Department guide · Lighting and electrical
Lighting and electrical, where the physics is the craft.
Lighting is two jobs wearing one name. There is the aesthetic job — where the light goes and why — and the electrical job, which is distribution, load, cable, safety and the reason nobody gets hurt. The internet covers the first obsessively and the second barely at all, which is unfortunate, because the second is the one that gets you hired as a spark.
This list leans towards the electrical side. It is for people who want to work in a lighting department rather than for people who want to light a music video, although there is plenty here for both.
Where to start
Learn the electricity first.
01
Load and distribution
Before colour temperature, before ratios, before anything: what a fixture draws, what a cable can carry, and how a distribution run is built. Everything else in the department is downstream of somebody having got that arithmetic right.
02
Then colour temperature and mixed sources
The 3200K and 5600K argument is not pedantry. It is the most common reason a beginner’s footage looks wrong, and it is fully learnable from free material in an afternoon.
03
Then fixtures, and only then
LED fixtures change constantly and manufacturer channels are the place to learn them, because they are at least transparent about being product training. Learn the principles first so the product training cannot mislead you.
Mains electricity on a film set is not a thing to learn by experiment. Watch what you like, but do not wire anything you have not been shown in person by somebody qualified.
The list
Free, checked, and every one of these links out.
Meet The Gaffer (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · US practice · grip and lighting
Luke Seerveld, a working gaffer, on fixtures, distribution, truck packing, job walkthroughs and the freelance economics underneath. One of very few channels made by somebody whose job is the department rather than by somebody who occasionally hires it. American terminology and American power: take the method, not the voltages.
ARRI — Learn & Help (opens in a new tab) · Free · photometrics, manuals and white papers · anyone planning a rig
Output figures, power draw, safety notes and rigging guidance, free and without registration. Aputure, Astera, Litepanels and Kino Flo publish the same kind of data for their own fixtures. Those numbers are what a gaffer plans from, and reading them teaches the department’s vocabulary faster than any tutorial.
ETC — training and documentation (opens in a new tab) · Free tutorials and manuals · paid classes · desk and board
Lighting control and desk training, theatre-leaning and directly transferable. Desk operating is an underrated paid route into a lighting department, and few people arrive having practised it.
ScreenSkills — lighting skills checklists (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · UK grades
What an electrician, a best boy, a gaffer and a lighting technician are each expected to know. The closest thing to an agreed job description in a department where titles vary wildly between productions.
ScreenSkills — lighting job profiles (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · before you apply
What the job is, what a day looks like, and how people get in. Read it before an interview so you are applying for the grade you meant to apply for.
British Cinematographer (opens in a new tab) · Free to read online · UK · any grade
Articles on how UK productions were lit, usually naming the fixtures, the rig and the gaffer. Seeing the plan behind a finished image is far more instructive than another three-point lighting video, and the CineSkills channel gathers the lighting archive under one cover.
American Cinematographer (opens in a new tab) · Free articles · paid magazine · working crew
The Shot Craft column on light, exposure and filtration, with the units and the arithmetic most tutorials avoid.
In Depth Cine (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · the image side
Lighting reasoning rather than lighting setups. The bridge between the electrical work and the image it produces, which is the conversation a gaffer has with a DoP all day.
The Film and TV Charity support line — 0800 054 0000 (opens in a new tab) · Free · confidential · 24 hours · no membership needed
Open to anybody working behind the scenes in film, television and cinema. Listed on a lighting page because this is a department of long hours, night shoots and physical risk, and the fatigue is not a personal failing. An independent organisation, unconnected to us.
Every link here goes to the owner’s own page, in a new tab. How we treat other people’s work · Last checked September 2026.
Money on it
Worth paying for, and the long game is a trade
A recognised electrical qualification
Not film specific, and the long game. A recognised electrical qualification from a further education college turns lighting from a precarious entry job into a trade you can fall back on. Funding often exists.
Paid, often funded
A working-at-height or rigging ticket
For anybody on truss, scaffold or a pre-rig. Real regulation behind it, portable outside the industry, and it makes you hireable on the pre-rig — the least gatekept entry to the department.
Paid, sometimes funded
The Mark Milsome Foundation — online production safety course (opens in a new tab) · Independently certified · about an hour and a quarter · check the cost on their page
Created after the death of camera operator Mark Milsome on set in 2017. The closest thing the UK has to a baseline production safety credential for a new entrant, and it matters in this department more than most.
The books
Two, and the first one is the one to buy.
| Book | What it is for |
|---|---|
| The Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook — Harry C. Box | Distribution, fixtures, rigging, safety and practice in detail no video attempts. It is the book gaffers own. If you buy one book from this entire library, buy this one. |
| Motion Picture and Video Lighting — Blain Brown | The aesthetic half, with the physics attached. Pairs with Box: one tells you how to power it, the other tells you where to put it. |
Where you are
The same list, sorted by what you have already done.
| If this is you | Do this, in this department |
|---|---|
| Never been on a set | Learn what a fixture draws and what a cable carries. Do not wire anything. Read the ScreenSkills profiles. |
| You have a first day | Learn the names of the fixtures and where cable runs. Step over nothing; walk round. |
| Building a career | The skills checklist for your grade and the one above it, and the photometric data for the fixtures on your next job. |
| Changing department | Start at load and distribution, whatever you did before. The electrical half is what gets you hired. |
| Running a department | The Bectu cards you are hiring inside, the published safety guidance you now sign for, and the trade press. |
The grades
What each rung actually does.
Director of photography
The person the gaffer is building it for, and the conversation that runs all day.
Any word on this page you have not met before is in the glossary, in UK terms.
Where the gap gets filled
With fixtures in your hands and a gaffer watching.
The lighting course runs on real fixtures, real distribution and real rigging, with the safety content delivered by people who do it for a living. The production simulations then put that into a working day where the schedule is the pressure and the turnaround is the test.
If you take nothing else from this page, take the free certification and the skills checklists, and use the checklist as a list of what you cannot yet do. That list is a better plan than any prospectus.
