Event lighting and lighting management is crucial to the success of any live event. The right lighting will influence the atmosphere and the actions of your audience. Whether its a live fashion show, theatre performance, or music content, live events rely on effective lighting. But how can you use lights to take control of your event? And what are the considerations? Well, here at Light Design, we are industry leaders when it comes to lighting and design. And we provide a range of high quality services to companies and individuals across London and the World. As a result, we have produced this guide to using light design to control live events.
To have a successful live event, you generally need to make sure that your audience are all on the same page with the proceedings and the cues provided. Lighting can be a successful tool to help you achieve this. In fact, high quality light design can help you stay in control of your live event by:
- keeping things on time and on schedule
- providing universally recognised social cues
- impressing your audience
Light design can keep you on time
For most live events, timings are crucial. For a music event drum solo, or a the timing of the catwalk turn at a fashion event, the timing needs to be precise. Lighting that is pre-programmed to change at set points can be a very useful tool to help you speed things up when necessary, or even slow them down. You can program your lights to change at set amount of time before the next act, and this can help you stick to the schedule.
Social cues
Sitting down, being quiet, standing up, and responding to the live show are all natural parts of every show. But if you want people to do these at certain times, lighting can be a significant and effective social cue. For example, lowering the lighting suggests that the performance is about to start, while increasing the light indicates that the performance is over, or taking a break. This in turn allows your audience to know what is expected of them throughout the event.
Impressing your audience
One of the biggest advantages of effective light design though, is the visual quality. Light design can be visually stunning, capturing the attention of the audience easily, and adding visuals to support the audio. In fact, the lighting can even be used as a way to direct audiences attention to parts of the stage or screen, or even parts of the room. People are naturally attracted to the movement and the illumination. This can add tension or drama, and keeps your audience engaged and involved in your show or performance.
Lighting and screens
In addition, high quality light design will also involve using LED screens or video walls. These produce light, but are most useful for the messages you can display. Whether its the line up or schedule for the evening, a guide to seating areas, or even just to show off your sponsors, LED screens can also be very useful for controlling your live event. People will be drawn to look at the screen, and this can help keep your audience in the loop with anything you need to tell them.
For more information or advice, get in touch with the team today, here at Light Design.