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December 4, 2024  |  Entertainment

Learn from Women in the Entertainment Lighting Industry


Carter Hartong

The Women in Lighting project, founded in 2019, is an important platform that profiles women working in lighting and lighting design.

Per their website, Women in Lighting “aims to promote their [women in the lighting industry] passion and achievements, narrate their career path and goals. It aims to celebrate their work and increase the profile of women working in lighting to help encourage, support and inspire the next generation.”

To commemorate the release of Women in Lighting’s latest book, “Collected Light Volume Three: Women in Entertainment Lighting,” this article will highlight five incredible designers featured in the book. You’ll learn about their roles in the industry and how Vectorworks helps them design without limits.

Enjoy!

Paule Constable, Lighting Designer

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Paule Constable is a UK-based lighting designer who works in live performance. Her work is seen and acknowledged the world over. She has been awarded five Olivier Awards, two Tony Awards, and the Helpman Award as well as many other industry and critics’ awards. Constable’s the sole recipient of the International Opera Award for Lighting and was awarded a London Critics Circle special achievement award to acknowledge her contribution to the industry.  

Constable has contributed to several notable productions, including “Warhorse,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” and “Les Misérables.” A recipient of the prestigious Royal Designer for Industry award, she’s also a dedicated advocate for sustainable practices in theatre. Additionally, Constable is a co-founder of the group Freelancers Make Theatre Work.

When speaking about Vectorworks, Constable said, “I use Vectorworks every day of my working life. It’s the tool I use to express my designs — it’s internationally recognized and acknowledged, and it creates a shared language across so many borders. In many ways, I would be lost without it!”

Emily Bornt, Owner of Lighting Entertainment and Production Services, LLC.

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Emily Bornt is a lighting designer and director for touring concerts. She trusts Vectorworks to be a mainstay of her workflow. “Vectorworks is my starting point when designing, not only to figure out what fixtures fit in a given space, but to provide a visual aid for vendors, techs, and clients. I can create accurate technical drawings, and there are several worksheets and tools built into the software that can calculate fixture and accessory counts, channel and patch your rig, note accurate dimensions, and even help communicate cable paths and calculate cable counts.” 

In addition to Renderworks’ built-in rendering engine, its export capabilities allow her to transfer 3D information and textures to other platforms, like Cinema4D and Unreal Engine, for enhanced lighting renders that assist in client approvals.  

While on tour, Bornt relies on Vectorworks for venue overlays, helping her and her team adapt the rig for specific locations, especially in challenging venues. This pre-planning reduces on-site guesswork and makes sure the team’s time is used efficiently. 

“Vectorworks is my most used tool aside from my console, not only for its ability to help solve problems but its ability to communicate those solutions, and is an absolute asset in my workflow,” said the designer and director.

Diana Kesselschmidt, Technical Director and Lighting Designer

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Kesselschmidt is a seasoned professional with 30 years of experience in live events, installations, activations, theater, dance, opera, concerts, tours, fashion, conferences, and corporate. Her specialty is organizing information into clear materials for execution, communicating between technical departments, and guiding productions from concept through execution.

Vectorworks is Kesselschmidt’s primary tool for communicating all elements between departments, including tracking data to create orders, vendor color coding, Project Sharing, rendering, and more.

According to Kesselschmidt, Vectorworks is “often the only tool used” to share designs with production collaborators and clients alike.

I-Hua Kao, Lighting Designer

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I-Hua Kao is a lighting designer based in Taiwan. She’s designed for a range of productions, such as modern plays, traditional Chinese operas, musicals, children’s plays, dances, concerts, and museum exhibitions.

The designer’s work on “Reenactment” for Shu-Yi & Dancers won the silver medal for the Lighting Design Award at World Stage Design 2013. Equally as impressive, Kao’s book, “At Full: Focus on Stage Lighting Technology and Applications,” was published in 2016 and has been released in a revised edition in 2023.

“I’ve been creating my light plots with Vectorworks Spotlight for 20 years, ever since studying at Carnegie Mellon,” said Kao. “I first learned the software through self-teaching, thanks to its straightforward logic. The X and Y axes, along with the user-defined origin, provide precise and absolute positions for each item, making drawing quicker and more reliable. This was quite unique at the time and continues to be particularly significant for drawing light plots, which always require a symmetrical layout of the lighting fixtures.”

Kao has spent the past ten years teaching lighting design and technology at several universities in Taiwan. In the classroom, the designer still emphasizes the value of Vectorworks: “I find it practical for students to check the performance of the fixtures and their relationships with scenery, projectors, and speakers using the 3D and rendering features in Vectorworks Spotlight before entering the theatre.”

Erica D. Hayes, Lighting Designer

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“As a lighting designer, Vectorworks is an indispensable tool in my creative process, allowing me to take projects from conception to completion with precision and creativity,” said Erica D. Hayes.

Whether working on large-scale tours for the likes of Faith Evans or The Isley Brothers or television sets, the designer uses Vectorworks to visualize and plan intricate lighting designs.

Hayes also uses Vectorworks for her work with IATSE 728. “I rely on Vectorworks to develop comprehensive set plots that meet the demands of both the music and film industries,” she said.

Buy “Collected Light Volume Three: Women in Entertainment Lighting” Today

Click the button below to purchase the book from Women in Lighting.

 

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