72 A prActicAl guide to stAge lighting As production or creative staff meetings con- tinue, the relationships between the lighting and other aspects of the production evolve. The wireless micro- phones, for example, will require pockets to be sewn into specific costume pieces to contain the base packs. The lighting and scenic designer will need to mutu- ally choose the fabric used for the china silk, in order to make sure the right material works for both them. Maybe they can go to a fabric store together. On the other hand, there may be no time for anyone to collec- tively get together again until just before load-in. qualities and movements of light, now described in the cue master, can now be viewed by the lighting designer in much the manner that a composer would view a musical score. The lighting designer now has an over- view of all of the scene names, characters, and song titles--the beginning of the language for the show. Since all of this information is collected on a few pages, it's possible to easily refer to almost any aspect or point of the production, and see adjacent scenes or songs, or see where they are relative to the rest of the show. Hokey cue Master, Version 2 Throughout all of these meetings, the lighting designer has been absorbing and notating everyone's individ- ual and collective input, recording the information on a legal pad or a laptop. For the time being, there are still only two core design documents, the cue master and the systems and specials sheet. Figure 3.5 shows the results of the first updating of the cue master for Hokey. Several rows have been added so that all of the added beats and moments that were revealed in all the meetings can be added. To help make a distinction between the songs and any other action, the song titles have been bolded. The information in the col- umns on the right-hand side may not have everything in the right place, but the first priority is to collect all of the available information into a single document as rapidly as possible. Every new beat or moment, every blocking or staging notation, and every song style indication has been included. All of the scribbled notes from the other meetings have now been absorbed into this single docu- ment. Entering the information as soon as possible after the one-on-one meetings often calls up other verbal notes that happened so quickly they weren't written down. Assembling and viewing the notes allows the designer to compare fresh information. This might include notes on costume colors, which may become particularly useful when examining color choices for the translucency. Obviously, not all of these lighting change ideas will survive into the light cue level setting session. At this point, however, this document is a repository for every conceivable lighting change, listed in a sequential format, with some sense of when and why it would take place. One of the benefits of the cue master is that it allows the lighting designer to have a more global view of an entire scene, and place it in the context of the entire production. It makes it possible to begin com- paring cues to one another--the lighting designer can see that Act 1, scene 1 looks like it may potentially repeat or restore to some degree during Act 3, scene 1. As the cue master expands, it allows the designer to define cue placement choices for more subtle move- ment of light, as well as for obvious cue points. The Hokey systems and specials, Version 2 Once the cue master has been updated, it's printed out and studied. Then, any applicable information about the systems or blocking notes gets transferred over to the systems and specials sheet. Figure 3.6 shows the result of this first updat- ing session, compared to Figure 3.3 at the begin- ning of the chapter on page 66. Already the amount of information and structural analysis have dra- matically expanded. During this updating process, ideas about colors, angles, and cueing thoughts have begun to emerge. And now, that information may be turned around and re-entered back into the cue master. At this point in the process, many of these thoughts may still end with question marks by them. But as the information gets more distilled, and as the big looks and recipes for each scene continue to be developed and honed, patterns and similarities of col- ors, angles, and mental pictures start to emerge. As Figure 3.6 shows, not all of the information is strictly in the correct column. As a complex show grows and changes, it's common to see information overflow from one column to another, until another column is added. As new systems are decided, this type of document often increases in size, and can quickly require multiple pages with larger paper and smaller fonts. Sometimes lighting designers start by rotating the document to a landscape layout, expanding it onto legal-sized paper, and adding col- umns for each direction of light. In this way it can be easier to see repetitions and patterns emerge. The important thing is to condense the looks of the show into the most compressed possible lay- out. Then it's possible to compare systems used in various scenes to one another, and then see how much any system is used throughout the show. As more information and more cue sequences are added to the cue master, the overall number, color, and purposes of each system or special series is expanded, contracted, or eliminated altogether. Each system is constantly reviewed, decisions made about the color and amount of coverage can then be