Lighting Design II

Course Description

TPA4021C is the second course in theatrical lighting design, and it is where the subject stops being about understanding light and starts being about producing a complete, buildable lighting package.

Florida's statewide description is refreshingly concrete: the course "will analyze scripts from the point of view of lighting the show and includes the drafting of light plots, doing center line sections, and all necessary paper work connected with the finished lighting package."

⚠ Read that as a list of deliverables, because it is one. A finished lighting package is a specific set of documents — a light plot, a centre-line section, an instrument schedule, a channel hookup, a colour and gobo schedule, a magic sheet and a cue synopsis — and a designer is judged on whether an electrician can build the rig from them without asking a question. Producing that package is the work of this course.

UWF, the only Florida public institution carrying this identifier, describes the pedagogy: the course "advances the study of the design process involved in lighting design. Theoretical design projects and light lab projects are used to give the student challenges in the classroom that can be directly translated to the design process. Theoretical projects in a variety of design venues and types of theatre with lab projects that further build the designer's resources."

⚠⚠ The phrase "a variety of design venues and types of theatre" is the substantive difference from the first course. Lighting a proscenium drama, a thrust production, an arena concert, a dance piece and a musical are genuinely different design problems with different instrument counts, different angles, different conventions and different relationships to the performer. The second course is where a designer learns that the method generalises and the solutions do not.

⚠⚠⚠ One warning belongs at the top of this page rather than buried in it: the prerequisite recorded for this course statewide names a number its only carrier does not offer. See Special Information — it is the most consequential practical fact here.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Analyse a script specifically for lighting — deriving time, place, mood, focus, practical sources and the production's own logic from the text.
• Develop a lighting design concept and articulate it to a director and a design team.
• ⚠ Draft a complete, professional light plot to USITT graphic standard, in scale, for a specific venue.
• ⚠ Draft a centre-line section and use it to verify beam angles, trim heights, throw distances and coverage.
• Produce the full paperwork set: instrument schedule, channel hookup, colour and template schedules, magic sheet, cue synopsis and shop order.
• Select instruments deliberately — matching fixture, lens, beam angle and accessory to the job rather than to habit.
• Design within real constraints: inventory, circuit and dimmer capacity, hanging positions, budget, crew hours and the technical schedule.
• Design for multiple venue types — proscenium, thrust, arena and black box — and explain how each changes the approach.
• Write, time and refine a cue structure that supports the production rather than announcing itself.
• Execute light lab projects, testing design decisions against what the instruments actually do.
• ⚠ Present and defend a design package, and revise it under the constraints a technical director or master electrician imposes.
• Apply safe practice for work at height, electrical work and rigging.

Optional Outcomes

• Draft in Vectorworks Spotlight and manage paperwork in Lightwright — ⚠ the professional standard pairing.
• Use previsualisation (Vision, Capture, WYSIWYG) to pre-programme and test a plot.
• Programme a lighting console — ETC Eos is the dominant American theatrical platform.
• Design with moving lights, LED colour mixing and media servers.
• Design for dance, opera, musical theatre, concert or themed entertainment.
• Assemble a professional portfolio and prepare for the United Scenic Artists examination.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Script analysis for lighting at production depth — scene-by-scene breakdown, cue-worthy moments, and what the text does and does not dictate.
• Concept and collaboration — working with the director, scenic designer and costume designer so the three designs agree.
• The light plot — drafting standards, symbols, scale, layering, notation and legibility.
• ⚠ The centre-line section — why it exists, how to draw it, and the geometry it resolves.
• Paperwork — instrument schedule, channel hookup, magic sheet, colour and gobo schedules, shop order, cue list; ⚠ who reads each one and what they need from it.
• Systems thinking — front light, back light, side light, specials and washes as an organised structure rather than a collection of instruments.
• Angle, area and coverage — the geometry behind the plot.
• Colour at production scale — palettes, media, LED mixing, and colour's interaction with paint, fabric and skin.
• Venue types and their conventions, including the particular difficulties of thrust and arena.
• Cueing and timing — structure, transitions, and the relationship between cue and stage action.
• Technical rehearsal process — focus, level setting, cue-to-cue, and working productively under time pressure.
• Budget, inventory and electrical capacity as design constraints.
• Electrical, rigging and fall safety.

