Stage Lighting Design (Second Edition) by Neil Fraser

Over the years, I have taught basic lighting skills to GCSE, A-Level and vocational course students. I have found useful resources by being magpie-like online but what I would have given for Neil Fraser's book.

Recently updated to bring it up to date in terms of the many advances in the lighting world, notably intelligent lighting, this book shows what an excellent teacher Neil Fraser must be and how lucky RADA are to have him.

The book balances nicely the need for students to understand how to create a lighting design using generic lighting (what most schools will have unless they have a massive budget) but also explores really creative ways of using intelligent lighting units.

I really like that this book is grounded in the industry. It is full of helpful hints on things like how to run a plotting session; what to include on a lighting plan for ease of rigging (yes, these days created with CAD rather than a stencil but always printed out and handed to those rigging); and how to deal with creative types. There's a particularly useful exercise where one person plays an awkward director in a plotting session, always asking for the impossible. While this is probably great fun to do it's also useful. This is a book packed full of advice to allow you to develop as a designer and work well with others in the process!