Specialisation Lighting Design
A specialisation in lighting design focuses on the role that light can play at events or in dramatic productions. We provide you with the tools you need to become a master in the use of lighting. You learn how light can generate emotion, about the function of colour and the technology involved with modern or classic implementations. You are trained to work as lighting designer within a creative team that is able to realise a complete production by working together. You experiment with lighting in productions at school and at outside venues and discover/create your own style.
Head teacher: Bastiaan Schoof
Second year
You will explore lighting design more deeply in your second year. Subjects like colour theory and motivated lighting will be dealt with extensively. We will examine the role of lighting in the dramaturgy of productions. Another facet we will look into is how a museum exhibition, architecture or installation art is illuminated. It’s all about using light in the best possible way to create an artistic product.
Towards the end of the second study year, you will choose an internship for the third year. Before doing so, you must formulate your personal learning goals. During the second year you should also consider who you want to act as your external mentor. He/she will act as a contact person for monitoring your development during the last two years of your study.
Projects during your second year
Quirine Racké and Helena Muskens are conceptual artists and filmmakers. Students of the study programme Amsterdam Drama and Contemporary Music Theatre (ATKA) work together with lighting and sound specialists on an individual creative process.
You do the singer-songwriter project together with a singer-songwriter from the field. They write a song and you create a performance around it together.
At the end of the year, together with students of the study programmes Theatre Directing 2 and Scenography 2, you will make a production based on a scientific phenomenon
Third year
Your research internship is central to the first semester of your third study year. You will undertake research in the work field with a theatre ensemble, at an event or festival or even with a business organization. On the basis of your personal learning goals, you will use this time to explore how a lighting designer works. The third year is concluded with a graduation project in or outside the school or even abroad. While working on these different projects you will maintain contact with your external mentor. In the second semester, after completing the project ‘Mythological Melancholic Manifesto’, you are free to plan your own study trajectory. For example, by starting work on a graduation project, creating work of your own or following lessons at a university or other hbo study programme (internally or externally) or another internship. At the end of the year you must submit a personal graduation plan for your fourth year. A final interview with the head of studies will decide if your plan is approved.
Project during your third year
After your internship, you work together with students from Theatre directing 3 and Scenography 3 on the Mythological Melancholic Manifesto. Inspired by this theme, students work together on an equal basis to realise a production or installation in the large auditorium of the academy.
Fourth year
During the fourth year that comprises nine months, you will work on your graduation projects. A condition is that at least one graduation project must be realized during this time at school with students of other study programmes who are also completing their final year. A research project in the form of an essay or thesis (circa 6 weeks) is also a possibility as well as an internship.