Optional Topics

• Vectorworks Spotlight and Lightwright workflow.
• Previsualisation and offline programming.
• Console programming, cue tracking and effects.
• Moving lights, LED fixtures and colour-mixing systems.
• Networked control — DMX, sACN, Art-Net and RDM.
• Dance, opera, concert and themed-entertainment lighting.
• Portfolio, interview practice and the USA 829 examination.

Resources & Tools

• A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting (Steven Shelley) — ⚠ the best single book for this specific course. It is about the plot, the section and the paperwork, which is exactly what the statewide description names.
• Stage Lighting Design: The Art, the Craft, the Life (Richard Pilbrow) — the profession's classic, and the best account of how a designer actually thinks.
• Scene Design and Stage Lighting (Parker, Wolf and Block) — the standard combined textbook.
• The Automated Lighting Programmer's Handbook (Brad Schiller) — where moving lights are covered.
• Vectorworks Spotlight — ⚠⚠ the industry-standard drafting application. Student licences are free, and fluency in it is directly and immediately employable.
• Lightwright — paperwork management, used with Vectorworks by essentially every working designer in American theatre.
• ETC Eos offline software — free, and the console family you are most likely to meet.
• Gel swatch books (Rosco, Lee) — free from the manufacturers.
• USITT — the professional body; its Graphic Standard governs how a plot is drawn, and its annual conference is where portfolios get seen.
• United Scenic Artists Local 829 — the designers' union; understand the examination route before you graduate.
• ⚠ Design a real show. A plot drawn for a theatre that exists, hung by people who will complain about it, is worth more than any number of theoretical projects — and the theoretical projects exist to get you ready for it.

Career Pathways

• Lighting designer — theatre, dance, opera, concert touring, corporate events, themed entertainment and architecture.
• Assistant and associate lighting designer — ⚠ the realistic entry point, and the job this course's paperwork skills are literally for. An assistant's core function is producing and maintaining the paperwork the designer's plot generates.
• Master electrician, programmer and electrician — the technical track, and where the steady work is.
• Themed entertainment lighting — ⚠⚠ Florida's dominant employer of this skill. Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal Creative, and the specialist design and integration firms clustered around Orlando design and maintain lighting for attractions, shows, parades and nighttime spectaculars continuously.
• Concert, corporate and convention lighting — Orlando is one of the largest convention markets in the country, and the event-lighting sector around it is substantial and year-round.
• Cruise line entertainment out of Miami, Port Everglades and Port Canaveral.
• Film and television lighting, and architectural lighting design — both recruit from theatrical training, the latter increasingly.
• Florida producing theatres: Asolo Repertory (Sarasota), Maltz Jupiter, Florida Studio Theatre, Orlando Shakes, the Adrienne Arsht Center and the Straz Center.
• ⚠ Union structure: USA Local 829 represents designers (entry by examination and portfolio); IATSE represents electricians and programmers. They are different career paths, and nearly every designer works the technical side first.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ The prerequisite recorded for this course names a number its only carrier does not offer

This is the most useful thing on the page, and it is a genuine defect in the state record rather than a subtlety.

Source	Prerequisite it names	Does the carrier offer that number?
Florida statewide record	TPA 4020 Lighting Design I	⚠⚠ No — UWF does not carry TPA4020 (FSU and UF do)
UWF (the only carrier of TPA4021C)	TPA 3020 OR TPA 3022	⚠ TPA3022 yes; TPA3020 is carried by no Florida public institution at all

What is actually going on. Florida numbers "Lighting Design I" two ways: TPA4020, carried by FSU and UF, and TPA3022, carried by FAU and UWF. ⚠⚠ The statewide prerequisite for this course was written against one family, while the institution teaching the course uses the other — so the state's record describes a chain that does not exist anywhere it is taught.

The practical answer is simple, and it is not the state's record. ⚠ At UWF the real gate is TPA3022 Lighting Design I. Take that course. If you are coming from another institution, you need the equivalent of a first lighting design course — ⚠⚠ and what you should send is the syllabus and your portfolio, not the number, because in this corner of the catalogue the number identifies almost nothing.

⚠ The same warning applies in the other direction. The unsuffixed number TPA4021 is carried by FSU and UF, both at three credits, as their Lighting Design II — following their TPA4020. So the second course is one number with two suffixes across two separate numbering families, and a transfer evaluator matching on identifiers alone has a reasonable chance of getting it wrong in either direction.

