Being a Master Electrician

Introduction

This set of documents is intended to provide a fairly complete introduction to being a Master Electrician at Harvard. In fact, this set of pages probably has more information then you really want to know! Feel free to skip to the bits that you are interested in and come back to the other material at your leisure or as questions come up. In particular, you probably want to read through the Working On A Show section, then look at Space Notes for the space you'll be working in, if any.

These were written by David Corlette, based on documents from Alan Symonds. If there is any inaccurate or incomplete information in these pages (a lot of my electrical knowledge is imperfectly remembered from high school!), please please please let us know.

At the moment, this set of documents is incomplete. Use the Table of Contents to get to the existing information; the rest of the pages will be filled out and lots and lots of images added hopefully soon.

If you are interested in the artistic aspects of lighting, you can also look at the Lighting Design document.
Useful links and reference data are on the Resource page.

If you'd like to skip the introduction, you can jump directly to the Table of Contents, or go forward a page to Basic elecs .

Master Electrician

Being a Master Electrician for a Harvard show has always been somewhat confusing. In some respects, the job you are actually performing is something more like "lighting crew chief" because in fact most of the things that a Master Electrician in the real world might do are already provided for you by the Lighting Designer or the space. On the other hand, there are lots of spaces on campus, and lots of opportunity to really learn about how the lighting systems work. By learning how to really take care of the lighting and electrical aspects of Harvard shows, you will make yourself invaluable to the Harvard community. Knowing all about the technical aspects will also prepare you to be a more efficient, more practical, and more knowledgeable lighting designer.

So what is a Master Electrician? In general, the ME is changed with aiding the Lighting Designer in the technical aspects of the lighting for the show. This means dealing with electrical concerns in the space and renting appropriate equipment. The ME is also in charge of the load-in of lights for the show. In essence, this means that the ME should be able to take the Lighting Designer's paperwork, load in the show, and have the LD show up for focus. In Harvard theater, there are several problems with this, e.g. the LD rarely has complete or accurate paperwork, the LD is also expected to help load in lights, etc. Regardless of this, being a capable ME means that you should be able to interpret the LDs wishes and do your best to set up the lighting for the show as he or she wants. This also means that you have a responsibility to make sure that the LD hasn't made any errors, such as overloading circuits or dimmers, or putting lights in unsafe locations. Ideally, the ME will be involved somewhat in the design process, so this type of feedback can be given to the LD before they have their heart set on some crazy idea.

In order to do her job effectively, the ME must know just about everything there is to know about electricity, lights, and theater procedures, at least on a practical level. Clearly, much of this is picked up by experience, but hopefully this set of documents will give you a jumpstart so you can jump into the role of ME with at least some fundamental concepts down. Being an ME is quite fun; you get to run a light crew, deal with some odd people at rental shops, deal with huge amounts of electrical power (remember to have someone stand behind you with a 2x4 when tying in!), and other fun stuff. Being a good ME is more of an art than a science, though, and you should pay serious attention to making things "look" good.

This set of documents is roughly arranged in three sections:

Basic information: a quick, practical guide to basic electricity and lighting concepts, so you can understand on a low level what's going on inside the lighting system.
Tour of the theater: a "tour" that leads you through most of the pieces and components that make up theaters.
Working on a show: A step-by-step guide on how to be an ME for a Harvard show; all the details you should take care of.
Space Notes: Specific notes about particular spaces that might have features different from other spaces.