lights are fixtures built to wash a cyclorama (the seamless upstage backdrop) evenly from top or bottom. LED cyc units made saturated, seamless color fields a one-fixture job.

Blinder

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Blinders are audience-facing fixture arrays (classically 2-light or 8-light tungsten banks) that flash the crowd at peak moments. The warm bloom and slow fade of tungsten blinders remains its own effect.

Strobe

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A strobe produces intense flashes at controllable rates for effect hits and simulated motion. Modern LED strobes double as blinders and washes; safety practice treats sustained strobing as a health consideration for audiences.

Breakup (gobo)

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A breakup is an abstract gobo pattern used to texture light rather than project an image: foliage, shards, dapple. Designers stack breakups in movers and profiles to keep stage light from reading flat.

Iris

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An iris is the adjustable circular aperture in a profile or followspot that changes beam diameter without changing focus. "Iris down" is the standing instruction for tightening a spot pickup.

Shutter cut

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Shutter cuts use a profile fixture’s four framing shutters to shape the beam into hard edges: keeping light off a screen, framing a doorway, slicing a podium special out of a wash.

Bump

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A bump is an instantaneous jump to a look or level (no fade), usually on a bump button ridden live to music. Bumps and chases are the percussion section of busked lighting.

Chase

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A chase is a repeating sequence of lighting states stepping in rhythm: the classic runway of PARs, or any looped effect stepping through fixtures. Rate and intensity ride live on most consoles.

Submaster

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A submaster is a fader holding a stored look or group at proportional level, letting an operator ride pieces of the rig manually. Busking rigs are built as pages of submasters and executors.

Busking

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Busking is operating lighting live without pre-recorded cues: building the show in real time from palettes, submasters, and effects, standard practice for concerts without locked setlists.

Previz

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Previsualization is programming a show against a 3D simulation of the rig before ever touching the real one, trading venue days for studio days. The console thinks it is talking to the actual rig.

Hang and focus

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The hang is installing fixtures per the plot; focus is aiming and shaping each one to its purpose. "Hang and focus" together are the lighting load-in’s two great phases, in that order.

Practical

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A practical is a light source that appears within the scene itself (a lamp on a desk, a neon sign) and actually works, usually circuited and cued like any fixture.

Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.