	Family A	Family B
Lighting Design I	TPA3022 — FAU, UWF	TPA4020 — FSU, UF
Lighting Design II	TPA4021C — UWF (this course)	TPA4021 — FSU, UF

⚠ Design or craft? The division this course sits on

Lighting in the TPA prefix splits between design (TPA3022, this course) and technology (TPA3223C — "lighting equipment, dimmers, control, and other electronics"). ⚠⚠ They are different professions. A designer decides what the production looks like and issues the plot; an electrician and programmer build and run it. USA Local 829 represents the first, IATSE the second.

⚠ Learn both. Almost nobody is hired as a lighting designer out of an undergraduate degree — the technical skills are what pay while the design career is built, and a designer who knows what can actually be hung, circuited and focused in the hours available is a better designer and a far more employable one.

Offering Notes

Institution	Its title	Credits	Prerequisite
University of West Florida (SUS)	Lighting Design II	3	TPA 3020 OR TPA 3022; may not be repeated for credit

One Florida public institution carries this identifier, at three credits. ⚠ No institution publishes a contact-hour figure, so the 60 hours recorded here is derived by Florida's convention for a three-credit integrated C course — and it is corroborated by UWF's own description, which builds the course around "light lab projects" alongside the theoretical ones.

⚠⚠ Expect the real commitment to exceed 60 hours substantially. Drafting a plot is slow; the paperwork that follows it is slower; and light lab time, hanging and focus sessions in a working theatre run when the theatre is free, which is often at night. The credit value describes the registration, not the time.

UWF places the course in its College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Theatre. The unsuffixed TPA4021 is carried by FSU and UF, both at three credits, both titled Lighting Design II.

Position in the curriculum and transfer

An upper-division course following a first lighting design course, which itself follows stagecraft. It sits alongside scene design II (TPA4061), costume design II (TPA4046) and the technical numbers in a design and production degree, and it is normally where a student assembles the portfolio that determines what happens after graduation.

⚠ Florida's statewide record classifies it as transferable to an institution offering the same course, with no Gordon Rule designation and no general-education category, and marks it for dual enrolment with elective high-school credit. The (U) in the statewide title means only upper division and carries no further information.

⚠⚠ Given the two-family numbering described above, transfer on portfolio and syllabus. Roughly 78% of all TPA identifiers are carried by exactly one Florida public institution, so a clean number match is the exception in this prefix rather than a reasonable expectation.

AI Integration

Lighting design is already a computational discipline and has been for a generation. Plots are drafted in Vectorworks, paperwork lives in Lightwright, plots are pre-programmed in previsualisation, and moving lights and LED fixtures are computers that emit light. ⚠ Every one of those tools is in scope for this course and a student should learn them.

Generative image tools are a real addition at the concept stage. Producing a dozen images of a mood to show a director, or to argue with yourself about, is faster than sketching and sometimes more productive. Designers use it.

⚠⚠⚠ But this is precisely the course where the distinction has to be made sharply, because this course is about the document, not the picture. The statewide description says so outright: "the drafting of light plots, doing center line sections, and all necessary paper work connected with the finished lighting package." ⚠ A generated image shows a result with no account of how it is produced. A light plot is a buildable specification — these fixtures, in these positions, at these angles, with these colours, on these circuits, within the dimmer capacity, hanging positions and trim heights of a real theatre, achievable by a real crew in the hours the schedule allows. The design is the second thing. The picture is at best an argument for it.

The failure mode is specific and preceptors see it every year. Generated stage imagery shows light with no possible source, shadows inconsistent with any rig, beams that no lens produces, and effects that would require instruments in the middle of the audience. ⚠⚠ A student who has drawn a centre-line section spots it instantly, because the section is exactly the tool for asking "can this beam actually get there from a position that exists?" A student who has not will present a director a picture that cannot be built — and the director will have started staging toward it before anyone finds out.

⚠ A harder caution on the technical content. Beam and field angles, photometric data, gel transmission, circuit capacity and rigging loads are equipment-specific and safety-relevant. Verify against manufacturer photometrics and your theatre's actual inventory. ⚠⚠ Anything touching electrical load, rigging or work at height is confirmed with your technical director, not with a chat window — the consequences of a confident wrong answer there are physical.

Used well: generating and discarding concept imagery; explaining optics, photometrics or colour theory a different way; drafting the structure of a paperwork document you then fill from your own plot; and scripting repetitive tasks in the drafting and paperwork workflow. ⚠ And the portfolio point, which matters more in the second course than the first: employers and graduate programmes ask what you designed and why you made each choice. A portfolio of generated images answers neither, and an interviewer can tell within a minute.