Light mixing
There are some important things to remember when determining the lighting mix. It firstly, light acts differently to pigment colours. While the primary colours of pigments are red, yellow and blue, the primary colours of light are red, green and blue.
As the three primary colours of light are mixed they tend towards white light and so it is obviously pointless to mix them equally as they cancel each other out. Also, as green light creates a ghoulish colour on skin, tending to make everyone appear sick, it is a less frequently used colour, particularly on its own.
How light mixes to create new colours is very important, but equally important is how coloured light reacts to the pigments in the set and costumes, or in the actors' faces. The table below outlines how different coloured light reacts with different pigments in skin, paint, material and makeup.
| How coloured light effects coloured pigments | ||||||
|
| Red pigment | Orange Pigment | Yellow pigment | Green pigment | Blue pigment | Violet pigment |
| Red Light | Fades and disappears | Becomes lighter | Becomes white | Becomes much darker | Becomes dark grey | Becomes black |
| Yellow Light | Remains red | Fades slightly | Fades and disappears | Becomes dark grey | Becomes dark grey | Becomes nearly black |
| Green Light | Becomes much darker | Darkens | Darkens | Becomes pale green | Becomes dark green | Becomes nearly black |
| Blue Light | Darkens | Becomes much darker | Becomes light mauve | Lightens | Becomes pale blue | Becomes light mauve |
| Violet Light | Becomes pale red | Lightens | Becomes pink | Becomes pale blue | Darkens | Becomes very pale |
| Neutral colours (black, brown and greys) remain almost the same under all lights, apart from a slight change in depth of tone or shade. | ||||||
Lighting Control
Despite the differences between lighting consoles, dimmer racks, lanterns and communication protocols between devices, there are a few general rules that can be applied to all incandescent (electric filament) lanterns. Firstly, individual faders on a lighting desk (board/controller) are connected to individual dimmers in a rack. Individual dimmers in a rack are connected to individual lanterns or groups of lanterns that will work together. By raising the level of a fader on the lighting desk you are increasing the amount of electricity passing through its dimmer and therefore the amount of light produced by the lantern/s. Whether the controller is an analogue desk, or a digital one transmitting DMX512 signals to a DeMUX converter and then to the dimmer racks, the concept is the same: one fader controls one dimmer, which controls the intensity of light produced. Of course modern digital lighting desks can group (or gang) several faders together to enable them to be controlled by one 'memory' or 'preset' fader, making plotting an entire production much more convenient for the operator.
